The Friendly Anarchist

Task Mentality

Has idleness still a space in a society of digital gadgets and vanashing boundaries between work and free time? In a recent Spiegel cover story, author Susanne Beyer tries to find leisure by spending two hours inside a luxury spa hotel in Berlin. As it turns out, she feels like a stranger in an artificial world of relaxation: While the whole procedure is quite pleasant, it also strikes her as being somewhat whimsical. Meanwhile, her thoughts are rushing, her Blackberry* is tempting.

Later on, she describes some of the challenges for the modern idler: We live in a world where busyness is expected and most people are even proud of it. Although many classical souls – from Aristotle to Petrarca and Goethe – were advocates of leisure, it looks as if we lost the art of integrating it into our lives. Beyer herself won’t be able to cure her gadget addiction and workaholism in the short term – even though she manages to switch off her cellphone after a day of reflection.

The Drawbacks of Task Mentality

Beyer’s main mistake when searching for leisure is that she approaches it like a task. We are so used to micro-managing our days and working towards measurable results, that it influences the way we relax: Leisure becomes just another box on our to-do list that has to be checked off. The problem is that leisure (or idleness, as I like to call it) doesn’t work like this. As much as to-do lists can help us getting things done, they can also prevent us from ever enjoying the pleasures of being idle.

Our only chance to attain leisure is to overcome our task mentality and approach it with an open mind. And while each person has different preferences when it comes to spending this time, I am not refering to mere “fun” and “entertainment” here. Entertainment can easily be scheduled: Two hours for a movie, a day at Disney World. Idleness, in contrast, cannot: While we may only be able to reserve a certain time frame for it, we cannot push or control it. As Schopenhauer puts it, quoted in the Spiegel article: To really be idle, the mind “must not follow any goal and thus must not be directed by the will”.

Trust in Idleness

The weirdest thing about idleness is that it’s so valuable, but it doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee: To tap its potential, we have to be willing to dedicate time to it, but we cannot be sure about the outcome. We just can’t know if we will really reach this state of mind that improves our “soul’s estate”, as Thoreau described it. But if we don’t give it a try, we will definitely lose it.

In a world crazy about measuring output and performance, it’s not surprising that leisure runs the risk of being abolished. When we go shopping for mirrors and necklaces, we get something tangible in return – but the benefits of leisure are harder to grasp.** That said, in my own experience leisure will always give you back more than you put into it. Many writers, philosophers, thinkers, scientists, and artists agree with this: It’s worth your time, it just defies human control.

Openness, it turns out, is an important trait for any idler. Together with a certain humility it allows us to reach these moments of pure relaxation, that in turn fuel our creativity and help us to develop ideas and reflect on life as a whole. We could also say that real leisure demands trust: The trust that our time spent will be worth it, even though we don’t know exactly what we will get out of it.

*) Btw., Tom Hodgkinson is right that it’s insulting to see how computer and communication companies are kidnapping the names of the viands of nature: Apples, Blackberries, Oranges, …

**) This is also one of the reasons why it’s harder to build a successful blog around idleness than, say, dog breeding. The benefits for the reader take a little more time to communicate.

Mirrors and Necklaces

Remember the stories of American natives, giving away their treasures to the conquerers that had arrived to colonize them? Unassuming of what was coming, many Indians were happy to trade their gold, their cities, and ultimately their sovereignty for mirrors and necklaces. And every school kid is astonished to hear about people exchanging their highest treasures for something ultimately worthless.

Of course, the Indians didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t know about the value gold and pearls had for their visitors, and they didn’t know about the greed their initial generosity would trigger. Anyway, most school kids assume, weren’t they also stupid? Something like that could never happen to us! We know about the value of the things we own, and we would never give them away carelessly. Or, would we?

I often have to think of the Indians when I see how people can’t wait to buy the newest gadgets or pass hours in shopping malls in order to relax after work: Be it an iPad or a new pair of shoes, we are crazy to get it.

Do people really know how much their shopping is worth? In reality, most of the things we buy are the mirrors and necklaces of our times – and we decide to exchange our lives for them. Instead of making use of the time we are granted on this planet, we rather fill it with meaningless work in order to get the money to buy meaningless stuff, in order to experience meaningless entertainment and forget about our meaningless relationships.

