Learning the Pursuit of Happiness

The title of this post popped into my head as a possible unifying concept for my thesis. Each of the key words is loaded with meaning, and the intersection between them is where my interests lie. Some preliminary questions I need answers to:

Learning

• How are kids currently learning about which possibilities for their future are likely to make them happy?
  
• Is this learning effectively helping them make good decisions? Do they have the information and skills?
  
• How might these skills and information be learned better? Technology, social software, planning portfolios, mentoring, overhauling career development and guidance programs, etc?
  
• How could a more holistic focus on lifestylism (or entire future lifestyles, as opposed to just family or career goals in isolation) help us make better decisions?
  
• How would rich visualization, simulation and reflection help kids understand the implications and interdependencies of their future choices?
  
• What differences exist in how kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds learn about their future options (career, education, lifestyle)?

Pursuit

• How are young people currently setting goals or directions for their futures? What are the ecological and social consequences of an entire generation of people pursuing those goals? Are they sustainable goals for individuals and society?
  
• Are the goals or directions generally meaningful, realistic, and aligned with their personal values? Are they pursuing what they actually care about? Do they know how to identify and take the best steps to achieving those goals?
  
• How could the process of helping kids set and achieve lifestyle goals be improved so that they'd have better tools and motivation to succeed by their own measures of success?
  
• How does fear motivate and paralyze young people when they think about their future options?
  
• How much of the goals and dreams of young people are borrowed or absorbed from society and the American Dream as opposed to being authentic and personal?
  
• Do young people believe that they can create their own futures, or that they must choose from existing options? How much desire is there to create future ways of living that are more satisfying and sustainable?
  
• How are differences in socioeconomic status manifested in the types of lifestyles kids pursue? How could those differences be minimized? Is class mobility a myth?

Happiness

• How likely are the most common or popular goals to make young people happy, both in the process of pursuing them and in their attainment? How happy is the American Dream making adults right now?
  
• How might lifestylism as an orientation or approach to the future help us better enjoy the journey and the destination?
  
• How could people better understand the connections between their personal happiness and the collective or common good of their communities and planet?
  
• How do kids define and pursue happiness in the present? What needs and wants do they believe will make them happy in their futures?
  
• What do young people believe about the relationships between work and happiness? Is work mostly viewed as the means for generating income to fuel consumption (which should equal happiness)? How well is this model working now? What should replace it if it's not making most people happy?

As I said in a previous post about my thesis topic, it's not a problem of not being interested in enough things -- it's a matter of organizing these questions into some kind of coherent approach or conceptual model. I'm glad I took a few months off from my program to ponder some of this stuff, because I feel like I'm at least identifying the questions I care about. The comments to my last thesis post were extremely helpful, even the abusive ones. Please feel free to comment on the questions I've included here -- even though I'm mostly just thinking out loud, it's great to have others bounce off of them as well. Which ones are most interesting to you (they're all interesting to me)? Which might be combined or expanded to yield the most interesting explorations?

Mac Truck

Jory has been reflecting on the tension between forging ahead on work vs stepping back to consider at the bigger picture:

"There have been times when all I've done is overdo, push to an unhealthy limit, make things that were perfect imperfect because I was bored, or afraid of sinking. I took a project management class once, thinking it would enhance my skills of making things happen. At the time I was very successful knocking off the tasks on my to-do list, and on everyone else's, but the big-picture projects, the ones that were truly revolutionary, didn't ever come to fruition. A few weeks into the course I was given a pet name, Mac Truck, to describe my management style; I don't think it was a good thing."

I suspect she's being too hard on herself, and it sounds like she might be getting a bit tired of all this reflection...but thank goodness for the rest of us that she's writing this stuff.

Permaculture

My beautiful and brainy wife doesn't post very often, but I'm always glad when she does. Her recent post about permaculture is sticking in my brain this week. She found some excellent points about approaches to life that promote permaculture that tie directly into lifestylism, at least as I'm seeing it now...especially these:

• Evoke whole system sensitivity: pay attention to whole cycles, not reduce everything to parts
  
• Model ecologically-appropriate lifestyles for others to learn and mimic
  
• Most importantly--have fun: life is too short for boredom, burn-out, tedium, and the like -- be sure to enjoy all of what you learn and do -- a healthy mind, body, and spirit (and relationships) can then be enjoyed as well. Help to design and grow healthy organizations, communities, and institutions accordingly.

Counterculture

I'm not sure how exactly this relates to Lifestylism, but I wanted to save Pat Kane's post about Creative Crass for the initial argument, later comments, and a few excellent interviews about counterculture.

