How to Achieve Success

In my spare time — what little there is of it — I’ve been continuing my research into the nature of fear and how that relates to success and achievement. Why does fear hold some people back yet serve as a motivator for others? As part of this, I’ve been re-reading all of Malcolm Gladwell. It’s entertaining and instructive.

How to Achieve Success

OutliersIn Outliers, for instance, Gladwell explores the factors allow some people to achieve runaway success. How did Bill Gates become Bill Gates? How did The Beatles become The Beatles? And why do some people who seem to have innate talent never reach their full potential?

Gladwell’s hypothesis is that there are two factors necessary for success: environment and effort.

Success cannot be achieved without great personal effort. Gladwell popularized the notion (though he did not invent it) that to truly become proficient at something, to master it, you need to spend roughly 10,000 hours acquiring that skill. Bill Gates, for instance, spent about 10,000 hours learning to program. The best violinists spend about 10,000 hours practicing their instrument. And so on.

It’s nearly impossible to become successful without putting in a lot of work.

But effort alone isn’t enough. Gladwell argues that Outliers — his term for folks who achieve astounding success — come from environments that encourage and foster their talents and abilities. It’s not enough that Bill Gates was interested in computers. He had to be born into a community that gave him a chance to spend 10,000 hours programming, an environment that provided tons of opportunities to put his skills to work.

Success is the Sum of Environment Plus Effort

Warren Buffett, perhaps the world’s greatest investor, has spoken many times about what he calls “the ovarian lottery”. “You’re going to get one ball out of there, and that is the most important thing that’s ever going to happen in your life,” he once told a group of students at the University of Florida.

In his philanthropic pledge [PDF], Buffett writes:

My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. Both my children and I won what I call the ovarian lottery. (For starters, the odds against my 1930 birth taking place in the U.S. were at least 30 to 1. My being male and white also removed huge obstacles that a majority of Americans then faced.)

My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious.

There’s no question that Buffett worked damn hard to develop his business acumen. But he’s the first to admit that he was lucky to have been born in a time and a place that rewarded his passion.

I feel the same way about my own success. Yes, I’ve worked hard. I’ve spent far more than 10,000 hours blogging about life and money. But I’ve also been lucky, and in any number of ways. How strange is it that I came along at just the right time with just the right skills? I was a computer-geek psychology major who loved to write and was deep in debt. From these four factors, I was able to build Get Rich Slowly into something far more than I expected.

Again, success is the sum of environment plus effort.

Helping Others Succeed

It’s oft been said that “success is what happens when opportunity meets preparation”. That’s essentially the entire lesson of Gladwell’s Outliers. At the end of the book, he writes:

Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed…Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities — and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

This, too, is the core lesson of Luck is No Accident, a great book about making the most of unplanned events.

The moral, my friends, is to work hard and to keep an open mind so that you can take advantage of unexpected opportunities. But there’s another moral, and I think it’s just as important: Whenever possible, open doors for other people. The more chances we give others to succeed, the more likely they are to actually achieve success. Keep dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners.

Keep Dropping Keys All Night Long

All You Need to Know About Blogging

Note: Recently, I’ve been coaching Kim as she prepares to launch her own website. Doing so reminds of a lesson I try to preach to all new bloggers: Content is king. Here’s an article I wrote on the subject for a now-defunct blog about blogging back in March 2007.

I have a friend who’s starting a niche personal finance blog. He’s very interested in the subject, and knowledgeable, and I think he could make it an interesting site.

When the idea first came to him a few months ago, he approached me. “How do I make this a successful blog?” he asked.

“Post lots of good content,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he said. “But what else?”

“There is no ‘what else’,” I said. Actually, I ranted and raved about how too many people focus on things that aren’t important and don’t bother to spend time on the content, but essentially it all amounted to “there is no ‘what else’”.

My friend went away for a few weeks to work on his site. When I talked to him again he told me, “I’ve switched from WordPress to Drupal. Do you think that’ll make a difference?”

“It’ll make no difference at all,” I said. “Readers don’t care what weblog tool you use. All they care about is the content.”

“Yeah, but Drupal offers so many more features,” he said. I just shook my head.

About a month ago, he launched his site. He posted an introductory article. “Looks good,” I said.

“Can you point people to the site?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “You don’t have any content.”

