8
The Power of Pleasure

In a nutshell: In the 19th century, the upper classes didn’t tend to work much. As the dowager countess on Downton Abbey asked: “What’s a weekend?”¹ It was assumed that increased productivity would mean more leisure. Instead, being busy became a status symbol. Now that’s starting to change, and having control over one’s life and time is the new sign of success.

Pleasure and Leisure

Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, wrote an essay “In Praise of Idleness,” published in 1935. In it, he laid out his thinking on work and the importance of leisure.² He saw the Industrial Revolution as a way to reduce the amount of time workers spent laboring and believed that the ultimate goal of technological advancement was to increase the amount of leisure available to the average person.

Russell espoused a four-hour workday. If automation allowed us to accomplish more in less time, we should use the remaining time for pleasure and for good, not for more work.

He argued that civilization had been the fruit of having an elite, leisure class. He acknowledged that the elite had enjoyed advantages unfairly and their leisure had been earned on the backs of oppressed laborers, serfs, and slaves throughout the centuries. However, he made the case that the same elite had been responsible for much of what was good in the civilized world. Without an elite that had the leisure to pursue their interests, we wouldn’t have the art, science, literature, and even the philosophical or political thought that created the great civilizations.

In Russell’s worldview, industrialization now made it possible for everyone to enjoy the same benefits. He was no romantic when it came to the merits of the ruling classes and caustic in his judgment. He felt that the vast majority of the ruling classes were indolent and lacking in talent. Although the upper classes had produced Darwin and many other great minds, most of its members were more concerned with the state of their horses and their next meal or entertainment.

Russell believed that much good would come from people having more leisure—not only would they have personal satisfaction, but society as a whole would benefit. He thought that a small minority of people, if given the freedom to explore their interests unrelated to their employment, would pursue interests that contributed to the common good. They would engage in causes and movements that made life better for everyone. They would seek to improve how things are done, which would benefit all.

His main concern, however, was for the quality of life of the individual. He wanted people to be healthy and happy, to live calm lives engaged with each other. His ideal was that work would be demanding enough to make leisure appreciated, but not so much that it left people exhausted and unable for anything else.

Yet, we don’t seem to take advantage of it as we should:

“Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.”³

Russell was writing in the 1930s. He was already seeing that the Industrial Revolution had not resulted in a reduction of work as he thought it should. If he were alive now, he would see that we continue to be as “foolish” as ever and show no signs of changing our ways.

People now wear “busyness” as a badge of honor and sign of importance. Long-hours cultures are rife across many industries, notably in law and financial services. In the United States, vacation for most employees is set at two weeks a year and even that holiday leave is not always taken.

The headlines capture the extreme cases, like the banking intern in London who died of epileptic shock after working 72 hours in a row or junior doctors who regularly work back-to-back overnight shifts.

But what about the rest of us? To what end is all this work?

Dolce Far Niente

dol·ce far nien·te dōlCHāˌfär nēˈentā—An Italian phrase that translates as “pleasant idleness” or “the pleasure of doing nothing.”

The Italians feel very strongly about dolce far niente. For them it means idling away an hour in a café with friends or pottering solo along city streets with no particular destination in mind. You can dolce far niente alone or with someone. It doesn’t mean hanging out or just doing nothing. There’s a sweetness or wistfulness to it that implies you are appreciating the moment and have chosen to do nothing on purpose, for the pleasure of it. There is a sense of gentle idleness about it.

Americans don’t really do dolce far niente. Life is to be conquered and squeezed to the fullest. If you have down time, it should be optimized, utilized, prioritized. Think of all the things you could be doing in this hour or two. The idea of enjoying doing nothing feels heretical, sinful, and shameful.