But it’s just a bit of retail therapy, you might say. What’s wrong with having a big and shiny flatscreen TV, a new pair of shoes, a large DVD collection?

Only you can give the answer, and it’s quite easy to tell: When was the last time you took a hike through the forest close to your home, or went for a surf? When was the last time you spent talking to a friend or just a random stranger until dawn, without being interrupted by the sound of a ringing cellphone? When was the last time you cooked delicious food with your family, the last time you spent time playing with your kids without looking at the clock?

All these experiences don’t cost any money. They are right here, you just have to go for them. So, what are they worth to you? Are they inferior to spending the days at your job and the nights watching yet another episode of Lost? In that case, retail therapy wins. If not, shouldn’t you think about resisting mirrors and necklaces and take your life back? No charges will be applied to your credit card. All it takes is to make a decision.

Walk with Flowers

On January 16th, we will celebrate the 1st International Walk With Flowers Day. Click here to find out how to participate!

“It’s just business, you know…”

He shrugged and looked at me with an excusatory smile.
“Sure,” I was going to answer – but I paused and let his words ease down for a moment.

There was this guy, and he had given up his brick and mortar business in order to specialize in search engine marketing. It was working out nicely for him: He could travel, he made good money, and he enjoyed being his own boss. On the downside, he had to sit behind a computer for eight to twelve hours a day, sometimes for weeks at a time. I don’t remember if he had already been an alcoholic when I first met him, but he definitely was one by now.

Who was I to judge, though? People should be free to decide what to do with their lives. Still, he didn’t look too healthy. And what bothered me was that he was basically spamming Google in order to get his sites ranked. That, I told him, was messing up search for non-techie users, and it really wasn’t creating any value at all.

“Right,” he answered. “It’s just business, you know…”

A common phrase. An automatic excuse. Business is business, and life is life. We all know this phrase, and generally, we’ll just take it for granted. It comes up in many different contexts, in a couple of different forms:

We’ve been friends a long time, but now I’m going to cancel your credit and take your house. You know I have to do my job…
Sure, we’re burning down the Amazon. That’s what our shareholders are expecting, you know…
I’m spamming Google, spending entire days creating bullshit content. But it pays the bills…

In this moment of reflexion, the web marketing guy sitting in front of me, taking a mouthful of cold and ridiculously expensive German beer, I understood that I didn’t want to accept this excuse any longer. I understood that it wasn’t really an excuse at all. The moment business becomes a part of our lives, it becomes more than just business. It becomes something personal.

Business without Being a Businessman?

I never was interested in business. Business was something for clean-shaven men wearing grey suits and ties, and I mostly got in touch with it when I strolled by the bars where they took their secretaries in order to unwind after work. Over the years, friends of mine had become businessmen, but somehow I never became intrigued by it.

This changed during the last year or so, when I noticed that I didn’t want to be employed. Like it or not, I had to sit down and learn some business basics in order to become my own boss. Thus, I started reading books and blogs on the topic, especially on how to make a living online. But while the knowledge I obtained was valuable in many ways, something was missing. It was just as if the same old businessmen somehow had stopped wearing ties and lost their secretaries (or outsourced them to India) – but continued to be unfriendly persons.

You see, internet business is thriving. The affiliate industry is moving billions of dollars, ebook authors can make a fortune offering solutions for desperate buyers, and the blogging scene discovers upcoming superstars month after month. If you are even remotely interested in technology and working on your own, learning from the experts in this field certainly is a commendable strategy. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor will your business – but it will be far easier to do once you know the basics of bricklaying.

Taking it Personal

What was the problem, then? In the beginning I supposed it was just me and my inability to accept the realities of marketing and business plans: I get most of the tricks on a theoretical level, but my body and mind resist to implement them.

The more I thought about it, the more I noticed that my resistance was the result of dashed hopes. The hopes of a dreamer, a romantic maybe – but still: Was it completely unrealistic to hope that work in the web 2.0 era could somehow be “better” than it was before? Was it completely unrealistic to hope that a better way of doing business could become part of a happier personality? Was it completely unrealistic to hope that we could make up new models of work that fitted into new models of life?