Meanwhile he put up some Google ads and some Amazon ads. He posted a single link to another article at a big news site. I talked to him a couple of weeks later. “Nobody’s coming to my site,” he told me. “Not a single person has clicked on an ad.”

“That’s because there’s nothing there,” I told him.

“What do you mean?” he said. “I spent a lot of time creating the layout and putting up the ads.”

“You need to focus on content,” I told him.

So he wrote another article. It was moderately interesting, but it was all in one h-u-g-e paragraph. There’s been nothing new posted to the site since then. The site layout has changed a half-dozen times, though, as my friend tries to make it as pretty as possible.

He IMed me last night. “Nobody’s coming to the site,” he said.

“It needs content,” I told him.

“I don’t have time,” he said. “I’m so busy.” I pointed out that he wasn’t too busy to party with friends. He wasn’t too busy to play soccer. He wasn’t too busy to tinker with the layout. These are all fine things, but none of them have anything to do with getting readers. “Can’t you point people to my site?” he asked.

“Maybe in a couple of months,” I said. “Maybe once you have some content.”

This concept has been beat into the ground a thousand times before, but it’s the single most important factor in creating a successful weblog: To gain readers, you must publish quality content on a regular basis. Sure, readers like a pretty site. Sure, it would be nice if there were ads for them to click on. But all of this is secondary. All that really matters is the content.

That, my friends, is all that you ever need to know about blogging.

Note: In the six years since I wrote this article, a new distraction has reared its ugly head: Search Engine Optimization. New bloggers will spend dozens of hours focused on SEO instead of doing the one thing that matters most: creating content. When people ask me what I do for SEO, I tell the truth: Nothing. My motto is: “The best SEO is an article that people want to link to.” It’s the truth.

Some Quick Links About Health and Fitness

Lately, I’ve been collecting links faster than I can share them. This is a quick post about some of the fitness stuff I’ve found.

The Seven-Minute Workout

For instance, at the New York Times wellness blog, Gretchen Reynolds shared what she calls “the scientific seven-minute workout“. This series of twelve body-weight exercises — taken from a scientific article — can be done almost anywhere (all you need are a wall and a chair). Here’s the graphic from the NYT article:

Exercises for seven-minute workout

The key is to do these at high intensity (an 8 on a scale from 1 to 10) and to not rest between exercise. In other words, it should be seven minutes of suffering.

In essence, that’s the same philosophy behind Crossfit. You do a bunch of work, and you do it fast. This set of exercises is nice, though, because it covers a wide range of muscle groups without any special equipment.

One web developer created a web-based seven-minute workout timer that tells you which exercise you’re on, counts down the time, and then gives you ten seconds to move to the next one. Pretty slick.

Scrawny to Brawny

Elsewhere, Tim Ferriss shared a story about how to lose 20-30 pounds in five days — and then gain it back. It’s not really useful to anyone outside competitive fighters, I think, but it’s still interesting.

I can’t believe I’m going to admit this publicly, but the Tim Ferriss article led me to a blog called Scrawny to Brawny, which is about building muscle. I subscribed. You know what? It’s actually a damn fine blog filled with practical advice on more than just weightlifting.

For instance, I love this piece on becoming the most interesting man in the world. The author writes that interesting men (and by extension, interesting women) become interesting by doing lots of stuff. And that alters how they talk about life.

The author illustrates his argument with this clip from the film Good Will Hunting:

His point? To become interesting, you need to stop talking and start doing. He writes: “Things like love, fear, sadness, joy, struggle, triumph and loss all have to be tasted and fully experienced to be understood.” By doing more, you’ll shift your frame of reference and expand your vocabulary.

Human experience exists on a continuum. The degree to which you’ve experienced something will determine your frame of reference when you’re using that word.

The Tragedy of the Healthy Eater

Finally, Kris pointed me to a blog post about the tragedy of the healthy eater. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but it makes a great point.

Healthy eating used to be simple. Now, though, everyone has an opinion about what is and is not healthy. There internet allows fad diets to spread like wildfire. Last week, dairy was evil! This week everyone is gluten intolerant! Next week, vegetables will be the cause of all evil!

