Umair Haque

Create a Meaningful Life Through Meaningful Work

Umair Haque - Mo, 01/30/2012 - 17:03

In case you haven't been following my tell-all confessional — I mean Twitter feed — lately, I've been in Manhattan for the last few weeks. Hanging out in all the wrong places (read: painfully hip power hotels), I've had the questionable privilege of overhearing more than my fair share of Very Serious Conversations from the movers and shakers of the world.

And boy, have they been tedious: mostly, about eking out slightly sharper terms for deals for more yawn-inducing stuff (whether flicks, financial instruments, or kicks) that's destined not to matter. So here's a tiny hypothesis: maybe the real depression we've got to contend with isn't merely one of how much economic output we're generating — but what we're putting out there, and why. Call it a depression of human potential, a tale of human significance being willfully squandered (on, for example, stuff like this).

If that's the best we can do, no wonder our economy is falling short of its potential — and no wonder our lives occasionally feel empty, even meaningless. (Even star quarterbacks married to Brazilian supermodels occasionally say to themselves, there's got to be more than this.) Hence, If we want to do better, I suggest it's time to get lethally serious about doing stuff that actually matters. So here are three questions to ask about yourself about what you're spending your life doing:

Does it stand the test of time? Ponder this for a moment: the vast majority spend the vast majority of our lives sweating, suffering, and slogging mightily over stuff that's forgotten by next quarter, let alone next year or next century. Call me crazy, but I'd suggest: mattering means building stuff that's awesome enough to last. Maybe not forever, like Giza's Pyramids — but surely more than a couple of months, before it's absent-mindedly tossed into the dustbin of history along with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam of the age of disposable plastic junk. I'd give you a handful of recent real-world examples, but beyond the labors of love a new generation of artisans are working on, whether microbrews, novels, or games, here's the hard truth: when it comes to the stuff our largest institutions are invested in, I can't think of any, so poor is our cultural performance at standing the test of time. (Just ask yourself: is anybody really going to be watching Mission Impossible 4 a century from now, except a handful of irony-soaked action-movie-worshipping 22nd century hipsters?). Of course, all that really means is that since nearly everyone seems to suck at standing the test of time, you've got a tremendous opportunity not to.

Does it stand the test of excellence? In most boardrooms, the first and last question asked is: will "the markets," financial and "consumer," like your latest shiny trinket slightly better than the next guy's? Of course, that's a perfect recipe for mediocrity: to have barely satisfied weary, oppressed, jaded "consumers" already trained to demand the bare McMinimum is to have furiously smashed the glass ceiling of the lowest common mass-market denominator — and little more. Here are some higher bars: do critics, scholars, aficionados, and diehard enemies pan it, or love it? Mattering means recognizing that everyone's opinion is not created equal — some count more than others, for the simple reason that some opinions are more nuanced, educated, sophisticated, historically grounded, and self-aware than others.

Does it stand the test of you? Sure, I can understand why the dudes and gals I've been overhearing in my little Manhattan adventure are so energized by the stuff they're "working" on — it feels exciting to be part of a buzzing milieu's in-crowd. But let's face it: on our deathbeds, the accomplishments that matter most to most of us probably won't be recounted thus: "In 2012, I sold another thousand copies of someone else's middle-of-the-road blockbuster to an overweening VP with really bad hair and worse manners at a giant monopolistic corporation that was destroying my grandkids' futures. Man, I lived." So while I too sometimes feel enchanted by the seductive power of glittering fantastic excess that seems to have mesmerized my little informal sample of Manhattanites, I'd also like to challenge them — and you — to consider the questions of mattering in a slightly more sophisticated, humane, considered way. It's one thing to work on stuff that seems sexy because it's socially cool and financially rewarding. But fulfillment doesn't come much from money or cool-power — all the money in the world can't buy you a searing sense of accomplishment.

