The Abundant Life
Thomas Barden
Research Fellow at Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management
The Abundant Life
By Thomas J. Barden
According to reports from the Associated Press, Americans are unhappy. More specifically, they’re the unhappiest they’ve been in nearly 50 years. Drawing on nearly a half-century of research conducted by the General Social Survey, a dismal picture is drawn — more than ever, the nation is plagued by gloom.?
In the more immediate past, events unprecedented in our lifetime have exacerbated this trend: a global pandemic, which limited our human interaction, threatened our economic prosperity, and presented us with deep questions about our own mortality; civil strife, fueled by various disagreements and divisions, which strained our civic relationships and peace; international conflict, which poses a truly existential threat to world governance. From such upheaval, it is not surprising that our economy is undergoing what many now call “The Great Resignation,” as people of all ages and backgrounds seek something better in their work.?
Such a desire is not new for any of us, but perhaps it has been especially keen these past years. How can we, within our small sphere of influence, find the good life we so desire against a backdrop of such a world?
Strategies for An Abundant Life
Decades of psychological, sociological, and management research have been poured into understanding motivation, happiness, and meaning. While many of these principles have entered the public sphere, becoming mainstream and being widely adopted to the benefit of their adherents, still many more have yet to leave the “ivory tower” of academia.?
Just over a decade ago, Dr. Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School made waves with his publication of his now-famous article How Will You Measure Your Life?. This work, a culmination of his decades of teaching, management research, and personal community service, has since been an inspiration for millions around the globe. A few years later, his bestselling book of the same name widened his audience even further. His work focused on several of those powerful principles of happiness which can do the greatest good.
Those unsung principles can be summarized in the following questions:
My intention in this article is to articulate and expand upon these principles for two main reasons: First, so that you might apply them and enjoy the consequences in your own life; Second, so that you might use your knowledge of these things to assist and support all those within your sphere of influence. Whether you be a new hire, a team lead, or a CEO, you can make a difference in the lives of those with whom you work. In the words of Dr. Christensen, “Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.”
Finding Meaning
In recent decades, theories of motivation and meaning in work have enjoyed an unprecedented amount of attention and scrutiny. Management and psychology researchers, attempting to understand what truly makes employees tick, have poured themselves into this work.?
One of the foremost and highly influential among them is Dr. Frederick Herzberg, an eminent psychologist and theorist. Though his initial research was published and began circulating in the late 1960s, his ideas continue to be shared widely and are still prominently published in Harvard Business Review.?
When speaking about that which brings true happiness in our careers, Dr. Herzberg asserts that the most powerful motivators are neither money nor external factors. As shown in Exhibit 1, his extensive quantitative evidence indicates that job satisfaction is rarely, if ever, dependent on such influences. Rather, happiness is intrinsically tied to the opportunity to grow in responsibilities, learn, contribute to the lives of others, and then be recognized for all such achievements.?
When evaluating one’s career for these opportunities, it’s important to know that “grow[ing] in responsibilities” does not mean that one has received an increased workload. Such an increase, rather than?
Source: Herzberg, Harvard Business Review 2003
improving productivity and generating meaning in one’s work, can diminish and strain the enthusiasm of even the best of us. In Dr. Herzberg’s own words, “Job enrichment provides the opportunity for the employee's psychological growth, while job enlargement merely makes a job structurally bigger… Horizontal job loading (as opposed to vertical loading, or providing motivator factors), have been the problem of earlier job enlargement programs. Job loading merely enlarges the meaninglessness of the job.” In other words, an increasing workload does not a meaningful career make.
Seek out positions that will allow you, instead, to take on new and original tasks. Find work that helps you to grow, exercise a new degree of personal autonomy, and receive meaningful recognition when you perform well. Doing so will allow you to flourish, rather than slog, through the decades of your career.
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Family, Purpose, and Long-term Investments
Decades of psychological research have shown that of all life factors, the quality of one’s familial relationships most powerfully and consistently predicts well-being. Thus those who make little effort to preserve and improve these relationships truly take their life in their hands.
Doubtless, few if any of them set out with that end in mind. Their woe is a result of poor planning - a misidentification of and/or departure from the true purpose of their lives.?
A decent executive will tell you that a firm is only as powerful as its strategy. Resources, opportunities, capital, etc are ineffective and underutilized if they are not applied to a cohesive plan and held to a certain standard.
In other words, if a company’s resource allocation process is not properly managed, what emerges can differ greatly from what management intended. Because companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments towards initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, companies often shortchange investments that are crucial to their long-term goals and aspirations.
Like an effective business strategy, a defined purpose for our lives will guide us toward investing our time in projects that will yield the largest and most significant dividends. These dividends, rather than consisting of temporary pleasures or external validations, should be based on our deepest moral and philosophical commitments.
To develop an effective strategy and properly identify our life’s purpose, time must be side aside for that endeavor. You may have to sacrifice an hour a day you might have used otherwise, but the investment will be well worth it. In describing the sacrifices he made to pursue purpose - rather than ambition - driven endeavors during his education, Dr. Clayton Christensen has said, “I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned.”
Consider then, what you hope for out of life. Which of these aspirations, should they never come to fruition, would you feel the loss of most keenly??
Most people, when they ponder these questions, would speak about relationships with others, rather than any personal vendetta or achievement. However, with increasing frequency, respectable and otherwise successful people often find themselves unhappy because of troubles at home. You’ve likely seen examples of this in your own life.
Because the returns from efforts in our careers are immediate and tangible, people who are driven to excel have an unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their work. Investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. But if you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find the root cause in this predisposition towards immediate gratification. Looking at personal lives through the same lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.
Moral Life and Staying out of Jail
One may think an allusion to jail is a bit extreme, but it’s not. As reported by Dr. Christensen, once moral and civic people can find themselves in such circumstances. From his own life alone he specifically cites two members of his Rhodes Scholar cohort, as well as a once esteemed peer from Harvard Business School. Each began their public life with immense opportunities, and each ended it in a prison cell. Our eventual destination will not likely be as drastic, but it is still imperative we take precautions.?
A common principle in finance and economics is that of marginal cost. Generally, it teaches that businesses should pursue those courses of action that, at that moment, will produce the greatest benefit at the lowest expected cost.?
Unconsciously, we often employ the same reasoning in our own lives at our peril. When faced with a moral decision, we may rationalize that, “Just this once, it’s OK.” In that particular instance, the marginal cost of a single misstep may seem almost trivial. But such a rationalization fails to consider the total cost of such an action and what that path ultimately entails.
Furthermore, that initial decision almost always places us within a vicious cycle. After a first misdeed, marginal costs for continuance in the same behavior seem low. The cost of coming clean, however, immediately becomes disarmingly prohibitive. It is immeasurably easier never to cross the threshold of, “Just this once,” than to try to cross back. A resolute conviction to hold to one’s principles and the law 100% of the time will serve much better than holding to them 98% of the time.?
The Abundant Life
No one sets out into the world hoping to live a life of gloom, disappointment, or monotony. Rather we hope to pursue meaningful work, enjoy joyful relationships, and live free of the burdens of dishonesty or scandal. Decide now, today, how you will apply these principles, or face the consequences. The former will cost some effort, but the latter may cost you everything.?
Endnotes