Jason Roberts is changing the world

I read about Jason Roberts earlier this year in Dumbo Feather magazine and was blown away by what he had achieved as an "ordinary person".  To cut a long story short, when looking to buy a house with his wife years ago, he realised they could only afford to live in an undesirable part of town. Instead of being put off by that, he made it his mission to make it a better place to live - and he achieved it.  

He's a co-founder of Better Block, which is a movement that has spread across the globe that revitalises communities.  What they do is pretty cool...look at the Dumbo Feather interview, or the Better Block website, or Jason Roberts's TED talk.

This is a guy whose day job was working in IT, not someone with a degree in town planning.  He shows that you don't have to wait to be asked, or for someone else to start...you can do it yourself.

How to Change the World

I've been meaning to write about How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff for ages as it made a big impression on me. It's from the School of Life series so it's short, to the point and full of ideas.  This book is aimed at those of us who like the idea of changing the world in some way, but feel small, ultimately a bit powerless, think it's all too hard and then don't do anything else about it.

The book starts with a chapter on "Overcoming Defeatism" to get us out of this frame of mind and to remind us of the power of ordinary people.  If we want to hold a street party and get frustrated by petty regulations, Flintoff says we have a choice - we can either try to change the silly rules or we can just ignore them.  He talks about Gene Sharp who compiled an astonishing list of methods of "non violent action" - this sounds a bit alarming I know - but it is basically a very long list of ways of "doing something"  (all 198 of them are included in the appendix).  Flintoff says:

"Sharp demands that we remove our blinkers and recognise that political power is our own power - and that it does not reside only at the ballot box"

(Sounds like something Russell Brand would probably agree with based on his recent interview with Jeremy Paxman.)

So - that's the rousing call to action...but for what cause? Flintoff suggests how we can figure out what is important to us - what we actually want to take action on - and how to cultivate a sense of purpose.  There are some exercises in the book to help you work through those questions.

Next he suggests taking stock of your personal skills and qualities so you can work out how best you can help with your chosen cause.  After reflecting on his own experiences and skills, Flintoff comes up with this (which I love):

"I resolved from now on to stop thinking of myself only as a writer. I am also an artist, a baker, a career coach, a carpenter, a cleaner, a cook, a decorator, a dog walker, an English language teacher, a film maker, a gardener, a map maker, a bike messenger, a minicab driver, a qualified first aider, a printer, a publisher, a rubbish collector, a Scout patrol leader, a second hand bookseller, a tailor, a typist, a waiter, a washer up and possibly much else. I have to say that drawing up this list gave quite a boost to my self-esteem." 

He says there are two ways to change the world - to reduce suffering or to increase pleasure.    In the "increasing pleasure" category he talks about art and creativity.  He argues that "when we engage creatively with the world, we are having an impact".  In his mind, this is not confined to the fine arts, it could be making clothes or playing in a band.  Flintoff says

"A good world is not a world where everybody fixates on global problems according to some externally imposed framework of 'importance'. A good world is one in which people find meaning in the particular things they do - and that means a word that has a place for beauty, creativity and play."

In a nutshell then, changing the world doesn't have to be serious and heavy - we can have fun doing it too.  There are some great examples in the book of art projects and social enterprises, one of them is the Craftivist Collective which uses craft in activism.

The remainder of the book talks about where money fits in, how to get others to help, and changing the world in the wider community. There are lots of inspiring stories about people with great ideas, many of them sounded so simple that I thought, wow, I could do that.  I've come across other stories since reading this book that could have come straight from these pages. Just ordinary people doing the sort of world changing things Flintoff talks about in this book. 

Happier at Home

I mentioned recently that, in the midst of my house move, I re-read Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin.  Now, I'm a big fan of Gretchen Rubin's writing and became an even bigger fan when it turned out she is also a super nice lady (more on that later).  This post has taken me ages to write because Happier at Home is packed with, well, so much stuff, and I just couldn't pin down what I wanted to say.  So, in the spirit of "done is better than perfect" (a Gretchen-ism I like to remind myself of regularly), here's a collection of highlights and thoughts about the book.    

So - what's it about? Rubin describes the book as her account of the strategies that she used to feel more at home, at home.  In contrast to the messages in The Architecture of Happiness, which is all about the physical make up of buildings and their contents, Rubin doesn't really focus on this. She talks about what goes on in (and around) the home, and openly admits that she's not really interested in interior design. In fact, she said it had been a relief to her when she realised that her style of apartment didn't have to reflect any deep truths about her, and that it was enough that it be a pleasant, comfortable place to live.

Each month, Rubin picks a theme related to home (in the broadest sense) and sets herself some resolutions. She kicks off with "Possessions".  One of the most unsettling things about moving was being confronted with all our stuff - every single thing needed attention - and it made me just want to chuck it all out.  The usual comeback to a comment like this is that, yes, you should get rid of stuff, strive for simplicity, etc etc. Rubin argues we shouldn't just strive for less for the sake of having less, and assuming that less is better. She says instead we should just make sure we are engaging with our stuff - either by using it or keeping it because it has some special significance.

Next up is Marriage month.  One of the things Rubin talks about here is an attempt to rebalance who does the driving. Her husband basically does all of it, and she avoids it.  This is one of my own weaknesses too, and I read this chapter with hope, but it turns out there are no quick fixes for this.  Her sister offers the most helpful bit of wisdom here - that she'll only stop feeling anxious about driving after she has been driving every day for years.

Parenthood was the next theme, and I decided straight away to copy one of her resolutions to "under react to a problem".  Making a conscious effort to stay calm definitely makes a difference, but it takes practice.

A couple of months later Rubin focuses on Time.  She throws in a quote from Thoreau which inspired her:

"I love a broad margin to my life"

Isn't it such a luxury not to have to rush? In this chapter Rubin talks about planning her time better. She talks about everything from managing always-on technology and relentless emails, to how much she accomplished by doing something 15 minutes a day, to her kids' after school activities.  Her "15 minutes a day" task was sorting out her digital photos.  Some of her zeal for this rubbed off on me and I started tackling mine too. I also made a mental note to read Samuel Johnson, who is glowingly discussed in this chapter.