I have a good friend who worries about wasting time. She will often end a sentence about what her family ought to be doing with the phrase, “So the day isn’t wasted.” This was particularly amusing on a ski trip we were taking together with three preteen boys. The boys were sleeping in, lounging around in their pajamas, and slowly eating a pancake breakfast while she fretted that if they didn’t get moving and onto the slopes, the day would be wasted. It’s hard not to see the irony in hurrying along someone who is obviously enjoying themselves to enjoy themselves better doing something else.

I have a lot of sympathy for my friend. I like the satisfaction of getting things done and the sense of achievement that comes in ticking off a to-do list. The problem is that the items on the list are self-replacing. You’ve never ticked anything off without adding more items. And meanwhile, the moment for relaxing has passed.

Here are some suggestions for how you can enjoy dolce far niente. You will probably have plenty of others to add to this list, but it’s a good start:

• Unplug—Take a two-hour sabbatical from your devices. Don’t check email or calls while doing something pleasant.
• Get out doors—The next time the sun is shining, get up from your desk and take a 30-minute walk outside. Look around you and see what you notice that you’ve never seen before.
• Coffee with yourself—Instead of carrying your coffee back to your desk, sit and drink it without doing anything else (no phone, no newspaper). Look around you; lose yourself in your own thoughts.
• Leave early—Leave your office earlier than usual and wander back home taking an unusual route or stopping off at a bookstore to browse.
• Mooch—On Saturday morning, don’t head off straight away to the gym or to run errands. Stay in your pajamas, drink coffee and call a friend.
• Be early—Next time you’re meeting someone for dinner, try to be half an hour early and have a drink at the bar, people-watching until your companions arrive.
• Sabbatical Sunday (or Saturday)—You don’t have to be religious to take a Sabbath day. Decide which of your two weekend days will be errand-free. Do the necessary errands on the other day and only plan fun, pleasurable activities on your “Sabbath.”

The Luxury of Time

There is a counter-movement starting to emerge of people bragging about how they don’t check their email on vacation or about the unusual and lengthy holidays they’ve been taking. I know one executive whose most recent holidays included kayaking above the Arctic Circle in Norway and floating down a river in a barge in India.

Lucy Kellway at the Financial Times has been documenting how bankers in London are now as likely to brag about their New Year’s resolutions of cutting down on long hours as they are about cutting down on alcohol.⁴

There is a slow-dawning recognition that being truly successful means having control over your diary. If you were top of your game, why would you be at the beck and call of clients and corporate schedules?

Some sectors are slower to adapt to this phenomenon than others. Lawyers are notorious for working long hours because their business model is based on number of hours billed rather than on value provided. (Slight digression here, but how logical is it to charge more for taking longer to do something?)

I know a very successful international lawyer who is considered the leading expert in his field, but he laments the amount of time he spends traveling, including back and forth to Asia twice a month, and the conference calls that go past midnight.

“The clients demand it,” he will say. “I really don’t have that much control.”

How is that much different from the factory workers who slaved 12 hours a day, six days a week to whom Bertrand Russell wanted to provide more leisure time?

My lawyer friend literally has about as much leisure time as a 19th-century coal worker! He lives in much greater comfort, of course, and drives a very nice car, but the level of control he has over his life and how he spends his time is about as limited.

The television series Downton Abbey portrayed the last glorious days of the British upper classes when life was predestined from birth and some were born to serve and others to be served. The period captured in the award-winning drama is the early 20th century—the decades before World War II and the ensuing social leveling that would come in the post-war period due to advances in automation, access to education, and the need for a more skilled workforce.

The inhabitants of Downton Abbey spent their days engaged in leisurely pursuits and some amount of good works. The Dowager Countess once asked quite genuinely of her relative Matthew, who worked for a living as a solicitor, “What’s a weekend?”

The pendulum has come full circle where most people now long for more leisure and the very successful actually have less of it than others.

This is where I think the change is taking place and people are starting to push back and challenge conventional wisdom. What is the purpose of my life? Is it to struggle up the corporate ladder in order to toil there like an indentured servant? How is that success?