Talking About Work

Esther's got a great new job and is thinking about how we talk about work:

"Before, I wanted to escape the discussion about work because I was unhappy about my work. In fact, isn't it true that when you ask another person about what it is that they do, then they ask you the same question? Before, that very question would get my mind rolling around about something that I would be happier to forget because my next day was bound to be frustrating and, over time it was becoming less and less a reflection of me."

Doug was just over at my desk and we were talking about how we've both stopped asking people "what do you do?" at parties. He now asks, "what do you like to do?" and I've been using "what do you do for fun?"...after a moment of confusion because of the subtle difference, people's faces light up as they realize that you've just asked them a much more interesting question.

Here and There

Doug wrote a fabulous post this week about the darker side of our dreams and aspirations. I'm fascinated by this tension between optimizing our current lifestyles and projecting ourselves into other possible futures. The process drives growth, but can also lead to a sense of restlessness or general dissatisfaction with our lives that precludes our enjoyment of the present. A quote from Doug's piece:

"In truth, there is no 'there'. We will not find happiness, fulfillment, and/or some sense of inner peace somewhere else. Those things are more likely discovered 'here', as we make present-day life more fabulous, or pursue today those things we dream of tomorrow. The answers people seek are most often discovered inside than out, more often realized in present-day experience than in some future place."

Blue Collar to White Collar Limbo

Betzi e-mailed me an excerpt from a book about social mobility that looks to be worth reading. This topic fascinates me -- it bundles up aspirations, abilities, beliefs about the value of education, socioeconomic factors and the American Dream itself:

"After bricklaying for 30 years, my father promised himself I’d never pile bricks and blocks into walls for a living. He and my mother figured that an education—genie-like and benevolent—would somehow rocket me into the rarefied trajectory of the upwardly mobile and load some serious loot into my pockets. My desire to work at something interesting to me rather than merely profitable was hard to fathom. Here I was breaking blue-collar rule number one: Make as much money as you can, to pay for as good a life as you can get. My father would try to teach me what my goals should be when I was 19, my collar already fading to white. I was the college boy who handed him the wrong wrench on help-around-thehouse Saturdays."

She also sent along an NPR radio interview with the author, including calls from listeners -- thanks, Betzi.

Paradox of Choice

Are too many choices a bad thing? In an another excellent post about options, Jory pulls out a few choice quotes from The Paradox of Choice:

"When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable .... But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize."

Work-Life Unreadiness

Christopher has a great post about twentysomethings struggling to hit their stride, linking to this article -- a quote:

"We are in the midst of an epidemic of work-life unreadiness because an alarming number of emerging adults are unable to find a good fit between their minds and their career directions. Like seabirds mired in an oil spill, these fledgling men and women are stuck, unable to take flight toward a suitable career. Some are crippled before they have a chance to beat their wings; others have tumbled downward in the early stages of their trajectories. Because they are not finding their way, they may feel as if they are going nowhere and have nowhere to go."

Learning About Choices

Jory is living without a net, and thankfully she's sharing the experience with others. This week she asked a few fantastic questions about choices:

"What I meant was, living on-purpose is an acquired skill. In grade school, we’re taught Anatomy, but not Autonomy. The latter is a subject we experience later in life, when we feel the weight of bad choices pressing down on us and can’t quite make out where the pain is coming from. We’re taught to make cheaper choices, rational choices, quantifiably advantageous choices, hormonally driven choices, but where are we taught to make meaningful choices?"

Parental Madness and Childcare Issues

Evan linked to this fantastic article from Newsweek: Mommy Madness, which is part of a series on The Myth of the Perfect Mother. Despite the focus on moms, I found that most of it could apply equally well to engaged fathers. Two companion articles are also well worth reading: The Good Enough Mother and Meet the Slacker Mom. The theme isn't new -- being a great parent is hard when you want to also have a solid career and some kind of life for yourself -- but there's more depth in these personal stories than most of the stuff I've read.

The recommendations at the end of the first article underline many of the points I've covered here before, and I thought two were especially worth repeating: the need for flexible, decent-paying part-time work and demands for affordable high-quality childcare that is flexible enough to be part-time or even drop-in.

The latter issue is hot in Canada right now, and I want to get into it here in the next month or so because it's loaded with lifestyle values. Here's an article to get things rolling, and an admission (startling to me): for the first time in my adult life, I find myself aligned with the right-wing party's stance on a major political issue. Instead of spending billions on institutionalized daycare like the Liberals are planning, the Conservatives would rather spend the money (or give tax breaks) to let parents choose how they want their kids cared for, which should include giving them the same amount of money to care for them at home.

Workaholic's Choice

Jory offers some insight and great questions about ambition in The Workaholic's Choice, a post about a workaholic consultant profiled in Fast Company:

"I wasn’t sure what to make of this article; was FC trying to lionize this man for his self-sacrificing attitude towards work? A father of six children, four of them special-needs kids adopted from three different countries, you have to wonder why he bothered creating such a complex life outside of his work, as he had no time for it.