After the chapters on Body and Family is a chapter on Neighbourhood.  Here Rubin resolves to "be a tourist without leaving home" by making more effort to appreciate and enjoy what her city has to offer.  Another resolution this month was to "practice nonrandom acts of kindness".  Rubin disagrees with the notion that random acts of kindness bring happiness to the giver and the receiver (who she thinks will usually react with suspicion to a random act of kindness directed at them).  The nonrandom acts of kindness that Rubin focuses on include inviting new people to her reading and writing groups, recommending people for work and linking to other people's blogs. I smiled when I read this as this blog has been a lucky recipient of one of Rubin's nonrandom acts of kindness - she posted about this blog on twitter! - and it made my day!

Towards the end of the book, I highlighted this - which sounds so simple but is so insightful:

"...my quest perfectly illustrated one of my Secrets of Adulthood: I do best what comes naturally. When I pursue a goal that's right for me, my progress comes quickly and easily; when I pursue a goal that's wrong for me, my progress feels blocked. Now I try not to fight that sense of paralysis, but rather see it as a helpful clue to self-knowledge."

And, speaking of her Secrets of Adulthood (of which there are many) - this is one of my new favourites:

"It's the task that's never started that's the most wearisome"  

The final chapter, Now, brings it all together as Rubin reflects on her months of resolutions.  I won't spoil the ending except to say that it's happy and quite lovely.

You can find out more about Gretchen Rubin and her books and read her blog at www.gretchenrubin.com

The Architecture of Happiness

The last few weeks have been spent trying to adjust to life in a new home. For the last 3  years we lived in a lovely 2 bedroom apartment within walking distance of everything we needed to get to.  We were complimented on it often and I guess we felt quite house proud - not least because it was the first home we ever owned.  But with 2 small kids we'd grown out of it and desperately needed some more (especially outdoor) space.

We've moved about one mile away to the suburbs (where nothing is within walking distance) to an unrenovated 1950s house with a dodgy green carpet and a big back garden for the kids.  We're renting this place so we just have to accept it as it is.  This whole experience has made me wonder about how much our sense of identity is wrapped up in where we live - both what our homes are like and where they are.

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton gave me some insight into that.  Early on in the book he says,

"Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or worse, different people in different places - and on the conviction that it is architecture's task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be."

Instead of proudly showing people around, as we did in our old place, my husband and I have been the first to make jokes about the decor and apologise for the horrible bathroom. It's like we're saying - this isn't really us! Don't judge us! But of course our friends couldn't care less about these things. Now that we've been here for a while though I don't care about them either.

The Architecture of Happiness is quite wide ranging in the topics it covers, and although I generally love most of what Alain de Botton writes I find I have to be in the mood for it. This book felt a bit too dense to be tackling in the middle of this busy patch - however, there was a great chapter on "Ideals of Home" which I paid close attention to.  One of my favourite passages was about the meaning of home:

"To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song...We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us." 

I also liked this passage, which highlights the idea of home as a sanctuary where we can be our true selves (although his comments about work are very amusingly cynical).

"Our working routines may be frantic and compromised, dense with meetings, insincere handshakes, small-talk and bureaucracy. We may say things we don't believe in to win over our colleagues and feel ourselves becoming envious and excited in relation to goals we don't essentially care for.  

But finally, on our own, looking out of the hall window into the garden and the gathering darkness, we can slowly resume contact with a more authentic self, who was there waiting in the wings for us to end our performance."

In this same chapter on the Ideals of Home, de Botton also talks about what's in our homes.  He makes some interesting arguments about what drives our taste in art, furniture and interior design, and why our tastes change or, as he asks,  "Why do we change our minds about what we find beautiful?"

He argues that "a given stylistic choice will tell us as much about what its advocates lack as about what they like".  He says that in the late 18th Century in the West, there was an increase in popularity of "the natural" in all major art forms and he explains "They were falling in love with the natural in their art precisely because they were losing touch with the natural in their own lives".

On why our tastes change, he says:

"As the ways in which we are unbalanced alters, so our attention will continue to be drawn to new parts of the spectrum of taste, to new styles which we will declare beautiful on the basis that they embody in a concentrated form what now lies in shadow within us."

As I look around our new home and see all our treasured possessions in new places, our pieces of furniture in new rooms, our art and photos on the walls, I think about how much we love all this stuff. I've never thought about why I love the things I love in my home, or why we chose the things we did, but maybe he's right and these choices reveal some deep truths about what's lacking somewhere in life? I wonder... 

Blown off course

The last month has been completely full of non blogging activities and I have been feeling bad about that. There was something so fulfilling about writing down my thoughts about the books I was reading, having an outlet outside of work and domestic life, and feeling like my mind really was growing.  I have been blown off course by a series of events and the fog this created in my brain has taken a while to clear.

In the last month, we've sold our apartment and moved to a new house. We've bought a new car and soon afterwards crashed it, then got it fixed...we've had a health issue with my son, subsequently confirmed to be not actually a real concern.  My husband has stopped working to take on the kids, and I have been very very busy at work.  I had 3 days off work during all of this and, on the first day back in the office, I burst into tears at my desk.  I know this was down to a build up of stress, but it was so disappointing to be feeling that way. Despite feeling so clear headed and rational before all this, it didn't take much to tip the balance.

Anyway...in the midst of this I have been reading and thinking.  I've read The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton to try to understand my thoughts about moving house, and adjusting to a completely different type of home. I've been re-reading Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin and How to Change the World by John Paul Flintoff.  I also loved the Russell Brand interview with Jeremy Paxman and an inspirational article by the late wife of my friend Omar.

I will be writing about all of this stuff soon. It even feels good to be writing this. I'm relieved things have finally settled down.

Hacking your Education

I've had my nose stuck in Hacking your Education by Dale J Stephens since I wrote my last post.  It's aimed at young people contemplating university, and I've already been, so I've been reading out of curiosity rather than to learn tips to apply to my life. Was it still a worthwhile read? Yes...

In a nutshell, the book is pretty much a "how to" guide for any young person who wants to map out their own path outside the traditional (and expensive) university route and get a great job or start their own business at the end of it. It's full of case studies of friends and acquaintances who, for whatever reason, didn't attend university at all or dropped out and made successes of themselves through grit, determination, good luck and a fair amount of blagging and hustling.

