Chip Conley on embracing midlife

I’m not quite sure when I started to use the term midlife in association with, well, my own life, but I think it was during my late 40s. At the time, it did make me feel older to concede that I had entered this stage. Now, however, having entered the heart of my 60s, I’m wondering how much longer I can claim to be in this relatively youthful category.

Well, my concerns are now somewhat assuaged by entrepreneur and author Chip Conley, who suggests that midlife is a multi-stage journey that “may last from 35 to 75.” This broader chronological framing of midlife is just one interesting piece of his new book, Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age (Little, Brown Spark, 2024). I recommend it heartily, though with a quibble or two.

Conley pulls together a lot of aspects about how we address aging, starting with a look at life expectancy figures and suggesting that at 50 years old, someone could literally be at their midlife point. He encourages us to look at this as a time of growth, purpose, and fulfillment rather than as one marked by steady decline. This includes becoming comfortable in our own skin, redefining our relationship with work, letting go of unhealthy emotional baggage and ties, seeking out meaningful associations and activities, and basically becoming our best selves.

The book mixes the author’s personal anecdotes, summaries of research on aging and lifespan development (he’s done his homework), and a wide variety of other voices. On the latter, if authors such as Brené Brown, Joseph Campbell, Arthur C. Brooks, and Viktor Frankl sound familiar, then you’ll be in comfortable territory. Overall, it’s an easy and thought provoking read.

My quibbles pertain mainly to this genre of writing generally. While Conley has faced his share of personal challenges, he and others who write about life stages and aging from a personal development perspective tend to have financial resources and strong networks. There is, frankly, an upper middle class lean to these introspective looks at life, which makes books such as this more useful to those who have some degree of personal control over their choices and financial flexibility.

That said, Conley isn’t limiting his messaging to those with lots of time and money. His Modern Elder Academy, for example, is offering an online course that includes a copy of Learning to Love Midlife for $49 (link here). 

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By the way, if you’re looking for a more intellectual take on evaluating your life, then I’m happy to recommend the second edition of Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be (Eerdmans, 2020), edited by Mark R. Schwehn and Dorothy C. Bass of Valparaiso University, where I earned my bachelor’s degree many years ago. It’s an anthology of excerpted texts drawn from literature, public affairs, and philosophy, built around the theme captured by the title. Although written with undergraduate humanities seminars in mind, it’s a great volume for adults engaging in midlife contemplations consistent with Chip Conley’s book above.

Ikigai: It’s not just for middle-aged searchers

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Ikigai, according to Wikipedia, “is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living.” It is most commonly explained by invoking some version of the diagram reproduced above. The common center of all four circles is considered to be the state of ikigai.

Back in 2017, I wrote about ikigai in a post discussing personal satisfaction in one’s vocation or avocation. I’ve continued to see references to ikigai in various news features, often in the context of assessing one’s life at middle age.

Last year, I decided to add a session on ikigai to my law and psychology courses at Suffolk University Law School, which introduce students to the intersection of legal and psychological insights through the lens of therapeutic jurisprudence. “TJ,” as it is often tagged, is an interdisciplinary school of legal thought and practice that examines the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic properties of laws, legal systems, and legal institutions. 

Honestly, I wasn’t all that certain that a discussion around ikigai would resonate with a group of law students, most of whom are well short of their middle years. To my pleasant surprise, however, these discussions have been lively, thoughtful, and interactive. And, in a way that is capturing a recurring Generation Z theme, many students have folded into ikigai the importance of work-life balance. In their student evaluations, some have identified the ikigai discussion as being among their favorite parts of the course.

Sometimes an engaging, relatable concept captured in a simple diagram can yield interesting exchanges and valuable insights. I think that the ikigai diagram serves that role. My revised impression of ikigai is that it prompts important discussions and contemplations at many stages of one’s life. And, with some minor hacks and tweaking — such as taking into account vital uncompensated tasks such as parenting and caregiving, as well as meaningful avocations and hobbies — it has something to offer just about everyone.