Perhaps it’s the context du jour of work-life balance —- or, more accurately, work-life meaning —- that colors my bias. I fully believe that Stalk is smart, brilliant even, but is he wise? And, in the end, does the smartest man meet his maker with any more fanfare than the rest of us?"

It's true that we tend to respect people (on some level, anyway) for pursuing something with passion. Even when it's not something we would be interested in pouring ourselves into, there's something compelling about seeing someone else take it all the way. But what if that person is sacrificing the rest of their life for that passion, even though they might say that their marriage and kids and friendships are as important to them? Maybe that's what the Tragically Hip were singing about in Vapour Trails: "But there's nothing uglier than a man hitting his stride".

Planful Competence

Doug had a great post today about Owning Your Future, in which he shares the results of a longitudinal study (PDF) measuring the value of being "planful". I've always hated that word for whatever reason, but the results are fascinating. Doug's summary:

"Their research found that, ‘planful competence is a powerful predictor of an adolescent’s plans and their adult achievement in schooling and work.' The study defines ‘planful competence’ as a combination of ‘sense of mastery’ (a belief in yourself), ‘knowledge about the broader world of work’ (expanded career awareness), ‘scholastic aptitude’ (the skills), and ‘plans about the timing and extent of future attainment’ (defined intent). The paper goes on to state, 'Adolescents with a purposeful orientation towards life, combined with general and practical knowledge, have more ambitious career plans, more stable plans in young adulthood, and greater educational and occupational achievements by midlife.'

Masters Thesis

I've applied for a leave of absence from my masters program. After completing the coursework (including an inexplicable A in the final course, which I honestly expected to fail), I realized that I wasn't ready to launch right into my thesis. The leave gives me a few months to catch my breath and focus on a meaningful thesis question. It has to be related to education and technology (both of which have a fair bit of latitude) and could involve some original research, but wouldn't have to.

I’m tossing around a bunch of ideas, all centered around how people are using (and will be using in the future) the web to discover, define and pursue their aspirations. There’s also an element of mapping aspirations over values, both stated values and how they’re reflected in lifestyle choices (how we spend our time, energy and money), which I’m exploring here.

An example at the mundane end of the spectrum might be how high school students use college searches and college sites to decide where they want to go and what they want to study. It may also include some aspect of online career planning, which I’ve been working on for the last few years. I think the web can be used in better ways to help people envision their future work, especially by putting it in the context of figuring out how work will fit into the rest of their future life, including relationships, leisure, and learning.

Myron is doing some amazing work with high school kids, getting them to use the web to create a presentation of what they want for the future, using MLS to choose the home and location they envision themselves in, AutoTrader to select their vehicles, Expedia to plan their annual trips, etc... They create a sort of "surface view" of what their future life might look like, and then they add up the main costs to figure out what type of work will sustain those lifestyles, discussing values and choices in the context of what kids want. I love that approach, and I've seen how powerful the learning is for his students.

I'm fascinated by the psychology of aspiration and the concept of possible selves. Eddy Elmer sent me a helpful list of psychologists to use as a starting point for researching identity and self-actualization: Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, and Rogers seem to be the most promising.

43Things could be right in the middle of this stuff -— it’s currently the best example of a site that really harnesses the power of the web to help people figure out what they want to do. I love how it connects people with shared goals and informal expertise. It led me to this fascinating paper about goal-setting and the Delmore Effect.

So I’m not lacking interests...just need to focus. Any ideas for further reading, or more specific questions that emerge from these ideas? E-mail me or leave a comment here, and I will be most grateful.

Studying Goal-Setting

Fascinating paper about how people set goals (pdf). I enjoyed the illumination of the fact that we mostly think planning is a good thing, but don't actually do much of it:

"Specifically, they were asked: 'Do you believe that it is possible to improve your effectiveness by formulating goals?' This question evoked assent from 94% of the respondents. In spite of the near universal awareness that goal-setting would be useful, almost all of the queried people also confessed that they did not set goals. Specifically, they were asked: 'Is there any area in your life where you would like to do better, but have not formulated explicit goals in order to help you do better?' Although they had just agreed that goals were valuable tools, 91% admitted that they had not taken advantage of this useful strategy."

It's as if setting goals is like flossing or something -- knowing how valuable it is isn't sufficient motivation to actually do it. So what about the popularity of 43Things, where people seem to be loving the goal-setting process? One of the most interesting insights is related to something called the Delmore Effect, which basically shows that we tend to focus our attention on short-term, lower-priority goals and ignore the bigger, more important ones. I wonder how you analyze goals in 43Things for that effect?