Stephens thinks there are 3 main reasons why we go to university: the social experience, to get a job, and to learn for learning's sake.  He argues we can get these things in the real world, without having to pay out for university and have more fun in the process.

So far, so good. But how? Stephens has tonnes of suggestions.  Figure out what you're really interested in.  Commit to learning outside the classroom. Make a to-learn list, find someone or a group of people to keep you accountable, and put yourself out there (he suggests setting up a personal website that becomes your online portfolio of experiences).  Learn in groups with other like minded people. Figure out your talents and how you learn best. Find mentors and teachers. Network, have lots of coffees. Use technology, become a writer or a programmer! Gate crash conferences and university lectures! Take advantage of free educational resources. Have your 2 minute pitch ready! Start up a company. Travel the world! Don't pursue traditional jobs through traditional routes (never send in your CV!). Get a job through your network. They'll call you! (Well, sort of - that happened to some of the people in the case studies). Phew. As he says at the start, this is not a book about dropping out and taking the easy option.

In the book he also talks about Peter Thiel, the tech entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal, who set up the Thiel Fellowship in 2010 to give grants to people under 20 to spur them to quit college and pursue their own ventures (Stephens is part of this programme). This quote from Thiel made me think back to my post on expectations:

"The problem that exists with schooling is that it ends up convincing most people that they're mediocre, and then the talented people get regrouped and are forced to compete with each other, and then most of them get convinced they're mediocre as well, and you sort of cycle and repeat, until people's dreams and aspirations are badly beaten out of them over time." 

What did I learn from all of this? Well, I had no idea that universities like MIT in the US had made their course materials available for free online (yes, really! See here). Not only that, you can listen to university lectures on iTunes U, including from Harvard, which I think is pretty amazing.  I'm tempted to take a few modules...  Also the case studies in Hacking your Education are full of examples of young people basically designing their own jobs, just as Roman Krznaric suggests in How to Find Fulfilling Work.  It's reinforcing the message to put aside other people's expectations and do your own thing.

On reflection, it made me realise that there are loads of examples of people who have "hacked their education".  Dynamo the magician (who I wrote about here) could quite easily have been a case study in this book. Someone else I'm a fan of, the writer Caitlin Moran, could have been too - she educated herself in her local library and subsequently blagged her way to becoming a writer. Also, these twin sisters taught themselves to embroider by watching youtube videos and are now sought after artists.  I find these stories so inspiring. You can learn anything you want! It's all out there waiting for you.

Is rejecting formal education the new fashion?

I wrote a post on Thoreau's thoughts on learning recently (you can see it here) and I have been thinking about it a lot since.  He questions the role of formal education and makes the case for learning by doing, and teaching yourself.

I am a pretty straight laced sort of person and I like to stick to the rules (even if they are silly), which sometimes winds my (much more free spirited) husband up.  I followed the conventional education route and have worked in steady jobs ever since leaving university.  

Since reading Walden, Thoreau's ideas about learning have been on my mind and, as a consequence, I have noticed some interesting articles that wouldn't have been on my radar otherwise.

One of these was on a blog, zenhabits, which I stumbled across a couple of weeks ago. It is one of the most popular blogs on the internet.  The writer, Leo Babauta, has 6 children and is a proponent of unschooling. He has an entire blog devoted to it, Unschoolery.  He makes the case for self directed learning, but also offers some insights for teachers to help them unschool their regular classroom.

I also followed a link from John Armstrong's website to wired.co.uk which, coincidentally, had a Q&A with Dale Stephens, founder of the Uncollege movement.  Stephens has written a book, called Hacking your Education, which I have also added to my reading list.  The article says Uncollege

"encourages students to be self-directed learners and to create a 'learning community in the real world' that breaks the 'dichotomy between education and life.'"

This has some real parallels with the youtube video I mentioned in my post On Expectations recently, that is, school and life shouldn't feel like two separate worlds.

Is the point of education having the certificate at the end of it or the knowledge? Or is the knowledge enough?

How to Worry Less About Money

"How to Worry Less About Money" by John Armstrong is another book in the School of Life series.  It is a really great (and short) book which gave me a completely different perspective on money, my thoughts about it and what I spend it on.  The author offers a very refreshing and honest insight into his own money worries and how he has learnt to process them constructively.  In his own words, the book is about

"how we can bring imagination, self-knowledge, emotional maturity, and our big ideas about life and society, into the way we engage with money."

Armstrong kicks off by explaining that money worries aren't the same as money troubles (i.e. not being able to pay your bills).  He says worries are connected to imagination and the emotions, not just to what is happening here and now. Instead of simply asking how can I get more money or manage with less money, we should be asking how much money do we need and what do we need it for.

He argues that money worries are just other worries disguised as money worries, and urges us to think more deeply about the underlying cause of our worries. He illustrates this by talking about his car, which makes him feel anxious about money. He's worried that it's starting to get a bit rough round the edges, needs various repairs, isn't as fancy as other people's cars at the tennis club, and he can't afford to replace it. He digs into this a bit deeper and concedes that what he's really worried about not taking care of things properly. He's worried about his character, and buying a new car isn't going to change this, it will not make him better at looking after it.

Although I don't worry about financial security I do think about money a lot, mostly because I worry about the prices of things and I generally feel guilty if I spend a lot of money on something. I should probably spend some time thinking about what it is that I'm really worried about...

Armstrong makes some great comments about worrying (which I know I do quite a lot):

"Worry is a name for mental effort: ideally one wants to worry more insightfully and more purposefully. The aim of adult life, one might say, is to worry well. We worry about things that matter; worry implies care."

He talks about money as a medium of exchange and reminds us that almost anything can be turned into money, and money can be turned into anything.  We need to think about how we make money, and what possessions and activities we turn our money into. It's a mistake to think that the means are the ends, and that the medium of exchange is a "real thing". He argues we should think about money's relationship with flourishing (rather than happiness).

"Money brings about good consequences - helps us live valuable lives - only when joined with 'virtues'. Virtues are good abilities of mind and character."

I found his thoughts on Need versus Want really interesting.  He argues that needs are not necessarily just basic food, shelter, or the cheapest thing.  What we view as a "need" depends on what's important to us.  This is what he says:

"Need is deeper - bound up with the serious narrative of one's life. 'Do I need this?' is a way of asking: how important is this thing, how central is it to my becoming a good version of myself; what is it actually for in my life? This interrogation is designed to distinguish needs from mere wants."