I’ve worked with many executives, women in particular, who look at the senior people in their organizations—both male and female—and decide that’s not what they want.

“I was encouraged to apply for a director role. It’s considered very prestigious. But when I looked at the current directors and saw how much time they spend at work and how much time they spend traveling, I decided I really didn’t want to live like that. I feel bad because I know I should try to advance my career, but that just doesn’t look attractive,” said a mid-level executive at a global financial institution.

If time is the ultimate luxury, what implication does that have for employers?

“I would much rather have every Friday off and forgo 20 percent of my pay than have to go to work five days a week,” said a senior female executive in the UK. “That one extra day makes a huge difference to my life and time with my family. Even though I check email on Fridays and am probably as productive as someone else doing five days, I like the freedom it gives me.”

If you’re an employer or leader in your organization, figuring out what people really value at work is crucial to your success. Hint: It’s not more money.

Experiences vs. Consumption

I once took a trip to Nicaragua with my son over spring break. It was a bit of a disaster. We stayed in what had appeared to be idyllic beach bungalows on a remote island. But the sea was too rough for swimming, there was no pool, the nearest restaurant was a 20-minute walk on a muddy path through the jungle, and the resort owners were mean and rude. We tried to leave but couldn’t get a flight out earlier than the one on which we were booked. “We are trapped in paradise, Mom,” said my then 13-year-old son.

We made the best of things, got ourselves qualified in scuba diving, and were grateful for our Kindles. We now retell stories from the trip with much hilarity, including how the resort owners refused to serve us lunch one day because we hadn’t booked ahead even though we were staying there all week, and how they hid the fresh milk saying they needed it to make cheese and couldn’t spare it for guests.

The same thing doesn’t happen when I buy something or order it online and it turns out to be the wrong size or not as it appeared. There’s nothing hilarious in that. I simply have the tedium of repacking and shipping it back to the seller.

What’s the difference? A lot, apparently.

There has been significant research done into the difference in pleasure we get from experiences versus things. Research led by Cornell psychology professor Thomas Gilovich found that “Experiential purchases (money spent on doing) tend to provide more enduring happiness than material purchases (money spent on having).”⁵

Extensive research by Gilovich and colleagues found that there was a reason my nightmare trip to Nicaragua still gave me more pleasure than a purchase, satisfactory or not.

Apparently the benefits of experiences start to accrue in advance of the actual experience and have an afterlife in our memory. The same is not true of purchases.

“You can think about waiting for a delicious meal at a nice restaurant or looking forward to a vacation,” one of the researchers on Gilovich’s team said, “and how different that feels from waiting for, say, your pre-ordered iPhone to arrive. Or when the two-day shipping on Amazon Prime doesn’t seem fast enough.”⁶

We get more pleasure thinking about the pleasure we are going to have from an experience in the future, something we don’t get when we think about possessions.

You would think we would enjoy our new sofa more than our weekend away because it’s permanent and we derive ongoing enjoyment from it. Not true. It seems we have infinite capacity to become bored or unappreciative of the object for the very fact that we see it every day. Just think how quickly your euphoria at your new iPhone dissipated as it simply became your phone.

It turns out we also enjoy waiting for an experience much more than waiting for a possession.⁷ Witness the mood and interactions between people lined up to see the latest Star Wars movie or attend a concert of their favorite band, and compare it to the lack of mirth among sales shoppers on Good Friday or New Year’s Eve.

For retailers, our preference for experiences has major ramifications. A recent study by Ernst & Young found that the number-one trend among consumers was what they termed “prioritization of experiential value.”⁸ What that translates into is that it’s not enough that you sell me that coat and that it keeps me warm; I want to enjoy the experience of buying it and have a connection with the brand. Consumers are now expecting to be “active co-creators instead of simply consumers.” Retailers are now encouraging customers to participate at various stages, from design to purchase. They are also trying to add more experience by creating platforms for customers to have community with each other.

