by Jim McCarthy
This is related to what these days we call “fear of missing out” (“FOMO”), the common emotion stoked by social media, when your behavior is driven by the angst that no matter how good this moment may be, there is something better going on somewhere else, and you could actually be doing that right now, if you just managed things better. (We explore this more in the chapter on the Comparing Mind.)
Whether a person is 25 or 75, if they ask me for advice, I first ask them, “What are your nonnegotiables in life?” By “nonnegotiables,” I mean the aspects of your life that you absolutely must have to be happy. For example, you could say, “I’ll work anywhere in the world, but I have to work in finance,” or, “I’ll do any job necessary, but I’m not leaving Seattle, because my ailing mom lives here,” or, “I have to work in a company with fewer than 100 employees, because I hate big-company bureaucracy,” or, “I have to earn at least $50,000 per year to pay off my student loans.” Some people find it very useful to combine multiple nonnegotiables: “I’ll only work in a finance job in Seattle for a small company, earning at least $50,000 per year.”
Why would you intentionally limit your choices on what to do, when you already have FOMO?
So you can shift your focus from “things I can do” to “things I really want to do.” Shift from “where I could be” to “where I am,” which helps you enjoy the here and now. And instead of chasing 7,369 possible future employers, you’re chasing 20 — which is a manageable number for a focused, thorough, and highly successful job search. Instead of the 3,522 women you could be dating in Portland, you focus on the one you’re already living with.
Regarding personal relationships, I often suggest investing in family and friends. I recall mentoring a talented young Berkeley engineer who was German, worked in Korea, and ended up in Silicon Valley. He was struggling to decide whether to continue with another high-stress, low-pay, high-upside start-up in San Francisco, or to relocate to Southern California for a much less intense but otherwise excellent job. Once he realized that his nonnegotiable was to start a family and live a balanced life, his career choice became easy. And it turns out that he’s now doing very entrepreneurial things — but inside of a large corporation.
Is he missing out on years of the frenzied start-up scene in Silicon Valley? Yes.
Is he a lot happier now, because he’s building his life based on the nonnegotiable of investing in “family, friends, and community”? Absolutely.
And he tells me the surfing is a lot better down there anyway.
How to Know Your Nonnegotiables
What must you have, be, or do, in order to be happy? What is essential for you to experience pleasure, purpose, and peace? And how do you figure this out?
Are nonnegotiables the same as goals? Not really. A goal requires some effort, whose outcome is uncertain. A nonnegotiable is a decision or behavior over which you have a huge amount of control. Often nonnegotiables are not hard to accomplish, as long as you have determination and discipline. Sometimes having a nonnegotiable simply means you say “no” to distractions, which don’t make you happy anyway.
For example, when you’re age 30, you can have a goal of becoming a millionaire by 40. But that’s an aspiration, not a “nonnegotiable.” On the other hand, a person living in Chicago can have the nonnegotiable of continuing to live in Chicago.
Can you have too many nonnegotiables? If you come up with 27 nonnegotiables, you might box yourself into such a rigid life structure that you leave no room for spontaneity, creativity, or seizing opportunities. But if you define too few nonnegotiables, then perhaps you’re open to everything — which keeps you from focusing on being true to yourself and what really brings you fulfillment.
To define your nonnegotiables, try finishing the following sentence: “The bare minimum circumstances I need to experience pleasure and purpose in life are …” If you find this hard to do, don’t feel bad. Instead, you can break down your nonnegotiables this way:
Spiritual/Philosophical: What process do you have to know yourself and understand your purpose in this universe? You could meditate for 15 minutes daily, or attend services at your mosque, synagogue, or church weekly. You could walk on the beach, write in your diary, or go on a week-long silent retreat. Figure out what works for you, and make this a nonnegotiable for your spiritual life.
Health: Do you have a certain workout routine, which you absolutely refuse to abandon? Vegetarian diet? No smoking? At least seven hours of sleep per night? If you’re committed to living healthfully, then maybe you’ll pass on that investment banking job, which pays great but destroys your health. As for me, I do 10 minutes of yoga and stretching every morning. Is it hard to do? No. Have I been doing it every day since 1987? Yes.
Geography: A huge number of life decisions are simplified once you define where you are going to live. For some people, they do this all too readily — choosing to live in the town where they grew up or finished college, even when they could honor all their nonnegotiables and perhaps live in a place that is much better for them. In contrast, others flock to the big cities and tell themselves that the only place they could possibly live is San Francisco or London, when in fact they could lead a wonderful life in Costa Rica or Austin.
Family: Would you be willing to live in another city than your spouse or kids? How much are you willing to travel for work, especially in cases where you’ll earn more money but see your family less? What does it even mean to be part of your family? For many homemakers, their nonnegotiable is creating the best environment for their children, even if their own income and career suffer as a result.