He gives as an example a fine violinist who needs a very expensive bow, because this bow has a central role to play in this person's life.

He also looks at price versus value, and he says something here that made me think of the pursuit of material things that I talked about in the Status Anxiety post recently.  He talks about something inexpensive that he bought and collected over time, that he said he gets "a reliable, everyday thrill from using."

The pleasure we get from our possessions can be very real - I asked my husband to list his favourite things and he said our collection of photos and art, his guitar, and his surfboards.

When I was early in my career living in London I lusted after, and then after some encouragement from my flatmate Suzanne, eventually bought, a gold trench coat. It was GBP250 and the most expensive item of clothing I had ever bought. I loved wearing it so much, I used to joke to Suzanne that wearing it made me feel like a better person.  I have photos from a girls' weekend in Paris of me wearing that coat and it makes me so happy to see it (and remember the weekend of course).  The flip side of clothes shopping (which I do much less nowadays, and enjoy it far less than I did when I was younger), is impulse buying, bargain shopping (especially on the internet), basically buying for the sake of it. Most of the time this gives me a very short lived shopper's high, then a week later I forget I've even bought it. I hate this type of shopping and I want to try to cut it out.  

After reading this book, I want to spend money in a more mindful way, buy things that we'll treasure, that will last, that will give us a reliable, everyday thrill or allow us to flourish.  As Armstrong says, we have to look into ourselves and think what money means to us, not simply try to maximise the amount we have.

Status Anxiety and its solutions

I've finished reading Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. In his "solutions" section he puts forward some interesting ideas we can draw on to counter status anxiety and feeling bad about our position in society or how we think other people view us.

He groups them into big themes: Philosophy, Art, Politics, Religion and Bohemia.

In Philosophy, he talks about some of the philosophers in history who argued that the rest of society is stupid / ill informed / wrong and therefore we should dismiss and ignore other people's opinions of us.  He goes on to state that the obvious result of this sort of attitude is that one will likely end up with no friends. Hmm, doesn't sound very appealing.

Next he talks about Art - specifically novels, painting, tragedy and comedy.  He points out that novels have the ability to show us the moral good in people who would, if only based on their lack of outward symbols of status like wealth or power, be regarded by others as unimportant.  He says in life we only give praise to moral goodness that is outwardly displayed, but in novels we can listen in to the characters' thoughts and eavesdrop on conversations, which can give us a different perspective on them and make us appreciate their deeper qualities. In making his arguments he makes references the implicit social commentary in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and George Eliot's Middlemarch. I liked this idea and it reminded me that novels can teach us a lot about life, it doesn't always have to be through non-fiction. I haven't read either of these books so I'm adding them to my list.

The rest of the Art section didn't really strike a chord with me, but the Politics section made up for it. He starts by talking about what "status" meant in different societies through history and found that it was sometimes contradictory, and ever changing. In 2004 when the book was written he said that high status meant:

"[someone who has] been able to accumulate money, power and renown through his or her own accomplishments (rather than through inheritance) in one of the myriad sectors of the commercial world (including sport, art and scientific research)."

He talks later about our pursuit of material things, and how advertisers sell us things like cars:

"...[the advert will] fail to mention our tendency to cease to be excited by anything after we have owned it for a short while...We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction...Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another...The new car will be rapidly absorbed, like all the other wonders we already own, into the material backdrop of our lives, where we will hardly register its existence..."

This section made me think a lot, particularly the lines quoted above. I mentioned it to my husband and we had a good chat about our different buying styles, and which of our possessions give us pleasure beyond the initial rush of buying them.  I think this will probably deserve a separate blog post on its own...

The other part that I liked in the politics section was his recounting of a scene from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.  Woolf is denied entry into Trinity College Library at Cambridge University because she is a woman (she was told she could only enter if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or if she had a letter of introduction).  Instead of thinking "what's wrong with me?" she thought "what's wrong with them?".  After this she came up with a set of political demands for women, which included "a room of one's own".  I've never read this book, but that was my university library so it caught my imagination - I know that as a naive 18 year old I took it completely for granted that I could come and go as I pleased.

The remaining sections of the book cover Religion (where he reminds us that in the end we're all going to die so status anxiety is a bit pointless) and Bohemia, where he pointed out that there are groups of people who choose to forgo status giving activities and possessions, and he talked about Henry David Thoreau and his time at Walden Pond as an example.  

So...to wrap up, I liked this book and definitely had a different perspective reading it now than when it was first published.  Even so, the quote about status in Roman Krznaric's book is still my favourite on the topic and had the most impact on me and how I think about status. So punchy, so simple and so true.

How to Thrive in the Digital Age

I had a mini obsession with the School of Life books recently, and read 5 of 6 of the first series of books in quick succession. Then I convinced a good friend to ask for the whole set for her upcoming birthday (handy, because they weren't all available at my local library - thanks Alex!).  I haven't managed to blog about them all yet...but given some of my recent ramblings about technology it seemed like a good time to write about "How to Thrive in the Digital Age" by Tom Chatfield.

I picked up this book purely because it was in the School of Life series, I didn't have any particularly strong views on technology or the digital age, so wouldn't have chosen to read it based on the subject alone. I haven't got an iphone or an ipad (I know, how do I survive!), but I've got a Facebook account, this blog, a work email account, 2 personal email accounts, a mobile, a Blackberry and an insulin pump (I'm type 1 diabetic). That's enough technology for me.

Chatfield makes some interesting observations in the book. Since technology has become mobile, we've experienced a huge increase in media consumption.  We don't need to set aside special time to use it, we can be "plugged in" all the time and multi task with technology while doing other things.  Despite all the advances in technology, we have not found a way of increasing the amount of time we have available in a day.  Obviously technology has enabled us to use the time we do have more efficiently and be more productive, but it has also created lots of new ways to waste time.  It also means we are more available to others, more of the time, and can be more easily interrupted.  

