
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed - dsr12
http://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/
======
BSousa
Lately I've been thinking about this a lot.

I also took a break from corporate life for about 5 months now, and now trying
to get back into it. I'm actually content with what I have, give me my laptop
(which I already own) and my bookshelf (with probably more than 50 unread
books), as long as I have money for food and house/utilities, I'm actually
quite ok.

The problem arises when you are in a relationship and have a kid. It is really
hard to 'convince' people (including the wife) the baby doesn't need 10 pairs
of trousers or 50 plastic toys (He actually has a lot of hand me downs, and
all of his toys, maybe 20 if the many, are handmade wooden ones).

Also, that vacation the wife always dreamed, you can't really do that. Or she
wants a new fancy dress - nopes. Ohh the kid should go to private school
(while I'm not fond of it, looking at public schools in the area, maybe isn't
that bad of an idea), will the money be enough?

Yes, we can all live minimally, but we also have to agree, it maybe easier for
us 'techies' to do so as a laptop is usually hours of entertainment, but
trying this with a social life (girlfriend/friends/family) makes it really
hard.

All this to say, I'm really sad I'm giving up my free time to work 9-5 again,
but consulting isn't paying all the bills and allow me to provide a 'good'
life to my wife and kid.

~~~
dublinben
The key to maintaining a minimalist or anti-consumption lifestyle is to find a
partner who holds the same values, and not having children.

~~~
shaydoc
It's still possible to be minimalistic, with kids... Kids love nothing more
than spending time with their parents, and that is something today's western
world seems to infringe... If both parents are working long hours, what
happens to the kids, where is the time and love to nurture and educate them!

~~~
tspike
Absolutely true. Unfortunately, it's more expensive to have kids, which
inhibits the transition to a freer lifestyle.

~~~
9392732
It is a bit of a shame when those in society that have been well educated,
have invested heavily into themselves and have the most to pass on to their
children choose not to breed. Yet those that many would consider have the
least to pass on....

------
drags
_Unfortunately, this is close to impossible in my industry, and most others.
You work 40-plus hours or you work zero._

I've mentioned this before but my company hires Rails developers for 24hrs/wk.
Health insurance is provided and salary is proportional to full-time.

It's not for everyone, but it works well for us. Everyone's fresh and relaxed
when they come into work, and the free time is great for learning, side
projects, exercising, travel.

Anyway, we're actually hiring right now: if you're in the Bay Area and looking
shoot me an email.

~~~
Joeboy
Good for you. I'm neither in the Bay Area nor a Rails developer, but I really
wish I could find work like that.

~~~
cocoflunchy
Have you considered freelancing?

~~~
Joeboy
I contract, which means I get to work "as much as I want" over the longer
term, but it still means full time working for extended periods. It's not a
bad deal at all, but I'm starting to feel like I'd like something more stable.
I am hard to please.

~~~
jdotjdot
I did that for a while and had similar plusses and minuses, but the one thing
I still can't wrap my head around is insurance. What did you do about that?

~~~
Joeboy
In the UK I think most of us buy a professional / public indemnity bundle from
Hiscox, which costs a couple of hundred gbp or thereabouts. It's normally a
contractual obligation.

~~~
jdotjdot
Ah, well in the UK you have it much easier with the existence of the NHS,
whether or not it covers all of your needs. As I'm sure you know, in the US if
you don't have insurance, you don't really have much of anything--and due to
the tax advantage setup to get insurance through one's employer, self-employed
people get hit really hard with insurance.

------
crazygringo
> _But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of
> the amount of work people get done in eight hours... but because it makes
> for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay
> a lot more for convenience, gratification, ... We’ve been led into a culture
> that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence... Western
> economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very
> calculated manner on gratification, addiction..._

This makes it sound like there's some kind of a conspiracy, like robber barons
or The Man all got together to plan this out. It's a lot easier to invent
scapegoats like this, but that doesn't make it true.

> _Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much
> unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives? The
> economy would collapse and never recover._

Again, any kind of research to back up such a bold and incredibly
controversial statement? That's just unsubstantiated fluff, without
demonstrating any knowledge of actual economics.

The truth is much more prosaic. People buy what they want, and companies make
money doing their best to give it to them. In fact, we _celebrate_ companies
that do a better job at this, like Apple inventing the iPhone. People like
buying things, and decide on their own that they want to work harder to buy
those things.

Of course, most people don't have the degree of self-awareness or reflection
to realize what really makes them happy in the long-term -- but companies that
provide short-term gratification are under no obligation to educate their
consumers, and it's not like they have any better idea what makes you happier
long-term either, since everyone's different.

