Soul Shelter

(This essay first appeared in a different form in the August 2003 edition of Japan Entrepreneur Report)

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits. Robert Louis Stevenson

Jack Ma knows a thing or two about failure. After flunking two university entrance exams, he was accepted by his “city’s worst university.” Following graduation, he was earning $15 a month teaching English in mainland China.

But just a few short years later, he was running Alibaba.com, China’s most successful business-to-business e-commerce portal, and guest lecturing at the Harvard Business School (many of the professors there were baffled by his views). Now Alibaba.com is a listed firm valued at U.S. $26 billion. Here’s Jack’s take on failure:

The lessons learned from success stories only apply under certain conditions. But examples of failure teach us all something … I call Alibaba.com ‘1,001 mistakes’ …

What Jack says hits home with me, because I’m a rather accomplished gaffer myself, with an impressive record of small business busts. I’ve stumbled through a series of entrepreneurial ventures over the years: forming bands and making records, writing and producing publications, assembling retail products, and so forth. Most of these efforts were washouts in terms of businesses. Some were naïve, a couple embarrassingly so. But as the years passed and my experience grew, the efforts became less naïve and more practical (the pros say it takes four bad investments to make a real venture capitalist—maybe entrepreneurs need four flops, too).

After at least four clinkers, when I was finally able to identify my core skills and align my entrepreneurial efforts with them, the next venture evolved into something that was eventually valued highly by a third party.

So I say it’s time failure got some respect. One of my favorite self-help books, all about failure, is The University of Hard Knocks (also freely available at the Gutenberg Project). Ralph Parlette, the author, was a popular lecturer with a humorous, self-deprecating style who extolled the wisdom learned through “hard knocks” experiences of flopping. It’s hilarious reading underpinned by hard-hitting truths.

Here’s the takeaway: Keep trying. The most common precursor of success is a string of failures, each teaching an unforgettable lesson. But experience accrues to those who try, and failures eventually teach us how to succeed. Here’s how Shakespeare put it:

Our doubts are traitors

And make us lose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt

You may also enjoy:

“You’ve Got to Jump”

“You Don’t Need to Be an Insider”

“What’s the Big Idea?“

A few months back, I sat beside an old friend at a formal dinner. Call her Penny. Penny and I hadn’t seen each other for about three years, but we’d kept in touch through periodic e-mails. Penny happens to be one of the most industrious, inexhaustibly creative people I know, besides which, she’s always impressed me as having a virtuosic ability to stay connected to her innumerable friends, and to connect these people to each other — effecting introductions that often result in dynamic partnerships.

She’s a nexus, as I told her once (which only made her blush). She’s what might be called a natural expert in networking.

So imagine my surprise when, while chatting over our dinner, that very term arose and Penny sat back in her chair, shook her head, and said matter-of-factly, “You know, I really hate that word.”

“Networking?” I said.

“Yeah. It just gives me the creeps.”

I decided I’d avoid mentioning that it was a sort of keyword that popped into mind every time I thought of her. I gave a moment of silent consideration instead.

Finally I said, “You mean, it sounds too mercenary for your tastes.”

“Yeah! Exactly! I just happen to like people. I find them fascinating. I like to listen to their stories and learn about them.”

Penny’s artlessness is priceless. And I suddenly understood — after thirteen years of observing this woman’s social mastery, her lively, life-loving way of constantly undertaking new, exciting projects and forging relationships with highly creative, one-of-a-kind individuals — how it was that she managed to be so productive, so inventive, so ceaselessly inspired and inspiring.

Instead of channeling her personal and professional energies into schemes to “capitalize” on certain associations, Penny just opens herself, all the time, to the personalities around her. She primes the pump of whomever she’s seated beside at a party. Not because she’s looking for anything in particular, but because she’s unfailingly inquisitive, and always ready to entertain a diverse viewpoint or to query somebody and learn from their unique perspective.

Penny’s what I would call a People-Reader. She listens. Her interest is genuine and personal.

When it comes to books, some individuals are deep readers, plunging into the classics, annotating the margins of every printed page they lay eyes upon, constantly drawing connections between ideas digested from various sources. And some people read only skimmingly, sticking to headlines, or hurrying through great literature, or scanning ephemeral cyber-text.

In a similar way, certain people learn to cultivate deep “reading” habits in their social interactions, while others are content to “skim.”