Next time you have a tech question, notice how the company you’re dealing with will steer you toward a “user forum,” where you can ask other customers how best to resolve whatever issue you’re facing. This saves the company money on customer service and you’re likely to feel happier because you’re connecting with other like-minded, but hopefully more adept, customers.

This sort of consumer interaction hosted by a retailer lends itself to areas like tech, but it is increasingly found for everything from coffee to home appliance purchases.

The chief lesson here is that experiences make us happier than possessions and the likely conclusion is that the longer we spend anticipating them, the more pleasure we get. So try less impulse buying and fewer surprise parties, and instead start planning that next vacation.

The Natural World

Only 15 percent of Americans today live in rural areas, a phenomenon shared with most industrialized countries. We love cities for their conveniences and the economies of scale they produce. Cities are responsible for much of what civilization has to offer. Without cities, ideas can’t spread and people can’t develop and produce things for others as easily. It’s hard to provide services to people settled in remote areas, located long distances from each other. All manner of human endeavor and community do better in cities, whether that’s schools and hospitals, or orchestras and coffee shops. And yet, city living can be tiring and wearying. The noise, building height, traffic, congestion, and crowds all take a toll on our collective psyches.

Research on the impact of urban life is well established. Living in an urban environment is long known to be a risk factor for psychiatric diseases such as major depression or schizophrenia. This is true even though infrastructure, socioeconomic conditions, nutrition, and health care services are better in cities than in rural areas.⁹

But what about the benefits of nature to mitigate the stress of urban life, either within an urban environment or by spending time in rural settings?

It seems that although this research is less well established, we benefit substantially from spending time in nature.

Research by Gregory Bratman at Stanford University investigated the impact of nature experience on affect and cognition.¹⁰ Bratman and his colleagues randomly assigned 60 participants to a 50-minute walk in either a natural or an urban environment in and around Stanford, California. Before and after their walk, participants completed a series of psychological assessments of affective and cognitive functioning.

Compared to the urban walk, the nature walk resulted in affective benefits (decreased anxiety, rumination, and negative affect, and preservation of positive affect) as well as cognitive benefits (increased working memory performance).

In other words, the same walk had more benefit if it took place in nature. Perhaps it’s hardly surprising that a walk along the highway would be more stressful than a walk alongside a pretty stream, but an interesting aspect of the research was the benefit that continued after the walk was over.

Those participants who had walked along the highway were more likely to ruminate on things that were troubling them and report feeling anxious, while the participants who had been on a ramble through greenery reported feeling more confident, happy, and optimistic about their lives. The natural environment was the better one for participants’ brains.

The research on the impact of water to calm our nervous systems and increase well-being is even more compelling. Why are people drawn to spend time beside water in the summer, whether that’s the seashore or a lake? And why do people like to retire beside water? It may seem self-evident that we acquire mental benefits from being near water, but it turns out those benefits are far greater than we may have imagined.

Marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols has done extensive research on the remarkable effects of water on our health and well-being. In his book Blue Mind, he explores the neuroscience behind the benefits of being in, on, under, or beside water.¹¹

Nichols shares stories from top athletes, scientists, military veterans, and artists to show how water can improve performance, increase calm, diminish anxiety, and increase professional success. Fortunately, we don’t have to live beside the sea to benefit; swimming in our local pool or taking a bath has similar benefits to spending time by the ocean.

The benefits of being closer to nature may not seem like much of a revelation. For decades there have been organizations that worked to bring inner-city children to the country.

Summer camps dot the country now, but they started initially in the North East as a way to get children out of the heat and congestion of industrialized cities out to the country. To this day, camps compete with each other to draw urban children and their parents based on their proximity to water and distance from towns. Often, the more remote the camp, the more expensive it is.

Although we know it intuitively, spending time in nature is restorative and rejuvenating in ways we are still only beginning to appreciate.

In the meantime, experiment on yourself and notice the difference between a walk on a treadmill and one in the woods.