Chatfield argues that we need to be more mindful about how we use technology, and makes the case for carving out plugged and unplugged time.  He remarks on the fact that people are becoming more interested in holidays where they can venture "off the grid" to places with no mobile phone reception - being uncontactable is our ultimate idea of luxury.  One of the best holidays I've had in the last few years was when I was pregnant with my first child - my husband and I drove around Tasmania and over the course of 8 days I only had mobile and blackberry reception on 2 of them (in the main towns, Hobart and Launceston). Once the reception bars disappeared it was utter bliss being totally present in the moment, watching what was going on around us, talking to each other, and not being bothered by anyone. It wasn't a luxurious holiday by any stretch but we relaxed completely, and being unplugged was a big factor. We couldn't google things to do in whatever area we were in, we had to talk to people and ask for recommendations and write things down!  It was no surprise to me to read in this month's Elle magazine that e-tox breaks are being offered at an upmarket resort in Tasmania, although at astronomical cost!  Although it costs nothing to switch off your own devices and stick them in a drawer, some people clearly need a bit of help and encouragement to do so.

So if you're not going on a cold turkey break like this, how do you build unplugged time into your every day life?  For a long time, I was the sort of person who would check my blackberry last thing at night and first thing in the morning.  Not anymore. Earlier this year I read an article (Is There Life After Work?) by Erin Callan who said she realised only after losing her high powered job in finance that she had slipped into this habit (along with various other workaholic tendencies), to the detriment of all her other relationships, and when the work was gone she realised there wasn't much else left in her life.  As a working mother, time in the morning with my kids is precious (even though it's hectic and messy getting everyone out the door sometimes) and I have imposed a rule on myself that I won't check my blackberry until my kids are up, dressed, breakfasted and ready to go.  It's about priorities I guess. I don't always manage to stick to this rule but I'm trying hard.  

On expectations

I've been thinking about expectations after the Huffington Post article I wrote about last week. (The equation it talks about, that Happiness = Reality - Expectations, was written in the context of Gen Y's hopes about work).  I have also been re-reading Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. One of the first chapters - on the causes of status anxiety - is on expectations.  In this chapter he explains that our assessment of our own status is relative to the people we are comparing ourselves to (and measuring ourselves against).  This is what he says:

"Our judgement of what constitutes an appropriate limit on anything - for example, on wealth or esteem - is never arrived at independently; instead, we make such determinations by comparing our condition with that of a reference group, a set of people who we believe resemble us."

This idea of a reference group came up in the same Gen Y article, and in another article I read on the UK Telegraph website last week, ("There's much more to life than being top of the class"). It was about some research released by the London School of Economics that argued it's not always better to send your child to a "good" school instead of an average one.  In "good" schools, where children achieve better results, it's harder for average children to keep up, which negatively impacts their performance and their self confidence.  I think this is just saying - think about where your child ranks and tamper with the reference group so that you can get your child as near to the top (or furthest from the bottom) of that group as possible - which will make them feel good about themselves. It's such a narrow view of education and achievement though isn't it?      

While we're on the topic of school and expectations, I found this video on youtube called "10 Expectations".  It turns the whole thing about expectations at school on its head...instead of focusing on expectations about student achievement (measured solely by exam results) it talks about expectations that students have about school.  At its core, it breaks down the division between school and work/life, and asks how school can enrich the student, support the development of their interests and make them relevant to the real world.  It reminded me of the comments Thoreau made about learning in Walden Pond.  How likely is it that these 10 expectations will be realised? Or are they just hopes and wishes? They sound like what I would choose for my kids' education, in an ideal world.

Stop feeling bad...about email and disappointment

I am taking a break from writing about Walden Pond (which could give me enough material to write about for weeks) to talk about two things I saw on the internet last week.  They are both kind of related because they are about things that make people "feel bad" which is one of the pillars in the First Splendid Truth about happiness that Gretchen Rubin writes about in The Happiness Project. 

One thing that makes me feel bad is email. An out of control inbox and an overly complicated email filing system that makes it take forever to file things, then almost impossible to remember which folder I put things in once I've filed them.  My salvation came from an article on the Financial Times website last week called Ten Email Commandments written by Tim Harford.  In a very funny, well observed article, one of the commandments is to stop filing emails!  Just dump them all in an archive folder. He even cites academic research supporting the efficiency of this! So I have stopped filing emails this week for the first time ever and it's made such a difference already. No more procrastination about where to put things. No more time wasted!

The other was an article from the Huffington post: Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy. The article argues (via some funny drawings) that happiness (or unhappiness) results from reality being better (or worse) than your expectations and looks at this in the context of work.  It also talks about the role of Facebook in warping people's expectations, which is pretty fascinating really. It's worth a read (thanks Sarah for sending it to me!).

Thoreau on learning

The third instalment of the Walden Pond posts picks up on some of Thoreau's comments on learning and formal education. These comments are so relevant now.

On the costs of formal education:

"Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made."

On formal education vs. learning by doing:

"If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and science, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighbourhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practised but the art of life...Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month - the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this - or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and received a Rodgers' penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?"

On lifelong learning:

"It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women.  It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure - if they are indeed, so well off - to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord?"

I love these.

Thoreau on news

As I said yesterday, I've been reading Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau and he is talking about anything and everything - nature ("I rejoice that there are owls" - this made me laugh), civilisation, institutions, learning, health, appearance, money, freedom, work, relationships, philosophy, religion and the list goes on. This is the latest instalment in the Walden Pond posts...

Thoreau on news:

"I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.  If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter - we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?" 

How true.  Also, see how all his examples of "news" were negative things? It reminded me of something Philippa Perry says in "How to Stay Sane" about how we should limit our exposure to the TV (including the news).  She says:

"...even the news appears to be filtered for maximum emotional shock value, which means it has a bias towards bad news rather than good.  Be careful which stories you expose yourself to.  I'm not saying it is not important to be informed about what is going on, but to be informed repeatedly about bad news will give us neither a balanced view of our world nor of the other people who inhabit it."

I think Thoreau was onto something.

Wading through Walden Pond

I have been reading Walden this week by Henry David Thoreau.  It's something I thought I should read given the number of other books that have referenced him and his ideas.  He's quoted all over the place.  This book was written in the 19th century and is about the author's experience of living away from civilisation in a house he built himself at Walden Pond, when he maintained himself for 2 years without any formal "job".