Talk to Penny at a party and you’ll find yourself in a real conversation. Never will you feel that she’s taking measure of your “usefulness.” There’s always an authentic give-and-take with Penny, a sense of good old-fashioned human interaction — discourse of a kind that seems rare these days. That’s what Penny thrives on; that’s what she’s in it for; she’s never been in it for anything else. (I can only imagine how she’d cringe at the term “social capital,” though surely many who employ it do so innocently.)

Penny knows that the value of our life and our work can only be real if our relationships are real. True connections and meaningful accomplishments begin from a shared humanity.

A People-Reader like Penny never plots and calculates how to make this acquaintanceship or that third-degree connection or that person’s inimitable talent “add up” to profit for herself or advancement toward her own harbored ambition. That’s the stock in trade of People-Skimmers, a whole different breed, the true social mercenaries.

People-Skimmers are unpleasant folks. We’ve all run into them at one time or another. They’re the ones who prowl parties, cv’s pinned to their lapels and ears stopped against irrelevant pleasantries. They hasten through introductions and practice a form of small talk that’s like speed dating for the obsessively professional. Their radars are primed for prestige; human kindness and friendships are merely incidental byproducts of ambition — welcome, but of secondary importance. Not so for the likes of Penny. For her, Courtesy, Kindness, and the Art of Listening are everything.

I believe there’s an awful lot to learn from people like Penny. And I hope I’ve gotten better at really reading individuals as she does. I hope mere headlines don’t distract me too much.

And I believe, though Penny’s too pure to explicitly affirm this, that the deeply human traits necessary for good People-Reading are as fundamental to real success as they are to enduring friendship — and you just might get both in the bargain.

What could be better?

The nonfiction publishing world is ruled by the Big Idea: the concise, single-sentence statement of a book’s theme—and why it’s important. Once in book form, the Big Idea must grab bookstore browsers, convert them to buyers, then satisfy them as readers.

But all this starts farther up the food chain. Authors hoping to sell manuscripts to publishers must have crystalline statements of their Big Ideas (and increasingly, either celebrity status or a “platform” through which they can reach a substantial audience).

I’m pitching a book to a new publisher, so lately I’ve been struggling to articulate my Big Idea. That’s forcing me to dig down to the work’s true underpinnings. But along the way it raised a peripheral, far more fundamental issue: What’s the Big Idea of my life?

That question stopped me cold.

Somehow I’ve never articulated the Big Idea of my own life. To tell the truth, it took me longer than most to figure out that one creates rather than finds meaning in one’s life. We can hardly expect to wake up one day and intellectually fix upon a purpose for living. Purpose evolves over time and by doing, not merely thinking.

Yet it seems to me we could all use a Big Idea for our lives. It needn’t be world-changing. But neither should it be small.

The best thing that’s happened for me since starting Soul Shelter is that community members have been inspiring me with the Big Ideas of their own lives.

In Michigan, for instance, Spiritual River blogger Patrick has dedicated himself to helping addicts recover. At age 32, he’s created more meaning in his life than most 50-plus Deferred Life Plan multimillionaires.

Chris, a world citizen in action, has dedicated himself to advocating nonconformity. J.D., who recently quit his job to write full time, is resolved to inspiring others to eliminate debt and achieve prosperity. And Mark, my blogging partner, is committed to pursuing truth and beauty through literature. His latest post, The Heroic Journey is, at heart, about pursuing your own Big Idea.

Patrick, Chris, J. D., and Mark share a common value: making a lot of money is not part of their Big Idea. “Making a lot of money” is a boring, uninspired notion. In fact, it’s a Little Idea (you can take it from me; I’m no armchair philosopher on this particular topic). Money helps, but it falls short in inspiring behavior that transcends short-term self-interest. Remember the difference between pull and drive? Our Big Ideas should pull us.

So what’s my Big Idea? I’ve been moving toward it for years, and it’s high time I declared it:

Through teaching and writing, to help others start their own ventures—particularly ones that span national borders.

There, I feel better already. Wish me luck with my Big Idea. In coming months I’ll share steps I’m taking to live it.

You may also enjoy:

“Opting Out of the Deferred Life Plan”

“Time for Everything”

“You’ve Got to Jump”

“The Heroic Journey“

In a powerful lecture entitled “Mythic Literature,” recorded in the 1960s, the noted scholar of world mythologies, Joseph Campbell, said:

Every now and then, you will face the great mysteries that mankind has been facing. The mystery of death, when it eats into you. The mystery of the magnitude of the cosmos and your own place in it and all. And the imagery that will be coming up then will be imagery that will be matched in the mythologies of the world…

Abraham Maslow [a psychologist and a spokesman of the “positive psychology” movement]…published a little paper in which he discussed the values for which people lived. He named five:

1. Survival
2. Security
3. Prestige
4. Personal Relationships
5. Self-Development

And I remember when I read that, I thought those are exactly the values that go completely to pieces when one is seized with a mythological zeal. If there is something you are really living for, you will forget security, you will forget even survival, you will forget your prestige, you will even forget your friends, and as for self-development, that’s gone. When Jesus said ‘He who loses his life shall find it’ he was talking about this.

And it’s that jump, from the thing that animals live for, to the thing that only a human being can live for, that is the jump [into the Heroic Journey]…

Over the past ten years or so, I’ve done a good share of reading into world religions and mythologies. These age-old story patterns and images have taught me much about the art of writing (my first novel used a mythic structure of sorts). Naturally, as any inquiry into mythology will do, mine led me to Campbell, and his powerful ideas have had a lasting impact on my life.

For the last twenty-odd years, Campbell been criticized as a guru of the New Age movement. In fact, he was nothing of the kind, however misappropriated some of his ideas have been. Quite to the contrary, he was an eminent scholar — and certainly one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth-century.

Campbell came to public attention in the mid-1980s, thanks to the wildly popular six-part PBS series, The Power of Myth, in which he was interviewed by Bill Moyers. But Campbell’s career as a mythographer had its truer, more auspicious beginning a full three decades earlier, with the 1949 publication of the groundbreaking book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

In its pages, he presented a comparative study of mythological stories and belief systems from all over the world, and demonstrated the universality of many symbols (or archetypes) mankind has used for ages. He called this the “grammar of symbols,” and argued that every world culture produces a “mono-myth” in which the journey of a hero figure is marked by certain clearly distinguishable stages, such as: The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Crossing of the First Threshold, The Belly of the Whale, The Road of Trials, Atonement with the Father, Refusal of the Return, Crossing of the Return Threshold.

The Heroic Journey, found in so many different myths, reveals a psychological reality common to all human beings, and Campbell showed how modern psychology can shed light on the symbology of these diverse myths.

Each of us is born, confronts life’s mysteries, enjoys its graces, suffers its blows, and must eventually face death. That experience, being universal, is a “mythic” experience. We all share it, and we all look to stories, images, and belief systems to better understand it. That’s what Campbell’s work explored. In his preface to that 1949 book, he wrote:

There are of course differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of mankind, but this is a book about the similarities; and once these are understood the differences will be found to be much less great than is popularly (and politically) supposed. My hope is that a comparative elucidation may contribute to … unification, not in the name of some ecclesiastical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding. As we are told in the Vedas: ‘Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.’

And being a passionate humanist, and believing that his scholarly studies could be deeply relevant to the wider culture beyond academia, Campbell did not shy away from speaking in very personal terms about the “Heroic Journey” as it applied to everyone, even in modern life.

“The final secret of myth,” he said, “[is] to teach you how to penetrate the labyrinth of life in such a way that its spiritual values come through.”

In Campbell’s view, recognizing the mythic forces at work in one’s life could deeply enrich that life. He was at his most outspoken about this in The Power of Myth. And it was there, while talking about the Heroic Journey, that he used a phrase that has almost single-handedly popularized him among New Agers: “Follow Your Bliss.”

Frankly, I cringe whenever this phrase gets invoked in a twinkling, wind-chimey, neo-mystical manner, because all too often it’s being appropriated to justify self-indulgence or shallowness (in fact, it’s used in just this way by a character in the recent film, The Namesake, adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel).

I believe Campbell’s maxim is most meaningful — and useful — when placed firmly in the context of the man’s serious thought, and his lifelong work. “Following your bliss,” as Campbell means it, requires more than doing what feels good at any given moment. Being a matter of “mythological zeal,” it might require a confrontation with a dragon or two, a painful sacrifice or an embarkation into loneliness — in short: a parting with one or a few of Maslow’s Five Values. Here’s where bliss comes up in the conversation with Bill Moyers:

-Moyers: How do I slay that dragon in me? What’s the journey each of us has to make, what you call “the soul’s high adventure”?