I’m exaggerating, of course, but there’s a grain of truth there. When it comes to health, people are after magic bullets — just as with money. But there aren’t any magic bullets. Except for those rare few who truly have a problem with gluten, I’ve never seen anyone markedly improve their health by removing whole grains from their diet. And paleo? Don’t get me started. There are stacks of scientific studies that demonstrate a plant-based diet is correlated with health and long life; the paleo stuff is mostly fabricated out of fantasy.

My own solution is to pay attention to the research, and to know my own body. Yes, I mostly eat paleo (despite the fact I think the arguments for it are silly), but I’m very aware that if I ate more fruits and veggies, I’d be doing myself a favor.

Quick Tips for a Better Life

Though I moved into my new place just over three months ago, my walls are largely bare. I want to fill them with art, but I’m taking my time. I have a plan.

At some point, I realized that I have a lot of friends who are artists. I think it would be fun to pay them to create pieces of art for me. Apparently, they think it’d be fun too. Everyone I’ve approached has been eager to work on a personalized commission.

I’m just geting started with this project, but already have a handful of pieces. For instance, here’s a corner of the dining room:

IMG_0529

From left to right:

  • The yellow ceramic shell on top of the cabinet was created by Castle Riecke and her husband, Jim. When I was in high school, Castle was my first serious girlfriend. We reconnected a few years ago, and now try to hike or have coffee when time allows.

  • I commissioned the Kermit painting from Jolie Guillebeau. My favorite frog is sipping scotch and smoking a pipe while sitting on a pile of personal finance books. I love it.

  • The large ceramic vase on the floor was made by Kim’s cousin Freddie, who is better known as another type of artist.

When I met my friend Lisa for coffee a couple of weeks ago, I realized that she too has an artistic bent. She recently took some graphic design courses at a local university, and she’s just begun apprenticing with a fellow who does letterpress printing. She loves it.

“Hey,” I said. “I’ve been buying art from friends. Would you be interested in creating something for me?”

“Sure!” she said. She seemed excited. “Get me a few lines of text, and I’ll work on it over the next few months.”

That sounded awesome — but then I felt pressured to come up with something worthy of her work. I considered giving her one of my favorite quotes to play with, but then I decided I’d like something more personal. So, I spent a couple of hours last week compressing my life philosophy into a few sentences. When I’d finished, I’d boiled my personal creed down to one hundred words.

One Hundred Words by J.D. Roth

Breathe. Self-care comes first: Nurture your mind, body, and spirit. Be optimistic. Choose happiness. Don’t take things personally, and don’t make assumptions. Be good to people. Foster friendships. Be vulnerable and love passionately. Trust others. Trust yourself. Always do your best, but embrace the imperfections. Refuse to let fear guide your decision-making process. Act, even when you’re afraid. Ask for what you want. Collect opportunities, and create your own luck. Explore. Try new things, and keep an open mind. Be present in the moment. Share without reservation. Do what you love — do it often. Cultivate gratitude and joy.

Where possible above, I’ve linked to the person who taught me each lesson.

Meanwhile, on a related note, somebody posted an interesting question on AskMetafilter yesterday. RapcityinBlue wondered: “What’s the best piece of advice you got that worked nearly right away?” I always enjoy reading responses to this sort of thing. This time was no different. Here are some of my favorite nuggets of wisdom:

  • Listen when someone tells you something about themselves.
  • Never miss a chance to nap, ride a train, or let someone teach you something new.
  • Smile when you pick up the phone.
  • Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
  • Create a rule/filter in your e-mail client that holds all outgoing mail for 5 minutes.
  • Never cut what you can untie.

There are many other great tips in that thread, from advice about how to handle specific situations (snowboarding, computer programming) to general principles for living a happier life. It’s awesome.

I love it when people share the rules that help them lead a better life. What are some of yours?

How Do You Find Your Passion?

Last night, I had dinner with a long-time Get Rich Slowly reader. Amy is traveling the West Coast with her mother, and they’ve made their way to Portland after stopping at San Francisco, Yosemite, and Crater Lake.

Amy and I spent two hours chatting about her life and about mine. As we talked, we realized we have a lot in common. We’re both divorced, comfortable in our own skins, make decent livings, and have ample free time to explore the things we enjoy in life. Though we’re both content, we’ve each been trying to find a bit of direction.

Note: I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: The best part of my job is meeting people for lunch or coffee or dinner. It used to freak me out to meet strangers, but now I love it. I learn something new from every person I meet.