There are some brilliant flashes of wisdom and funny observations, much of which are still relevant today, but the bits in between aren't so engaging and I've found my mind wandering off (which is why it's taking me ages to read...).  That said, I thought I'd take stock now by sharing some of the highlights for me so far.

On what we wear (and why we bother wasting money on more clothes than we need):

"No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience." 

"It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."     

"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." 

"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."

On housing (and keeping up with the Joneses):

"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours have."

On luxury rail travel (he sounds unimpressed with the railways throughout the book to be honest):

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion."

Later he says:

"If we do not get out sleepers, forge rails, and devote days and nights to work, but go on tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? ... But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."

On avoiding life's complications:

"Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."

He would have enjoyed the internet:

"If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?"

Anyway, back to wading for me.

Magic, according to Dynamo

My parents were visiting recently from the UK (I moved to Australia 7 years ago) and we were catching up on what we were into watching on the TV. They started raving about Dynamo, a British Magician, who I had never heard of.  My mum grabbed the remote control and started cruising the channels, and, lo and behold, Dynamo's show was on TV at that very moment.  Since then I have been mildly obsessed with him (much to my husband's amusement).  He has made it onto this blog because I just read the book about his life, Nothing is Impossible.

First of all, if you haven't seen his TV shows, seek them out - they are highly entertaining and completely baffling.  I started out a cynic but was quickly sucked in.  When I first saw him performing magic on TV I felt a strange sensation of delight and disbelief that often made me burst out laughing.  I was talking about him in the office the other day and one of my (completely normal, sane) colleagues said "He just brings joy!" Exactly.   

What is magic anyway? Dynamo quotes Joseph Dunninger (he says he was a pioneer of magic):

"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, none will suffice." 

This reminds me of the end of the Life of Pi and its religious undertones. Dynamo reflects on this quote and says:

"I think magic is a feeling, it's an emotion. It's something that is brought out in someone when they're witnessing something they can't explain. They think, I can't explain that, it must be magic."

Secondly, please don't dismiss this book as a shallow "celebrity autobiography". It's not.  This book is an inspiring story about standing up to bullies, coping with a chronic illness (Crohn's disease) and long spells of hospitalisation, the life transforming influence of his grandfather (who introduced him to magic) and being totally focused on magic and excelling at it. It's about taking opportunities, joining forces with other people, having great ideas and being dedicated to pursuing them. He's a great role model.  Despite all his success and celebrity friends he comes across as being completely modest and down to earth.

It's funny, I was thinking while I was reading it that (by accident rather than by design I'm sure), Dynamo looks like he's ticked all the boxes Roman Krznaric talks about in "How to Find Fulfilling Work" - he's covered all the elements essential to meaning: he's cultivating his passions and talents (magic), he is doing work that makes a difference (entertaining people), he's earned money and gained status (fame and respect for his skills) - and pursued them in that order, which in my mind makes him seem like an all round great bloke.  He also ticks off flow (pursuing magic for its own sake, not the rewards it brings) and freedom to do as he pleases. Dynamo's found fulfilling work!

On freedom and "having it all"

In his book, How to Find Fulfilling Work, Roman Krznaric talks about the importance of freedom.  In the short section in the book on "freedom" he addresses, among other things, the idea of "having it all."

He quotes Shirley Conran, the British author and journalist, who wrote the 1975 book, Superwoman, in which she famously said "life's too short to stuff a mushroom".  She was lamenting the implicit message our culture is peddling that women who aren't able to shine in both their job and as mothers (while doing something esoteric on the side like learn Japanese) are somehow inadequate.

Krznaric brings a male perspective to the issue and reframes it as being relevant to both parents.  He thinks "can women have it all?" is the wrong question to be asking (I agree), and argues that the question should instead be:

"How can parents support each other so they can both have some of it all?"

I was at a drinks function after work one night last week and met two other women who were both qualified lawyers, one was looking after her children full time and one was working part time after returning from maternity leave.  This topic came up in conversation and I mentioned the "you can have it all, just not all at once" idea and they both said "that's what Quentin Bryce said".

Quentin Bryce is Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, and a pretty remarkable, inspiring woman. She said this in an interview in 2008 (you can see it here). My favourite quote is this, and I think it's relevant to men and women:

"For a very long time now I've been saying to young women, you can have it all, but not all at the same time. How important it is to take very good care of yourself, of your mental and physical and spiritual wellbeing, it's hard to do. It's easier to be a workaholic than to have a truly balanced life. It's very tough for a lot of women teetering on that tight rope of balance and balancing too many responsibilities."

How true.  It's so easy to let work take over sometimes, and so much harder to stop it.

On flow

I promised I would come back to the subject of "flow", which was one of the key elements in fulfilling work that Roman Krznaric wrote about in "How to Find Fulfilling Work".  Just as the idea of "being yourself" kept coming up in various books, so did the the concept of flow. 

Krznaric explained that a flow experience is one in which we are completely and unselfconsciously absorbed in whatever we are doing.  We are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.  Usually this activity is challenging enough to require our focus, but no so challenging that we fear failing.  It has been described as being almost like Buddhist meditation - we are totally engaged and present and the future and past fade away.  For athletes this is being "in the zone".  It's important in the context of work because doing these "flow" activities gives us a sense of fulfilment.

The pioneer of the theory of flow is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and it feels like his name is referenced all over the place now I know what flow is.  He talks about it in a TED video here, and you can read a review of his book, Finding Flow here.  

Susan Cain talks about flow in her book, Quiet.  She says:

"The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings."

She argues that typical "flow" experiences tend to be solitary pursuits that have nothing to do with reward-seeking (which is why it's relevant to her book about introverts).  Flow also get a mention in Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project (she covers a lot of ground!). 

I realised when I was reading about flow in Krznaric's book that I had been experiencing it myself in the process. I had barely noticed the hours passing by.  If I'm enjoying a book and it's not too hard going I definitely get into a flow state.  But what about other people? My husband, who loves surfing, says for him it's in the moments when he's riding a wave.

What about you?

