If ever there was research done on situational human happiness, I’m sure one of the places where happiness would be lowest would be in queues.
An outcome of the ‘age of the instant’ is that we seem to have lost a bit of patience along the way. And, given reports of increased amounts of stress, there hardly is a better place to vent. You can almost picture it as I say it – you’re standing in a queue where all is well. All of a sudden, one man or woman joins and begins making a scene. Soon, others join in and the discontent spreads like wild fire.
One of the best pieces of advice I got from a video I watched was ‘Hustle while you wait.’ I had no idea what it meant but took it as ‘Do something while you wait.’ (And turns out, that is indeed what it means..)
I am restless and impatient by nature and this line has enabled me to make peace with the process of waiting, and even come to appreciate it.
I do spend time waiting over the course of a week and I have a variety of activities to choose from – listen to a book, read the news, make a call etc. If I decide I need a break from information, then I also take pleasure from staring into nothing-ness or from a spot of people watching.
It’s amazing how much control we have in situations where it seems like we have none. And aside from our time being too precious to be thrown away, our well being is too precious to be wasted away in needless discontent and unhappiness.
Hustle while you wait. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten.
Regulars here are well aware of the book – ‘The Geography of Bliss’. I’ve been very inspired by the ideas in the book – especially by the idea of 100% attention. So, you can imagine how excited I was when Eric responded to my interview request with a ‘yes’.
Interviewing with Eric was a wonderful experience. In true journalist style, he ended up asking me a couple of questions while I was interviewing him! It made for a very memorable conversation and I walked away with a deep admiration for the depth of his insights and his wonderful way with words.
About Eric: Eric Weiner was a longtime correspondent for National Public Radio. He spent a decade overseas for NPR, based in New Delhi, Jerusalem and Tokyo.
He is the author of Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine and the author of The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World. In the book, Weiner travels to spots around the globe – including Iceland, Bhutan, Moldova and Qatar to search out how different countries define and pursue happiness.
Note: A word of apology for me regarding the video. I recognize Eric’s voice is soft compared to other videos (and especially soft compared to mine). We realized when editing this video that I need to make sure I do these Skype calls on full volume so the voice is well recorded. Apologies for the trouble!
Rohan: We would love to hear your story! We know you were a journalist with the NPR. What is the rest of it?
Eric: Well I grew up in Baltimore in the US. And I decided I was going to run away from home when I was 5. Maybe a lot of 5 year olds talk about running away from home, but I actually did! I ran a couple of miles before they picked me up. I guess you could say that I have been running ever since. Some would call it running away from something, but I would say running toward something!
I am a traveller and an amateur philosopher. An American writer Henry Miller can sum up my philosophy for life with this quote “When it comes to travel, ones destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things”. Long story short, I have been travelling in different capacities like a free spirit. I was with National Public Radio(NPR). I was stationed in Delhi, Tokyo and in about 30 or 40 other countries. These were not particularly happy places though.
One day I woke up and said, “This is kind of silly. Why am I travelling to these miserable places”. And so I decided to travel to the happy places on earth and see what they could teach us – about the art of happiness. I was trying to find someone to fund me for a year of travelling around the world to these happy places. A great publisher called Twelve Books did go for this and helped me. The result is the book The Geography of Bliss!
Rohan: How long ago was this?
Eric: I always had a way with words and I always wanted to travel. I was a journalist for a good 20 years with both NPR and New York Times for a while. At some point I realised the limitations of Journalism. For example, as a journalist, you can only report the facts and can never really say how you feel about something. I feel the liberation now that I get from writing books and magazine articles. For instance, I’m off to Kolkata over the next few weeks for research on my next book. I have the freedom for however long I want and for however long I can afford. So, if I feel like the India Coffee House in Kolkata is the place to be, I can spend days there whereas previously my editor would probably call me and say “Eric, you need to get out of this place and cover that war!”
I get the freedom to choose what I do and how I do it. And this freedom has made me realise that this is the true calling of my life! A bit late maybe, but ‘Better late then never’!
Rohan: What was the defining moment that made you stop and say hey I am going to write my own book?
Eric: My problem was never coming up with ideas, rather narrowing them down. I had lots of ideas for my books. It was from all the travel in all sorts of places. Once I was in Kazakhstan for about 7 weeks. My wife and I were staying there to adopt our baby girl. Staying that long was a requirement of the process. There’s not much to do there for so long and I had a lot of time to think. That was when the idea to write this book came! When you have a right idea, something sort of clicks into place, you know just know and you don’t turn back! That is quite wonderful.