“I feel lucky to have started my ADHD meds,” I told Amy. “They’ve allowed me to focus. And they’ve helped me rediscover my passion for writing. I love to write. I feel like that’s what I’m called to do. Over the past few weeks, it’s been awesome to throw myself back into my work. For instance, I spent five hours writing that short article about how to live a life you love, but it came out almost perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted. I love when that happens.”

Amy sighed. “I wish I knew what I wanted to do,” she said. “I haven’t found my passion. I like to read and I like to garden and I like to travel, but that’s not the same as liking to write. I love my job, but I’m not passionate about the work. I don’t feel called to do it. I wish I could figure out what I should be doing.”

I have this conversation over and over again with folks my age. People are dissatisfied. Maybe they’re content in their jobs, but they don’t find them fulfilling. They crave a greater sense of purpose, an alignment of work and values. We reach age forty, and we still don’t know what we want to be when we grow up.

“You know,” I said to Amy, “I think I have some resources that could help you as you’re thinking about what you want to do with your life. I’ll send them to you.”

The first resource is What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson, which explores how people find meaning in life. The book features dozens of interviews and stories with people searching for a greater purpose. From what I gather — I haven’t read the book yet — Bronson poses more questions than he answers. Still, I think this book could provide fodder for Amy (and other folks) as she tries to figure out what her future holds.

The next resource I recommend is the work of George Kinder, who explores what he calls “life planning”, a more holistic approach to financial planning.

I’ve argued before that the road to wealth is paved with goals. Kinder doesn’t ask us to set goals; he asks us to examine our values, and to decide what’s important. To help clients discover the deeper values in their lives, Kinder poses three questions:

  1. Imagine you’re financially secure, that you have enough money to take care of your needs, now and in the future. How would you live your life? Would you change anything?

  2. Now imagine that you visit your doctor, who tells you that you have only 5-10 years to live. You won’t ever feel sick, but you’ll have no notice of the moment of your death. What will you do in the time you have remaining? Will you change your life and how will you do it? (Note that this question does not assume unlimited funds.)

  3. Finally, imagine that your doctor shocks you with the news that you only have 24 hours to live. Ask yourself: What did you miss in life? Who did you not get to be? What did you not get to do?

Kinder says that answering the first question is easy. There are lots of things we’d do if money were no object. But as the questions progress, there’s a sort of funnel. They become more difficult to answer, and there are fewer possible responses. Life planning is all about answering the third question.

According to Kinder, the third question usually generates responses that follow five general themes:

  • Family or relationships — 90% of the responses to the final question contain this topic.

  • Authenticity or spirituality. Many responses involve leading a more meaningful life.

  • Creativity. Surprisingly, a large number of respondents express a desire to do something creative: to write a science-fiction novel, or to play guitar like Eric Clapton.

  • Giving back. Further down the list are themes about giving back to the community, about leaving a meaningful positive impact.

  • A “sense of place”. A fifth common theme (though nowhere near as prominent as the top three) is a desire to have some connection with place: a desire to be in nature, to live someplace different, or to help the environment.
Further reading: To learn more about George Kinder and his approach to life planning, check out his books Lighting the Torch and, especially, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity. I plan to re-read the latter over the next month.

I’m reminded of Bronnie Ware’s article about the regrets of the dying. Ware spent many years working in palliative care, and she noted that at the end of their lives, people tended to express five common regrets:

  • “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
  • “I wish I didn’t work so hard.”
  • “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
  • “I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.”
  • “I wish I’d let myself be happier.”

So, readers, here’s a question for you: It’s great if you know your passion — mine is writing — but what if there’s nothing you feel called to do? What then? How do you find a calling? How do you know what you ought to do?

Postscript: Amy pointed me to a great site I’d never heard of: David Cain’s Raptitude. Cain is all about mindfulness. His goal is to “get better at being human”, and he writes about how to buy happiness, how to walk across a parking lot, how to deal with negative people, why your work disappoints you, and more. I plan to read the entire archives.

The Blue Zones: How to Live a Long and Healthy Life

The Blue Zones by Dan BuettnerI’ve always been fascinated by the idea of extending human life. As a boy, my favorite characters in the Bible were those like Methuselah who lived for hundreds of years. (Noah, of ark fame, was reportedly 600 when he built his boat, and he lived for another 350 years after the flood!)