Sure, there’s lifestyle design: I don’t even want to open that pandora’s box again, but I think there’s some kind of consensus that it’s too much talk and too little walk. Then, there’s things minimalism: Own less than 100 items and you are admitted to this exclusive club. But while I love voluntary simplicity, I just don’t think the average Westerner’s main problem is that he owns more than two pairs of underwear. And, of course, there’s location independence: Live and work anywhere you like. Certainly my thing, but what about all those people who enjoy being where they are, but who still hate their job?

My point is this: You can work only four hours a week, own less than a hundred things, and travel the world – but still have a business that sucks. If that’s the case, it’s probably because your work is not aligned with the rest of your life and your personal code of ethics.

Walking with Flowers

When you walk the street with a bunch of flowers, interesting things will happen. People smile at you, they give you space to walk, and you will see this special glow in the eyes of many of them. Flowers are romantic, and most people have some kind of enjoyable memory of a day they received a bouquet, or they were giving one to a loved person.

Walking with flowers gets even more interesting when you start giving them away. And the idea is giving them to somebody you never met before. You can give your flowers away randomly or with a clear focus: The lonely lady with the bored face; the fighting couple; the tired street vendor at the bus stop.

A bunch of roses costs about 2 or 3 dollars around here. They may be more expensive where you are, but you can probably grow some in your garden. Be it work or money, it’s generally a small investment – but the returns will be huge, even though the common businessman won’t be able to measure them: Smiles, surprise, happiness. An invitation for coffee even, alhough that certainly wasn’t my intention.

I swear I saw a tear flowing once, when I gave a whole bouquet to a middle-aged businesswoman in Bogotá who had been making phone calls nervously for half an hour before I decided to get her some flowers. We didn’t even speak a single word.

If we enjoy voluntary simplicity, why not include some voluntary kindness in our lives? I think it’s nice to be nice, and I suppose most people would agree with that.

The Business Romantic

Wouldn’t business be a lot more enjoyable if more people were walking with flowers? Random gestures of kindness, random gestures of connection can be worth so much more than money, and I think they can have a deep impact on people.

No, I won’t accept any sarcastic comments here. I refuse to listen to the cynics anymore who say that giving away a couple of flowers doesn’t solve the problems of this world. Because, in reality, it does: Kindness and compassion is exactly what’s missing, and we won’t get it by presidential decrees. We’ll get it by being kind and compassionate in our daily life, and in our business.

This is a call for the romantics, a call for the dreamers out there, a call for the “woo woo” part inside of us: Let’s take business from the hands of cold and calculating men in grey who bore us to death with their focus on profits and sales. Let’s laugh at the business buffoons even though they take themselves so damn seriously. Let’s forget about getting rich quick. Let’s forget about getting rich at all – at least in the old and unfortunate definition of richness reflecting mere monetary status: We need no six figure income to be happy. What we need is health, a place to sleep, good food, and intelligent and entertaining relationships with other people: in business and in leisure hours, online and in real life.

If you’re employed, sitting in a cubicle and don’t want to take it anymore, accept that this is your life and you decide what to do with it. If, on the other hand, you’re self-employed or a business owner already, but concerned with nothing but web analytics, follower numbers, ROI, and SEO: Was that why you left your job? Was it really worth it?

I say: Conquer your fears and accept that life is more than business – but that your business will always affect your life. If you didn’t manage to align them yet, maybe it’s worth the frightening thought to just start over again.

I know it won’t be easy. But those checks that finance your life come from real people. People with problems, people with worries – maybe even people that care about you, and that care about what you do. Are you really giving them what they deserve? As far as I am concerned, if the business I do is not as good as the life I want to lead, I prefer going to bed hungry.

I’m not here to judge you. You can do that yourself. Just close your laptop, take a deep breath – and walk with flowers. If something feels wrong, you can smash your excuses within the blink of an eye.

On January 16th, we will celebrate the 1st International Walk With Flowers Day. Click here to find out how to participate!

Good Reads, Gunpowder Treason Edition

One year ago, The Friendly Anarchist went live with a short post remembering the gunpowder plot of 1605 and a speech from V, main character of the Hollywood movie V for Vendetta, based on Alan Moore’s graphic novel of the same name.

