The Early Retirement Dilemma in One Sentence

Barbara Ehrenbeck in her book Nickel and Dimed (a good read) raises the question of why she gave up her job and proceeds to answers it herself.

I treasure the gloriously autonomous, if not always well paid, writing life.

It can't be stated more succinctly than that.
Choose only one: a) Autonomy or b) a good salary.

Happiness is the Goal - Hsieh

The other day, my wife looked at my bedside stack of books and said, "You are reading a lot of books on happiness."

Indeed, I find it difficult to resist books, videos and articles on happiness. This graphic, by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com points to the reason. As Tony reminds us, if you ask someone why they want to do something, and whatever their answer, if you follow it up again by asking 'why' and keep doing that recursively, the answer always leads to "happiness." Ultimately, we want to be happy because we want to be happy.


He has this graphic in his book "Delivering Happiness" which is a very good book on customer service and on having the right set of values, and is a fun read. If you haven't read or heard much about Zappos.com's culture, you should read this book.

Not profits, but Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose - Dan Pink

Here's a great video that Dan Pink has put up. The animation is engaging, but the core message is even better, the one he has espoused in his book "Drive."

We are not all mere "profit-maximizers," but we all want three other things:
Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose.

Take a look at the video below.

RSA Animate -- Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

As If I were a Great Man…

While reading Michener’s autobiography The World Is My Home, the following two paragraphs resonated.

[[Michener resolves how he will live the rest of his life]] But as the stars came out and I could see the low mountains I had escaped, I swore: ‘I’m going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man.’ And despite the terrible braggadocio of those words, I understood precisely what I meant: ‘I’m going to erase envy and cheap thoughts. I’m going to concentrate my life on the biggest ideals and ideas I can handle. I’m going to associate myself with people who know more than I do. I’m going to tackle objectives of moment.’

[[Michener listens to his inner voice]] I heard no voices other than the inward ones that warned me that I had come to the end of the line in the direction I had been heading and that I sorely required a new path. I had observed that certain men and women lived as if they had shorn away the inconsequentials and reserved their energies for serious matters, and I decided to pattern my life after theirs.

Timid variations

In the same vein as my previous post, here’s something I found in Paul Theroux’ book “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.” Again, it reminded me of how I was starting to feel at times about my day job towards the end.

“I can tell that I am growing old,” says the narrator in Borges’s story “The Congress.” One unmistakable sign is the fact that I find novelty neither interesting nor surprising, perhaps because I see nothing essentially new in it – it’s little more than timid variations on what’s already been.”

Goals that didn't bring happiness

This morning, I read something that the famed Japanese author, Haruki Murakami said. He was referring to the time in the 90’s when Japan (he felt) sort of lost its way after dominating the world market with cameras, cars, and TV sets. Referring to the Japanese people’s beliefs as a whole, he said:

“But hard work didn’t bring us to a better place. We found that money is not the answer. We had our goals. We achieved them, but the achievement didn’t bring us happiness.”

I read that and thought it was perfect. If anyone asked me why I wasn’t working anymore, I could paraphrase that.