-Campbell: My general formula for my students is “Follow your bliss.” Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.

-Moyers: Is it my work or my life?

-Campbell: If the work that you’re doing is the work that you choose to do because you are enjoying it, that’s it. But if you think, ‘Oh no! I couldn’t do that!’ that’s the dragon locking you in. ‘No, no, I couldn’t be a writer,’ or ‘No, no, I couldn’t possibly do what So-and-so is doing.’

-Moyers: In this sense, unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we’re not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.

-Campbell: But in doing that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and to become alive yourself. … There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.

Being a writer of stories, I identify strongly with Campbell’s vision of a universal human narrative, a Heroic Journey through life’s frightful and glorious moments alike, a constant adventure that demands we remain on the path which will best allow us each to confront our fears and fulfill our potential.

The idea that following one’s bliss, finding one’s own heroic path, requires sacrifice and the abandonment of “security” or “prestige” or “self-development” rings very true with me. The journey may be hard, the road may be narrow, the destination obscured. But I hope I’ll be brave enough, always, to make the most worthy sacrifices, to go toward the dragon if that’s what’s most necesary, to seek spiritual adventure over stagnant convention. I want to recognize true and enduring fulfillment.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world. — Joseph Campbell

Once upon a time, a young Apple Computer attorney named Randy Komisar negotiated a deal that might have turned the personal computing industry upside down—and changed the world.

Komisar struck an agreement with Apollo Computer to license the Macintosh operating system. The move was the very embodiment of “Computing for the Rest of Us,” Apple’s Big Idea, the grand and good mission that inspired Apple employees and fans alike. Later Komisar would write:

Along with many others inside Apple, I was a strong proponent of licensing the Macintosh operating system in order to preempt Microsoft in setting the standard for user-friendly computing. After all, it was Apple’s birthright, its overriding mission. It would mean cannibalizing our own model, sacrificing margins for volume and market share, but it seemed better than circling the wagons and defending an ever-declining piece of the PC business.

But at the last minute, John Sculley, the brilliant Pepsi-Cola executive who at Steve Job’s behest famously gave up “selling sugar water” to lead Apple, scuttled the deal. Sculley undercut the company’s greater mission in order to preserve Apple’s high-margin end-to-end hardware/software business model.

Apple’s share of the worldwide personal computer market subsequently plummeted, and today it stands at just under three percent (3%). Would Sculley have made the same decision if he could have known that, years later, the reality of Apple’s vision would be Computing for Three Percent of Us?

No one knows, of course, what might have happened had Apple stuck to its ideals and licensed its operating system. But in The Monk and the Riddle, the best-seller detailing the episode, Komisar illuminates the point by distinguishing between passion and drive. Passion and drive are not the same at all, he writes:

Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do.

Passion pulled Apple Computer toward its mission of making computing available to everyman, but drive forced management to choose predictable profitability and lower risk. Here’s my takeaway: Drive arises from will, passion from the soul.

The distinction is useful. Komisar goes on to make the key point of his book, a rejection of what he calls the “Deferred Life Plan.”

The Deferred Life Plan consists of two steps:

1. Do what you have to do
2. Do what you want to do

To achieve the “promise of full coverage under the plan,” writes Komisar, you should divide life into two distinct parts. In Part One you do whatever it takes to become financially secure. In Part Two, you retire and do exactly what you want (it may hardly be necessary to note that the Deferred Life Plan is fueled by drive rather than passion).

The problem, of course, is that those who achieve financial security through drive rather than passion often discover the hollowness of victory. To use a self-help cliché, the success ladder they struggled so hard to climb was leaning against the wrong building.

I experienced this for myself when I sold my company in 2000. I’d started my firm in 1994 based on a passion: exploiting the Internet’s ability to convert high variable communications costs into low fixed costs on behalf of Japanese consumers, who’d long suffered from expensive metered-rate telecommunications services. The Internet also promised a curiously powerful mix of intimacy and anonymity, something perfectly matching the Japanese communication style.

That passion sustained me through the tough early years. Later, as our services were sought by higher and higher profile customers, the exigencies of business—and my drive to succeed—steadily overtook passion. Soon my business became one of helping online retailers sell more, more, more into Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. By the time we sold out, I, too, had “sold out” my Big Idea—my original vision—while fatigue and world-weary “success” blurred my recognition of that very truth. Maybe that’s why Komisar’s story struck me with such force.

Received Western wisdom continues to enthusiastically endorse the Deferred Life Plan, as it has for more than 200 years (earlier this month Mark wrote about Charles Lamb’s surprisingly mixed feelings upon his “deliverance” from a life of office drudgery in the early nineteenth century).

Opting out of the Deferred Life Plan is no easy task. It’s a struggle demanding discipline, not just of the will, but of the soul.

You may also enjoy:

“Time for Everything”

“You’ve Got to Jump”

“Recognizing the Opportunity Within“

In my writing life, I’ve had to learn not only how to harness ideas and produce something from them when they start to flow, but how to keep them flowing in the first place. Here are four simple tips that might be useful to anyone hoping to summon up fresh concepts or find new approaches to a project.

1. Keep a Notebook

Henry James famously urged the novice writer to “Try to become one of the people on whom nothing is lost.” He was speaking to the importance of not missing the little glimmers that move fleetingly through the mind—those brief, seemingly inconsequential images or concepts which just might prove to be an odd piece of some larger idea. If you let these little bits of thought come and go, if you shrug and idly say, ‘Huh,’ and allow them to fade away unrecorded, how can you ever know whether or not these pieces might have been patched together into a whole? You must capture them when they come. Don’t trust them to stick around very long on their own. Keep a notebook in your pocket (and a pen). Think of the notebook as a butterfly net. If a strange-colored thought catches your eye, swipe!

Emerson said it beautifully (and I’ll be posting more about this great mind soon):

Let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not.

2. Block Out Time in Your Calendar

I’ve long had an uncomfortable relationship with calendars. Something in me recoils from those neat little numbered boxes. I guess I’m loath to believe that the beauty and possibility of a day can be shrunken down to such strict geometry. But recently, while trying to balance various freelancing responsibilities amidst my main enterprise of drafting a new novel, it became clear that I’d have to get over my reservations and buy a weekly planner. There were just too many tasks and deadlines to bear in mind.

I did not compromise my convictions, mind you. I was still firmly resolved to see that the calendar served me. I would use this tool to help me manage my time, rather than let the tool dictate my every moment. So I sat down with the planner and reserved significant blocks of hours for novelizing. There: those hours were now spoken for. I’d dedicated them in ink. All other tasks must now defer to the primary importance of these working periods. If you’re hoping to generate ideas, you’ve got to make it clear to your own subconscious that you’re creating conditions to help the ideas to arrive.

The novelist Kazuo Ishiguro employs a useful working method whenever he comes to a critical stage in his writing. He lets it be known to friends and associates that he’s dedicated his time exclusively to the project at hand. He names the procedure A Crash. “I’m having A Crash,” he announces. He won’t be returning calls. He’ll be unavailable to discuss all matters save those relating to his work. And by simply giving his undertaking this formal designation, he finds that people are more inclined to understand and respect his aloofness. They forgive him their unreturned calls. “Oh, he’s having A Crash,” they say quietly, and smile.

3. Take a Walk

It’s not always useful to sit down at a desk and demand ideas of yourself. Creativity is an impish, testy thing. Sometimes, if mine suspects there’s too much weighing on its appearance, it refuses to show up. One of the best ways to get ideas flowing is to take a paradoxical approach: get your mind off the matter. Get outside of your house or office and outside of your head. But I’m not saying you ought to distract yourself with thoughts about other things. The idea is to try not to think at all. Take a walk. Breathe. Clear your mind by counting your steps or measuring your breath.

There’s a corollary to this point, which I’ve found extremely useful. It comes from Ernest Hemingway and has been cited fondly by many writers in interviews. It goes like this: In your non-working hours, make it a habit to train your thoughts away from the project at hand. Try to remember that this avoidance of thought is as much a discipline as the act of working steadily. Here’s how Hemingway put it in A Moveable Feast:

I learned not to think about anything I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.

And Hemingway’s last remark brings me to my fourth tip…

4. Read, or: Get Inspired

I don’t quite believe inspiration to be an airy and fickle cosmic messenger, as is commonly supposed. The way I see it, inspiration is an ever-existent thing. It surrounds each one of us all the time, in the fruits of other’s creativity, the works of other artists old and new. Inspiration is a kind of worldwide creative circuitry that anyone can tap into.