Rohan: You next book delves into religion and spirituality. Geography of bliss never touched this topic much. How did the second book come along?
Eric: I needed a subject bigger than happiness and what is a subject bigger than happiness except for God. I came across the fact that people who were religious are happier than people who are not. Why is that? Do the religious people know something that we don’t? I have never been a particularly religious person. You call me spiritually curious maybe, but that’s about me. And then something happened to me which I describe in the book ‘Man Seeks God’.
I finished my first book and about a week later I developed abdominal pains. I was worried and I went to the hospital. They took a couple of tests and I was waiting for a specialist to tell what was going on. The nurse in my room whispered this in my ears – ‘Have you found your God yet?’. Long story short, I was not dying. Though I thought so, for a short time. That question however, stuck. So, I travelled the world as I tend to do and tried on different faiths in a serious way but with a dose of humour as I don’t tend to take myself too seriously. So, the book is an exploration of these 8 faiths and what being spiritual and religious means in the year 2012.
Rohan: In the ending of ‘The Geography of Bliss’ that you call your thesis of happiness, you say you need money but not too much etc. How has this changed your life?
Eric: It did not change my life in any super dramatic way. I did not move to Iceland or Bhutan. Some people say you need to move for happiness, but they are whom I call hedonic refugees. They are happier when they move to a place different from where they are born. For most of us it does not work that way. We need to find a way right here. But we can incorporate these lessons, these other ways of seeing the world into our life
The Thais have wonderful sayings. One of them is ‘mai pen rai’ or ‘Never mind, just let it go’. It is a simple saying but one that we all find tough to accept. Another is that ‘You think too much’. This idea is actually alien to many of us. So I guess I picked up these lessons of happiness through this journey and I try to go through them everyday!
Rohan: So I am getting to an obvious question, but ‘Are you Happy?’!
Eric:I am less unhappy than I was before! Lets put it that way. You seem happy Rohan, are you happy?
Rohan: It’s funny but somebody the other day asked how my day was. I said it was very busy. She asked if it was good busy or bad busy. I said that I never think of things as bad busy. I just think of it as busy or good busy. She said that I was too young and not old yet!
Eric: Haha. I don’t buy that. What is the source of your happiness?
Rohan: I lost my dad and uncle when I was very young and it left my family in a tough place. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger I guess. I guess I just realized that ‘Life is a blessing’. I think it really is! I write down 5 blessings in my life/things I am grateful for, think about my bucketlist and make commitments on how I plan to live the day every morning..
Eric: I read in a paper that in Washington, there is a public bucket list wall. People write down ‘Before I die..’ things on it. And interestingly most of them are to do with travel and places people want to see! I think this travel impulse points to how people want to get out of the confines of their lives. One person from Ghana even wrote I want to swim in Buttermilk. That seemed odd but there was something very spontaneous about that.
I think it is important to remind ourselves of mortality. You lost two very important family members and I am sure that was very hard but it also probably reminded you about the fragility of life. I think people respond to crises like that in two ways. They either close down and shrink or they grow and expand. Seems like you have done the latter and I am really happy to hear that!
Rohan: I remember a quote that, At the end of the day, it’s your conception of death that decides our answers to life. I find that very deep. I was lucky with people in my case. I had my friends and family taking care of me. I think that’s the thing about India. How there is always family!
Eric: Yes, there was this study done about homeless people in Kolkata and California. The homeless people in India were much happier! They have family connections and relations. And that is a part source of happiness.
Rohan: I think connectedness, right?
Eric: Its usually people. But you could be connected to your Labrador or your gold fish. To nature or universe. We tend to talk about happiness as if it was a personal thing here in the US. It’s a very telling phrase that ‘you sabotage happiness by treating it as something you hold for yourself’.
Rohan: I am sure you know Jonathan Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis. I find it very interesting that he says it comes from the between.
Eric:Happiness is a by-product! Its never works like I am going to be happy today. I am going to be kind to others today or I am going to have fun today or I am going to be more appreciative today works. That will help your happiness.
Rohan: Eric, you get to decide how you spend your time. How do you discipline yourself?