It was a bit of a coincidence, but then, why not start a friendly anarchistic blog quoting an ambigious character – “a mixture of an actual advocate of anarchism and the traditional stereotype of the anarchist as a terrorist.” (Wikipedia)

Alan Moore comments on V: “The central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn’t want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history.”

In the same spirit, I also don’t want to tell anybody what to think, I just want you to think. So far, my endeavors have led me to publish around 60 posts on this site, and there are more to come. You can check out the timeless content of the first year of friendly anarchism in the archives. I implemented this page and some other shiny details here on the site thanks to the help of Joel Runyon. Joel is not only internet-savvy, he’s also an awesome person, so be sure to check out his blog if you are interested in doing impossible things!

[¶]

These days, I am taking some time off the internet, preparing new content for the second year. All I can tell you now is that we will accelerate a little, getting back to a “two posts per week” schedule. I will also move soon from Cartagena to stir things up a little, although I haven’t yet decided on a destination.

If you want to get a little bit of an inside view on how are things going and what’s coming up next, feel free to sign up for my friendly anarchistic newsletter. (It’s free, no spam, maximum 1-2 mails per month. I didn’t launch this officially yet, but you are invited to come early and get the best seats!)

Year Two will be exciting – the idea is to grow consciously in the spirit of better work, more idleness, higher creativity, and a balance between business and anti-consumerism. Thank you so much for your interest, your help, your comments and your messages. I am honored to have you as a reader.

[¶]

“Most writers are conservative. By that I mean they lock their best ideas in a vault and take pleasure in the richness of their stores, like misers with their money. Maybe you have moleskins full of hastily scribbled notes. Or a corkboard next to your desk messy with images, structural blueprints, articles ripped from magazines. Or at the very least a folder on your computer labeled Stuff.” (Short and sweet. Benjamin Percy on Writing as a gambler’s trade.)

[¶]

“The problem is, that paid employment rarely delivers the benefits that its promoters, who must be either naive or disingenuous, claim for it. Overwork destroys lives and wrecks families. Work kills: the TUC estimates that 20,000 people in the UK die each year as a direct result of their job. A quarter of a million are injured by their jobs, the TUC claims, and a further half million are made ill by them. The UN says that 2.2 million people worldwide are killed by work. That’s three times more than war. Yet we see no war on work being declared by governments.” (Tom Hodgkinson on delcaring the war on work.)

[¶]

“No one can know with certainty what the market will embrace, so truly no one person can purport to be in possession of that knowledge. It’s completely backward, but we very often don’t know that we want something until we’ve experienced it. What if Albert Einstein, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Miles Davis, The Beatles, Pablo Neruda, Salman Rushdie, The Ramones, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, shoot, even J.K. Rowling or Lady Gaga, had refused to do their work because they didn’t think the ‘market’ wanted it?” (Jamie Berry on setting yourself on fire. I had one of the most enjoyable Twitter conversations ever with him. You should definitely follow him if you’re interested in art.)

[¶]

“Museums are a great thing. Most have free or pay-what-you-want nights. But sometimes you just want to look at art in the late morning without a crowd standing around you. And maybe 24 hours later you need to look at that painting again. And 24 hours later you need to look again. And maybe you don’t really have a job and you don’t really make any money and you can’t really afford to wander around in museums everyday, though you have the time to do it.” (David Horvitz on going to museums for free.)

[¶]

“The Misconception: You procrastinate because you are lazy and can’t manage your time well.
The Truth: Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking.”
(You always get me with research on procrastination.)

[¶]

“You are not your enemy.” (Zen at Play. Great message. So true. Worth following on Twitter, too.)

[¶]

“As long as the toilets are comfortable, people are happy — even in nomadic conditions. I first saw the Washlet (Japanese shower toilet) in the 1980s, and I immediately bought one for every restroom at the ryokan. I knew that as long as people had decent, clean toilets, they’d be happy staying in 100-year-old rooms.”

(…)

“A country needs all kinds of people with all kinds of jobs. Japan is full of jobs that nobody wants. There’s work available along rivers, such as cleaning and fishing, and at ryokan, but it seems that everyone wants to live in Tokyo and sit at a desk.”