For couples with kids, many counselors suggest having a weekly “date night” so that you don’t get so absorbed by your role as a parent that you lose sight of your role as a spouse. Your nonnegotiable could be putting your marriage first, as the foundation for a happy family.
Social: In Bronnie Ware’s Top Five Regrets of the Dying, she identifies Regret #4 as: “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” So maybe your nonnegotiable is that you have lunch or coffee with two different friends every month.
Work: It can be extremely helpful to identify in your career what you must do (create amazing products, help the least fortunate people in our society, or fight inequality) and what you refuse to do (sell things that make people stupid, apathetic, or sick).
Play/Fun/Travel: Silicon Valley has more than its share of workaholics. Some of them try to “work hard and play hard,” whereas others just “work hard and then work some more.” Workaholism might be sustainable short term, but not long term. If these people worked a bit less and got more sleep, many of them would be healthier, happier, more creative, more productive, and more successful. I heard one of the most intense, top venture capitalists in Silicon Valley tell a start-up CEO, “Please, take off one day per week to rest and have a life.”
Intellectual/Creative/Artistic: Do you love gardening? Fishing? Cycling? Having a hobby or creative outlet can help you fulfill your other nonnegotiables. When I was working my longest hours at Yahoo, back in 1998, I started attending a salsa dancing class on Thursday nights. I wasn’t very good at it, but I was completely entranced by the music, movement, and fun. It was about the only time of the week I was able to clear my head and not think about work. So when I got back to the office on Friday morning, I felt like I had rested and was able to enjoy my work again.
Financial: How much money do you want? How much do you need? If you have to make massive sacrifices to keep that big bucks job, then at least be aware that this is your financial nonnegotiable. And recognize all those other things you may be giving up in the Spiritual/Philosophical, Health, Geography, Family, Social, Play/Fun/Travel, and Intellectual/Creative/Artistic categories.
Writing Activity 7:
Write out all your nonnegotiables in the following areas:
•Spiritual/Philosophical
•Health
•Geography
•Family
•Social
•Work
•Play/Fun/Travel
•Intellectual/Creative/Artistic
•Financial
Next, have your spouse or partner do it — and compare lists. Together you may come up with some very creative solutions to your life plans. You might suddenly find that both of you are open to retiring in Portugal, or volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Indonesia.
Ask, “What Would It Take?”
Here’s one way to use your nonnegotiables to help you make an important decision: Imagine you’re working as an account manager at an internet start-up in New York City. You’d really rather be a high school math teacher. But you can’t afford to live in New York on a teacher’s salary.
You could simply ask, “Can I be a high school math teacher?” and answer, “No, I can’t.”
Or you could ask, “What would it take to work as a high school math teacher?”
Then you could revisit all your nonnegotiables in life, and conclude that it would be possible if you perhaps moved to a lower-cost city, shared an apartment with someone, used public transportation, spent less money on clothing, and took on an extra job as a tutor in the summers. Then you can imagine what that life would be — especially if you’re going to do work that is much more meaningful for you.
You might still decide to stay at your job in New York City — with newfound gratitude and commitment.
Or you might make that move to Colorado to teach calculus — and end up being a lot happier.
If you can truly, honestly, realistically say that another role would be your calling, then you owe it to yourself to figure out how to do that work. The sooner, the better — for your sake. After all, you want a wise, authentic, and passionate answer to the question, What does the world still need from you?
The Limits of What Money Can Do for You
Unless you’re independently wealthy, at least one of the reasons you work is to earn money. For most of us, this is completely necessary for survival. But over the course of my life, I’ve seen the popular culture in the United States shift from hippies in the 1960s preaching “peace, love, and understanding,” to Wall Streeters in the 1980s asserting “Greed is Good,” to today’s social media and reality TV stars flaunting their wealth.
A 1966 study of entering college freshmen in the U.S. found that “Being very well off financially” was essential or very important for 43.8 percent of the respondents — far behind “Helping others in need,” which received the highest ranking at 68.5 percent.16 But by 2016, in the same survey, “Being very well off financially” had leapt to the number one spot in importance over all other objectives, cited by 82.3 percent of respondents. “Helping others in difficulty” had also grown in the meantime, but only slightly, cited by 77.5 percent.17 I can only conclude that young college kids still wanted to save the world and help others — but they needed to get rich in the process.
Perhaps they were inspired by the example of Mark Zuckerberg. He cofounded Facebook and became the youngest self-made billionaire by age 23.18 In the process, he helped create the social media revolution that has turbocharged “the Comparing Mind” (see Chapter Eight) — our state of suffering when we fear that others are more successful, happier, or having more fun than we are.