(Of course, the most powerful inspiration—that which produces work of blazing, timeless significance—truly is an almost mythological force. A winged, two-headed lion, maybe. A creature of great wildness and ferocity, not to be trapped. But while this kind of world-altering inspiration just might be a bit supernatural, after all, and surely can’t be corralled and domesticated, even it can be harnessed for a while.)

The best method I know for accessing writerly inspiration is to open and lean over the pages of a good book. And I think every field or discipline must have a counterpart to this action. So read, view, or listen to good work by dynamic people in your field. Try to understand just why these people’s achievements stir you as they do. What creative seed do they water inside you? How might that seed be brought to flower, and in what way will the resulting creation differ from or add to the inspiring achievements that preceded it?

In other words, pay attention to your rising voltage as you read. Isn’t that your own unique current, just waiting to be spliced into the global circuit of inspiration?

Here’s how Joseph Campbell talked about reading (more on this fellow soon as well):

Read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time…When you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he has done. Don’t say, ‘Oh, I want to know what So-and-so did’—and don’t bother at all with the bestseller list. Just read what this one author has to give you. And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. But when you go from one author to another, you may be able to tell us the date when each wrote such and such a poem—but he hasn’t said anything to you.

Try out each of these tips in turn. Or combine them for a powerful cumulative effect. And may you enjoy an embarrassing abundance of ideas!

You might also enjoy:

“The Lonely-Novelist’s Five-Point Productivity Plan”

“Daunting Task? Learn to Whip It”

“Understanding the World Through the Thomas Theorem“

Try as I might, I still spend too much time in front of the computer. I’m an Internet junkie. Even though most of what filters in each day is unimportant, it’s hard to resist “handling” it. E-mail is like fishing: you just might get a bite—or even catch a whopper.

Though 95% of what confronts us online is unnecessary, unimportant, irrelevant, or at most, entertaining, it somehow feels like work. So we “do” it.

Here’s the problem: Most of it’s not real work. It’s busywork, or make-work, or distracted play. It’s dependence on false urgency. How many professions really require one to sit in front of a computer all day long? Could any work posture be less creative, less inspiring, or more isolating?

Realizing something was fundamentally wrong, last month I decided to travel for eight days straight without once checking e-mail or doing any other computing. The experience convinced me that my premise of sitting down in front of a computer every morning with the intention of doing productive work is irretrievably broken. And if it’s broken for me, there’s a good chance it’s broken for millions of other so-called white collar workers.

The moment of clarity came on an Easter Sunday morning as I descended to the lobby of the Marriott Fairfield in Ann Arbor, Michigan. From a huge wall-mounted flat screen television, a commercial touting vitamins blared. This was followed by a continuous stream of embarrassing CNN sludge; uninspired attempts to create news “stories” by pitting personalities one against another.

No one else was in the lobby, and I wanted to read, so I looked for the television remote control, and finding none, asked the receptionist to mute this soul-damaging noise (I left out the “soul-damaging” part of the request).

Blessed silence. I read peacefully for a solid hour and a half, looking up occasionally at the soundless television screen to realize I was missing absolutely nothing of importance. Without sound the sludge was harmless.

At that moment in my computer-free week I suddenly understood the solution: Turn it off. Sitting in front of a PC to work now seemed as foolish as watching CNN in order to learn something important about the world.

I departed the lobby, and returning six hours later found the television sound still muted (it was, I choose to think, a demonstration that the absence of television audio improves the ambience of any room). Ads for the erectile dysfunction nostrum Cialys were alternating, somehow appropriately, with more CNN “news.”

What is a computer? For me, and for most regular schleps, it is primarily a recording device. We enter text, conduct research, revise text, manipulate spreadsheets, create presentations, update Web sites and blogs, write programs, execute designs, do accounting, and so forth.

But we’re basically creating files of things we’ve presumably thought about before sparking up our CPUs. After all, musicians do not wake up and hit the “record” button on their multitrack machines for six hours straight. They practice, compose, collaborate, and rehearse before arranging recordings. Should the less musical among us differ in how we approach our crafts?

Consider how one should arrange a work area. A woodworker’s shop has a bandsaw, drill press, and other specialized tools, carefully placed to maximize productivity and comfort. Similarly, computers should contain neatly arranged word processing, spreadsheet, and other programs.

But what craftsman would mix tools and games in his workspace? Who would place a television and magazine rack in the middle of his shop, install a foosball game between the drill press and lathe, move a pool table next to the bandsaw?