(The best newspaper article I read this week. It was send to me by my reader Greg, and it’s the account of ~~Tsurunoyu Onsen~~ Kazushi Sato, the owner of a hot-spring ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn). This man knows what he’s doing, and his place is definitely on my travel list!)

“Balance Entrepreneurship and Anti-Consumerism” (A Conversation with Melanie Orndorff)

Over a couple of mails and months, I was lucky to have an interesting (and totally tempo giusto) conversation with WordPress hero and long-term freelancer, Melanie Orndorff. We talked about new ways to approach a career, location-independence, the relationship between freelancing and micro-entrepreneurship, and how hard it is to avoid getting employed.

This is the first part of our conversation, the second part can be found on Melanie’s blog, Rock Unemployment!

Fabian: Hey Melanie, great to have this conversation with you! You help people to find a job and/or build a side gig while being unemployed – I am deliberately unemployed, but of course making (some) money is an issue for me, too.

My personal problem is that I’m just not much of a business person. I was wondering about how to get more into an entrepreneur’s mindset as a person that is somewhat critical on consumerist lifestyles. As you dropped a career to get into freelancing, can you relate to this, or did you just have an entrepreneur’s mindset right from the start?

Melanie: Your question’s been on my mind a lot this week! I’m intrigued by the balance between entrepreneurship and anti-consumerism.

I’ve been a freelancer for most of the past 12 or so years, so I actually felt very confined in the full-time, salaried positions I held recently. I remember being shown a chart of my potential career progression within a company I worked for, and feeling an immediate need to run screaming from the building. I think being a freelancer requires a bit of an entrepreneur’s mindset, since I’m in charge of my own ship, but at the same time, there’s a lot of stability in knowing that – if I needed to – I could probably dig up a job next week doing something (even if it’s not particularly glamorous).

Maybe that’s where the balance lies: There’s a need to be professional enough to manage your own career without a company telling you where the “career ladder” is, and yet, there’s got to be a willingness to try anything and everything. One of my life goals is to work as a US mail carrier. I love sorting things and relish the idea of walking around, greeting people all afternoon. Would that be possible if I had a corporate career? Probably not. Do my friends think I’m crazy for it? Absolutely.

Fabian: At least in Germany, part-time mail carriers in smaller villages are really well-paid. Surely sounds like a fun job for some time, preferably in summer, though. :)

Melanie: Related to this, how do you balance your professional and anarchist sides?

Fabian: Until now, I found it to be surprisingly easy to get a job, and surprisingly hard to avoid it! In this sense, I really admire your decision to go freelance and never look back. As for me, I am mixing freelance jobs with temporary employment and casual jobs, and I’m getting more and more interested in micro-entrepreneurship. Consequently, I’m also making some money from my internet endeavors.

In practice, it looks like this: Before leaving Germany at the end of 2008, I worked as a tutor, web and print designer with a professor for political science in Cologne. After that, I took some time to write my thesis, travel through South America, and think about my life. When money became an issue again, I did a few translation jobs while being on the road, programmed some websites, and eventually engaged in a short career as a tour guide for cruiseship tourists in Cartagena. (I even was co-owner of a small pig farm in Colombia, which was kind of fun and admittedly delicious, though not too profitable.)

This enumeration probably reveals already my anarchist approach to work. My idea is to replace the typical career advice with an approach of common sense: It’s logical that we have to make money, it’s logical that we have to work on some unpleasant things – but we are also free to make the best of it and adjust work to our personal priorities!

In the democratic states we live in, we often just cast our vote and then enter into a state of apathy in almost all areas of our existence. Friendly anarchism is a call to get active and involved – in work and politics, but also in life in general. We have one life only, and we should live it on our own terms, making the best of it.

I see you are traveling a lot – What do you think about location independence, would that be an option for you or are you already living location-independently?

Melanie: I don’t have the travel bug like so many of the bloggers I read, so my “lifestyle design” is more about creating a work flow that allows me to spend time with my friends and family, take time for myself whenever I choose, and avoid a long commute.

Read the second part of the conversation here.