Being human is never easy. But that's the point. Perhaps as an unintended consequence of our relentless quest for more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now, we've comfortably acceded to something akin to a minor-league contempt for the richness and grandeur of life unquenchably meaningfully well lived. Hence, call this post my tiny statement of rebellion. Hex me with all the bland management jargon in the world, zap me with all the perfect theories and models you like, but I'll never, ever accept the idea that triviality, mediocrity, and futility are appropriate goals for any human being, much less our grand, splintering systems of human organization.

We're all built differently — but none of us is here to not make a difference. So what are your three questions for getting lethally serious about doing stuff that matters?

Kategorien: Umair Haque

Mastering the Art of Living Meaningfully Well

Umair Haque - Fr, 12/30/2011 - 20:57

So, how's your 2011 been? Mine: the proverbial best and worst of times. I had my first book published, finished my second, and made it (much to my own massive surprise) onto the Thinkers50 list. But I also lost, in the same month, two of the people I loved the most. That's life: the act of living in the human universe — in the full ebb and flow of its deep tides of joy, sorrow, accomplishment, and grief.

All of which made me reflect on (if you've been following me on Twitter lately, perhaps even brood over) a Big Question: what does it mean to live meaningfully well? If you accept the less-than-heretical proposition that our way of life, work, and play, while materially rich, might be leaving us emotionally, relationally, socially, physically, and spiritually if not empty, than perhaps just a little bit unhealthy; that it might be optimized for more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier over wiser, fitter, smarter, closer, tougher — how would we redesign economies, markets, and organizations to help us live better?

I ended up writing a little book about it — Betterness: Economics for Humans. It's a five-step program for reimagining and redesigning prosperity — beginning at the biggest of levels, the global economy, through to the micro-level, the organizations we all spend most of our days in — that's composed not merely just of more bigger faster, but of radically better.

But I also wanted to get even more micro, more immediate: how can each of us be a wholer, truer person, right now, today? In an era where the prosperity we once took for granted appears to be crumbling around us, when the plight of the present seems to be somewhere between facepalm, headdesk, and epic fail, when the great challenges of today are nothing less than rebuilding economy, polity, and society — here's what I believe you're going to have to get lethally serious about: your own human potential, and how deeply, authentically, and powerfully, over the course of your life, you're going to fulfill it.

Hence, recently, I decided to ask my Twitter followers for three lessons they'd give people younger than themselves about leading a good life. The result was a global brainstorm of epic proportions — more insightful and interesting than anything yours truly has ever written.

So here's my question. What are your three lessons for living a good life? What lessons would you give someone, say, in their twenties, today? Here are mine:

Cultivate (your better self). What's the point of "education" anyway? One point of view says: to produce more STEM graduates. And to be sure, there's a case to be made for those skills. But I'd say that, by and large, that case is founded on the deterministic assumption that the point of education is greater productivity; you study so you can be a faithful, loyal, unquestioning "employee" with the commoditized, routinized analytical skills to get the (yawn, shrug, eye-roll) neo-Fordist job done. I'd argue the reverse is true: the point of productivity is education — the "output" of authentically thicker value, greater social benefit, is a process that culminates in the act of being a wholer person. I'd argue, on reflection, what society really might have is a shortage of living, breathing well-rounded humans; with a moral compass, an ethical core, a cosmopolitan sensibility, and a long view born of historicism. What we've got plenty of are wannabe-bankers whose idea of a good life goes about as far as grabbing for the nearest, biggest bonus — what we've got less of are well-rounded people with the courage, wisdom, and capacities to nurture and sustain a society, polity, and economy that blossom. So put immediate gratification to one side and cultivate your higher sensibilities; learn the arts of nuance, subtlety, humility, and grace. I don't mean you have to spend every evening at the opera — but I do mean you probably have to do better than thinking Lil Wayne is the apex of human accomplishment. Let's get real: without a refined, honed, expansive sense of what great accomplishment is, you stand little to no chance of ever pushing past its boundaries yourself.

