2: Control: Have Your Happiness And Eat It Too

Thomas Sowell has said, "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs." This seems to support the idea behind "work-life balance." You’re told to choose either a great career and sacrifice your life (or vice versa), or balance the two and settle for only a good career and good life.

Thomas Sowell is right but the conversation about work-life balance is wrong. You can have your happiness and eat it, too.

The idea that we must choose one at the cost of the other is a false dichotomy. We are not constrained by the options presented to us. A successful work life and fulfilled life are not mutually exclusive.

The unfortunate reality of today is that most young people strive for work-life balance and end up complacent at work and unfulfilled in their home life. Dissatisfaction at work is on the rise. Depression and anxiety levels have never been higher.

Wage Slaves: Race Against the Clock

Why does almost everyone you know work a "9-5"? (Alexa, play “9-5” by Dolly Parton). Of all those people, how many are fulfilled in their daily life? Probably not many. In fact, this viral tweet would likely resonate with them. Maybe it does for you too.

It wasn't always this way. Prior to the early part of the 20th Century, American production was carried out by families. Most typically, family farms where the whole family contributed their labor so the farm could operate. For the ~25% of the population not working on a farm, most worked in family businesses —shopkeeper, shoemaker, doctor, carpenter etc. Like farms, these businesses were usually handed down from generation to generation. It wasn't until the middle part of the 20th Century that wage labor became the dominant form of work in America.⁽¹⁾  It wasn’t an easy life but it was one that came with total freedom and control. This changed as the primary decision maker in many Americans’ lives became their boss or manager.

The resulting culture of wage work has left most workers unfulfilled and going through the motions of everyday life. The W2 employee becomes comfortable & complacent — handcuffed by a paycheck that arrives every two weeks — despite being in a deteriorating position.

Wage work (whether salaried or not) is an employee selling their time. And time, like all other valuable resources, is scarce. Everyday we all have a little less. As the supply of time decreases (we get older), the price paid for that time (wage) should increase proportionately. Yet it rarely ever does. The wage worker's only way out of this death spiral is to tuck away enough money over the 40-50 years of work. Then hopefully regain control of their time for the last 20 years (retirement).

What Is The Path Out?

Control. An internal locus of control - the belief that one's own actions and decisions primarily determine their outcomes - is a crucial first step to getting out of the time-scarcity death spiral.

Angus Campbell, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, studied and wrote extensively on what makes people happy. His book, The Sense of Wellbeing in America, draws a common thread across income groups, geography, and education:

So it starts with control. Regain control: taking ownership over one's own actions and accepting full responsibility for the consequences. Then, marvel at the possibilities.

Some standouts from the content I've consumed the past two weeks:

• Troubled, a memoir by Rob Henderson

  • The book follows the author through a brutal childhood. First growing up in foster care, then in a poor & broken adopted family. Henderson eventually joins the Air Force and makes his way to Yale, then Oxford. All after an adolescence filled with drug abuse, crime, and abandonment.

  • “I’ve come to believe that upward social mobility shouldn’t be our priority as a society. Rather, upward mobility should be the side effect of far more important things: family, stability, and emotional security for children. Even if upward mobility were the primary goal, a safe and secure family would help achieve it more than anything else. Conventional badges of success do not repair the effects of a volatile upbringing.”

• Dune Part II

  • No spoilers here. Great movie for those interested in sci-fi, action, and large-scale cinematographic productions

• "Google's Culture of Fear" - Pirate Wires

  • In the wake of the Gemini AI release fiasco, the article details the deteriorating ability of Google to operate — let alone innovate — due to a culture of safetyism.

  • “Google is now facing the classic Innovator’s Dilemma, in which the development of a new and important technology well within its capability undermines its present business model”

• Intellectual Seat Belts - Kyle Harrison

  • Somer interesting ideas on seat belts and the virtue of being wrong

  • “People use establishment or in-group thinking as their “intellectual seat-belt,” which makes them feel safe enough to just believe something without evaluating it themselves.”

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Sources:

(1) Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, https://users.pop.umn.edu/~ruggl001/Articles/PPP.pdf

(2) Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel