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Lifestyle blogging

By Pete Burden
December 27, 2008 //
2

My friend Nigel of Nigel’s Ecostore (provider of all things eco) gave me a Christmas present this year: 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. As a huge fan of Ricardo Semler’s Seven Day Weekend I was intrigued but sceptical.

It is fairly easy to rubbish the author’s approach: basically he suggests stopping deferring the good life life now for the fantasy of a great life later.

For him this means jacking in the day-job, setting up a business selling anything (“nutritional supplements” in his case), and automating the running of the business so that you can take advantage of disparities in global incomes and live at South American prices, pay a wage bill in Indian Rupees, and earn income in US dollars.

It’s easy to rubbish because I guess we all hope that disparities in global incomes are temporary; and hence this New Rich lifestyle is not really sustainable, unless you keep hopping from poorer to poorer countries. He puts a complete ban on the whole African continent by the way; too scary perhaps?

Because while Ferris does suggest longer stays than most travel writers (months, not days or weeks) there’s undoubtedly a lot of carbon-generating international air travel involved in the process (who am I to talk: I work with a business travel company amongst others).

And mostly because, while there’s a section at the end about giving something useful back to society, for Ferris that’s a step to take after having lived it up and made your money – it seems to me that’s another form of deferral. Why not get on and do what seems most worthwhile right now, and let money and lifestyle find you?

But that all said I did like the book (so thanks Nigel). Yes, you could say it’s shallow; but then so am I sometimes. It’s well crafted, his youthful enthusiasm is infectious, and it’s full of ideas and practical suggestions. Is it a bad thing that he won Wired Magazine‘s “Greatest Self Promoter of All-Time” prize in 2008? If he uses it to generate money for charities through his LitLiberation project?

Who knows what he’ll do next? The combination of promotional skills using social media and charitable inclinations is probably a good one.

And at least reading the book has made me question some of my assumptions about these things and others, and that is surely always worthwhile.

Categories Change, Consumption, Motivation

Begin at the bottom

By Pete Burden
December 7, 2008 //
0

Lewes, where I live, is a Transition Town. The Transition movement led by Rob Hopkins and Ben Brangwyn and based in Totnes in the UK  is a very interesting movement.

It’s different from some environmentally focussed groups in that it’s not a protest group – it’s not against anything. Rather it’s focussed on creating positive solutions in response to climate change and “peak oil“.

It’s different because it’s local too, and is really more about community, and community resilience, rather than looking at the world top-down or from a global perspective. Instead, it’s a truly bottom-up way of looking at the world.

In fact, I’d argue it operates from the real bottom – me. My perspective and my behaviours as a member are the first and most important place where things can change.

I also like the way the Transition network is structured. It is a network not a hierarchical organisation. Each Transition Town, Village or City can choose how it operates locally, as long as it at least considers following the network’s broad principles.

Being involved leads to some interesting local debates, which I believe have resonance with the broader world too.

Firstly, we have debated whether it’s better to take a positive or negative view of global trends, particularly climate change and peak oil. Is changing our lives as a result of these things bad or good? I, for one, think a world with less oil where we care for the planet more could be a lot better, and in lots of ways.

Secondly, there’s an argument about resilience in the face of change. Who is more resilient, us in wealthy surburban Britain? Or people in developing countries who haven’t forgotten how to live simply. I realise there are shades of grey in this debate, but still can’t help wondering what all the real fuss is about for us more wealthy folk.

Thirdly, there is an argument about hysteria, about getting people into a state of panic. Plenty of the rich world’s population appear the opposite – almost frozen and immobile – in the face of the things that are happening to us. Ecosystems in collapse, species (including our own) under threat, and we continue to shop, drive and so on. As if there was no tomorrow.

I am sure there is a place for hysteria in getting people to sit up and take notice. For jogging people out of their comfort zones. But ultimately I think, as the story of the boy who cried wolf suggests, it’s really not constructive.

The world is simply too unpredictable. Anyone who uses hysteria to garner action risks becoming simply unbelievable.

So, what other strategies might there be to shake people from their immobility? A psychologist, and friend of mine,  Ben Fletcher, has a suggestion: Do Something Different.

Ben’s suggestion is that people stay the same largely because of habits. Because of habits people behave incongruently with what they believe. For example, we know we should recycle more but we don’t because it’s not our habit.

So randomly and consistently breaking habits should allow us to behave more congruently.

Then all the publicity and knowledge and “facts” which fly around about the environment should properly drive us to take corrective action.

Does it work? Yes, I think so, from having tried one of the DSD programmes. It seems to have the same kind of results as behavioural disputing – where our actions can prove that thoughts we hold to very dearly aren’t actually correct.

