When I moved into my new house last December, I was delighted. It’s a beautiful house overlooking the sea, walking distance away from office, in the costliest residential address in India. In fact, it’s such a lovely house that it was featured in a Mid-Day story on cool bachelor pads.
It would have been easy for me to look at the house as a symbol of how far I had come in life, especially in the context of where I had started from.
Instead, I remembered this paragraph from page 186 of Po Bronson’s life-changing book What Should I Do with My Life?, in which “boom wrangler” Heidi Olson explains her wanderlust —
I decided to go to Oxford for a year, because, well, it was Oxford. I told the other women at work, and one said, ‘I wish I could just up and go to Oxford.’ So I asked, ‘Why don’t you?’ She said, ‘I would, but I bought a couch.’ I always remembered that moment, and I never wanted to be that woman. I never wanted to be trapped by my past, my belongings, my commitments.
I first heard about Patricia Martin and her book RenGen (Renaissance Generation) while I was listening to Susan Bratton’s Dishy Mix, one of my favorite podcasts.
The basic premise of RenGen is that we are about to see a cultural movement that is similar in scope and scale to the Renaissance. This movement will be spearheaded by a sophisticated and demanding group of ‘cultural consumers’ who are expressing themselves creatively and organizing themselves into communities using the powerful tools provided by social media. To succeed in this context, brands will need to transform big ideas into reality (idea brands), build compassionate relationships (compassion brands), provide the tools to remove anxiety (anxiety brands), fuse opposites into a holistic collage and provide authentic experiences.
Now, Patricia is the founder and president of LitLamp Communications Group, which specializes in building brands through art sponsorships, so it’s easy to dismiss RenGen as a rather sophisticated sales brochure for her agency.
However, even if Patricia’s case for a cultural renaissance is a little overstated, her observations on the trends that are reshaping consumption are totally spot on. These are the same trends that led me towards my off consumption experiment. Specifically, these three trends are especially worth watching out for –
Filed in Research
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Also tagged Authenticity, Creative Class, Cultural Consumer, Dishy Mix, LitLamp Communications Group, New Rich, Patricia Martin, Personalization, Renaissance Generation, RenGen, Richard Florida, Simplicity, Social Media, Susan Bratton
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Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
I spent last Sunday at Crossword book store in Kemps Corner, reading Timothy Ferris’s ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’.
Given Tim’s ‘live it up’ image, I expected it to be a book about having more; instead, it turned out to be a book about finding happiness in having less.
The basic premise of the book is that we have a choice between work and leisure. An income of $100000 a year means very different things when it requires a 60 hour work week and a 40 hour work week. At more than 60 hours a week, typical of Asia and America, it inevitably results in stress-related health disorders. At less than 40 hours a week, typical of Europe, it results in a happy work-life balance. At 4 hours a week, typical of Tim, it means nirvana.
Tim is not for or against consumption. Instead, he differentiates between three types of consumption — spending money to own things, spending money to enjoy experiences, and spending money to free up time for the experiences. Tim believes that having new experiences is the key to happiness, that owning things distracts us from the pursuits of new experiences, and that time and not money is the limiting factor in having experiences. Most of us work too long, own too many things, and enjoy too few experiences. Tim’s mantra is to work as little as possible, own as little as possible and free up all your time and money for enjoying experiences.