Eric: When I go to a place I try and stay focussed. I try to answer one big question or a few big questions at a time. My travel is always designed to uncover answers to these questions. I think the day of just roaming around the streets of Kolkata in search of answers are over. The world is pretty well discovered by now! Technology has shrunk the world that way.
The kinds of travel books that still appeal to people are the ones where you travel with a purpose. My next book is based on the geography of genius. It is about how certain places make us feel more creative. And how certain places through history are very innovative. And about why that is. I am travelling to seven cities to discover what is in the air and what makes it work. So I want to ask you Rohan, where did you feel your most creative self?
Rohan: I have lived in Chennai, Singapore and London. In terms of places I think London is the place I feel most creative! Another place is the Silicon Valley or the bay area as they call it. I think there is a certain energy in the air. I think diversity helps when it comes to feeling energy. I also think history helps. For example the bay area has an history of innovation..
Eric: When you take Kolkata as an example, most people think of Mother Teresa and poverty. And then there are the great writers Tagore and Vivekananda and artists and Indian film makers. I am just wondering maybe the messiness of the city creates inspiration..
Rohan: I think Chaos helps, too! I feel very creative back home.
Eric: One of the great things about moving out of home and returning is that you see it with fresh eyes. Does that happen to you?
Rohan: I remember this quote that says ‘You travel around the world and come back to the place where you started and finally recognize it’ that is the essence of travel, I think!
Eric: I think TS Elliot said that. And I think we’ve butchered it. (haha)
(Original quote: And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time)
Rohan: I am exploring routines as a source of happiness. Do you have daily routines that help?
Eric: Oh boy. That’s a good question. When you are a free spirit you do not have a structure in your life. So you have to create a structure. So, I need to pay more attention to my schedule than you do because you have to be at a certain place for work. I don’t have to be anywhere except to pick up my daughter from school.
So I try to map out my day pretty tightly. I start the day with some Buddhist meditation or exercises. I find I need to get out of home to right as there are too many distractions. I go to a coffee shop or someplace like that. I catch up on e-mails and block out time to write. I use a program called Freedom that cuts me off the internet! I need that discipline. I try to block out the time and give myself the routine. I think it is important. We need structure in our lives, even if we are by ourselves.
Rohan: What is a message you would like to pass on to the motley bunch of readers on this blog – let’s say a bunch of youngsters like me?
Eric: You say youngsters and I am struck by how many young people from your age are so damn serious about everything! They feel like they are very behind in their lives. How can you be? You are 23! They have to take their tests go to graduate school and what not. If you look at great people like Einstein, they were terrible at school and would appear to be goofing off.
So, my message, if you Don’t take things so seriously.If you lose that sense of playfulness – what the Thais call ‘Sanuk’, you have lost everything. The moment work feels like work, you are not going to do anything great. When it feels like play. it doesn’t feel like a burden. So, Chill out and have some fun!
—
Thank you Eric! That was fun, entertaining and profound all at once. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did. As always, look forward to your feedback, thoughts and comments in the comments. :-)
Happy Monday all!
The Real Leader Team,
Dhanya, EB and your truly..
This week’s book learning is from ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman –
“Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As as student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.”
Which alternative is more probable?
1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
When posed with this question and asked to answer, 85% of Stanford Graduate Business School students, all of whom had taken several advanced courses in probability, statistics, and decision theory, along with about 85% to 90% of undergraduates at several major universities chose option 2.
Think about it for a moment though: Every feminist bank teller is a bank teller! Picking Number 2 nearly violates the basic laws of logic, not to mention probability. Yet nearly everyone failed. Why?
Daniel Kahneman points out that we have 2 processing systems – the intuitive and quick to respond
System 1 that ‘thinks fast’ and the more lazy, calculative and deliberate System 2 that ‘thinks slow’.
The point Kahneman makes here is that we often jump to conclusions on many problems without thinking ‘twice’ i.e. engaging our system 2.
I found this insight fascinating.. And more learnings to follow on the 2 systems..
Here’s to observing our 2 systems in action this week!
PS: Apologies to feed readers who are seeing this twice. Some posting issues!
I was walking back home after a spot of grocery shopping an hour or so ago. I wasn’t in any particular hurry and found myself observing the many faces that passed by. Some looked relaxed, a couple looked really worried and yet some others looked blank and expressionless.
