The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption

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Some books force you to drop whatever you are doing, find the nearest mirror, look yourself in the eye and ask difficult questions of yourself. ‘What Should I Do with My Life?’ by Po Bronson is one such book.

The first time I read it, more than a year back, I ended up weeping in public at Istanbul airport.

The second time I read it, almost six months back, I decided to start searching for something I could devote my life to.

When I moved into my new house last December, I thought of an excerpt from the book and promised myself that I won’t let my lovely house trap me into a life of complacent comfort.

When I spent a weekend, three months back, reading Judith Levine’s ‘Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping’ and decided to go off consumption for a year, it was another excerpt from ‘What Should I Do with My Life?’ that helped me make the decision –

Shouldn’t I make money first — to fund my dream? The notion that there’s an order to your working life is an almost classic assumption: Pay your dues, and then tend to your dream. I expected to find numerous examples of the truth of this path. But I didn’t find any.

Sure, I found tons of rich guys who were now giving a lot away to charity or who had bought an island. I found plenty of people who had found something meaningful and original to do after making their money. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the garden-variety fantasy: Put your calling in a lockbox, go out and make a ton of money, and then come back to the lockbox to pick up your calling where you left it.

It turns out that having the financial independence to walk away rarely triggers people to do just that. The reality is, making money is such hard work that it changes you. It takes twice as long as anyone plans for. It requires more sacrifices than anyone expects. You become so emotionally invested in that world — and psychologically adapted to it — that you don’t really want to ditch it.

I met many people who had left the money behind. But having “enough” didn’t trigger the change. It had to get personal: Something had to happen such as divorce, the death of a parent, or the recognition that the long hours were hurting one’s children.

The ruling assumption is that money is the shortest route to freedom. Absurdly, that strategy is cast as the “practical approach.” But in truth, the opposite is true. The shortest route to the good life involves building the confidence that you can live happily within your means (whatever the means provided by the choices that are truly acceptable to you turn out to be). It’s scary to imagine living on less. But embracing your dreams is surprisingly liberating. Instilled with a sense of purpose, your spending habits naturally reorganize, because you discover that you need less.

This is an extremely threatening conclusion. It suggests that the vast majority of us aren’t just putting our dreams on ice — we’re killing them.

In less than two months, as I pack my life in a backpack, ‘What Should I Do with My Life?’ will be very much in my mind, and also in that backpack.