Yet the computer—the most important worktool of the twenty-first century—has become precisely that: a bottomless repository of time-wasting, thought-numbing activities and games, each eager to engage the easily-distracted mind in some trivial task, CNN screaming at us uninvited.

Check e-mail? Sure—it’ll only take a minute. Allow that Adobe update? Why not? While we’re at it, might as well peek in on the blog, read a little news, accept that Facebook invitation, forward that joke, monitor the ol’ portfolio …

The computer is a tool for fixing thoughts in digitized format (and for viewing others’ thoughts in digitized formats). As such, it hardly requires five or seven hours per day of our attention.

Isn’t it more reasonable—and more soul-affirming—to spend our hours in analog mode, thinking and talking and drawing and writing? Then, when we have a draft worth recording, to do so in the briefest possible time?

You may say “but I think better when I type.” I doubt it. You’re probably just more used to thinking while typing. You’ll probably accomplish more by exiting your cubicle or leaving the house.

Eight joyous days of setting not a single finger to keyboard taught me three lessons. Here they are, with resolutions derived therefrom (incidentally, I fully appreciate the irony of publishing this in a blog, and can only say it went through three paper drafts with manual redlining first, minimizing the number of pixels …er, viewed—in its production):

• The least creative, least productive, most isolating work posture is also the most familiar: facing a monitor astride a comfy office chair.

No more reflexively turning on the computer first thing every morning. That routine stopped April 1, 2008. I plan to spend less and less time at my computer.

• Thinking, planning, and drafting are the priority work tasks

Now, each day starts with a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and careful balancing of what’s important against what’s merely urgent. Thoughtfully, mindfully, I will carefully hand-draw, hand-letter paper drafts of each Next Step, my WIRU master list at hand. A cup of tea or coffee helps.

• Paper and pen—not PC—are the tools for the job

See that non-pixellized clipboard? Add paper and pen, in an offline environment that encourages fresh thinking—the library, a coffee shop—at the very least the dining room table. Somewhere without distractions (a wise man once advised that we should not read too much, lest we forget how to think for ourselves).

A mind at rest, a body at ease on the sofa. Creativity on, CPU off. Thoughts self-generated, not borrowed from others. Then, after confirming the Important and sketching drafts on paper—then and only then—will I reach around the wooden desk surface, reluctantly hit the CPU’s “on” button, activate that electronic wonderbox, and strive to record the useful.

See also:

“Happiness is Turning Off the Computer”

“Want to Achieve Your Goal? Avoid E-Mail!”

“The Four-Letter Question for 2008: WIRU“

These days, slowness bears a number of negative connotations. Our modern world’s industrialism, globalization, and high-tech, high-speed information systems have made the word “slow” virtually interchangeable with “unproductive,” “costly,” “out-of-date,” “useless,” “lazy,” “stupid,” “ineffectual,” or just plain “broken.”

But in recent years, the go-go-go modern lifestyle of fast food, fast connections, fast talk, fast cars, and fast money has inspired a swing of the cultural pendulum back toward the cultivation of more mindful habits in people’s personal lives. It seems we’re beginning to realize the costs of so much fastness — the damage it can do to our bodies, our minds, our spirits.

Wait a minute, we’re saying to ourselves. We’re human beings. Our work is important and so is our time, certainly, but what is that time really worth if we spend it at a blurring pace in hopes of packing every minute with profit or accomplishment? Is that any way to live? — letting time drain away so that you hardly notice it? No, we all require balance, rest, and peace of mind if we’re going to continue to be healthy, happy, and yes, productive citizens.

So we find certain cultural initiatives such as the Slow Food Movement emerging to new prominence. We see people stepping back to say, “The Internet is terrific and all, but we need to learn to unplug and take walk in the park, or sit down to talk face-to-face with a friend!”

Slowness, it turns out, is not so much a detriment as it is a fundamental aspect of leading a meaningful human life. Doesn’t the age-old impulse toward religion show us what an essential human impulse slowness is? We modern mortals, just like the generations before us, need to be re-set on a regular basis, reconditioned to the natural, non-mechanical pace of things. By practicing meditation or attending Mass or praying in the mosque or temple we gain perspective, we slow down, we breathe and return to the moment at hand. And it’s not just religion that does the trick. We walk in the woods, we ponder a work of art, we explore history, we write a poem or read one.