We have a 40-hour workweek because most people _prefer_ work twice as much and
be paid twice as much as a 20-hour workweek. Sure, there are people who would
prefer 20 hours and half (or less) salary, but they're in the vast minority,
so that's not what companies build their workforces around.

To rebut the title: yes, your lifestyle has already been "designed", but it
isn't intelligent design. No _person_ designed it. It's just what cultural
evolution has arrived at so far.

~~~
firefoxman1
A great Steve Jobs quote relevant to your first point:

 _A lot of times we think “Why is the television programming so bad? Why are
television shows so demeaning, so poor?” The first thought that occurs to you
is “Well, there is a conspiracy: the networks are feeding us this slop because
its cheap to produce. [...] but the truth of the matter, if you study it in
any depth, is that networks absolutely want to give people what they want so
that they will watch the shows. If people wanted something different, they
would get it. And the truth of the matter is that the shows that are on
television, are on television because that’s what people want. [...] And
that’s far more depressing than a conspiracy. Conspiracies are much more fun
than the truth of the matter, which is that the vast majority of the public
are pretty mindless most of the time._

There's no conspiracy, just mindlessness. It's just how society has evolved
over time.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Used to be legitimate news reporters getting substantial stories. Turned into
pretty faces spouting fatuous nonsense.

Why did news teams last so long? Not because the television public wouldn't
have watched crap - there was crap available, and they watched it. (Candid
Camera was a sort of first-generation realitiy TV show).

It lasted because the guys running the business respected the news teams - for
their power over politics, their ability to turn over rocks and reveal dirt,
whatever.

At some point (writers' strike?) content became a race to the bottom, which is
about where we sit now. This is a new phenomenon, not some natural ecosystem
response.

------
moxie
It's interesting that the author uses the word "lifestyle," because the
popular etymology of the word actually _comes from marketing research_.

The word itself was popularized relatively recently (only a generation ago):
[http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lifestyle&y...](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lifestyle&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

It was driven largely by VALS, research done by Stanford Research Institute on
new marketing techniques, which has been partially credited for transforming
advertising into what we know today: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALS>

The Adam Curtis film "Century Of The Self" has an excellent exploration of the
term "lifestyle" and the context it came from.

I think it's interesting that we commonly use the word "lifestyle" to talk
about breaking out of a consumer-driven mindset, when the language itself was
developed precisely for marketing to that mindset.

~~~
narag
I didn't know that. I first read it here, in HN (not an English speaker) in
two senses: "lifestyle business" and as a synonim for something a little less
strong than "vice" or "crime": drinking, overeating, "soft" drugs,
workaholism...

The funny thing is that it seems to conflate the same slight deviation from
the average in the good direction: exercise, healthy food...

------
rayiner
I'm always a bit surprised that people are surprised to discover this. You
know the experiments where monkeys will do things for grapes or tokens? That,
writ large, is human society. The feelings we get making and spending money,
and the feelings we get comparing our ability to do that to other people,
satisfies a deep biological need in our primate selves.

~~~
pm90
I think you've hit on an important point here which the article has missed.
Peer-pressure is responsible for most of the unwanted consumption that the
author mentions. If we lived in a society where reading and debating on books
was considered an accepted and revered social activity, then we would have
many more people reading books than (say) watching sports.

I don't really blame most people for having that kind of feeling (we are
humans after all) but it does help to sometimes take a step back and ask
ourselves why we live our life the way we do.

Ben Franklin used that kind of peer-pressure to learn new skills so it can be
used for doing good too

------
whichdan
I can certainly relate to this. Living in Boston, it's very easy to drop $50++
just walking around the city for an afternoon, then to come home and spend
$100 for half a week's worth of groceries at Whole Foods.

I definitely wish each raise came with the option to work less.. 10% more
money or 10% less work. When you consider that, on paper, a 20% pay cut could
mean a 3-day weekend, it makes a lot of sense until you bring it up in
conversation..

~~~
ErikAugust
Trader Joe's.

Used to do Shaw's + co-ops when I lived in Vermont. That was around $160 a
week.

Now, in Boston, I pay about $100 total at Trader Joe's (for more groceries).
40% decrease - around $3120 per year in savings.

Random note: you can live in Boston for about the same cost as Burlington,
Vermont. Something is crazy about that.

~~~
whichdan
I love Trader Joe's, but the only one I know of is downtown. That means 20
minutes extra each way, plus a little under $4 for the T. Whole Foods is a
quick ten minute walk.

~~~
jplewicke
There's also two in Cambridge (one by Fresh Pond and one on Mem Drive near the
BU bridge) and one in Coolidge Corner in Brookline.