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Note: For an introduction to the field of therapeutic jurisprudence, see my 2021 law review article, “Teaching Therapeutic Jurisprudence,” published in the University of Baltimore Law Review; go here for a freely downloadable pdf.)

Bronnie Ware: “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” (and what she’s learned since then)

For years, palliative care provider Bronnie Ware helped people who were nearing the end of their life’s journeys. Her work included conversations with them about what regrets they had carried into their later years. These shared epiphanies led Ware to write a blog post that went viral and an eventual book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing (2012). Here are the top five regrets, as drawn from Ware’s conversations:

1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”;
2. “I wish I didn’t work so hard”;
3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings”;
4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends”; and,
5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

She explains each of these points in greater detail in this blog post. Her book, which I highly recommend, delves even deeper in this topic.

I wrote about Ware’s work back in 2011. Since then, I’ve traveled from my early 50s to my late 50s, and — my oh my — her words resonate even more strongly with me today.

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Five years after publishing her book, she shared on her blog “Five Things I Have Learned Since Five Regrets” (link here):

1. “Courage is the greatest tool for bringing our dreams into reality”;
2. “Surrender is much more effective than striving or forcing”;
3. “Our dreams require us to triumph over upper-limits”;
4. “Self-care is crucial for an authentic life”; and,
5. “Real life connections are the essence of joy.”

Her full blog piece fleshes out her points and is definitely worth a read.

Great life lessons here. Gifts from those who have preceded us.

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Cross-posted with my “Musings of a Gen Joneser” personal blog.

A simple question to ponder

I’m reading The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life (2016) by historian Michael Puett (Harvard) and journalist Christine Gross-Loh. The book is an outgrowth of Dr. Puett’s wildly popular undergraduate course on Chinese philosophy, which Gross-Loh wrote about for The Atlantic in 2013 (link here). In touting his course, Puett promises that “This course will change your life,” and apparently the students are buying into the claim.

The book starts us with Confucius. In contrast to philosophers who “jump right in with big questions” such as “Do we have free will? and “What is the meaning of life?,” Confucius “asked this fundamental and deceptively profound question”:

How are you living your life on a daily basis?

It’s a question that can take you very, very deep. I’ve been pondering it since reading the passage over the weekend, and I’m far from done.

Puett and Gross-Loh go on to suggest that this inquiry can lead us to change how we live and act, built on the assumption that we are not destined to be stuck in place. 

The Path is one of those short (200 pp.), profound-sounding, easy-to-read books that makes for a popular graduation gift. However, I think it resonates even more strongly with those of us who have been around the block a few times.

Of course, positive individual change is not always so simple as wishing or allowing for it to occur. If, for example, someone has been subjected to severe abuse, the trauma from that experience can have serious impacts on mental and physical health and personal behavior. Nevertheless, I submit that this simple inquiry can be a pathway towards positive change in our lives. In fact, it may be especially enlightening for those who are dealing with significant challenges and who want to make positive transitions in their lives.

So, once again, ask yourself:

How are you living your life on a daily basis?

On “workism” and American attitudes toward work

A couple of days ago, I posted on Facebook that I had managed to crank out a 30-page draft of an article, citing roughly 75 sources, in four days. Although I was happy with the draft when I submitted it for possible publication, upon rereading it I quickly saw its rough edges. Nevertheless, some of my Facebook pals gave me kudos for having hunkered down and completed the job, and I have to say that I was giving myself a pat on the back for having pulled it off.

But today I read this piece by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic, “Workism Is Making America Miserable” (link here) and I had to wonder if it was speaking to me:

The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.

…The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.

What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.

OK, so some might understandably say that “workism” is merely a repackaged way of saying workaholic. But Thompson is taking the latter notion a step further. He’s basically giving social class and (male) gendered angles to this deep, sometimes obsessive quest to work. He confesses that he is a “workist” whose personal identity “is so bound up in my job, my sense of accomplishment, and my feeling of productivity,” yet he also realizes that this isn’t good for him or for society. In fact, he makes suggestions for public policy reform that combat workism. (He shares plenty of details in the full article, which I heartily recommend.)

