Two Secrets of Happiness

It occurred to me today that a large measure of my happiness can be attributed to two things. One, I'm easily amused. Two, I'm easily fascinated.

Playing the Time Horizon Accordion

"The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever."
- Anatole France

The pendulum has seemingly swung back to an emphasis on getting things done. There are aa variety of good sources for help on this topic. David Allen is the latest of the productivity gurus to offer useful tips about how to be efficient and effective. I used to teach seminars for Franklin Covey and can personally vouch for the value of their approach.

It seems to me, though, that one of the most important decisions you need to make has to do with your time horizon. More important than what you get done in a day is whether you are living your day through the filter of the day-to-day or the filter of a lifetime. Are you going to judge your accomplishments by daily goals or by your goals for a decade?

Is your time horizon the week? This is a common orientation for businesses that seem to delight in the weekly status reports. I have found that this tends to feed a frantic feeling as people continually scramble to accomplish lots of activities before the next weekly report. Too often, the result is a series of weekly accomplishments that merely support the status quo, tasks done superficially and quickly. To be fair, it also helps people to "just do it!" A person can stack up quite the list of accomplishments this way; the question is whether any of the accomplishments so important at the end of each week will still seem to matter at the end of the year.

Is your time horizon the year? Are you sorting through task possibilities with the annual Christmas letter or your New Year's resolutions in mind? This orientation can profoundly change the focus of someone who has conscientiously worked to complete tasks each week. It can change your priorities to the extent that you actually neglect what once seemed important. If your goal is to visit Venice, for example, you might sacrifice your savings goals for this one year in order to accomplish a goal that might otherwise never materialize. If your goal is to get a new job, you may actually sacrifice some degree of quality in your current job in order to find time to hunt for a job that you would otherwise never find time for.

Is your time horizon the roughly 3 to 5 years it takes to start a business or complete a degree? Are you continually choosing what to do and what not to do through the filter of equity creation, choosing tasks based on whether you think that they'll add value to your business? Are you accumulating college credits with an eye towards a BA or MBA degree? If so, you will probably neglect a variety of things that are important to you; socializing, for instance, will take a back seat to homework or dealing with customer problems. Your goal for a balanced life may have to be deferred until you are through this phase.

Is your time horizon the roughly 20 years it takes to raise a child? Does your to do list revolve around the developmental stages of the child, choosing what to do and what not to do thinking about how that will impact your child's adult life? Again, making this choice will color all other choices; you may make sacrifices to your career because they conflict with your goals for your child(ren).

Is your time horizon a life time? Do you have a vision of what you're trying to do with your life, of what you want to have changed in the world? You are always giving up something - sacrificing something. The question is what are you sacrificing and for what cause? Are you giving up your future for now or are you giving up now for your future?

Neither short-term or long-term orientation is a panacea. If your time horizon is too distant, it is easy to justify a lack of progress every day; if your time horizon is too near, it is easy to become frantic about the daily signs of progress. The first orientation can make you lazy and the second can make you a nervous wreck. You can continually defer enjoyment in ways that ensure that you'll never experience it; or you can seize enjoyment today in ways that basically ensure that it'll be even harder to find in the future.

So perhaps the answer lies in playing your time horizon like an accordion - pushing out the time horizon at some points in your life and squeezing it down to the very near term at others, alternately taking the long view and then engaging yourself in the smallest moments of time. What is key, then, is to play the accordion of time horizon and not let it play you.

Lessons Learned from Parenting

Tomorrow my youngest turns 18 and next week his sister is 20.

I've learned a few things about parenting. I've learned to kiss them on the head when I'm confused by them or frustrated by them or delighted with them. This seems to work on 18 month old children and 18 year old children alike. I've learned to call them "precious children," as a reminder to me and to them. And I've changed my mind about my job as a parent.

When these two little people came into the world, I actually thought it was my job to help turn them into certain kind of people. A couple of decades later, I'm come around to the opinion that my job is very different.

Anyone with children is amazed by what distinct personalities they are. They come into the world at a particular trajectory, seemingly destined to be a particular somebody, and it is not exactly clear that a parent can do much about it. Well, other than make them feel self-conscious or guilty about who they are.

So, how has this realization changed my notion of what it means to be a parent? Rather than try to change or shape who they are, I see my job as helping them to figure out how to succeed, how to navigate life, given that they are who they are. As we stand beside each other, trying to figure this out, I learn one more thing; they usually have a better idea than me about how to do that.

The Timing of Success or Failure

I wonder if the difference between success and failure isn't sometimes simply a difference in timing. If you stop too soon, you're a failure. If you persist, you are a success.

The Paradox of Meaning

“We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.”
- W. H. Auden

If you look up the definition of a word, you'll find it references other words. Meaning is an oddly circular notion.