On being yourself

The importance of "being yourself" to sanity and happiness has come up in various ways in the books I've been reading lately.  The "feeling right" bit in Gretchen Rubin's First Splendid Truth in her book, The Happiness Project, wasn't something I focused on very much while I was reading it, but I've been thinking about it more since I read two other books:

I recently finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, which I picked up, partly because it was endorsed on the cover by Gretchen Rubin, whose writing I love.  It took reading this book for me to realise (at age 33) that actually, I am a bit of an introvert, and - because Cain presents a wide range of reasons why this can be a positive, despite popular opinion - that's OK. It explained a lot.  It was also fascinating to read about the studies on the behaviours of babies and how they were effective predictors of whether they grew up to be an introvert or an extrovert.  I think we've got a 3 year old extrovert and a 1 year old introvert in the making in our family and now I feel like I understand them even better.  The book also explained why arguments between my (extrovert) husband and I are so ineffective, because we argue in different ways that don't really work together.  It gave me a real insight into myself and how I interact with other people, both at home and at work.

How to Stay Sane is a book in the School of Life series, written by psychotherapist, Philippa Perry.  She makes the case for taking the time to look after our mental health, just like we do our physical health.  In her view, to stay sane - which means to avoid the extremes of living in either an overly rigid way or in chaos - we need to practice self observation, cultivate good relationships, expose ourselves to positive stress (like learning and exercise) and think about our personal narratives.  Perry has this advice about relationships, which highlights (for me, anyway) the importance of being with people we feel comfortable with so we can be ourselves:

"...in order to meaningfully connect with another person, one has to be open. This means not being who we think we should be, but allowing ourselves to be who we really are.  This usually involves risking feeling vulnerable."

Reading these books has been an exercise in self observation of sorts as it's impossible to read them in a detached way - they automatically make me think of my own behaviour and thought processes and help me understand them better.  Some things I've tried to change and others I have simply learnt to accept.  I feel like I'm being myself.  

The beauty of Food DIY

I wasn't expecting to be moved by a book about food.  I bought Food DIY by Tim Hayward for my husband as he's the main cook in our family, and dreams about living in the countryside one day doing lots of River Cottage-y type things like making his own charcuterie.  

Food DIY's sub-title is: "How to make your own everything: sausages to smoked salmon, sourdough to sloe gin, bacon to buns".

I was looking through it at the weekend and found myself reading passages aloud to my husband (I guess trying to convince him that he really should pay attention to this book I had just bought for him).  In the introduction:

"...there's something empowering about grasping back food production from industry and middlemen and a dignity in providing for your family..."

"...in a strange, geeky way, some of these skills are a pleasure in themselves and worth trying if only once."

I also loved what Hayward said about Food DIY and Kids (he has a 10 year old daughter who gets involved in his cooking):

"DIY cooking with kids isn't just about recipes, it's about spending time together, about science, history, culture, art, physical competence with tools and heat, about learning to enjoy sensory pleasures, taking responsibility for how we treat our bodies and those of other living things, all the stuff we learned from our parents and from experience and want to pass on."

Although I have never before been tempted to build my own smoke house or make my own cheese, looking at these activities through Hayward's poetic and enthusiastic lens means that now I can't wait for us all to get stuck in.

Dumbo Feather led me to Brain Pickings

Let me explain.

I was browsing the magazines in my local newsagent recently and saw a publication called Dumbo Feather. I hadn't ever read it before, or even realised it existed, but it had a photo of a cool looking woman on the front cover at her computer and the headline "Maria Popova is a Brain Picker" so despite the hefty AU$15 price tag I bought a copy and took it home.

Dumbo Feather is a magazine that's intelligent but readable, about things that matter and with no airbrushing. It's also printed on nice thick matt paper so it looks and feels nice as well (a bit like another great Australian magazine called Frankie).  Dumbo Feather does exactly what it says on its cover which is to have "conversations with extraordinary people."

It turns out that the $15 was a good investment because I then discovered that Maria Popova has a blog called Brain Pickings (which is updated almost every day and is completely free), and Dumbo Feather has a website which contains all of the magazine content and archives FOR FREE!!!

Checking the Brain Pickings blog has turned into a daily habit for me, and it's a source of great ideas for things to read, clever videos to watch, art to enjoy and people to admire.

For me it has been a much better way to while away time on the internet instead of online shopping or people.com!

How to Find Fulfilling Work

I love libraries. I set up this blog in the State Library of New South Wales and I'm writing this post from Avalon Community Library on a glorious sunny spring day.

It was during an unexpected afternoon in my local library last month that I began reading How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric, one of the books in the fantastic School of Life series, which is edited by the equally fantastic Alain de Botton.  After about half an hour of starting the book, sitting in the study section of Manly Library, I got an excited urge to run out to the newsagents and buy a notebook and pen so I could remember the insights starting to emerge from the pages.  Five minutes later and back in the library, I spent the entire afternoon immersed in the book.

I think most of us at some time in our careers question whether what we're doing is the right thing for us. I happened to be in the middle of a couple of weeks off work so it was a good topic to reflect on.  I loved this book.  It completely changed the way I think about work - and how I use the time I have in my life - and found it quite liberating.

Thinking about work can be mind bogglingly complex.  Krznaric breaks it down nicely and works through the elements methodically.

He very neatly sets out his view that fulfilling work has 3 key elements:

• Meaning
• Flow
• Freedom

He then breaks down "meaning" into 5 components: money, status, making a difference, following our passions and using our talents.  He explains that money and status are extrinsic motivating factors and the others are intrinsic motivating factors. Given everyone will have different preferences and priorities around these components, Krznaric says there is no single blueprint for a meaningful career.

The next part of the book looks at each of the 5 components in more detail.  The role of money in life and happiness is a fascinating topic in itself (and the subject of another book in the School of Life series called "How to Worry Less About Money" - more on that later).  Status as a topic is also something that I find really interesting ("Status Anxiety" by Alain de Botton is on my list to re-read), and there's a great quote in Krznaric's book - which I've copied down from my scribbled notes so might not be word perfect but you get the gist:

"the universal desire for reputation in which we judge ourselves through other people's eyes is fraught with dangers"

Next he talks about "making a difference" and how this can weave into the world of work.   This made me think about the emerging world of social entrepreneurship and some articles I had read recently about people making a difference as individuals, and also prompted me to read "How to Change the World" by John Paul Flintoff - yes, you've guessed it - another in the School of Life series.

The fourth and fifth components are combined into a section on cultivating passions and talents. Again, he offers a great quote, this time from Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand:

"The master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labour and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."