I am very grateful for the work I get to do. In terms of my work as a professor, with the exception of grading exams (a necessary evil) and faculty meetings (ditto, sometimes minus “necessary”), it’s a wonderful job. Teaching, scholarship, and service — the troika that make up a professor’s core job duties — are very rewarding activities. But geez, I saw a lot of myself in that article. It’s not unusual for me to work seven days a week.

However, I break with the workism theme here: While Thompson says that workism has replaced faith for some, I don’t necessarily look at it that way. Although my religious beliefs are a work-in-progress — I believe in a God whose truth is somewhere in the intersection of the great faith traditions and various notions of spirituality — that hodgepodge of values helps to infuse my work with meaning. There are many others with much more defined religious beliefs who see their work as a personal ministry. And for those who see their work as an opportunity to create positive change, it’s not about making more money. 

That said, all work and no play can be an unhealthy recipe. I’m trying to do better on that elusive work-life balance thing. One of my hobbies is singing. For years I’ve taken a weekly singing workshop at a local adult education center. I’ve also become a regular at a local karaoke studio. I love the Great American Songbook — Sinatra, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Rodgers & Hammerstein, and some of the classic singer-songwriters are among my favorites. In fact, I’ll be crooning a few tunes at karaoke this weekend.

Ruminating, problem solving, and coping in the midst of work abuse

In an article recently published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (abstract here), researchers Abbas Firoozabadi, Sjir Uitdewilligen, and Fred R. H. Zijlstra pose their key question in the title: “Should you switch off or stay engaged? The consequences of thinking about work on the trajectory of psychological well-being over time.”

Basically, they wanted to explore how taking our jobs home with us affects psychological well-being, especially when it comes to how we deal with work-related problems. Their focus was the distinction between ruminating (in this context, repeatedly thinking about the negative emotional aspects of a work experience) vs. problem-solving (analyzing potential responses and solutions). As some readers can already see, this study has significant implications for those experiencing forms of bullying, mobbing, and harassment at work.

Study details and findings

As explained in the article abstract, the study was conducted with “123 participants with full-time and primarily mentally demanding jobs,” using the following methodology:

We conducted a 3-wave longitudinal study with a time lag of 6 months between each wave. At the first measurement moment, participants filled out a survey over 5 consecutive working days assessing work-related affective rumination and problem-solving pondering during evenings. Exhaustion and health complaints were assessed at the first measurement moment as well as after 6 and 12 months.

The researchers found:

The results showed that affective rumination is a significant predictor of increase in exhaustion over time. Problem-solving pondering was not found to be a significant predictor of change in psychological well-being over time. These findings demonstrate that work-related rumination during evenings may lead to health problems over time depending on the type of rumination. It suggests that unlike affective rumination, problem-solving pondering during evenings has no influence on psychological well-being over time.

Bottom line, slightly boiled down: Ruminating about work challenges will likely have negative health effects, while thinking about work challenges in problem-solving mode is a typically a break-even proposition in terms of health.

Applied to workplace bullying, mobbing, and harassment

Over the past 20 years, I’ve heard or read hundreds of stories about severe work abuse. I’ve concluded that for targeted individuals, ruminating over these terrible experiences is one of the most common and debilitating thought patterns. It is a form of ongoing re-traumatization.

Researchers Firoozabadi, Uitdewilligen, and Zijlstra were not specifically studying the psychological health effects of bullying-related behaviors, but their research has significant implications for those who are experiencing work abuse. Their study results dovetail with what many have observed or experienced: Ruminating about workplace mistreatment can create and exacerbate health problems, while operating in problem-solving mode is less likely to have such impacts. In fact, the latter may even improve psychological well-being by injecting needed doses of hope and empowerment.

If one could easily flip the switch from rumination to problem-solving, well then, a lot of problems would be solved, right?! However, in many cases of work abuse, it’s more complicated than that, especially when psychological trauma enters the picture. All too often, trauma and rumination go hand-in-hand. Targets of work abuse often ruminate about what happened and how it has affected them. It’s harder for them to shift the focus toward potential responses and solutions.