Changing our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes allows us to move on – to change our behaviour and create the world anew. That’s a bottom-up change. Something transition is all about.

Categories Change, Consumption, Environment, Future, Motivation, Perception, Thinking

Live more simply…

By Pete Burden
October 19, 2008 //
0

Thanks to my friend Oliver, I just finished reading Ervin Laszlo’s 2006 book The Chaos Point. Probably the best book I have read since  the last amazing book I read. They seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment.

We are always busy so my wife asked me to summarise it in 30 seconds. Here goes:

  • The world is in a terrible state, and getting worse.
  • Doom is not, however, inevitable.
  • Changing our own consciousness – personally and as a group – is the answer.

This goes a long way to answering one of the major riddles I struggle with. If you believe the world is a complex system (as I do), and that we can’t predict outcomes with any certainty (even though scientific, economic. and political dogma suggest we can), why isn’t it OK just to live and let live?

It will all work out for the best won’t it? The trickle-down will work. Technology will fix the climate. Crisis will be averted, yet again. Everyone will be happy.

Laszlo’s point is that we humans are both the problem and the solution. We are destroying the planet and in danger of destroying ourselves. But we have the power to change our thinking. And changing our thinking allows us to change the framework by which we all live. Our future is not predetermined. It depends on that framework.

Our ingrained liberalism suggests live and let live. But we can, for example, choose a better morality, summarised by Ghandi’s “Live more simply, so that others can simply live”.

How do we change our morality, change our consciousness? Another riddle: it’s not easy, and yet it is. One clear way forward is to work on oneself. To try to understand oneself better, mind, body and soul.

My wife liked that bit. She’s an example to me. Someone who takes personal development very seriously. And I must go and read another book.

Categories Change, Motivation, Solution, Sustainability, Thinking

Roll up, roll up

By Pete Burden
September 23, 2008 //
2

What a great time to enrol people in the business of doing something about social and environmental issues.

Gordon Gecko was wrong, greed is not good. As some of the financial fat cats get their comeuppance surely we’ll see  an acceleration towards a world where more people use their working lives to do something worthwhile.

But what might stop this happening?

Firstly, I suppose, especially in an economic downturn, people might claim poverty. But as fellow JustMeans blogger Osbert Lancaster wrote in “Responsible business in a time of turmoil?” – one good strategy is to remember we in the West are rich. Wildly rich compared to many of the people in the developing world.

Selfishness isn’t a bad strategy in my view. If you don’t look after yourself, what chance do you have of looking after others? The trick is probably to try to sort oneself out, in every way, then start to see what you can do for others.

Secondly, many people seem to argue there’s no point. The world’s going to hell in a handcart anyway, so why bother. Well is it? It seems to me that our biggest hope is the very presence of sites like JustMeans, and all the thousands (millions?) of people signing up to similar initiatives. If together we create a critical mass, then surely there’s some hope?

Thirdly, some people seem to feel they aren’t able to do anything. Maybe we haven’t got  the skills. Or maybe we don’t have any choice.

That’s something that took me some years to fully understand. That really everything we do is our own choice. We may tell ourselves that we have no choice but it’s simply not true. No one cooerces us. Or very rarely anyway.

Anything else? People like me, preaching? Personally, I hate being told what to do. And I do worry that many of our social and environmental organisations are too exclusive, run by “professionals” and “experts”. People who “know” the answers. (Hopefully that’ll trigger a response!)

I like the message that came across from Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest video – that this movement is wide and deep, broad and inclusive. Everyone, literally everyone, has something to contribute.

So dive in.

Categories Environment, Money, Motivation, Social, Sustainability

Keeping going

By Pete Burden
June 9, 2008 //
3

What do you do to keep going when the going gets tough?

I guess we all have times when we feel like giving up. Maybe it’s the heat of the summer. Or the cold of the winter. Maybe it’s because things seem to be going badly. Or maybe they are going so well that all impetus is lost.

When I get like that, inspirational talks don’t help. In a different mood listening to an inspirational speaker might lift me up. For me, at that time, the obvious refrain “it’s different for them” becomes very attractive.

One thing I know helps is the support of friends. A talk with like-minded people can, at least for the duration of the session, get me fired up again. Of course, the last thing I want to do in this mood is get out there and meet friends.

At times like this having made a commitment to myself is probably the best source of forward motion. If I have previously promised myself that despite hitting the doldrums I will continue to move forward, then when I hit this state, that’s what I’ll do.

It works for me. What do you do?

Categories Commitment, Motivation, Purpose

Resistance is useless

By Pete Burden
May 17, 2008 //
3

I am struggling today with getting started. As I have already revealed in an earlier post I can be something of a procrastinator. I see the opportunity. But will I do anything about it? Before it’s too late? And “if you see a bandwagon it’s too late to jump on it …” as my old friend Damien reminded me just the other day.

Artists and writers of all kinds know about “resistance”. So do psychologists and therapists. Everything gets in the way of change – whether it be the higher desire to create (write, paint, draw, make music). Or the need to improve our lives. To stop being depressed. To achieve things we would like to achieve.

Experts in organisational change know about these things too. But I can’t really get to grips with theories of organisational change. Personally, I favour approaches where change emerges bottom-up rather than being “managed-in” from the top down. I could easily spend a few days thinking about this, working it out, burning some brain-energy.

If I did, of course, it would probably be just more resistance. If you’re truly interested in that topic I’ll recommend Steven Pressfield’s the War of Art. Three sections spell it out: what resistance is, combating it, and what happens when you get beyond it.

But the real answer for me, the way to get beyond resistance in a single step, to stop procrastinating, to suddenly find yourself doing what you know in your heart of hearts is the right thing, to suddenly find yourself in the middle of the process of addressing the opportunity of sustainability (as opposed to thinking about it, talking about it, and getting ready to start) is to Do Something Different.

Do Something Different is a phrase coined by some psychologist friends of mine, Ben Fletcher and Karen Pine. Of course there’s a convincing theory behind it. You can read about it in one of their books – which happens to be about changing eating habits.

But the truth is – the phrase itself says it all. Do something different from what you normally do. Strangely, it doesn’t even have to be anything to do with your objective. Just do anything at all, as long as it’s different. Do one thing different, then another the next day, and so on.

You’ll be different. And things will be different. They’ll be different from the very first action you take that is different, and your world will change.

And that’s the easy the way to get started. No motivation required. Resistance is useless.

Categories Change, Motivation

Do the right thing

By Pete Burden
May 12, 2008 //
0

I hate the idea of being forced into things. It makes me squirm. If someone tells me that I have to do something, I will immediately start scanning around for arguments I can use to take an opposite position. It’s probably something to do with having three older and, I must have thought, smarter brothers.

Sometimes climate change and resource issues (like peak oil) feel like that to me. That we have no choice and that because of things that other people have done (over many hundreds of years perhaps) I am going to have to curtail my great life style. That offends my childish sense of freedom – my sense that it’s definitely not fair.

I remember watching this fun video on risk on Youtube a little while ago. I did my own little analysis over the weekend. What it told me was that barring catastrophe the major significant risks of climate change and oil depletion are to less developed countries than ours. Climate change is real, but the UK is already a very resilient, and wealthy country. We can buy our way out of many problems. Yes, it will probably hurt, but even here mainly it will hurt the poor.

And what about catastrophe? If you read the press and watch TV that is always very likely. One after another, regular as clockwork, the disaster stories come (and often go). Bird flu, MRSA, asteroid impact, child snatchers – the list goes on and on. This is hardly a surprise. News is “meant to be” negative. If you look up “news values” on the web, you’ll find lists of criteria by which stories are selected as newsworthy. Negativity – bad news – usually appears pretty high on the list.

Of course this wouldn’t trouble a normal person. But if like me you have a tendency to catastrophic thinking then you probably need to read the great Martin Seligman‘s book “Learned Optimism“. In which he gives simple techniques to manage this kind of destructive thinking.

So if we can dismiss catastrophe, or at least put it in its proper place, then from my simple analysis, I believe that in the UK (and other developed countries) we will probably continue to thrive and prosper. By probably I mean, trying to be very specific, “with some considerable certainty”. Despite the many catastrophes the world faces.

In that case seizing the business opportunity of sustainability, climate change, poverty, disease, hunger, and resource insecurity is a moral and ethical issue. It’s about doing the right thing. It’s about how we share this planet – about our connection with others. We need, for example, to create a low-carbon economy because it’s the right thing to do.

And how do we get there? I believe the first step is simply to ask questions like “what does a low-carbon economy look like for business?” What will your business look like if travel and transportation costs rise further? How dependent is your business on the price of oil? And what are the opportunities?

Anybody want to to make a start?

Categories Business, Future, Motivation, Plan

Stop working, stop spending and start living

By Pete Burden
May 5, 2008 //
2

I read a chapter by Tom Hodgkinson in “Do good lives have to cost the earth” last night. He wrote one of my favourite books of the last few years – “How to be idle.” His article is a variation on that theme – ending with the suggestion that in order to save the planet we should “stop working, stop spending and start living.”