I love this quote.  It reminds me of an interview I read many years ago with the photographer, Mario Testino, who was talking about how he ended up becoming a professional photographer, and he said someone (father or grandfather...I forget who) told him that he should do a job he loved and use the weekends for rest, and not to choose a job that meant you had to fit your entire life into the weekends. I've never forgotten that.  There is another quote in the book, from Herminia Ibarra, that I absolutely loved and was an utter revelation to me:

"our working identity is not a hidden treasure to be discovered at the very core of our being - rather it is made up of many possibilities...we are many selves."

Krznaric argues that, because we each have within us a range of different experiences, interests and talents, we could find ourselves happy in a whole range of different jobs and we don't need to agonise over finding the one perfect thing. He encourages us to consider becoming "wide achievers" with "portfolio careers" (pursuing different jobs at the same time on a part time basis) or as "serial specialists" (doing a range of different jobs one after the other).  He encourages people to "act now, think later", because humans suffer from "negative bias" which makes them naturally cautious and more prone to focusing on what could go wrong.  He advocates decreasing risk by dipping your toes in the water of a new job or career by doing work experience, volunteering, undertaking training courses, talking to people who know about it and doing things in your spare time outside your main job (like write a blog!).

The remainder of the book talks about the other elements, flow and freedom, which I'll pick up in another blog post.

One thing I found really valuable about this book is the series of questions and exercises you are prompted to do throughout.  By taking the time to do them it makes the book more engaging and relevant to your own life. There is also a "homework" section at the back recommending further reading.

If you don't get round to reading the book, you can watch the author give a talk on it here.

Have a great weekend!

The Happiness Project made me happier

I stumbled upon the The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin when I was on maternity leave with my second baby. The cocktail of a challenging baby, scrambled hormones and months on end of broken sleep made me look twice at the title. It’s fair to say I wasn’t feeling particularly happy at the time. I thought it would be a light, fun, American book about self-helpy stuff and positive thoughts. I wasn’t expecting to love it, but love it I did.  

The book is about the author’s year long project to make changes to her life to make her feel happier.  Some people are put off by this premise and wonder how an educated, comfortably off woman living in New York City can have any relevance to their lives. I don’t take that view. This is really a book about how your actions and attitudes affect your overall enjoyment of life, and surely that’s relevant to everyone.

Some of my favourite things from the book are stuck on post-its on my fridge.

Her opening theory boils down to this, her "First Splendid Truth":

"To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth"

Which means – do more things you like, sort out the things that make you feel bad (bogged down, short of time, under pressure), live an authentic life that feels right for you (e.g. change your job if you think your calling is to do something else) and grow as a person (by learning something new, or trying new things).  Rubin believes if you tackle all of those elements you’ll feel happier. As she goes through the book she works through what these things are for her and what she does about them.

"Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Or, in other words, "done is better than perfect". This was a big one for me. I am a perfectionist in a bad way. I realised that we were continually missing out on going on holiday because we couldn’t find the perfect thing (too far away, too expensive, not enough there for the kids…). After reading this book and realising what was happening I thought how crazy that was so just went ahead and booked the best thing we could come up with. It wasn’t the greatest holiday but we felt good about the fact that we were going on holiday at all.

This is closely related to:

“Most decisions don’t require extensive research”

Again, something I still find myself defaulting to no matter how seemingly insignificant the decision may be.  I think it’s my perfectionist streak that makes me a “maximiser” rather than a “satisficer”. I knew about these descriptors from my economics degree and rationality of economic agents, but hadn’t thought before about what category I fit into. Too often I find myself acting like a maximiser in pursuit of the “best” particular thing, rather than being a satisficer, happy with something being “good enough”.  It’s fine to be a maximiser when something really matters, but when it’s not that important it’s time wasting and exhausting.  Big note to self there.

“Tackle a nagging task” and “By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished”

A source of “feeling bad” for many of us is the list we keep in our heads of all the things we’ve been meaning to do but haven’t got round to yet.  Make a list and work through them all. Throw some money at the problem, just get them done. The other classic avoidance strategy stems from tasks that look overwhelming – like filing the enormous accumulated pile of paperwork on the shelf - so you don’t do it at all. If you spend 10 minutes a day tackling it, it’ll get done and you won’t have to spend a whole afternoon doing it all at once.

Another source of feeling bad is how we affect those around us. Very few of us wake up smiling and cheerful every single day, and on the days we’re in a bad mood the people we live with or sit with at work cop the brunt of it.  Not something I’ve ever really thought about to be honest – but Rubin points out how selfish it is to dump your small worries and grumpiness on your family or friends… something exists called "emotional contagion" and it means that bad moods and miserable faces are catching! 

I could go on…but I want you to read the book for yourself. Finally, I also need to credit The Happiness Project with being a big influence on the direction of my reading, and the inspiration for starting this blog. I always used to reach for a good novel to escape and unwind but since reading this book it’s made me think much more about my life, how I approach it, how I think, and how much we can learn from the lives and experiences of others.  This has led me to lots of interesting non fiction books and memoirs, which I'll talk about more on this blog.

In the meantime I recommend checking out the Happiness Project blog. Enjoy!

I am here to talk about what I have loved reading

Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved reading.  I would read anything I could get my hands on.  I remember getting board books for Christmas as a 3 year old, and choosing which books I wanted to order from a catalogue my mum used to get when we lived in Brunei in the 1980s, way before internet shopping.  When I’d read those I would pick up my Usborne Science Encyclopaedia or read my parents’ big hardback copy of “What to do in an Emergency” from the Readers Digest.  They never questioned why an 8 year old would want to read that. I still remember what to do if I ever get crushed in a crowd or fall into quicksand.

Although it has been a constant part of my life since childhood, I hadn’t given much thought to reading as an activity until recently but this week I had some realisations:

1. reading is pretty much all I do in my “spare” time (anything else involves more complex logistical arrangements)
2. even if there weren’t complex logistical arrangements involved in doing other things, I would still prefer to be reading
3. I talk about books and what I’ve learnt from them a lot
4. I might as well do something productive with all the time I’m spending reading … and not just subject my husband and work colleagues to my endless enthusiastic chatter about them

So here I am.  I am here to talk about what I have loved reading.