Photograph courtesy of Museums Victoria
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes, who is considered the father of modern economics, wrote an essay titled, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. In that essay, he describes his prediction for what life would be like for future generations. He predicts that economic prosperity will be so great and abundant that our need to work across all of society will diminish. And since the vast majority of people will no longer need to "sell themselves for the means of life," he warns that humanity's next great challenge will be how to look forward to and not dread the "age of leisure."
While he predicts there will be some people who have an "intense, unsatisfied purposiveness" that causes them to continue to pursue wealth blindly, he goes on to imagine that the vast majority of society will have a shift in moral codes. That we will recognize that loving money as a possession, as opposed to as a means for the realities and enjoyments of life, will finally be collectively viewed in the harsh light of truth; that it is disgusting, morbid, semi-pathological and semi-criminal.
Keynes closes the essay advising the readers of his time not to worry about the impending problem of too much leisure time because he predicts that it will be at least a hundred years until this can happen. At least a hundred years will be 2030, ten years after this glorious, dumpster-fire-year of 2020.
Of course, in the last 90 years, a lot of people have shit on John Maynard Keynes' prediction. There are many a snarky article asking Keynes where their 15-hour-work-week is. I have always been a quiet champion of this essay. I have questioned the 40-hour-work week since before I started working 40 hour weeks.
In the last week of my final semester in college, I started to experience random pangs of anxiety. I found myself doing mental math, trying to add up an equation that wouldn't add up. The equation I was trying to figure out was how I could have enough time for leisure while working a full-time job that included a daily commute?
I have always found this transition to be a particularly cruel thing to do to young people. To give them four years of nearly pure autonomy, and heaps of leisure time only to convince them to give it up just soon as they learn how to use it.
It baffles me that we condition children and young adults to be on such a wonderfully autonomous schedule with an abundance of holidays. Then upon graduation, for most of us, we enter into the predictable schedule of working eight hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year for the next 40 to 50 years.
Through my work, I discovered Keynes' essay, and I've encountered all kinds of people that participate in all sorts of non-traditional employment - some by design and some by default. I've dedicated my life (for now) to understanding people and their relationship to money and work so I can help them.
For the last handful of years, I would only half-joke that I couldn't wait for Keynes' prediction to come true. I worried people wouldn't take me seriously if they know I saw some truth in his prediction. But after recent events, I'm starting to think that it's not so crazy to imagine that our relationship with work, and therefore money, is changing.
One recent event was Andrew Yang's run for president. He ran on the platform that a universal basic income for every citizen would be necessary because of how automation (robots!) will impact work. His platform brought this idea - our changing relationship to work and, therefore, money - into the mainstream. The other recent event is, of course, COVID-19. The crisis has drastically altered how we work in the short term, and I would be shocked if it doesn't radically change how people work in the long term.
So it feels like it's time for us to acknowledge that our relationship with work is changing and what the financial consequences of those changes will be. As we work less, we'll be earning less. And if we are earning less, we'll likely need to consume less and feel okay about that. We'll have to figure out how to still think and feel the abundance in our lives, despite the contraction of work and money.
Regardless of how this all shakes out, whether Keynes' utopian fantasy comes true, things go back to normal, or we land somewhere in between, there are still good reasons to learn how to see things from a perspective of abundance.
The ability to think abundantly tends to lead towards healthier, productive behavior, feeling self-confident, and having a stronger sense of self-worth. When you tend to think through the lens of abundance, you can see opportunity in a time of crisis, and that perspective can be the deciding factor for what actions you ultimately take.
In this article, I'll explore how you can still feel content while spending less money.
Let's dig in.
Mind the Hedonic Treadmill
The first thing to understand is this concept of the hedonic treadmill, also sometimes called hedonic adaptation. It's the concept that humans will keep relatively stable levels of happiness despite positive or negative events.
Imagine a talented young athlete who dreams of becoming a professional snowboarder. Throughout junior high school, they excel but get injured in their first year of high school. The injury is so severe that the young athlete will never be able to compete professionally.
Their crushed dreams of pro snowboarding might sting at first, but over time, they find joy in cross country skiing and helping injured athletes. Before long, the idea of being a pro athlete gets replaced with the dream of being a sports trainer, having a family, and enjoying holidays in the snow. This shift is an example of the remarkable adaptability of human beings.
But here's the flip side. Imagine a young person who grew up poor and working class. When they're younger, they imagine having an apartment to call their own. They think that's all they will need to feel happy. This person does everything right, and the circumstances are on their side. At 22, they've finished college, secured employment, and got that apartment of their own. This person is happy.