This may very well be a neurological effect, not necessarily a personality trait. As research has found, traumatic experiences can cause the side of the brain governing emotions (the so-called right side) to go into hyper-active mode, while the side of the brain governing logic, communication, and decision making (the so-called left side) shuts down. As I’ve written before, this understanding helps to explain why many targets of work abuse ruminate about the experience of that abuse and its effects on their emotions, while finding it difficult to develop an ordered narrative of relevant events and engage in problem-solving.

(As a side note, I’ll offer some unscientific, indirect evidence of this dynamic, drawn from writing this blog since 2008: Blog posts on workplace bullying that validate the experiences of being abused at work tend to attract a lot more search engine hits and Facebook “likes” than those that are problem-solving or solution-oriented in nature.)

The ruins of rumination — and potential coping responses

In a 2010 Psychology Today blog post, Dr. Edward Selby provides a useful primer on rumination and its effects:

Rumination refers to the tendency to repetitively think about the causes, situational factors, and consequences of one’s negative emotional experience (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). Basically, rumination means that you continuously think about the various aspects of situations that are upsetting.

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What’s so bad about rumination though, it’s all about problem solving right? While it’s true that problem solving and planning are essential to overcoming a difficult problem, people who ruminate tend to take these activities too far and for too long. . . . Sometimes people will ruminate about the problem so much so that they never even develop a solution to the problem.

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The research is extremely consistent. People who ruminate are much more likely to develop problems with depression and anxiety, and those problems are hard to overcome for someone who fails to change ruminative thought patterns.

Fortunately Dr. Selby suggests how people break out of their cycles of rumination. He strongly recommends pursuing a genuinely enjoyable, distracting activity:

So how do you overcome rumination? Well have you ever heard the phrase, “get your mind off of the problem?” The answer is simple, to overcome rumination you need to engage in some kind of activity that fully occupies your mind and prevents your thoughts from drifting back to the problem.

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There are many activities that can be used to distract from rumination, and the best one to use is one that is personal for you. For example, some good activities include reading a book, playing a game, exercising, talking to a friend (but not about the problem!), or watching a movie. Of course you are only limited by your creativity and access to different activities. Importantly, you have to enjoy the behavior for it to work.

Losing one’s self in something good

Selby’s advice is congruent with pieces that I’ve written in this blog about the importance of immersive hobbies and pastimes, especially for those who are dealing with toxic work situations. In a 2015 blog post, “Targets of workplace bullying: Pursuing healthy, immersive activities away from the job,” I wrote:

For some, delving into a positive, engaging, and immersive activity may serve as a healthy alternative to ruminating over a terrible work situation. This may be in the form of a hobby, a personal project, an avocation, volunteer work, or creating a side business.

. . . Therapy or counseling, and mindfulness activities such as yoga or meditation, may be helpful for coping with bullying at work. In addition, consider the possibility of a meaningful, life-affirming endeavor in which you can lose yourself in a good way.

I emphasize words such as meaningful and immersive. I am well aware that this is not as simple as picking out a hobby or pastime from some random list. (In this context, “Why don’t you try collecting coins?” is about as helpful as “You need to get over it.”) Rather, it’s about connecting to a positive activity decoupled from work. It will not address the bullying itself, but it may well provide a safe and enjoyable space away from it.

In that post, I told a story about Dr. Shelley Lane, who was experiencing workplace bullying at a college where she had previously worked:

When Dr. Shelley Lane was experiencing severe bullying at the community college where she worked and recovering from foot surgery that limited her mobility, she retrieved the personal journals she wrote during a formative year spent studying abroad as a young undergraduate and turned them into a book project.

In the Preface to her eventually published study abroad memoir, A Stirling Diary: An Intercultural Story of Communication, Connection, and Coming-Of-Age (2010), she wrote:

Soon thereafter fate provided me with two reasons why I should read them [her personal journals] again: a new president at the community college where I worked who made Attila the Hun appear weak and timid, and foot surgery that had me in crutches for four months. I finally returned to the journals to keep my mind away from the workplace bully and to forget that I wasn’t easily mobile.