Speaking of poetry, here’s one on the subject of slowness which I particuarly like. Whenever I read “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke, I can practically feel the coils of my brain unwinding, the hammering of the clock growing fainter. Slowness sets in and everything around me seems to get a little bit clearer.

Do yourself a favor and read the following stanzas slowly. This isn’t the morning paper. Give each line your thought, rather than expecting the line’s thought to be given to you. If you’re able to, read the lines aloud. Each one deserves a breath — or two — of its own.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
(Theodore Roethke; 1953)

Carl Honore is the author of the book, In Praise of Slowness (2004). He’s got a lot of wonderful things to say about the value of slowing down and paying more attention. The video below captures a 20-minute talk he gave at the annual TED conference back in 2005. (TED, which stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design,” is a fascinating event geared around “inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers.” The TED website, which features many videos of these talks, is well worth exploring.)

I thought I’d let Mr. Honore conclude my Soul Shelter post this week. Give him a listen.

Warren Buffett is now the world’s richest man, according to the latest Forbes ranking. Worth some $62 billion, Buffett displaced Bill Gates after markets punished Microsoft for its baffling $44 billion bid to purchase Yahoo.

Let’s put $62 billion in perspective: Invested in treasuries at 2%, it’d throw off interest of $3.39 million per day. Just to remind ourselves, a billion is a thousand millions.

Warren Buffett knows how to build wealth, and while he was unavailable to share fortune-building tips with Soul Shelter readers today, my brother Charles, who attends Berkshire Hathaway events in Omaha each year, relayed this anecdote from Buffett’s 2006 shareholders’ meeting:

One shareholder asked a question along the lines of ‘how should I study investing in order to build wealth in my spare time?’

Buffett replied that, for most people, the bulk of their income is going to come from earning power in their chosen profession. Therefore, from the standpoint of building wealth, free time is better spent sharpening one’s professional skills rather than studying investing.

Coming from the world’s most successful investor, that’s powerful advice. Deep attention to one’s work surely is the path to fortune—and fulfillment—for most of us.

Still, can’t the world’s richest man offer some behind-the-scenes clues to riches? The Internet abounds with Warren Buffett quotes, but here’s a revealing look at the behavior of the man himself, again from brother Charles:

Sunday night we went to a shareholders’ party at Warren Buffett’s favorite steakhouse, a place called Gorat’s. I don’t know whether I can put this diplomatically, but I will bet that in Wayne and Oakland counties, Michigan, it is not possible today to find an establishment as déclassé and frozen in the 1950s as is Gorat’s.

While we were enjoying, or I should say, consuming, our overcooked meals, who should walk in but Bill Gates, who sat down three tables away. He was followed a few minutes later by Warren Buffet. The world’s two richest men soon seemed to be having the time of their lives there in Omaha, chowing down dreadful food (aka ‘The World’s Finest Steaks’ according to Gorat’s roadside sign.)

I told this story later that evening to a waiter at a cigar bar to which we’d retreated. ‘Warren Buffett!’ he said. ‘When he comes here, he tips a dollar for parking the car, and pays two dollars for a Scotch and water from the well. We ask him, does he want a particular Scotch? No, just the house brand.’

Frugality: A primary “secret” of the wealthy.

A few years back, I met Chris Flowers, one of the billionaires who appears on the Forbes list. My buddy and co-author Carl Kay arranged to have him serve as master of ceremonies for a talk I gave in New York about my first book.

Chris arrived at the venue about seven minutes before the event was to begin. We quickly reviewed logistics with the organizer, then went downstairs to begin the presentation.

The talk, about “cultural arbitrage” by foreign entrepreneurs in Japan, went well, and I was flattered when the billionaire emcee stayed around to chat for a few minutes afterwards. He told me he’d read portions of my book, where I’d written about his own cultural arbitrage in executing what remains one of the largest private equity deals in history.

As we parted, I asked whether I might contact one of his flunkies regarding participation in his upcoming fund.

“I don’t have flunkies,” he replied cheerfully. “Hiring flunkies means we make less money.” Then he offered his card.

Another secret worth remembering: No flunkies, even when you can afford them.

I haven’t met any more billionaires since that day, but I’m taking advice from those two: instead of fretting over my portfolio, I’m buckling down on improving my career prospects—and staying away from flunkies.

You may also enjoy:

“Changing Scenes with the Law of Requisite Variety”

“Recognizing the Opportunity Within”

“The Barn of Fortune? (Thoughts on Happiness and Financial Freedom)”