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Clay

Photo by Kirbmart1000
A few months ago, I met a guy named Leonard Knight who’s spent the last 20 years building a folk art masterpiece called "Salvation Mountain." Leonard lives in the back of his pickup truck and usually sleeps under the stars. Visitors bring him food, paint, and minor donations, and Leonard continues to work on his adobe mountain and ~200 other folk art projects meant to convey the message that "God Loves Everyone." Leonard’s mountain has been likened to an epic work of folk art “comparable to the Watts Towers,” is entered it into the Congressional Record as a national treasure, and was also featured in the movie Into the Wild.

While I don’t seek to emulate Leonard’s lifestyle, I very much respect him for having the guts to peruse his dreams. Leonard’s life is highly unconventional and wouldn’t work for most of us, but it got me thinking about . . .

The Diversity of Lifestyle Design

When I think about lifestyle design, I usually think about automated income, mini-retirements, making money online, traveling the world, and the 4-Hour Work Week. The truth, however, is that there are an unlimited number of tools in the lifestyle design arsenal.  Lifestyle design is as old as life itself.

The philosophy of lifestyle design is actually quite simple.  It suggests that there are limitless ways to arrange and configure your life and that the logistics of living are much more flexible than most of us can imagine.

There is one [movie line] that stands out for me. It comes from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, when the Charlie Sheen character — a promising big shot in the stock market — is telling his girlfriend about his dreams. "I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I’m thirty and get out of this racket," he says, "I’ll be able to ride my motorcycle across China." When I first saw this scene … I nearly fell out of my seat in astonishment. Charlie Sheen or anyone else could work for eight months as a toilet cleaner and have enough money to ride a motorcycle across China. The thing is, most Americans probably wouldn’t find this movie scene odd.
-Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts has perfected the art of long term world travel, Dan Clements can run a business from anywhere while roving the globe with his wife and children, Lea Woodward has freelanced from every continent, Doug Mayle and his wife are traveling across the world in a sailboat, Mark Hayword runs a bed and breakfast on the Island of Culebra, and Tim Ferriss works the famed 4-Hour-Work Week. I admire the real-life adventures of these excellent writers. I also think it’s important to acknowledge that these stories only convey part of the picture.

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Photo by Chance Gardener
[Note: If you support this manifesto, please consider voting for it on ChangeThis.com (no login necessary)]

Since World War II, productivity in the U.S. has doubled. So we should be working 20-hour work weeks, right? Well, we’re not. We’re working more. In fact, we’re working more than medieval peasants, and the 40-hour work week hasn’t changed since 1940 even though productivity levels have been growing steadily since then. Productivity simply isn’t helping most people: it’s not making them happier or leading to more free time.

The Productivity Industrial Complex

You and your company need to get things done - lots of things[.] You have invested heavily in the human factor … but are you getting all the results from your people that you could? Are they maximizing their output?
-The David Allen Company

Photo by Stewf
The Productivity Industrial Complex is a marriage between corporations and an entire industry of productivity companies, gurus, consultants, and solution-makers who help corporations squeeze every ounce of productivity from their workers. Organizations like The David Allen Company, for example, make the bulk of their income from corporations looking to “maximize their employee output,” and it’s no surprise that they have a Fortune 500-studded client list which includes Lockheed Martin, Deloitte & Touche, and the U.S. Department of Defense (see here for more of his clients).

This manifesto is largely a response to the Productivity Industrial Complex . . .

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(Photo by  Steve Sawyer)
The battle for our minds usually isn’t a struggle against brainwashing (although most of us are mildly brainwashed). The battle for our minds isn’t usually about politics, consumer culture, and mass media. Nope. The battle for our minds is fought out every day in the workplace, and due largely to. . .

The Paradox of Intelligence

More intelligent people tend to have jobs that require very high levels of mental engagement (not to mention, longer work weeks). If you’re a doctor, lawyer, accountant, consultant, teacher, etc., then chances are your thoughts are consumed by work-related activities (and that you have less-than-average amounts of free time).

Highly intelligent people are more likely to exchange their brainpower for money, and less likely to retain much of said brainpower for themselves. They’re more likely to enroll in mentally demanding graduate programs and accept mentally demanding jobs. (In the western world we’re taught that if we have the capacity to be a doctor then it’s somehow a “waste” to work retail, make smoothies for a living, or become a farmer — even though a retailer worker, smoothie maker, or farmer get to own more of their thoughts).

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photo by Djloche

I’ve spent a past life or two kicking against the pricks of growth.  Things have since improved about 1,000% because I’ve come to terms with my habit of . . .

Eating New Contexts for Breakfast

My soul is rooted in a homeland, but I eat new contexts for breakfast. There’s a city where I’ll lay deep roots, but I still chew up/spit out new learning environments; I down them like rolls of Smarties(TM).