In Dr. Lane’s case, there were good outcomes on multiple levels. First, she left that college for a better job at a better school. Second, as I wrote last year, she would later author a book, “Understanding Incivility: Why Are They So Rude?,” for which I was privileged to write the Foreword.

Not the last word, but hopefully of help

Dear readers, this obviously isn’t the last word on rumination and how to deal with it, but I hope it is of assistance to those who are experiencing it. Moving from rumination to problem-solving can be an important step toward healing and recovery. May it be so for you if you are in this difficult place.

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Additional relevant posts

Coping with workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse: Letting go of the story (but not completely) (2016)

The importance of hobbies and avocations during stressful and anxious times (2016)

Helping workplace bullying targets get beyond rumination (2015)

Post-traumatic embitterment disorder as a consequence of workplace bullying (2015)

Themes of work and employment in “The Americans”

FX’s “The Americans,” the one-hour drama series featuring a husband-and-wife team as deep-cover Soviet spies operating out of a Washington D.C. suburb during the 1980s, came to the close of its superb six-year run last Wednesday.

If you’re unfamiliar with “The Americans,” here’s the brief rundown: On the surface, Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) Jennings are juggling everyday suburban life, raising their two kids (Paige and Henry), and managing a travel agency. However, they are really Soviet plants, deeply involved in espionage and intelligence activities, which often require them to assume new identities in order to gather information and fulfill mission directives. To make things more complicated, their new neighbor across the street is Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI agent who does intelligence work. The relationships between the Jennings and Beeman families help to frame the entire series.

Indeed, “The Americans” is very much about relationships, however fraught with Cold War intrigue. And as I’ve written before, it’s also a show about managing one’s work life, under the most trying of circumstances. I’d like to build on that theme here, while keeping spoilers down to a minimum!

Raising their games

As I recall, early reviewers regarded “The Americans” as a very good cable drama, but most stopped short of tagging it as brilliant. However, it would finish as one of the most widely hailed series on TV today. Some pundits are rightly calling it one of the best ever on the small screen.

As I see it, this evolution in the show’s reviews goes much beyond its discovery by a more appreciative audience. Rather, from season to season we become witnesses to everyone raising their games, including the cast, directors, producers, writers, and crew. This final season, in particular, had an edge-of-your-seat genius to it. For some time it was known that this would be the show’s last run, and the ability to work within that timeframe paid off completely.

Call this a lesson in how to go from good to great.

Creating art

Last week’s episode ranks as one of the best series finales ever — perhaps the best in terms of beautifully resolving (or not resolving) multiple story arcs — and I’m guessing that it will be studied in acting and film school classes for years to come.

In particular, the critics have already gone gaga over the parking garage face-off scene featuring Philip, Elizabeth, Paige, and Stan. Yeah, it was that good. If there’s such a thing as an Emmy award for a single scene, then this gets it, hands down.

As for Rhys, Russell, and Emmerich, please give them Emmys for their overall performances this season.

Love at work

Romance between co-workers can be full of risks, challenges, and dramas. So it was with Rhys and Russell, on screen and off. Soviet intelligence authorities paired Philip and Elizabeth as a couple before they were planted in the U.S.; this was an arranged marriage purely for purposes of spycraft. They grew into love during the course of their working relationship.

Offscreen, Rhys and Russell became a couple too, and they remain together. This is a common occurrence in Hollywood, but one made more interesting because of the evolving relationship between Philip and Elizabeth.

From nostalgia to immersion

Especially for late Boomers and early Gen Xers, “The Americans” grabs us from the start by playing to our nostalgia for the 80s. You have the 80s music, clothing, hairdos, cars, gadgetry, and all that stuff.

To me it seemed a little over the top at first. But whether it was a crass strategy to reel us in via constant product placement or a deliberate use of commercial and cultural markers to establish the historical context, it did draw us back to those years. Once there, the nostalgic button-pushing would soon give way to the rich, ongoing drama and developing storylines. 

Masks at work

“The Americans” is about putting on masks at work, literally and figuratively. Here’s what I wrote about that aspect of the show four years ago:

The other day, it hit me that “The Americans” is, at least in part, about putting on masks at work. Elizabeth and Philip must wear these masks almost all the time, even with their kids.