------
zxcvvcxz
These type of posts bother me because they play the blame game without
substantiating arguments or offering useful alternatives. This paragraph in
particular was annoying:

"We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired,
hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment,
and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue
wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like
something is still missing."

To start, this almost implies that there's a room full of Old Powerful White
Men (let's be honest, that's what you imagine) figuring out how to raise
little consumer sheep. Like it's a big conspiracy or something. Even worse,
the government must be in on it, otherwise I wouldn't have to work 8 hours and
feel tired all the time! Well, part of this 'conspiracy' is called
'marketing', and if you have an issue with that, then please address it with a
logical argument. I think most of HN is fine with marketing, otherwise nobody
would get to witness these new startups.

Regarding the 8 hour workday: this is an economics argument more than
anything. Again, either address it properly or leave it be. What would be nice
would be an alternative suggestion. However, I don't think travelling at large
with a MBP sipping mojitos on the beach and skyping clients is something
society at large can start doing. But the author probably can. (There's a bit
of an interesting aside - should intelligence and technical skills afford you
more freedom?)

To wrap up, what really bothers me with that paragraph, and this post in
general, is this: it's being implied that personal happiness and fulfillment
(so nothing "feels missing") is not a personal responsibility. What? Let's
look at that last sentence again:

"We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing."

Just because consumerism isn't "filling your inner void" doesn't mean it
caused it. That's not to advocate for or against consumerism, just to suggest
that there are other alternatives to these problems. And it's your own
responsibility to go find them.

All that being said, I found the post interesting enough to think about and
reply to, so thanks for writing it.

~~~
Evgeny
_To start, this almost implies that there's a room full of Old Powerful White
Men (let's be honest, that's what you imagine) figuring out how to raise
little consumer sheep._

I've never been in such a meeting, but what would you imagine is discussed
when sales strategies are devised?

\- How can we drive our customers to buy more of our products? How can we sell
more to existing customers, how can we attract more new ones? Marketing,
advertising campaigns showing how happy our customers are?

or

\- Do our customers really need that much of our products? Should we educate
them on the fact that excess usage of our products is unhealthy? Should we
make sure they don't hurt their budgets or rake credit card debt?

What I'm saying is that it's not a conspiracy, but the "hand of the market"
does not care if you are better off buying something or not. McDonalds
wouldn't care if you ever eat anything but fries, Johnson & Johnson wouldn't
care if you wash your hands obsessively 25 times per hour, and no home
electronics provider would care if you hoard their products in stacks in your
basement. The only thing they care about is to sell as much as possible, and
ideally make you come back for more.

------
mgkimsal
"Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much
unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives?

The economy would collapse and never recover."

I used to think this, but I don't believe that so much any more. It would take
a hit, but would adjust to people spending more time and money on things that
mattered more to them - the things that take more money to do, vs the $5-$10
impulse purchases on things of limited value.

What things might those be? Travel? More energy efficient housing/appliances?
More experience-oriented stuff in general (time with family/friends/etc)

~~~
Moto7451
I've taught myself to reduce the "things" in my life (impulse items and
expensive distraction "things" like cable subscriptions) and to do a lot more
cooking at home (fun and a big savings in and of itself). I'd say that at the
end of the month I'm likely spending a little less than I would if I were a
huge impulse purchaser/had to have every little subscription possible, but the
things -> experiences trade has a far better ROI. Here are the differences
I've found over the past year and a half:

1\. I am traveling more. Unlimited vacation + not insisting on having multiple
$x00 payments (like a fancy new car) means a $300 round trip ticket isn't even
something I have to plan to purchase. I'm averaging a trip by plane every
three months and a smaller weekend road trip once per month.

My buddy has a big fancy truck and he pays the equivalent of two round trip
tickets per month but his average round trip commute is about 2 miles. I'll
never understand this (if for no other reason than my love of the bicycle).

2\. When I go to dinner I eat at better (healthier) restaurants. I've never
been a picky eater but I've definitely found myself turning my nose up at food
I would have enjoyed six months ago. I have probably only eaten at fast food
places maybe 7 times in that period. This so far has been my favorite plus.

3\. When I do buy things, I have no reason not to buy the nicer of two items.

4\. I can afford a gym membership and personal training sessions. Actually
where I go it pretty much works out that if you brown bag your lunch every day
you can afford the membership + 3 sessions per week.

5\. My apartment looks huge without all the clutter. My aunt lives in the same
building and has the same apartment layout but you'd assume mine was at least
50% larger.

~~~
gte910h
Once you declutter, I really suggest painting if you are allowed to. It is
really nice to have painted rooms, and you can take the small "apparent size"
hit

~~~
Moto7451
Thankfully the preceding tenant did that. Having something besides white
primer walls is a big plus.

