Boundless #52 - What Are You Reading This Summer?
Summer Reads | Micro-Adventures | Wandering | Passionate Quitters
May 25th, 2019: Greeting from my last week in Taipei before spending two months back in the east coast of the US. If you’d like to connect let me know!
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Stan and George you rock
Such classic names you both have
Stan and George rock on
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Quick ask: I have a short 3-minute survey about the course I’m creating for people making shifts in their work-life. Please fill it out?
#1 Reader Questions 🙋♂️🙋♀️
I’m going to do an experiment of answering reader questions on the podcast in June. Submit your questions here (works on mobile) or e-mail them to me. Here are some from a reader this week:
Any examples of companies that are doing things different for their employees?
Here are a few of my favorites:
Basecamp caps its working week at 40 hours and then 32 hours during the summer
Gravity payments has a minimum salary of $70,000
Bionic Solution gives employees three weeks vacation plus “two weeks from anywhere” meaning they can work remotely for two weeks (unclear if paid or not).
Working in pairs on one computer, babies allowed in the office and transparent pay at Menlo Innovations (link to podcast with Rich Sheridan)
Ricardo Semler asking “three whys” and eliminating tons of rules at his company
A free Kindle and free books at Buffer:
📚 Free books and Kindle: Get a free Kindle and all the free books - digital, physical, and audio - you like anytime.
Zappos gives people that don’t want to work at the company a generous stipend
Moving your startup to Morocco when your US Visas expires (H/T Jonny M.)
Do you have any books on your summer reading list?
I’ve been re-designing my site to include more detailed reviews, notes and book recommendations here (under construction). Here are some reviews of books I’ve read over the last few months and my short review as well as an Amazon affiliate link if you want to share some of Amazon’s trillion dollar market cap with me.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber (9/10) (affiliate)
Max Weber's famous treatise on capitalism is a must read for trying to make sense of the beliefs required to make capitalism "work." He argues that capitalism is not about greed, but could actually be seen as a sensible control on a human tendency towards uncontrolled greed. Instead, he argues that Capitalism required a deep belief in the idea that work should be done for its own sake and the endless pursuit of profit as an end in itself was good.
The question of the motive forces in the expansion of modern capitalism is not in the first instance a question of the origin of the capital sums which were available for capitalistic uses, but, above all, of the development of the spirit of capitalism.
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry (9/10) (affiliate) - H/T Andrew T.
Wendell Berry tries to make sense of the systematic shift away from farming as a local family-driven endeavor to one done by major industrial organizations. This gives him a lens to contemplate the costs to community, family, love and health.
And it is one of the miracles of science and hygiene that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons.
Why Liberalism Failed, By Patrick Dineen (9/10) (affiliate)
Makes the argument that liberalism is eating itself because of a new definition of liberty from being free but controlled by virtue to being unleashed by all barriers. However, with this level of freedom, we have the tendency to impose restrictions, complexity and policies that undermine the whole idea of freedom in the first place.
Liberalism was thus a titanic wager that ancient norms of behavior could be lifted in the name of a new form of liberation and that conquering nature would supply the fuel to permit nearly infinite choices. The twin outcomes of this effort—the depletion of moral self-command and the depletion of material resources—make inevitable an inquiry into what comes after liberalism.
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (9/10) (affiliate)
A gorilla teaches a student how to save the world. The student tries to make sense of how we arrived in our current ecological crisis through a story of humans place in the world.
“The area we’re looking at, the Fertile Crescent, was inhabited by modern humans for something like a hundred thousand years before our agricultural revolution began.”
Books About Taiwan: Green Island and Orphan of Asia are both excellent historical fiction books about different periods in Taiwanese history - which gives you a lens on what has happened in Taiwan, China, Japan and other countries over the last 100 years.
Books I want to read this summer:
I want to finish Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society by Andre Gorz
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
Anything else I should be reading?
What do you do when you have an extra day to yourself?
It might be easier if I offer a reflection on what an ideal day has looked like in the past few months.
In Taiwan, I’ve designed my working life around my partners schedule which is a bit all over the place right now since she works at a gym. So my “days off” have typically been spent with her and days to myself tend are work and self-focused.
On an ideal day I’ve had to myself over the past few months it might look something like this:
Coffee & catching up on the NBA from the US
Meditate for 10 minutes
Doing some writing, creative work or website updates
Work until I get hungry (typically around 2-3pm)
Go to the pool to workout and go to the sauna
Wander around and/or go for a bike ride around the city
Return home to do a video call, podcast interview or in-person meal with a friend in the city
Meet up with my partner for a dinner at the night market or in the city and wander around at night
Read before bed for 30-60 minutes
A lot of this I can plug and play depending on the day, the weather and any pressing work demands. This is an incredible privilege, but one mostly achieved by “becoming satisfied with spending less” as Morgan Housel wrote in a recent fantastic essay.
He goes on:
It’s not easy. It’s a behavioral trait, not analytical skill, and investing attracts more of the latter. Some are better at it than others, but virtually everyone is primed to at least assume they’ll be happier if they spent more.
The last 18 months has been an experiment in trying to become satisfied with spending less and I’ve found similar results as Morgan:
For me it’s been realizing that what makes people happy is having options – doing what you want, with who you want, when you want, where you want.
Over the past nine months, my income has been from my strategy consulting course, gifts from patrons, coaching gifts and consulting fees. Outside of about 50 hours of this work, I’ve been able to do the work at time that align with my energy.
I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for the current circumstances of my life. I’ve always been blessed with an optimistic demeanor, but as I grow older and as I’ve continued to experiment in living in new ways, I really do take more and more moments to stop, look around and say “wow life is grand.”
#2 Alastair Humphreys on biking around the world for four years, busking through Europe and embracing micro-adventures 🎻
🎧 Listen: Web | Itunes | Overcast | Spotify | Google 🎧
I talked to Alastair Humphreys after he had returned the previous night from a micro-adventure. It wasn't a four year biking trip or a challenging long walk across the desert (he's done that though!), but instead a short overnight camping trip with himself to re-connect with nature and his adventurous spirit. He helps others think about how they can design similar micro-adventures to find joy in the "5 to 9" rather than doing everything in service of the 9 to 5.
#3 Mary Hirschfeld on economics’ blind spot 🎧
On this podcast with Russ Roberts, Mary argues that the economic profession has developed a blindness to these “higher goods” in a philosophical sense that make us happy.
But, let's call it the textbook version of homo economicus--the economic human being--as maximizing utility depending on stuff. A lot of times, taking that new job with the higher salary that allows you to have the bigger house, the nicer car, and more stuff, means less time for your family, your community, your pursuit of French, playing the flute, whatever it is that is not commercially oriented. And I think economists, not intending it, but they become blind to those tradeoffs.
…she argues for a renewed prioritization (or in economics a deeper consideration of) of essentially, what matters:
…what Aquinas helps you to see is that there's another way of thinking about human happiness that is ultimately more fulfilling and more sustainable. And, that's one where you think--where you just pause. You put the whole project on pause, and you think, 'What do I want my life to look like? What are the goods that I want to have in it?' And, if you do that, you are going to see that the amount of material goods, the amount of stuff you need, is actually finite
#4 How Work Turned Us Into Passionate Quitters 📖
Professor Ilana Gershon shares a different perspective on something I’ve written about before - the careerist mindset - something I fully embraced for over ten years. She argues that this is the result of the expected result of a continued trend towards a neoliberal global order - free markets, meritocracy, individual freedom:
Over time, a whole body of literature emerged advocating that people should view themselves as a business – a bundle of skills, assets, qualities, experiences and relationships to be managed and continually enhanced.…Good jobs used to be ones with a good salary, benefits, location, hours, boss, co-workers, and a clear path towards promotion. Now, a good job is one that prepares you for your next job, almost always with another company.
She argues that this shifts our mindset toward being full-time “quitters.” The only point of taking a job is to gain skills or experiences and then to leave it. This view aligns with what Andew Taggart has written about separately on how our modern work culture pushed people deeply identify with their work:
A career is a first-person work-centric story of progress about an individual’s life course, a story that confers a sense of purpose and unity upon specific work experiences (internships, jobs, gigs, projects, awards, promotions, etc.) as well as a staid identity (journalist, firefighter, accountant, executive coach, independent art advisor, etc.) upon an individual. The aim of the career, and therefore of the careerist’s life, is work success.
#5 Misc 🎊
Boundless Reads #114 - Five Good Reads From (last) Week
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I want to make this newsletter an ongoing experiment and co-creation with the many members that read and follow along. What questions do you want me to write about? Anything you are working on that I can share? What quotes are inspiring you?