Create (something dangerous). Mediocrity isn't a quest to be pursued — but a derelict deathtrap to be detonated into oblivion. Hence, I'm firmly of the belief that your youth should be spent pursuing your passion — not just slightly, tremulously, haltingly, but unrelentingly, with a vengeance, to the max and then beyond. So dream laughably big — and then take an absurdly huge risk or two. Bet the farm before it's a ranch, a small town, and an overly comfy place to hang your saddle and your hat. Create something: don't just be an "employee," a "manager," or any other kind of mere mechanic of the present. Be a builder, a creator, an architect of the future. It doesn't matter whether it's a sonata, a book, a startup, a financial instrument, or a new genre of hairstyles — bring into being something not just fundamentally new, but irrepressibly dangerous to the tired, plodding powers that be. Think about it this way: if your quest is mediocrity, then sure, master the skills of shuffling Powerpoint decks, glad-handing beancounters, and making the numbers; but if your quest, on the other hand, is something resembling excellence, then the meta-skills of toppling the status quo — ambition, intention, rebellion, perseverance, humanity, empathy — are going to count for more, and the sooner you get started, the better off you'll be.

Forgive (and fail). I hate the slightly dehumanizing, mechanistic words "high achievers." Because the truth is that the mark of someone reaching for the stars isn't "achievement" — but failure, of the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck snap up. If you're going to live a life that matters, I'd bet that sometimes in your 20s, you're going to fail — spectacularly, in Technicolor. You might launch a successful, disruptive venture — only to see your marriage fall apart. You might meet the perfect life partner — only to discover your career is flaming out. Or you might be on top of the world, financially — only to discover you've never felt emptier. These are all failures, of the "omg" variety — and they're reliable triggers of a mid-to-late-twenties-where-the-hell-is-my-smoking-trainwreck-of-a-life-going anyways quandary. So consider this: when you fail, and fail big — forgive. Forgive the people around you. Forgive yourself. Examine the past, but don't let it imprison you. You can dwell on your failure for years, and turn a trauma into a crisis. Or you can gently remember that mistakes aren't the end of the world, but the beginning of wisdom — and firmly step forward into possibility.

As the great poet Antonio Machado once wrote: "walker, there is no path; the path is made by walking." Never was this truer than in an era of abject institutional failure, social fracture, and economic meltdown. We know where yesterday's paths lead — not to a shining city we once called prosperity, but to here; dying metropolises, battered exurbs, mass unemployment, nail-biting fear of the future, plutocracy and protest, the crumbling ruins of empire. So map the horizons of your own journey, and, when the status quo tells you it can't be done, tell the status quo to go to hell.

What's important is that what you're doing matters — to yourself, to the people you love, and to something bigger, whether your community, society, or even humanity. Choose fulfillment and passion over "money" and "success." The latter follow the former — and without the former, the latter are empty. When you're sorting through your passions, consider what you have the potential to be not merely mediocre, but world-beating, at. And as you refine your choices, consider which are going to matter most in the sense of the greatest good for the greatest number — perhaps for the longest time. Because one world-changing accomplishment that knocks the ball out of that park is likely to give you more satisfaction than a lifetime of designer jeans.

Now, these lessons are far from the only ones, or the "best" ones. In our Twitter conversation, there were plenty that I thought were far sharper, more resonant, and just plain wiser. So rather than discuss my tiny, inconsequential lessons in the comments, let me ask again: what three lessons would you give people in their 20s — or anyone, for that matter — about what it takes to live a meaningfully, resonantly good life?

Use the hashtag #3lessons to continue this conversation on Twitter.

Kategorien: Umair Haque

Is America a Failing State?

Umair Haque - Di, 12/20/2011 - 15:48

Currencies imploding, markets fluctuating, politicians dithering, economies stagnating, societies fracturing, unrest spreading. Welcome to the winter of our discontent — again.

Is America failing? And are the other advanced economies following in its staggering footsteps (UK, I'm looking at you)?

Consider my very crude, edited, back-of-the-envelope take on a few of the criteria outlined in the Failed States index, one by one. Uneven, stratified, exclusionary economic development, accompanied by economic flatlining? Sounds familiar. Mounting demographic pressures, including slum creation? Just tour Baltimore. Widespread corruption and kleptocracy? Yep — for just one example, see then-Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson tipping off his hedge fund buddies about Fannie and Freddie. Delegitimization of the state? What else does a Congressional approval rating in single digits suggest to you? Progressive deterioration of public services? Just look at JFK airport. Widespread violation of human rights? Finally, here's one I can't automatically check off the list--but still, one of the year's most viral photos was Officer Pike calmly pepper-spraying college kids in the face. Reverse brain drain? Not yet — but not hard to imagine, if we keep harassing bright students.

Here's what I'm not suggesting: that America is Afghanistan; that the incredible suffering of the globe's most vulnerable is equivalent to what Twitter snarkily calls #firstworldproblems, nor that life in an advanced economy that's declining is as heart-rendingly awful as in an a nation that failed to advance at all. But I am suggesting that the rumors of our imminent decline are worth examining, and that we might start by looking at the failure of our institutions to deliver the goods.

Perhaps the most vital question is this: what can we do to reverse the decline? The remedy I've heard being whispered in the back-slapping corridors of power is what the hoary old wonks call "good governance" — accountability, transparency, and the like, neatly pushing us right back to the status quo ante. But I'd like to challenge that simplistic remedy. After all, what got us there is what got us here. Instead, decline's moonshot might just be pioneering fundamentally better ways of living, working, and playing; an economy that elevates human potential to a higher apex.

Here are five reasons I think it's time to reimagine what we want from "recovery."

You can't have accountability without working accounts. What you account for sets the limits of accountability. Why is it so difficult for us to hold failing politicians, bankers, CEOs, and boards accountable? Because we do a notably poor job of accounting for the full weight of the harm they cause. Whether it's a banking crisis, oil spill, obesity epidemic, or social fracture, failure in social and human terms isn't reflected in clanking, wheezing "GDP"; it's as economically invisible as a desert mirage.

Industrial output is not a human outcome. Our economy's a finely tuned machine that relentlessly, remorselessly pursues the dumb "growth" of industrial output. But shiny, faux-designer junk isn't a human outcome. After a certain threshold, more money makes us only a tiny bit happier, if at all; after a certain threshold, more "product" can only lead to society-wide arms races of hyperconsumption that fails to elevate people's lives in human terms. Our current concept of prosperity elevates the mundane over, and at the expense of, the humane. Institutions fit for the future must do the reverse.

Transparency doesn't mean much to the blind. Transparency is necessary, but it probably requires a corollary: a population willing to invest in civic, social, and human life, not just shop (and pepper spray other shoppers) until they drop. Apart from, say, Black Friday — a nihilistic, narcissistic, desperate celebration of the gleaming machine that's busily gnawing through prosperity's future — consider the curious case of American Idol getting more votes than the American President.

"Value" depends on what counts as "harm." It's become a hilarious running joke among sentient humans: people who watch Fox News, research concludes, are actually more misinformed than people who don't watch any news at all. It's funny — but it's also not funny. If Fox is literally helping dumbify entire chunks of the populace, inflicting harm on our democracy — just as surely as a polluting factory inflicts harm on a river — should it be allowed to do so with impunity? Or should it have to be responsible for creating what you might call real value in the first place, not just bonuses for its execs?

Philosophy isn't a luxury — it's a necessity. A political philosophy defines the highest good that a society elevates and pursues; it anchors a society's preferences and expectations. So what's ours? I'd say: it's missing. We don't have a vision of the highest good that matters, resonates, and means much in human — let alone social — terms. "Left" vs "right," as we practice them, seem to have devolved into a marketing trick, converging to a let-them-eat-cake lowest-common-denominator vision that indulges and lionizes intricately connected circles within circles of wealth, power, and privilege.

So what might the above principles mean pragmatically? What would better economic institutions and political philosophies fit for the future actually look and feel like in the real world? That's the subject of my next book, Betterness: Economics for Humans, released this week in e-only format — in which I attempt to sketch out a new blueprint for economies, markets, and organizations fit for the future.

Camus, the great philosopher of meaning and revolution, once thundered: "Don't let them tell us stories...there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye." I'd say: the triumphal myths of yesterday have had their day; yesteryear's stories of hard-earned abundance and meritocratic plenitude seem, today, like bedtime fables for wide-eyed children. And though I fist-poundingly believe we can, the fact is, I don't know if we will turn our fate around. But I do know we probably can't do it without the courage, wisdom, and determination to look it unflinchingly in the eye.

Kategorien: Umair Haque

America: Excelling at Mediocrity

Umair Haque - Fr, 10/28/2011 - 20:26

Recently, I've been around the world and then back to the US of A. And what strikes me is how fast many parts of the globe are forging ahead — and how decrepit coming home can feel in comparison (JFK airport, I'm looking at you). It's got me wondering: what is America still the best at?

Consider this thought experiment. If you were really, really, really rich — say, not just part of the routinely opulent 1%, but a card-carrying member of the eye-poppingly decadent .01% — what part of your life would be American? If you had the money, I'd bet you'd drive a German car, wear British shoes and an Italian suit, keep your savings in a Swiss bank, vacation in Koh Samui with shopping expeditions to Cannes, fly Emirates, develop a palate for South African wine, hire a French-trained chef, buy a few dozen Indian and Chinese companies, and pay Dubai-style taxes.

Were to you have the untrammeled economic freedom to, I'd bet you'd run screaming from big, fat, wheezing American business as usual, and its coterie of lackluster, slightly bizarre, and occasionally grody "innovations": spray cheese, ATM fees, designer diapers, disposable lowest-common-denominator junk made by prison labor, Muzak-filled big-box stores, five thousand channels and nothing on but endless reruns of Toddlers in Tiaras — not to mention toxic mega-debt, oxymoronic "healthcare," decrepit roads, and once-proud cities now crumbling into ruins. Sure, you'd probably still choose to use Google on your iPhone to surf the web — but that's about far as it'd go.

How did we get here?

The mightiest adversary that snaps great empires like twigs isn't chimerical "globalization" — it's glittering hubris, bedecked in the finery of denial. Hence, if the whispered rumors of our imminent decline are worth leaning in and listening to, then perhaps it's worth trying to diagnose the depth of the plunge and the slope of the cliff before we scrabble for a handhold.

If, as I've argued, we've got a bad case of Reality Deficit Disorder, then it might be time for a gentle reality check. Argue with me if you like, unleash the snarling dream team of Homeland Security, cable news, and Rick Perry's Hair on me if you want, but here's my hypothesis: today, America excels at mediocrity.

After decades of erasing the last luminous wisps of a once awe-inspiring excellence, today, it's perfected the art of imagining, designing, mega-financing, and mass-producing the tedious, humdrum, banal, middle of the road, bland, trivial, forgettable, the less than exhilarating — whose side effects may include unemployment, stagnation, insecurity, distrust, meaninglessness, depression, and dumbification. And it might be that all the preceding is what lurching machine age "markets", "corporations", "finance" and "profit" optimize an economy for — and further, what they shape the minds of a people to come to expect as the limit of the possible (until, of course, a metamovement reminds them that it's not).

Let me be clear. I speak not merely of America's structural current account deficit, sagging trade balance, or dearth of exports — but the possibility that America's greatest export might be the furious pursuit of mediocrity: a set of self-destructive expectations and preferences that, having not been good enough for America — having reduced the people formerly known as the middle class to penury, having rotted Baltimore and Detroit into cities that are beginning to resemble Kabul and Peshawar — probably won't be good enough for the world. Should the world cotton onto the not-so-happy ending of the story of dumb, opulence-driven McGrowth, then that recognition might be the rocket fuel that sends an American decline into liftoff.

Mediocrity backed by muscle might be a recipe for success in preschool — but by the time you don a baccalaureate's cap, it's the sharper, quicker, wiser and curiouser that tend to prosper. Hence, if you accept the heretical proposition that at this juncture in history America's not the best in the world at everything under the sun — that it just might excel at the stuff of the widget age of plastic prosperity, but that's not nearly good enough for 21st century prosperity — then allow me to ask, again: what is America still the best in the world at? Or maybe, more powerfully, what should America be the best in the world at?

NB — No, I don't "hate America", so please don't get defensive. My question isn't a rhetorical one. I want your answer, and you're more than welcome to answer in the affirmative. You're welcome to disagree with me, or to support me — either way, let's keep it civilized.

Kategorien: Umair Haque

Make the Dangerous Choice to Dissent

Umair Haque - Do, 10/13/2011 - 21:45

Work harder, feel emptier, buy more, grow poorer...work harder. Sound familiar? That's the conventional wisdom of the omnipresent church of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier, now. The problem is that the conventional wisdom isn't just wrong. If we want real human prosperity, the ability to live a live that not merely glitters, but that matters — well, then it was never right.

That's the nightmare whirling noiselessly within the dilapidated American dream. And while the dream's being furiously exported around the globe — and while the world might be seduced, despite lingering suspicion, by it — you and I know, by now, better: the paradigm that was supposed to lead us to the promised land has instead led us to this land of broken promises.

Hence, my suggestion is this: If you want to live a meaningfully better life, you're going to have to make the dangerous choice to dissent. A life lived meaningfully isn't denominated by digital friends, designer logos, or wads of paper notes. It's denominated by what you've lived, what it's worth to you, and what that's worth to humanity. That's the heart of eudaimonia, a new economic paradigm based on fulfilling human potential — not creating and marketing useless stuff. It's so different from our current conception that I had to reach back to Ancient Greece for a name I thought captured its essence. I'm developing it further in an HBR Single — a short, digital essay I'm planning to release in December. But in the meantime, here's how I see the crucial elements of a eudaimonic life:

Impact. Pursuing the paycheck first and last is a great way to spend your life desperately unfulfilled. Insanely great work isn't motivated by glittering jackpots — but by an abiding desire to, as Steve Jobs put it, make a dent in the universe. So take a deep breath and aim squarely at the lofty apex of human accomplishment — while stepping firmly onto the grimy pavement.

People. Life is about people, not product. If you're spending 80% of your time on "product", you're not fully alive. Lasting relationships aren't built by "networking" but by caring. This means investing in people, not just grinning at them. Hence, if you want to "connect," you probably have to do what's more dangerous than merely swapping email addresses or biz cards — you have to relate.

Purpose. What is the fundamental reason you are here? To conquer the next pair of designer trophy jeans? Hardly. Brands are for cattle, strategy is for games, and consumers are for "output." Human life is about lasting outcomes, not just short-term payoffs; hence, I'd say the stuff of razor-sharp purpose begins there. Which human outcomes are you here to transform?

Courage. Compromising too readily with the past never creates the future. It only recreates the past. You can't find fertile new ground by dully plodding along after the herd — you've got to veer off in a different direction. So dream bigger. Be hopelessly naïve. And persevere unflinchingly.

Self-respect. If your society's going haywire, it's up to you to begin fixing it. If your work is sucking at your soul, and you see it doing relentless damage to people and society, quit and do something else. No, it's not easy — but odds are, the axe is going to fall over the next decade anyways. Value your inner life as much as you value your outer stuff. Stop buying into marketing's spin-cycle of self-loathing — "Feeling anxious? Buy this, now!!" — and start investing your time, energy, and imagination in action instead of stuff.

The first challenge is seeing through the empty promise of opulence. But the second, tougher challenge is refuting it. To do that, we're going to have start living heretically. We're going to have not just disbelieve the conventional wisdom — we're going to have to defy it.

Kategorien: Umair Haque