------
gte910h
The REAL issue with this is the high cost of N employees vs just hour per
employee. Training, health insurance, etc

If we could drop it so everyone worked 30 hours but worked 75% of what they do
today, many would jump at it in the higher earning echelons.

Per worker costs strongly incentivise long weeks.

~~~
hrabago
Perhaps the overhead could be considered as part of the overall costs. I would
still appreciate the choice of having to work 75% of the time for 65% pay if I
understood that the difference was due to health coverage and other benefits.
In other words, the transparency would help. I strongly believe I'd still sign
up for it.

~~~
gte910h
I'd just prefer to see medical benefits untie from employers (not for moral,
but for reducing worker overhead reasons).

Additionally, under the current sphere 'part time' workers don't usually get
company benefits.

------
sliverstorm
As far as 'where the money goes', I can't speak for everyone but in my case I
have asked myself this question a number of times and I think the answer is
pretty simple.

Firstly, I have more past-times than I did when I was broke. This is partly
because I can afford to, and partly because I have more time. (When I was
broke, I was a busy student)

Secondly, I no longer stop and think as much about goods quality. When I had
no money, it made sense to spend ridiculous amounts of time carefully
selecting goods to maximize "bang-for-buck". Now that my time is more
valuable, I will more often opt for the best quality item.

The same carries over to food as well. Not a foodie, but eating healthy is
simply more expensive than ramen.

------
eCa
> The economy would collapse and never recover.

That is exactly what I said (at my 40-hour/week job) would happen if everyone
were like me.

More seriously, I've come to the same conclusion. Our entire society is built
on the consumption of junk. Expensive gadgets with a built-in expiration date
(either by breaking easily or technology deprecation).

~~~
einhverfr
I think the key problem is that such consumption isn't sustainable. Sooner or
later you run into the fact that we can't keep running on this treadmill and
pushing the costs on down.

It seems to me that the call to action should be building a new economy, one
of free individuals guided by a truly free market, because as the article
demonstrates the market is hardly free at the moment.

~~~
scarecrowbob
Is it possible that, by definition, a "market" has controls on it that make
the term "free mark" an oxymoron?

~~~
einhverfr
I think the question of a free market is a question of who has power in the
market. We'd say a communist "marketplace" isn't free because the power is
concentrated in the hands of the state, but the same must surely be true in a
marketplace run by a non-state monopoly. I would define a marketplace as free
if and only if the primary power rests with the purchasers.

------
iuguy
At Mandalorian we generally have to work the standard work week when doing
stuff for clients, but beyond that people manage their own time, often
spending bits of time here or there to do the school run, take their kids to
the doctors or as happened for the last two weeks, one of our consultants
taking half days off every day while they get their new house sorted out.

I find that a results oriented work environment seems to make for happier
employees.

------
keithpeter
Nicely written piece. I like the progression from the author's observation
about his backpacking trip; the contrast with his regained 9 to 5 day, and the
realisation that consumption is driving the whole whirlygig. Reminded me of
Tom Hodgkinson's _The Idler_ <http://idler.co.uk/magazine/>

" _It's amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes if twenty minutes
is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way
longer._ "

I've just relearned that lesson; we have come through a very busy time at work
and things just had to get done in minutes, right _now_. It worked and the sky
did not fall.

~~~
hrabago
It isn't always sustainable, though. You do this long enough and a lot of
people would start burning out. Certainly there are people who would thrive in
an ongoing high-stress environment, but not everyone is built like that, or
would want to stay in such a situation for long.

The occasional case of high stress, high productivity periods can be good for
that feeling of accomplishment once the deadline is met. It's like the
climactic ending of an action movie - a lot of activity leading up to a
desired goal. However once the next chapter begins, you want to go back to a
sense of normalcy, when people can recover and just relish the recent
accomplishment.

~~~
keithpeter
Oh, yes, I agree completely, there is a need for peaks and troughs. What I
learned last week however is that certain fairly mundane documentation and
planning tasks can actually be completed in _much_ less time than I have
usually allocated to them (the domain is not IT or computing by the way).

------
thruflo
So why don't we work less? Is it really because we want more stuff? Or is it
driven by social competition, desire to move up maslow's heirarchy, ...?

I know I will be happier if I work less. But I don't.