At that moment, it struck me that we must walk by millions of faces in a lifetime. Add in a bit of travel in densely populated nations to that and the number would easily be in the hundreds of millions..
That’s a hundred million stories. Every person walking has a story of his/her own – a past, hopes about a future, a mood, a reason for the mood, an outlook, a belief system, some sadness, some happiness. We might have passed by many who are in the midst of the best time of their lives and yet some others going through their worst.
But, each with their own story.
Now, consider this for a moment – by smiling, by saying a nice word, by being appreciative, by holding the door open, by showing a bit of kindness, a bit of consideration, we have probably positively impacted so many of these stories. We may have turned many a mood from bad to good, we may have turned a day around, sprinkled a bit of hope, added a bit of joy.. and maybe even saved a life.
There is often talk about changing the world by building great things. But imagine just walking around being the best we can be – and changing the world by being kind, nice and humane to one person at a time. Maybe we’d impact a 100 million souls over the course of a life time..
If we aren’t doing that, I wonder.. I just wonder.. what the hell else are we doing that’s more important?
I’m really beginning to enjoy the ‘Feel Good Friday’ series. After Caine’s Arcade and the brilliant Olympics Mother’s video, it’s a tough act to follow but I think we have a winner.
This is a 5 and a half video called ‘A story for tomorrow’ that is profound and inspiring at the same time that I stumbled onto at a friend’s blog.
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A moment that sends chills down my spine around 3:50 – “And then I will ask as I do to everyone else – Did you enjoy your story?”
One of the challenges I set myself every day is the ‘short’ post and by ‘short’, I don’t mean ‘in a hurry’ and hence, short but short because the message is delivered in just the number of words necessary i.e. Perfection.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
And I always look at Seth Godin’s posts for inspiration. In any given 30 day period, his posts generally average 7-8 lines and always pack a punch.
In my case, while the intent is to achieve just that, the piece always ends up longer. I understand now that this is part of what Geoff Colvin terms ‘Deliberate Practice’ and I’m hoping to get to being able to deliver a message concisely. Less is more when it comes to all forms of communication. That’s why less is hard, too.
With that in mind, I’ll wish you all a great day. And hey, what do you know – this turned out to be a concise post after all. Whether it delivered the message, I’ll leave it to you to decide..
What are your experiences with ‘less is more’? How do you work on your own communication?
As anybody with a vague interest in football would know, Manchester City won the English Premier League in the most dramatic of styles – with 2 goals in ‘extra time’ to seal the title. Manchester City has always been in shadow of the ‘other’ club in Manchester called Manchester United before oil rich Abu Dhabi decided to invest in the club and they were understandably delirious.
However, one of their players – an ex Manchester United star by name Carlos Tevez was pictures with a banner that said ‘R.I.P Fergie’ – Fergie standing for Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s legendary manager and his ex boss.
Now, Carlos Tevez is no stranger to controversy being prone to emotional outbursts. Thanks to an outburst against his current manager earlier this year, he was punished by being forced to sit out of the team for 6 months and was unable to move to a different club as no club wanted to take the risk. He was lucky to be called back in the last 10 games of the season.
Carlos Tevez had two wildly successful years at Manchester United winning the coveted the European cup as well as consecutive Premier League titles. He would have gone down as a legend of the club had it not been for acts like this. And yet, his legacy is now tarnished and all his bridges are burnt. You might argue that it doesn’t matter as he’s found success in a new place. My belief is that it in the long run, it will come back to bite you.
A hundred years ago, if you screwed up really bad in the city/town that you lived in, you could literally sail off in a boat to a far off land and begin a new life. No questions asked. Now, wherever you go, your facebook, twitter and LinkedIn profiles are likely to follow you. And unfortunately, reputations are not shock resistant.
When I thought of this post yesterday, I initially thought I’d title it ‘Never burn your bridges’. I changed my mind. That’s because there are times when it is actually worth burning your bridges. Maybe you were in a job where the people involved were out to get you thanks to misaligned values/character and as a result, bad intentions. Burning your bridges was probably a good move then.
And, if you did burn your bridges when the people on the other side were of good character and had good intentions which were lost in circumstances, it’s never too late to make up. If they were good folks, they will forgive you. Maybe not forget, but atleast forgive.