According to Dr. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist and Zen priest who teaches at Harvard Medical School, a 2015 survey asked Millennials about their major life goals, and found that more than 80 percent wanted to get rich, and 50 percent wanted to be famous.19 This explains, I believe, part of Donald Trump’s appeal — he is apparently rich and famous in a culture that worships fortune and fame. Whether Mr. Trump is happy or not … I don’t know.
In any case, it’s useful to be aware of the limits of what money can do for you and your happiness. Statistics show that the buying power of Americans almost tripled from the late 1950s until the early 2010s, but the “percentage describing themselves as very happy” remained in the low 30-percent range for almost the entire time.20
Nobel prize-winning economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton published a study in 2010, noting that money and “emotional well-being” were positively correlated — but only up to a point. Their findings, based on 450,000 responses from 1,000 U.S. residents, were that after a person reached $75,000 in annual household income, additional money did not make them happier.21
They surmised that “Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals’ ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure.”22 Or, as a Money magazine write-up put it, “richer people have a lot of problems that have nothing to do with a lack of funds.”23
Now, you might be saying, “Wait a second, Jim! I live in New York (or Washington, D.C., or London …). Our cost of living is higher than the U.S. average!” Fair enough. The most important point of this research is not whether the exact number is $75,000. The key takeaway is that more money has diminishing returns with respect to “emotional well-being”: Once you’re reasonably comfortable, working your butt off to make a lot more money will not make you happier on a day-to-day basis.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert pithily notes that “we think money will bring us lots of happiness for a long time, and actually it brings us a little happiness for a short time.”24
What would make you happier, after you reach this minimum happiness threshold?
One British researcher examined an increase in frequency of interaction with friends, relatives, and neighbors. He found that “an increase in the level of social involvements is worth up to an extra £85,000 a year [approximately $120,000] in terms of life satisfaction. Actual changes in income, on the other hand, buy very little happiness.” [Emphasis mine.]25
Reflecting on my own experience, this research makes sense to me. When I was in my 20s and living frugally as an English teacher in Frankfurt, a business journalist in Madrid, or a phone salesman in the San Francisco Bay Area, increases in pay from $12,000 per year to $16,000 per year to $25,000 per year were huge! I was immediately able to feel the impact on my finances, lifestyle, and sense of accomplishment.
I didn’t complain when I was working at Yahoo during the Dot-Com Boom of the late 1990s and became a “dot-com millionaire.” I do know that becoming a millionaire helped me “solve” a lot of financial challenges and worries that I had had before. I was able to pay off my student loans, buy a fancy red Volvo convertible, have a gorgeous wedding in Silicon Valley (just as the Dot-Com Bubble started to burst), and buy a lovely home in Cupertino, California for my family.
About a decade later, I was divorced, living by myself in a smaller townhouse in nearby Mountain View. The situation with my ex-wife and two daughters was not good. My last job had not turned out well. And then I received my cancer diagnosis.
I could not help but look at the apartment complex across the street and see extended families — grandparents, parents, and grandchildren — having outdoor barbeques and playing in the swimming pool. At that time, my net worth might have been easily 200 times or 400 times more than theirs. But I certainly was not 200 times happier than they were. In fact, based on the laughter I heard echoing across Rock Street, I was probably not at all happier than they were.
Of course, it’s impossible for me to know for sure. In fact, I encourage you to avoid “the Comparing Mind,” which we discuss in Chapter Eight. My point is that earning a lot of money did not make me a lot happier. I don’t necessarily subscribe to the old saying, “People don’t own things. Things own people.” But it’s worth considering.
According to some research, the more money you earn, the more you want. Jeffrey Pfeffer is a professor at Stanford’s Graduate
School of Business who, with Sanford E. DeVoe of the University of Toronto and Byron Y. Lee of Renmin University of China, published a research paper titled, “When Does Money Make Money More Important?” He notes that money that comes from the work we do (rather than money we inherit, get from investments, or win in a lottery) makes that money more important to us. “The money in that case is a signal of competence and worth, and that makes it addictive, because the more you have, the more you want,” he says.26
Pfeffer says that the paper was inspired by a quote from Daniel Vasella, the former CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG, who was initially offered a $78 million severance package, but then turned it down after a public uproar. Speaking to Fortune magazine in 2002, Vasella said, “The strange part is, the more I made, the more I got preoccupied with money. When suddenly I didn’t have to think about money as much, I found myself starting to think increasingly about it.”
Indeed, many of us spend our lives imagining that if we simply had a mountain of cash, then all our worries would go away. But even billionaires get the blues. According to Brad Klontz, a psychologist who works with the superrich, billionaires often feel isolated and have trouble trusting others, because so many of their relationships are based on money. So how great is it to be a billionaire? According to Klontz, the superwealthy have “different problems. But not a lack of problems.”27