~~~
kisielk
Well, it's hard to find a job that's <40 hours a week for one.

~~~
lilsunnybee
Next to impossible if you're looking for benefits too, such as health
insurance, vacation time, and sick leave.

------
sonnyg
What was old is new again :) - In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell
<http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html>

------
marknutter
Yet there are those of us who enjoy our jobs and don't mind spending 40 hours
a week doing something fulfilling, and who look forward to exercising and
don't look at it like a chore, or who take great pleasure in saving money and
being frugal.

~~~
scribu
Yes, and that's great, but it doesn't invalidate the general trend.

~~~
marknutter
And how sure are we it's a general trend? Are there any numbers anybody can
point to?

~~~
scribu
Plenty of studies on job satisfaction exist. I just googled "job satisfaction
trends" and got various studies, and this article from 2010:

"Americans' job satisfaction falls to record low"
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-01-05-jo...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-01-05-job-
satisfaction-use_N.htm)

------
iuguy
Incidentally the article references a Book and Documentary both called "The
Corporation" by Joel Bakan. The book[1] is an excellent read and the
documentary[2] is also worth a watch, free on archive.org.

[1] - [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit-
Pro...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit-Profit-
Power/dp/1845291743/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361117603&sr=1-1)

[2] - <http://archive.org/details/The_Corporation_>

------
kevinpet
I'm always skeptical of arguments that assume massive implicit cartels. "the
8-hour workday is too profitable for big business ... because it makes for
such a purchase-happy public". Maybe, but if I can really get happier, more
productive workers by letting them work 9-4, I don't care whether they are
being good little consumers in their off hours. A business's employees make up
a very small fraction of their customers.

------
rdudekul
"We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired,
hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment,
and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue
wanting things we don’t have."

Almost all of us are sheep and have a herd mentality. This makes it easy for
big businesses and even government to sway our sentiments to manipulate us.
From the education system to work place to media, everything is designed
around big businesses generate revenues by pushing items we do not REALLY
need. Material comforts and sensory pleasures do not fulfill anyone for long.
How do we realize what we want will not truly satisfy us? How do we break out
of this?

The hard way is to discover the source of satisfaction lies within, through
meditation, questioning and experimentation. When we discover our true calling
and use our talents to serve all selflessly (as much as possible), we can get
a glimpse of true happiness. Till then we cannot help but be manipulated by
society in its current form.

~~~
lilsunnybee
Most of the world's population is low wage workers who don't _have_ any extra
for mindless consumption. Somehow they are able to get by without these
comforts, and don't even need to meditate.

The real problem here is the yuppie lifestyle. Just think if all of those
wasted financial resources could actually go to fund something important,
rather than mindless waste. Keeping people exhausted and feeling they are
entitled contributes greatly to the problem.

~~~
GFischer
I'm sorry to say, even low wage workers WANT the "mindless consumption"
extras.

The doorman at my apartment here in Uruguay (who makes about U$ 1.000 / month)
has just spent about a month's wages on some high-tech cell phone with Android
(I think it's a Galaxy Note 2). He has a wife and child to feed.

The number of people living in hovels (they're called "cantegril" here in
Uruguay and "villa miseria" in Argentina and "favela" in Brazil) that have LCD
TVs is staggering.

There's a subculture that values Nike shoes and steals to get them.

------
moultano
Does anyone have statistics on the breakdown of expenses for the average
household, or within different income levels? I don't think we can really
discuss this materially without some real stats. My hunch is that the budget
of most families is dominated by food, housing, and transportation.

------
mark_l_watson
Great article. Some old ideas, but worth carefully exploring.

A huge understatement, but right on: "Here in the West, a lifestyle of
unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the
public by big business."

My wife and I talk about this all the time, especially in the context of TV
commercials.

BTW, on the subject of 40 hour work weeks. I am in my early 60s and I have
worked full time for a very small fraction of my life. Even when working for
large companies in an office environment, I was just about always able to
negotiate working 32 hours Tuesday-Friday. Three day weekends every week
allowed me to write a lot of books and spend lots of time outdoors.

------
tunnuz
I have been talking about this with a friend recently, but the author managed
to put this down with much better words. Great reading.

------
natex
Possibly too much traffic right now.

Here's Google's cache (text-only).

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.rap...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-
lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/&hl=en&tbo=d&strip=1)

------
usaar333
After reading a post like this, I feel fortunate to live in a place where
3-bedroom houses go for $800,000. When someone is paying ~$175/day just for
housing, all of the "unnecessary fluff" really are a drop in the bucket.

------
blissofbeing
Site seems down. Anyone have a cache?

~~~
franciscoap
When this happens, just search google for cache:[url]

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.r...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.raptitude.com%2F2010%2F07%2Fyour-
lifestyle-has-already-been-designed%2F)

------
nchase
mirror?