I have huge sympathy with this idea and in our own small way I think this is what my wife and I have been trying to do for some years. I try to work as little as possible (although I fail lots of the time), and we have also down-shifted quite a bit.

Making this step is about attitude as much as anything else. And often my attitude is less than the best. I am still plagued by the same socially driven desires as most other people (Hodgkinson is clearly a saint). Security drives me, sometimes status drives me, and the desire for the easy, perfect, TV-like-life drives me.

But I agree with Hodgkinson, it’s worth the effort. Maybe I am getting better at it too. There really is more life with less spending and less work.

But what does that mean for businesses? Hodgkinson rails at business because he believes the whole system depends on greed. That 0 percent growth means death to business. And that “business” therefore drives us to work and spend.

I think he is talking about big business. I don’t see why small business (and he is the owner and operator of a couple of small businesses: publishing a magazine, writing books) has to be just about growth in terms of scale. It’s also about growing in strength. Perhaps it is easier to grow your small business if the economy is booming. But I don’t see why it has to be that way.

For example, a small business can get stronger by changing from a dependence on one large account to a larger number of smaller accounts. The latter business is stronger and more resilient. But its income (and profitability) may not change at all.

A small company can get stronger when one of the team learns some new sales skills. And then finds it easier and simpler to close a piece of business – using less time and less effort. If that sales person spends more time playing and doing nothing (and definitely not shopping) revenue won’t rise. The company won’t grow in conventional terms. But it is stronger and more resilient. So it has grown in that sense – like a piece of bamboo.

Categories Downshifting, Growth, Motivation

Why, why, why?

By Pete Burden
April 26, 2008 //
2

Why does this all matter? It’s a question that rattles around in the back of my mind a lot.

I am convinced by the urgency of doing something positive, and I can see that there is a huge opportunity waiting. But I really like the “why?” question. Was it Ricardo Semler – of Seven Day Weekend fame – who said his company’s strategy is to ask the question “Why?” repeatedly when faced by any new initiative or problem? I think he said it helps them prioritise, and ensure they only spend time on the things that give the most real benefits. That’s something I guess we would all aspire to.

And it’s such a simple technique.

So “why” do something about climate change? Why do something about poverty? Why try to seize the sustainability opportunity, when there are probably plenty of easier ways to make a living, and probably easier ways to make money, if that is your goal too.

I read a little piece by Rosie Boycott the other day in a very good book called “Do good lives have to cost the earth” by Andrew Simms and Joe Smith. I wouldn’t normally have much time for something written by a former editor of the Express newspaper. I can’t be bothered with newspapers at the best of times, let alone the Express. But she reminded me that the reason we need to do something in the UK about climate change is partly to show our leadership to the rest of the world. This in turn reminded me that we need to do the same about sustainability in general, even though the UK is a small country with relatively little impact on these global matters.

So one answer to the question “why?” is that we should do it because we can – we have the wealth and security. And we also should do it because we have a responsibillty and an opportunity to show leadership to business people all over the world.

If we in the developed world can’t make good sense and good lives out of the opportunities arising from sustainability, how can we expect others to do the same? And, with the size of the opportunities and the size of the problems, we really need these others to be part of the solution too.

Categories Motivation, Purpose, Solution, Why

How to take advantage of an opportunity

By Pete Burden
April 4, 2008 //
1

So, if sustainability is an opportunity, how on earth do you take advantage of it?

I’ve just finished reading Felix Dennis’ very funny book “How to get rich”. It’s also very real and packed with useful insights.

I think the book is really about how to succeed at doing things (in his case it was getting rich). I think it’s very applicable to the question of how to ensure your business takes advantage of the sustainability opportunity.

I’ll put his suggestions into my own words (and add a couple of things I have gathered myself):

  1. Commit. Work out what you want to do. Choose something that is true for you. Make a no-let-out contract with yourself to do it. Make it despite any objections that come up.
  2. Recognise that everything that happens to you is down to you. Even including your upbringing and genes. If you can do this, then what happened in the past can be turned from a pain to something really useful – learning about what you did that worked and what you did that didn’t.
  3. Be totally fearless. Now that is difficult for a total coward like me. But I know it to be a great strategy. Amongst other things, it means stopping caring about what others think – and being true to yourself instead. It means handling what’s in front of you – and not thinking too much about what might or might not happen.
  4. Start (don’t wait or hesitate). That’s a tough one for me. I often procrastinate.
  5. Persevere. But if one approach doesn’t work, “do something different” (more on this later).

What a great plan. Anybody know if it works?

Categories Commitment, Motivation, Plan
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