This is not so much ‘hack’, neither is it a principle that only applies to your relationships at work unless of course you are sure you will never run in to your personal network in a professional setting. In today’s shrinking world, I’d imagine there would be very few willing to take that bet.
And, finally, while it’s easy to call out a negative example alone, I’d like to also point out that there is a positive example as well. Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United the same year Carlos Tevez did. He left with dignity and always had good things to say about his time at Manchester United.
And songs about Ronaldo are still sung at Old Trafford. Reputation leads to legacy. And legacy matters.
I have 2 questions for all of you today as I’m looking for some feedback. I’m grouping the two unrelated questions together so I can get your feedback on both.
1. I am looking to make the ‘Everything Books’ section useful. What will help?
As you might have noticed, I have a section on this blog called ‘Everything Books’. Improving this section has been on my mind for a long time and I felt myself getting stuck when attempting to do so this weekend. As a few of you here might know, I do blog all book reviews on another blog and the purpose of this section is to make it easier for readers here to easily find recommendations.
I’m curious if you guys do find yourself checking this section out? And if you do, what would be useful?
2. Is Disqus 2012 causing any problems at your end?
I had a note from a regular yesterday noting that Disqus 2012 seemed to be taking forever to load at her end. I haven’t heard any other feedback on Disqus 2012 from anyone else so I just thought I’d throw it out.
It would be helpful feedback for Disqus and helpful for me to understand as well. (I guess I’ll finally understand why I’m not getting 500 comments per post. ;-))
And while we are at it, any other interesting improvement ideas/feedback is always helpful. Thank you so much in advance for your help.
I’d blogged last month about Attention and a resolve to start giving 100% attention to everything I do.
I tend to think most things as muscles these days – intelligence, ability, habit and the only way to build them, as a result, as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is a term used a lot in a great book I’m reading called ‘Talent is Overrated’ by Geoff Colvin. More on this concept later.
If you’ve ever done any sort of muscle building in the gym, you know that it is a painful process especially in the initial stages. And I’m going through the same, rather difficult process. The end objective here would be to have it so ingrained in my head that if I get a phone call (for example), I am 100% on the call. Being present, and doing one thing at a time – that’s the aspiration.
I realize now that I wrote about attention exactly one month ago. I feel there’s been a fair bit of improvement on this front. I do my best to take any phone calls away from my computer so I’m not tempted to open the browser or my email. As for work, I use a cool piece of freeware called the Procrastination Killer. This is a piece of freeware I’d learnt about 4 years or so ago but never got around to using it for more than a week despite many attempts over the year. The big reason is that the philosophy built in is to spend 10 minutes working and then take a 2 minute break. This never works. My breaks spill. I ended up keeping the same ratio and lengthening the work and break time by doing 25 minutes with a 5 minute break.
And I realized a few days into this new system that I had accidentally stumbled into the Pomodoro technique. That’s been working pretty well.
I am convinced 100% Attention is where true productivity lies. For now, it’s still the hard work phase involved with building this muscle. But, like all muscle building, I’m hopeful this will become part of the flow soon.
This week’s book learning is from ‘Inside Apple’ by Adam Lashinsky –
A big source of the politicking in big organizations is the concept of the P&L. Essentially, having your own P&L or Profit and Loss statement means you are wholly responsible for the profits of your business unit and defines your ‘domain’ as a manager.
i.e. ‘I run my own P&L and therefore I am.’ ;-)
Steve Jobs bucked the trend at Apple by ensuring only the CFO owned a P&L. This led to a few interesting outcomes – aside from removing all politicking about the amount of money executives controlled, it focused discussions around creating incredible products.
Managers at all levels were never asked to defend decisions on ROI or ‘Return on Investment’. The conversations around dollars and expenses were thrown out of the window and teams were made to feel like ‘rich kids’ and believe they could do whatever they wanted as long as their parents i.e. the CFO gave the final ‘okay’.
The overall P&L was closely monitored by Jobs and the CFO, of course. And keeping it centralized meant there were no repeat expenses across business units!
‘Inside Apple’ provides some interesting insights into Apple’s way of working. The most interesting observation here is that Apple consistently bucks all traditional management ‘best practices’ and has done exceptionally well.
Perhaps ‘best practices’ need to be overhauled once in a while? Perhaps learning to question, understand the rationale and make the best judgment is the essence of greatness?
Here’s to understanding the reason behind ‘best practices’ around us this week!
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A Learning a Day 