Scott Porad

In response to my Stop Seeking Happiness post, Joel Bush posted an excellent comment that referenced an article about the positive influence Marines’ boot camp has on its recruits.  (The article is absolutely worth reading, click here).

I really appreciate the excellent contribution to the post from Joel…the money line was this quote from the article:

Don’t pursue happiness; pursue excellence.

which is really just awesome.  Take a moment to meditate on that line and realize it’s power.

I saw Joel at Cheezburger Night at the Mariners last week, and since then I’ve been thinking about his comment.  As I’ve been considering this, what comes to my mind is substituting the word “excellence” for “creativity”.  I don’t mean creativity only like an art project, but rather creativity as the act of creating something.

I’m not saying the original quote is wrong or off-base.  In fact, they are not mutually exclusive.  I just realized that, for me, it is creativity that causes meaning and happiness.

Over the weekend I made a comment to Lisa that, given these economic times, I would feel safer if we had more money.  Don’t get me wrong, we’re not going to the poor house any time soon, but we still have to work for a living.  I would feel more safe if we had enough money so that we didn’t have to work, I said.

Regardless, even if I didn’t have to work, I would still probably keep doing what I’m doing.  It’s just too exciting to do otherwise.  But that wasn’t my point; I was just trying to express that I would feel more safe than I feel now.

“It’s interesting to me that you think money, and not people and relationships, will make you safe,” Lisa replied.

KAPOW!  Lisa’s response stunned me and she was absolutely right.  Given the worst-case scenario, we’d end up having to rely on friends and family for necessities.  In the event of that unlikely scenario, it will be the people and relationships that keep us safe.

After getting my head screwed on straight, I was reminded of Tara Hunt’s recent post about chicken soup:

…the soup metric is the number of people in your social network that you know would bring you soup if they knew you were sick and/or get your back in any other real friend way – to help you feel better OR help your career.

which after thinking about it, I realized was just another flavor of the Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans theory:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

And what’s common here is what Lisa so eloquently was able to make me see clearly: it is the people and relationships that will safeguard your your health, career, and life.

In my yard there are two beautiful, tall pine trees that drop what seem to be an infinite number of pine cones.  So, on Saturday I headed out with my 7-year-old son to rake them and, in the process, learned some things about web and software development.

The first thing to know is that we moved to this house last summer from a postage stamp sized yard in the city.  Until now my son didn’t have experience raking anything more than about 10 square feet of lawn.  As he got going with enthusiasm, he basically just was just moving the cones around, sloshing them to-and-fro.  It was clear that he needed a little coaching.

Lesson #1: The Master Pile

First, I explained to him that we needed to make one big pile…The Master Pile.  We would rake all the pine cones into this pile, then we’d pick up the pile and put it into the yard waste bin.  The point of this lesson was that we needed a plan as a foundation for our project.  The same thing goes for any web or software project—you need a plan, a roadmap, a guide.

This bit of guidance worked well because it directed his efforts in one direction, but there were still issues.  He was raking a little bit here, a little bit there, but it didn’t seem like anything was actually getting done.

Lesson #2: The Clean Area

After he mastered The Master Pile, I explained to pick one small section, no bigger than 3 or 4 feet square, and get that area completely raked until it was clean of pine cones.  That would be The Clean Area.

Once he did that, which only took a few moments, I asked if it felt good to see that there was one part of the yard complete.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Okay, well, now pick another few feet next to it and make it bigger.  Keep on trying to make your Clean Area bigger and bigger.”

The lesson here was that when working on a project, you need to feel progress through small successes.  Success feels good, so set yourself up to have lots of it, even if they’re small.  When you’re having success, you’ll be having fun and want to keep on going.  Success is a drug, it’s addictive, so organize your project to get the biggest high possible.

But, it was still a big job.  Just because we had a plan, and we were having little successes along the way, doesn’t mean that it didn’t feel overwhelming still.  There were easily over a thousand pine cones.  How would we ever get this job done?!

Lesson #3: Focus on Progress

Building on the notion that success begets success, I had to relieve the overwhelming burden of what seemed like endless raking.  To do this, I worked at framing the project in positive a positive way.

“Dad, we’re never going to finish this.  Look at how many are left!”

“Oh, sure we are.  Look at how big our Clean Area is.  Instead of thinking about how much raking we have left, focus instead on how big our Clean Area has become.  Don’t think about what’s left.  Think about making the Clean Area as big as possible and we’ll be done in no time.”

The lesson here is obvious: focus on your success and progress, instead of the mountain ahead.  In the software or web development world, this means actually keeping a list somewhere of all the things that have been accomplished.

This is, in fact, how we do it on my team: we have an entire wall devoted to listing out all the things we’ve achieved and it just keeps on getting bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where it now dwarfs the list of stuff that we need to do.

All that said, I had never planned on having our yard raking job turn into a learning experience this weekend, but it did which made the job even more fun.  As they say, “once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right”.

In a recent blog post, Erica O’Grady writes:

Anyone who has talked to me lately, knows that I’m OBSESSED with Happiness. What is it? What does it look like, taste like, feel like? How do we get it? How do we know when we have it? Is Happiness even possible?

and what came to mind when I read that I’m not sure Happiness is something we can obtain directly.  In other words, my sense (based on my experience) is that Happiness is a byproduct of other types of well-being.

To put in another way, there is a thing called Happiness out there in the world that exists.  I believe this.  However, I very much believe that if you are attempting to obtain Happiness directly that, by definition, you will not obtain it.  There is no possible way to obtain it directly and any attempts to obtain it will yield the opposite result.  Like Alice and the Red Queen, the faster you run the further away you will get from your destination.

So, earlier I said this weird phrase “type well-being”.  What is a type of well-being?  Social, Emotional, Mental, Physical — our whole selves are composed of these components.  The activities in our lives, including external factors, affect each and all of these components which, in turn, yield Happiness or lack thereof.

What might these affectations be?  Stimulation.  Meaning.  Engagement.  Love.  Or lack thereof for all of these.  This is, obviously, not a comprehensive list…just an illustration of what might influence or types of well-being in such a way that yields happiness.

Of course, all this is very abstract, so let’s bring it back down to the ground: if you’re seeking Happiness, stop.  Stop now, because you will not find it that way.  

Instead, go do something that may or may not stimulate your social-emotional-mental-or-physical well-being.  Exercise.  Read a book.  Call a friend and talk.  Something, anything, it almost doesn’t matter…do not be afraid that it might not be just the right thing…just pick the first thing that comes to mind and do it.

Then, when you’re done, ask yourself if you enjoyed it…did it make you happy?  If so, then do it again.  If not, then try something else.  It’s just that easy.