I’m also drawn to science-fiction novels that feature longevity as a subplot. For instance, in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (which I mentioned a few days ago in another context), medical advances allow people to live for more than two hundred years. (For a decade, I’ve had an idea for a short story called “Herb Nelson’s Long Life”, which would be about a man who has been alive for centuries.)

Naturally, I’m not just interested in fictional accounts of longevity. I’m interested in the science behind it too. Recently, I found time to read The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, a book that examines the lifestyles of five of the longest-lived populations on the planet. What attributes do these folks have in common?

The Blue Zones

I first read Buettner’s work in the pages of National Geographic. In November 2005, the magazine printed his article, “The Secrets to a Long Life“, which offers a taste of what’s contained in The Blue Zones. In the article, Buettner profiles populations in Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; and Loma Linda, California. These are communities where people live long and stay happy.

Expanding his work to book length, he added two additional locations: the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and the Greek island of Ikaria.

In each of these five locations, people have long and healthy lives. They reach the age of 100 at rates significantly higher than average.

In The Blue Zones, Buettner shares stories from each of these locations, sharing how specific people have lived and thrived for ten decades. As he interviews people in each location, he tries to find common threads. What is that makes the people in Sardinia live so long? In Ikaria? Then, at the end of the book, Buettner draws from these five populations as a whole. What attributes do they share?

Blue Zones commonalities

Long and Healthy Lives

After looking at these groups individually, Buettner makes nine broad generalizations about factors that seem to be related to longevity and well-being. Note, though, that correlations does not imply causality. These qualities are present in the communities he’s studied, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually the secrets to long life. (Though, of course, I’d like to think they are.)

Here are the recommendations from The Blue Zones:

  • Be active. Those who live a long time are generally active people. They walk. They raise gardens. They have fun. If you struggle with this, Buettner suggests finding ways to force yourself to be active. He also recommends doing yoga twice a week.

  • Cut calories. Many Eastern cultures have a practice in which they eat until they’re “80% full”. Buettner recommends cutting portion sizes through common tricks like using smaller serving dishes, making snacks a hassle, preparing smaller portions, eating more slowly, and eating early.

  • Eat a plant-based diet. Eat two servings of vegetables with every meal. Limit meat intake. Avoid processed foods. Make fruits and vegetables the highlight of your diet. Stock up on nuts, and eat them every day.

  • Drink red wine — in moderation. Sip it with your dinner, or institute a daily “happy hour” where you socialize with friends.

  • Have a purpose. Take time to see the Big Picture. Craft a mission statement, and then find a partner to hold you accountable to it. Learn something new. Buettner points out that learning a musical instrument or studying a new language are two great ways to keep your brain sharp.

  • Downshift. Reduce the stress in your life. Cut out the electronic noise. Arrive early to appointments. Meditate.

  • Participate in a spiritual community. Buettner stresses the importance of spiritual communities, and encourages readers to open their minds, discard prejudices, and just go to a church service.

  • Make family a priority. Live closer to your family. Own a smaller home, where people are forced to interact more. Establish rituals. Create a family shrine.

  • Find the right tribe. Be likeable. Surround yourself with people who share your values. Identify your inner circle, the people you trust and support. Try to spend 30 minutes each day with these folks.

Here’s a Venn diagram (from Wikipedia) that summarizes Buettner’s findings from the three original Blue Zones. (I’d love to see a similar diagram that takes into account all five regions.)

Blue Zones commonalities
Common attributes among Blue Zones

More than anything, Buettner writes, “Purpose and love are essential ingredients in all Blue Zone recipes for longevity.”

Conclusion

There’s no way a simple blog post can do justice to Buettner’s book. The Blue Zones is fascinating, at least for those of us interested in longevity. If you want more info, buy the book (or borrow it from the library, like I did). You can also visit the Blue Zones website, where you’ll find:

I’ll close this summary with a key piece of advice from The Blue Zones. “This information will do you no good,” Buettner writes, “unless you put it into practice.”

How to Live a Life You Love

For a long time, I was unhappy. I was fat, broke, and miserable. Maybe I was depressed, I’m not sure. Whatever the case, I didn’t like my life, and I wanted something better. I waited and waited but nothing ever improved.

Eventually I hit bottom. I wasn’t willing to allow myself to sink any lower, so I decided to make some changes.