In their work, they take on different roles, identities, and personalities. . . . Elizabeth and Philip have no purely authentic selves in terms of their structured lives.

Granted, most of us cannot relate to the lives of deep cover spies. But many of us have been in jobs where we couldn’t quite be ourselves. In fact, most jobs require putting parts of our personalities on the shelf. And in the cases of jobs done largely for a paycheck, big chunks of our personalities may be buried while at work.

At the same time, we may be expected to show qualities of friendliness, courtesy, or deference, even when we don’t honestly feel them. Organizational psychologists call this “emotional labor,” and it can be taxing.

Suffice it to say that Philip and Elizabeth expended more emotional labor than any ten regular people could provide in their aggregate lifetimes!

Moral and ethical decision making

With the Jennings, especially ice-in-her-veins Elizabeth, the moral and ethical code boils down easily to the ends justifying the means. The possibility of violence, of course, is an ongoing presence in many of the show’s story arcs, and the show has piled up a lot of dead bodies, often with ruthless dispatch.  But what sets “The Americans” apart are the many ruses, lies, and deceptions that constitute enormous interpersonal abuses, all in the name of duty. Good, decent people are swept into the web and changed forever.

Still, is this really any different from a well-paid CEO saying that we regretfully had to cut jobs of longtime employees to ensure the financial health of the company, when in reality the company simply chose to put shareholder earnings first? And don’t virulent displays of workplace bullying, mobbing, gaslighting, and harassment mirror the heartless psychological cruelties of Philip and Elizabeth?

Work-life balance

Folks, if you want a prime example of the obliteration of work-life balance, then Elizabeth and Philip serve it up grandly! Put simply, they have no balance. Almost everything is about duty and responsibility. For both, the job often comes first, followed by parenting. I don’t know if I can recall a single genuine vacation or trip, or even a movie and dinner, that didn’t involve their spy work.

Of course, the opportunity to make a difference sometimes requires personal sacrifices, including the loss of what we might call free time. With the Jennings, however, the sacrifices increasingly reach into their souls. 

Institutions as employers

Throughout the series, the relationships of individuals to larger institutions are significant.

Elizabeth and Philip seemingly have leeway in how they fulfill their orders, but they and other Soviet operatives must answer to their superiors in Moscow. In the land of the free, Stan, too, has wiggle room as an agent, but he must answer to the vertical, bureaucratic structure of the FBI.

Ultimately we have two sharply contrasting political ideologies, but when it comes to employment, top-down power relationships often prevail under both.

Politics and work

The Jennings are driven by political ideology, especially Elizabeth, whose commitment to the Soviet ideal remains strong through the heart of the series. Philip’s wavering has consequences for his work and their relationship.

In America, the business, public, and non-profit sectors certainly have their own true believers who bring a sense of mission to their jobs, grounded in ideological commitments. “The Americans” invites us to think hard about how rigid political and social beliefs can inform what we do for living, how we go about it, and the limitations of working in this mode.

Start at the beginning

If you haven’t tried “The Americans,” then the only way to do so is from the beginning. To be honest, I wasn’t immediately addicted to this show. As I suggested above, I think it started out as a very good drama before it grew into something spectacular. It took me a while to get sucked into its world, but once that happened, I was hooked for good.

Given that television binge-watching tastes are so individual, I won’t presume that “The Americans” is for all readers here. But if you want to give it a try, then it’s available on various streaming platforms and season DVDs, and I’m sure a series box set is in the works, too.

 

Periodic reminder: Hobbies are good for us

The other day, a dear friend told me in a matter-of-fact way that I’m a workaholic. She’s right, I know, which may render me the wrong writer to extol the virtues of having an engaging hobby. Nevertheless, I’ve been doing so for many years on this blog (e.g., here, here, and here) and elsewhere.