But in two years, their friends move from a rented apartment to a rented house, and suddenly, that apartment of their own is lackluster in comparison. So this person works hard, gets a promotion, and can finally afford to rent a house. Exciting at first, but a year later, their friends buy the house next door. They make improvements, and now this person's expectations of what they thought would make them happy have just gotten more expensive.
There isn't anything inherently wrong with growth and improvement. There is nothing wrong with setting goals, achieving them, and then setting higher ones. But the constant drive for more can become damaging when you are not conscious of your motivation. When your motivation comes from a place of scarcity and not abundance, no matter what you achieve, no matter how much money you make, how much power and status you have, you'll never feel like you have enough. Donald Trump is the perfect example of this. Even as the president of the United States, he still does not have enough power or status, and he will probably never feel like he has enough money, no matter how much. Of course, this is an extreme example.
Feeling better about spending less starts with recognizing the reality of being on the hedonic treadmill. Part of this reality is the false belief that satisfying our desires will lead to ongoing positive feelings like happiness and pleasure. Some purchases might make you feel better in the long run, but most of them will not. The next part is so simple it might feel insulting to your intellect, but soothing to the emotional being that you are. The antidote to being stuck on the hedonic treadmill is to practice gratitude.
Focus on what you have, practice gratitude daily
You will never feel satisfied with what you get until you feel satisfied with what you have. Practicing gratitude every day will cultivate a mindset of abundance. You'll see everything that has been given to you. And you'll see them as gifts. Thinking abundantly is that simple.
Let me just drop the fucking science. Practicing gratitude and simply being appreciative or grateful, can measurably improve your overall well being. Practicing gratitude can rewire your prefrontal cortex so that you tend to be positive, tend to appreciate and remember positive experiences and cultivate the resiliency needed to deal with adversity. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for managing negative emotions like guilt, shame, and violence. So the more you practice gratitude, the stronger your neural pathways will become. These strong neural pathways are linked to increased happiness, reduced depression, and strengthened resiliency. It's also linked to lower blood pressure, reduced chronic pain, increased energy, even living longer. People who practice gratitude tend to have higher self-esteem than those who don't. People that think grateful thoughts before bed sleep better than those who don't.
When we feel gratitude for what we have or towards someone who has helped us, our brain stem releases dopamine. Dopamine makes us feel good and fosters positive emotions and prosocial behavior like camaraderie. When we reflect or write down things we are grateful for in our lives, our brains release serotonin. Serotonin enhances our mood, motivation, and willpower. And the more you practice activating these neural pathways, the less effort it takes to activate these pathways the next time.
Gratitude, Three Ways
Here are a few different ways to start a gratitude practice.
Write It
Write down what you're grateful for. If you have a physical planner or you use a notebook to plan your days, stack a gratitude practice onto that habit. You can also keep a journal entirely dedicated to your gratitude practice.
Feel It
Kristan Sergeant, my coach, taught me a daily gratitude practice called Grateful Flow. It's really simple. Here's what my practice looks like. I silently say things I'm grateful for. I tend to close my eyes, put my hand on my heart, and try to feel gratitude in my heart. I also try to find something new to be grateful each time. I try to think of really simple things that I take for granted, like the chair supporting my body or the air in my lungs. If you already have a habit of yoga or meditation, you can stack the Grateful Flow practice onto it.
Share It
My wife and I practice gratitude together by asking each other what we are grateful for each day at dinner. We try to find three new things to feel thankful for each day. We made it a habit by stacking it onto the daily habit of asking each other how our days were.
A gratitude practice is the simplest thing you can do to feel content at any moment in your life. It's a tool we have as humans. It's free, and it will leave you feeling much better than whatever you buy on Amazon that you'll forget about in two months.
If you can't find some gratitude, maybe youโre just an asshole (or maybe you need professional help)
I once heard a guy say, "If you can't live off of $250,000 a year, you're an asshole." He was explaining that he was selling his business, and because of that, his lifestyle was going to change. He was predicting that he'd earn less and have to look into other revenue streams. But what he was saying was the most he needed, the most he thought anyone required is a cool quarter mil a year. And if you can't feel content with that, well maybe the problem is you. It seems his personal experiences have shown him that there is a limit to how having more money can make you feel. And at a certain point, the problem isn't really how much you're earning; it's how much you're spending and why.
We can argue about that figure of $250,000; some might say you're an asshole if you can't appreciate $50,000, and all the assholes in the Silicon Valley think $500,000 a year is just getting by. The point is, if you're reading this on a computer you own, that's connected to the internet that you can afford, and your fucking feet aren't cold and wet, then you can probably find things to be grateful for in your life. If you canโt, in all seriousness, you should seek professional help. And before you choose to shit on the idea of a daily gratitude practice, implement one, be consistent and see what happens. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.