So what is it that gives a life meaning? I suppose that it, too, is an oddly circular notion. Our lives have meaning when they connect with other lives. We're unlikley to discover the meaning of our lives with a deep dive into our navels.

Flow as Your Compass

A compass is different from a map. A compass provides an orientation. Flow can be a compass for you as you find your way in life.

Flow is a term popularized by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. For decades, Csikszentmihalyi has researched happiness and engagement. Asking people about their happiest moments, he frequently heard them use the term, "I was just in the flow." It is when we are fully engaged in life - whether it is in conversation or rock climbing, surgery or problem-solving - that we feel the happiest. A couple of the characteristics of flow are losing track of time and becoming unselfconscious.

One other characteristic of flow is a balance between challenge and skill. If your skill is great but the task you're doing is not particularly challenging, you feel bored or, at best, in control. If your skill is poor but the task you are doing is challenging, you feel stressed or anxious. But when your challenge and your skill level are both high, you experience flow. Your skill is sufficient for the task, but it requires your full engagement to do it.

In this way, flow can work like a compass. When you begin to feel too much in control or bored, you need a new challenge. When you begin to feel anxious or stressed, you need a new skill, or need to develop your skill more fully. The absence of flow can point you in the direction you should be going. I would argue that if one subordinates career development to long-term attainment of flow, one's career will ultimately do well. Finding flow means following a path of development.

If you accept a job that soon bores you, you'll probably find yourself facing one of two things. You may find your wages stagnating or you may find your employer eventually unable to afford you. If you don't develop skills needed to overcome stress in a job, you'll probably soon find yourself fired or demoted.

There is a temptation to stay in a job that lets you feel in control. This is particularly tempting for people who already feel overwhelmed by life and don't particularly want a big challenge at work. Women in poor relationships or burdened with extra work at home may well opt for jobs that let them feel in control rather than jobs that require their full engagement, for instance.

It is often easier to find flow than to find a "direction." Flow can be a compass for people willing to struggle to stay engaged in life and work. Insisting on the experience of flow does not just mean that you'll experience more happiness and satisfaction in life. It means that you'll be compelled to develop your potential.

Transform Self or Transform Society?

"We have become the tools of our tools," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote some 150 years ago.

Think about the various ways in which we subordinate our goals to the goals of our tools - the institutions like bank, corporations, and nations that, presumably, are mere tools for humanity. People go through hell because of odd religious beliefs, suffer financial stress after banks give them money, and miss out on profitable opportunities because of work commitments.

One of my beliefs is that we're on the verge of a new economy, a social revolution. The Industrial Revolution did at least two things: it transformed that era's dominant institution (the nation-state of absolute monarchs) and it helped society overcome the limit of capital. Banks, bond and stock markets, and factories were all social inventions designed to overcome the limit to progress - capital - and their explosion in popularity defined the Industrial Revolution.

In the last century, another economy emerged. This Information Age transformed society's dominant institution (the financial market of robber barons) and overcame the limit of knowledge workers. The modern university, information technology and the modern corporation were all social inventions designed to overcome the limit to progress - knowledge workers - and their explosion in popularity defined the Information Age. The new economy will not be designed to overcome the limit of land, capital, or knowledge work. Rather, it will be designed to overcome the limit of entrepreneurship. It will transform today's dominant institution - the corporation.

What is entrepreneurship? It is the act of social invention, of institutionalizing a source of value for the community. Steve Jobs and Henry Ford are entrepreneurs; less obviously, so was Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther. They are to organizations what inventors are to products.

One element of entrepreneurship rarely commented upon is the relationship of the entrepreneur to the institution. Most of us conform our selves to the institutions in which we find ourselves; an entrepreneur founds an institution that they conform to the entrepreneur.

The economy of the last century was defined by the popularization of knowledge work. Think of the explosion in the levels of education from 1900 to 2000. In 1900, only a small fraction of the American population between the age of 13 and 17 was engaged in formal education; by 2000, only a small fraction was not engaged in formal education. Imagine a parallel with entrepreneurship during the next fifty years.

The economy of this century will be defined by the popularization of entrepreneurship. One consequence is the transformation of what it means to become better. Efforts to change the self - self-help, "becoming a better person," and realizing one's potential -- will themselves be fundamentally changed. Instead of working to conform the self to society, we'll be conforming society to our selves. I don't believe it is possible to overstate the implications of this shift.

Western Civilization has been defined by amazing institutions and the role of the individual has been to conform to those institutions. We are called up on to be good Christians by the Church, good citizens by the nation-state, fiscally responsible by the bank, and good employees by the corporation.

What if the average person were shaping institutions to realize his or her potential rather than conforming to institutions?