Now comes a thought-provoking New York Times piece by Jaya Saxena, “The Case for Having a Hobby,” which explores our relationship with hobbies in a world where so many people feel pressured to be continually productive, and where so many others don’t have the luxury of time or resources to easily allow for a hobby. The article examines the impact of an achievement-oriented culture that undermines the pursuit of hobbies for pleasure. Ultimately, Saxena suggests doing “something you’re genuinely interested in and want to do just for the sake of doing it.”

Despite said workaholic tendencies, I’ve made conscious efforts to carve out time for hobbies. I thought I’d use this end-of-school-year juncture to once again share a few of my pastimes over the years:

A voice made for photographs?

For many years I’ve been taking a weekly voice class at the Boston Center for Adult Education. Here’s what I wrote about the experience a couple of years ago:

Every Tuesday, our class meets for a 90-minute session, led by Jane (a Juilliard-trained vocalist and instructor) and Maria (a classically trained piano accompanist). The format is simple. After group warm-ups, each student performs a song of their choosing and is coached before the group. Yup, each of us does a solo number every week!

…I select mostly numbers from the Great American Songbook — the stuff of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Sinatra, etc. — but others perform contemporary pop, classic rock, folk, country, religious…you name it.

…On occasion we take our voices outside of the class to perform. Our group has gone to several local open mic cabaret nights, and we’ve done karaoke a few times as well.

…I often remark that the class and the people in it have saved me thousands of dollars in therapy costs. For me singing class is a form of mindfulness, an opportunity to be in the moment with music I enjoy, buoyed by terrific people who make it a supportive and fun experience. I count many of these folks as good friends.

Yeah, that’s a tornado dropping behind me

Since my boyhood days of growing up in northwest Indiana, I’ve been deeply fascinated by tornadoes. Ten years ago, I signed up for a storm chase tour hosted by Tempest Tours, a Texas-based company that takes its guests into bad weather throughout America’s heartland, led by expert storm chasers. In a remarkable stroke of lucky timing, within a few hours of leaving our base hotel in Oklahoma, we intercepted a single supercell that spawned multiple tornadoes throughout the day. It was an awe-inspiring experience, and I’ve gone on four more tours since then.

I’ve collected just about everything except heads

As a kid I was drawn to collecting. Stamps, coins, baseball cards, and more. Limited funds prevented me from accumulating too much stuff — a blessing for a pack rat like me, believe me — but I’ve still managed to hang on to some of my favorite collectibles. And although I don’t have time to collect stamps actively, I’m still drawn to their beauty and the historical stories they often tell. On occasion I’ll pick up an interesting stamp set or illustrated cover.

Replaying sports history with the APBA baseball simulation game

I’ve been a sports fan since boyhood days as well, and one manifestation of that fandom is playing and collecting tabletop sports simulation games that use statistics-based game models to recreate actual or imagined pro and college sports teams and play games with them. These are the analog precursors to popular sports video games like John Madden Football. Pictured above are player performance cards from one of the legendary tabletop baseball games, APBA Baseball. If you roll a 66 (6 on both 6-sided die), you’re almost guaranteed that the player hits a home run!

Heaven is time to read books

Of course, there are books. In my case, lots of them. Hundreds and hundreds. This, too, goes back to childhood, when books were both a joy and a refuge. I think the same could be said of them today.

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Looking back at what I just wrote, I wonder how much our penchant for hobbies has roots in our younger days. In my case, every one of these hobbies can be traced to my childhood. Perhaps some enterprising graduate student has already written a thesis on the linkages between childhood fascinations and adult hobbies, but for now I’ll simply acknowledge the connection for me. In addition, I hope that readers will pursue or discover hobbies that give them an enjoyable respite from life’s immediate challenges.

Personal crises and work life

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Amy Gallo provides a very good advice piece on how to think through options when a personal crisis is affecting your work life. The crisis may be a family member with an illness, your own health situation, a divorce, or any other significant external stressor. Gallo’s full article goes into helpful detail, explaining key advice and discussing several case examples. She summarizes her major points this way:

Do:

• Determine what type of support you need — at home and at work.
• Tell your colleagues what’s happening so that they feel compassion for your situation.
• Make clear, specific requests of your coworkers and boss so that they know how they can help you.