I started by taking control of my finances. I began to read about saving and investing. As I read, I put what I learned into practice. It didn’t happen overnight — in fact, it took years — but I paid off my credit cards and put money into savings. Today, I’m debt-free and have a substantial nest egg.

After putting my financial house in order, I decided to take control of my fitness. I began to read about exercise and nutrition. As I read, I put what I learned into practice. Again the changes happened slowly, but they did happen. Within a couple of years, I had lost fifty pounds and put on muscle. More importantly, I’d changed my eating habits and made exercise a part of my daily life.

J.D. (Tire Flip)
Fitness is one of my daily priorities.

It’s been said that success breeds success. That was certainly true in my case. Each positive change I made helped me to understand that I could make other positive changes. I realized that nobody cares more about my life than I do. If I want to be happy, I need to be in charge of that happiness. I can’t wait for anyone (or anything) to bring it to me.

I am responsible for my own well-being. And you are responsible for yours.

As children, we’re conditioned that we need permission to do things. You need permission from your parents to leave the dinner table or to go outside and play. You need permission from your teacher to go to the bathroom.

Even as adults, we often feel we need permission. You need permission from your boss to leave work early. You need permission from your spouse to hang out with your friends instead of cleaning the bathroom.

Like many folks, I grew up with an external locus of control. I thought my fate was largely determined by the people and events around me. This wasn’t a conscious belief, but it was always there, underlying everything I felt and did. As a result, I waited for things to happen. I needed permission to take risks or to try new things.

That’s no longer the case.

Keep Dropping Keys All Night Long
After you’ve reclaimed your life, help others reclaim theirs…

I’ve spent the past ten years reclaiming my life. I’ve shifted to an internal locus of control. I’ve come to realize that I’m in charge of my own destiny, and that it’s my responsibility to live a life I love. This means that I need to:

  • Avoid excuses.
  • Ask for what I want.
  • Own my decisions.
  • React constructively to adversity.
  • Collect (and take advantage of) opportunities.
  • Let go of the things that no longer work.
  • Ignore the opinion of others.
  • Act — even when I’m afraid.

If you’re unhappy, nobody else is going to make things better for you. You have to make things better for yourself. Concentrate on the things you can control, and use that control to fix the other things that are broken. This will grant you even more control over your future well-being.

You live in a world of your own creation. You have the power of choice. You create your own certainty. Live your life as you want to live it, and do so without regret. Give yourself permission to do so.

Caveat: It’s okay to change jobs or to move to San Diego. It’s not okay to steal your neighbor’s television or to drive on the wrong side of the highway. Remember the Golden Rule. Do what you want insofar as you’re not harming others.

The Gift Economy and Social Capital

On Friday, Kim and I had dinner with Jason and Kyra Bussanich. Jason is a chiropractor in Lake Oswego and his wife Kyra owns a popular gluten-free bakery. (Kyra also won an episode of Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars”.)

Over dinner, we touched briefly on the notion of a gift economy. Wikipedia has a great definition of this concept:

A gift economy is a mode of exchange where valuables are given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. In contrast to a barter economy or a market economy, social norms and custom govern gift exchange, rather than an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other commodity. Gift exchange is frequently “embedded” in political, kin, or religious institutions.

The next day, Kim and I joined Kyra and her mother to see the Dalai Lama speak at an environmental summit here in Portland. At one point, the moderator posed this question to the panelists: “On some level, the human experience is all about consumption. Life lives by consuming life. But how do we moderate our consumption to reasonable levels?” All of the answers seemed very similar:

  • Oregon governor John Kitzhaber said the challenge is to build an economic system that is not built on the assumption of unlimited growth and unlimited consumption. He pointed out (as I often have) that beyond a certain level, increased income does not increase happiness. Kitzhaber also stressed the importance of social capital, the mutual goodwill we create when we interact with our friends and neighbors.

  • Environmental activist David Suzuki said that because of the effects of the Great Depression, “The engine of our economy runs on consumption, and we don’t focus on the things that truly make us happy. We think of prosperity in a weird way. It’s not our things that make us wealthy — it’s our family and it’s our friends.” [For the record, studies show that health and the quality of personal relationships are the best predictors of personal happiness.]

  • Andrea Durbin, executive director of the Oregon Environmental Council, joined the chorus. “We need to make better choices every day so that our economy isn’t driving by our consumption habits,” she said. “Consuming less will not only help our environment but improve our quality of life.”

