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.