It’s not that I’m a badass, I just like kicking it Henry Thoreau style:

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau

Put me in a new job, in a new learning environment, or a new situation and I’ll start drenching myself in that context.  If I’m in a new city, I’ll go skinny-dipping in its rivers and lakes, visit its grimy underbelly, walk the streets of its neighborhoods, drink its tap water, and go to every possible block party. If it’s a new job, I’ll often try to meet everyone in the company, go to all the trainings, take on new projects, move up the ladder.  I’m not alone in this, and chances are that at one time or another, you’ve “been there, done that.”

We all know the drill: You drench yourself in a situation, you wallow in the mud of humanity, wipe the grime all over yourself. You breathe it in, you live it, you grow from it. And then one day, like that, you wake up and discover its time to move on.

It’s not that you’ve grown out of a given situation, or grown above it or beyond it.  It’s often that grown away from it.  And this growing away is often painful because . . .

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photo by Krelic

You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
–Morpheus in “The Matrix”

In the cyberpunk classic, The Matrix, protagonist Neo lives in a simulated reality created — by machines — to subdue and pacify humans. At one point, the film’s central character, Neo, is given the opportunity to take either a blue pill or a red pill. If Neo takes the blue pill, his life goes on as before. But if he takes the red pill, his eyes open up to the false reality that is The Matrix and he becomes exposed to the parallel universe that’s been his entire known existence.

Because of advertisements, political spin, cultural peer pressure, biased dogma, and even some of our own outdated biological instincts, we all live to at least some extent with one foot in a false reality. The decision to take the metaphorical blue pill (blissful ignorance), or red pill (the truth, no matter how painful it may be), isn’t as cut and dry for us as it was for Neo. The red/blue pill analogy, however, is still an important one that represents a key decision we continually face: do we live according to unquestioned patterns and modes of existence, or do we continually press for the truth, no matter how damaging it might be to our ego, to our nest eggs, and our social status?

The truth is that truth is the only path down which long-term and durable solutions to personal and societal problems can be solved. Here are 7 practices meant to aid you in continually taking the metaphorical red pill:

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Modern life has us enmeshed in a web of unwanted and unnecessary commitments.  Most of us spend the majority of our time doing things we don’t want to do.  We join committees because we think they’ll look good on our resumes, go to birthday parties out of obligation, attend inane meetings, stay in bad relationships out of fear, take on unwanted work projects to gain favor with our bosses, stay in jobs we don’t like instead of quitting.

Unwanted commitments seem to beget more unwanted commitments.  They’re like lies: they multiply fast.  If you take on an unwanted project to please your boss, then the next time a similar project comes by she’ll throw it in your lap.  If you unhappily go to an acquaintances birthday party out of sense of obligation, they’re likely to invite you over for dinner, or call you more often.  You get my drift.

What Does this Have to do with Productivity?

Well, it’s common knowledge that productivity naturally emerges from passion: when we love what we’re doing, productivity becomes irrelevant.  The corollary is that being unproductive results from doing things you’d rather not do.

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Photo by TravelTrailerSNZ.

[Note: I intentionally decided not to use a beach photo.  Lifestyle design means different things to different people; it isn’t just for middle-aged businessmen living as expats in coastal regions, although that is the stereotype.]

Lifestyle design (LD) has a lengthy past but a short history.  The art of (sometimes radical) lifestyle configuration, however, has been practiced for quite sometime by liberated people from all walks of life.

The growth of the Internet has enabled those loaded with cash to disconnect from the 9-5 without disconnecting from their Porches, Louis Vuitton gear, mobile cash cow businesses, and brokerage accounts.  The Internet’s rise has also allowed persons from less auspicious backgrounds (like myself) to live creatively without making seemingly prohibitive income sacrifices.  Indeed, if one plays their cards right, a mainstream Internet presence can eliminate the monetary drawbacks that used to come with a a non-mainstream lifestyle.  Technology has come a long way, and I’m glad that lifestyles are starting to catch up.

Here’s a list of lifestyle design resources that might be of help to the interested.

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"Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive."
-Howard Thurman

In the song "My Roller Coaster," singer/songwriter Kimya Dawson recalls her mom saying "I hope someday you get paid for being Kimya Dawson."  Here’s the song if you want to listen:

Given how some parents encourage children to adopt unwanted professions or identities, Kimya’s mother’s statement is powerful.  Kimya’s mother hoped she would get paid just for being Kimya.  Kimya now gets paid for playing anti-folk concerts across the U.S. and for being her beautifully quirky and authentic self (you may have heard her 6 songs on the Juno soundtrack).

In a world of increasing competition and economic downturns, we’re working more hours for less pay, taking fewer vacation hours, and generally burning out.  Perhaps this explains the popularity of alternative career books, stay-at-home jobs, and psychiatric medications.  The societally scripted routes to success are failing us.

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