Don’t:

• Feel you have to tell everyone directly — it’s OK to ask close colleagues to explain to others what’s going on.
• Share every detail of your situation; tell coworkers only the details that are pertinent to them.
• Assume that it will be painful to continue working during this time — sometimes going to the office can be a comfort.

Employee benefits

I’m going to put on my employment lawyer hat and underscore the importance of understanding your benefit options.

First, know your employee benefits. They may include, among other things, vacation and sick days, personal leave, and perhaps even pay advances or long-term disability coverage.

Second, if the situation involves your own health, you may have a right to a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and/or an equivalent state law.

Third, if your health or that of an immediate family member is involved, consider the option of unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Some employers and a few jurisdictions may offer paid medical leave.

Words of caution

Finally, if you happen to be working for a not-so-great employer, be careful about disclosures and requests involving personal crises — notwithstanding Amy Gallo’s advice. Unfortunately, there are all too many stories of unscrupulous employers using an employee’s personal crisis as a way of pushing them out of the workplace. Maybe they don’t want to provide medical leave or a reasonable accommodation. Maybe they’re looking for the right excuse to get rid of an otherwise productive worker. As many of those who have experienced workplace bullying can attest, some abusive managers are very, very good at sniffing out vulnerability.

If you think your situation may be putting your job at risk, that is the time to seek the advice of a lawyer who specializes in representing employees. For more on securing an employment attorney, see my article posted earlier this year, “Bad work situations: When do you need an employment lawyer?“

When boss behaviors fall short of bullying, but still prompt an “oy”

If we define workplace bullying as intentional, often repeated, verbal or non-verbal mistreatment of employee that causes mental or physical harm, then it follows that a lot of not-so-great behaviors fall short of that threshold. Bullying, as I’ve come to think of it, is targeted and usually malicious in nature. “Bad bossism,” on the other hand, is simply that.

I just read Adam Bryant’s New York Times interview of Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini, and I’m glad that I don’t work for her. (Barstool Sports, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a “bro” site featuring lots of sports talk and photos of scantily clad co-eds.) While nothing in the interview necessarily cries out “bullying boss,” Nardini’s punishing management practices and assessments of humanity aren’t for everyone: 

1. She’ll run people into the ground in order to build a better Barstool.

I think I’m punishing. I have a large ability to grind. If I want something or if I believe in something or I think something should be done better, I will push and push until I exhaust people.

I really value stamina and drive. I am bad with stagnation and complacency. It’s not just about winning, but did we do everything possible to make something happen?

2. That includes being available 24/7, and she’s going to test that during your interview phase.

If you’re in the process of interviewing with us, I’ll text you about something at 9 p.m. or 11 a.m. on a Sunday just to see how fast you’ll respond.

[In response to the followup question of permissible response time] Within three hours. It’s not that I’m going to bug you all weekend if you work for me, but I want you to be responsive. I think about work all the time. Other people don’t have to be working all the time, but I want people who are also always thinking.

3. She’s got a single-lens, 90/10 view of humanity.

I had to learn, and I’m still learning, about the kinds of people on my team who can run in my system, which is pretty hard-driving.

…There were people who weren’t into it, and it took me a long time to learn that there are people who I call “90 percent players” and there are “10 percent players.”

The 90 percent players are superdependable. They work hard every day, and they’re amenable to whatever you want to do.

And the 10 percent people may not be great 90 percent of the time, but 10 percent of the time they’re genius, and they’re genius at the moment that matters.

It took me a long time to learn that there’s a beauty and a gift in the 10 percent people, and you have to be able to unlock it.

Oy, indeed.

It would’ve been great had interviewer Bryant followed up with a question about work-life balance, but we’ll have to imagine Nardini’s response. (I’d predict some variation on “work hard, play hard.”)

To be fair, Nardini is no different than any other CEO who expects their underlings to demonstrate fulsome devotion to their jobs. She’s merely among the latest to regard her management philosophy as worth bragging about. Of course, we’re used to hearing this stuff from certain male CEOs, so perhaps it’s a sign of ironic, umm, progress, that a female CEO is spouting more of the same.