  • And, of course, the Dalai Lama took a very buddhist approach to the question of happiness: “Inner wealth is most important,” he said, “and that comes from human relationships. The ultimate source of a happy life and a peaceful life is within ourselves, not money.”
The Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama actually has a great sense of humor. I like him.

A supplemental economy

As I listened to the panelists respond to this question, I was again reminded of the gift economy. This is a concept I first discovered while reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s science-fiction trilogy about the colonization of Mars. In the second book, Green Mars, the colonists grapple with constructing a new economy, one that’s neither capitalist nor socialist, but something more sustainable. As part of that, a sort of background gift economy emerges where individual outposts share their surplus with others. It’s an important part of a larger economic model.

There are some obvious pragmatic problems to the gift economy. It’s a utopian ideal that operates best in the rarified air of argument and hypothesis, and is less likely to succeed (let alone be implemented) in the real world.

But while such a system might not be practical for an actual global (or national or municipal) economy, a culture of gift-giving can be an excellent supplemental economy, a voluntary means of building mutual goodwill among family, friends, and neighbors. A gift economy builds social capital, bringing communities closer together.

Some examples:

  • If I have things that I do not use (as is often the case), and I pass these things on to people who will use them, I’m increasing their wealth and happiness at no cost to myself. This isn’t necessarily an altruistic action, but it is an action that improves the overall wealth of the community.

  • When I give, whether time or material goods, to another person, I’m not just improving her physical life. I’m also creating, for lack of a better term, positive mental energy. I’m fostering mutual goodwill.

  • When a group of people give together — especially when they give time — the result is often greater than the sum of the parts. Just as a group mentality can feed negative emotions and lead to negative consequences, the same group mentality can have positive results. After the Boston Marathon bombing, media outlets trumpeted the actions of the folks who rushed toward danger in order to help the wounded. My colleagues Nate St. Pierre and J. Money founded a group called Love Drop, a “a micro-giving network of people who unite as a community to help one person or family a month”. Etcetera.

Though I haven’t used it myself, I hear that FreeCycle is a great example of the gift economy. Here’s the group’s mission statement: “Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.”

Note: Here’s a short essay on how gift culture builds reputation among computer programmers.)

The extraordinary power of compound kindness

We don’t need to sacrifice our own interests to participate in the gift culture or to generate social capital. It’s not a zero-sum game. Often, we can create win-win situations that allow everyone involved to profit.

The older I get, the more I’m convinced of the importance of social capital.

Social capital comes from building a broad network of relationships, a network that you can draw upon to help yourself and help others. This isn’t networking in the smarmy, slimy sense, but in the authentic “I’m your neighbor and your friend” sense. A complex network of people will have thousands (millions!) of connections, creating a powerful web of support. (You can see great examples of this in Ben Franklin’s autobiography and in Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone.)

These networks are usually built through everyday kindnesses. These actions compound (just like compound interest) to yield larger returns in the future.

The broader your circle of friends, the bigger your family, the better you know your neighbors, and the more involved you are in your community, the more social capital you have. (And the more social capital you contribute to others — it’s a reciprocal thing!)

“Building community is the adhesiveness that holds us together as a society. Without community, we break down into individual consumers.” — John Kitzhaber

Video: Random Acts of Kindness in Russia

A couple of years ago, during that period in which I thought I wanted to have dozens of sites devoted to dozens of topics, I started a blog called Awesome People.

Awesome People was designed as an antidote to all of the negative news on the web (and elsewhere). Every day, we’re bombarded by stories that highlight the worst of human nature. People can’t get enough of watching the misfortune of others.

Well, I don’t like it.

In response, I started a site that highlighted the good things people accomplish, the amazing things they do with their bodies and hearts and minds. Of all the blogs I’ve ever created, Awesome People is still my favorite. It’s the one that comes closest to capturing the way I see the world.

Last year, I gave up on the “dozens of sites” idea. Instead, everything I write lives here, at More Than Money. That means I should be sharing stuff about awesome people.

Here, for example, is a YouTube compilation that’s gone viral, a collection of videos from dashboard cameras in Russian cars that show people doing positive things:

This is truly great stuff.

Have you seen a story about awesome people? Drop me a line so that I can share it with readers.