Living in More Than One World

In my previous post, I wrote about the release of the new book 50 Philosophy Classics, by Tom Butler-Bowdon. The publisher, Nicholas Brealey, has re-released all titles in Tom’s 50 Classics series as “The Literature of Possibility.” Taken together, they represent a highly valuable library of inspirational thought throughout the ages, aimed not at the specialist but for curious readers who are hungry for deep knowledge with applicability for daily life.

I mentioned that books by contemporary thinkers such as Daniel Kahneman and Nassim Nicholas Taleb shared space in the new book with the more familiar historical names (Aristotle, Plato, Confucius and so on). One of the strongest contributions of 50 Philosophy Classics is the inclusion of, besides Kahneman and Taleb, other modern-age writers that we more readily associate with other disciplines, including Iris Murdoch (a philosopher but better known as a novelist) and Marshall McLuhan (better known as a media/cultural observer).

Many readers will also appreciate the inclusion of the highly popular Harvard government professor Michael Sandel and his 2009 book Justice, as well as the oft-referenced Thomas Kuhn (“paradigm shift”), and his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In addition, there is the physicist David Bohm (who has been written about elegantly by Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski and others) and his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order.

Butler-Bowdon shows that philosophy is a big tent that can encompass ideas and inquiries that hold significant meaning and maps to understanding for some, and the opposite effect on others. “The purpose of this book,” he writes, “is not to tell you who is “right,” but to lay out some of the ideas and theories of note to help you make up your own mind.”

Spring is the season of renewal and rebirth, the perfect time for the publication of Tom Butler-Bowdon’s new book 50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing; and the re-release of the previous five books in his 50 Classics series (Self-Help, Success, Spiritual, Psychology and Prosperity).

I’ve written about Butler-Bowdon a number of times, both in this blog and earlier in USA TODAY, most recently when I blogged about his 2012 book, Never Too Late to Be Great. I find his writing to be endlessly inspirational, useful and practical; and I reread sections in short bursts on nearly a daily basis. His ability to get the gist of a book and clearly and concisely communicate it is truly formidable.

50 Philosophy Classics follows the winning format of the earlier Classics books; concise (usually around six pages) chapters on each selected book giving the main points, context, some quotations and a basic bio of each author. The introduction clearly explains his rationale for the new book, and along with a brief glossary, there is also a list of 50 additional classics. Basing his writing on particular books, rather than having to write a chapter each explaining the entire work of,  for instance, Plato or Aristotle, makes this more manageable and compact.

Given its place in the series, it is fitting that the book aims to demonstrate how these classics of philosophy can help guide us to leading a smarter, more fulfilling life. I’ll delve more into some of the specifics in my next post, but it’s worth noting the wide time range covered, from the 5th century BC Analects of Confucius, to contemporary authors, including some that may not always be identified as philosophers, such as Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan). I’ll return to 50 Philosophy Classics in my next post, but in the meantime, it’s worth quoting Butler-Bowdon’s description that “philosophy is high-level thinking to establish what is true or real, given the limits of human thought and senses, and the implication of this for how we act.”

Improving your life at any time of year can seem overwhelming. That is especially true for mid-late January, with many people trying to implement new year’s resolutions or similar goals and strategies. Last year I wrote about keeping on track at a time when the weather is bleak and things don’t seem to be changing fast enough. I believe that my thoughts from last year are still valid, but you might want to add the ideas of Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman to the mix. I wrote about him in 2009 and 2011, and he has a new book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. It has drawn lots of attention, in part because it reminds us that not all self-help is helpful, and that we don’t necessarily help the situation by constantly putting pressure on ourselves to improve.

Burkeman addressed the resolutions issue last month in a guest article for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, which among other things introduced me to “the Buddhist-influenced Japanese psychologist Shoma Morita.” He quotes this advice from Morita, about essentially starting where you are, with what you have, warts-and-all, to “begin taking action now, while being neurotic or imperfect or a procrastinator or unhealthy or lazy or any other label by which you inaccurately describe yourself.”  Burkeman’s clear-eyed, realistic and fairly gentle way of bringing you back to earth is also evident in his latest column, about creative thinking, another area that is fraught with unreasonable expectations. A key takeaway for me is that there are many paths to improvement, happiness and enlightenment; you have to find what is right for you. The best authors in these genres forge a direct connection with their readers, a worthy aspiration that can slowly lead to improved lives.

I enjoyed yesterday’s report by Lisa Napoli for NPR Morning Edition, Buddhist Meditation: A Management Skill? It features my friend Jeremy Hunter, a professor at the Drucker-Ito School in Claremont, Cal. He was one of the first people I met when I went to Claremont in 2002 to do research for my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. Jeremy teaches mindfulness (including meditation) and self-management, geared to the needs and expectations of MBA students. I sat in on one of his classes in 2005. In 2010, he and Scott Scherer contributed a chapter, Knowledge Worker Productivity and the Practice of Self-Management, to the book The Drucker Difference.

Applying the principles of mindfulness to work, which I wrote about in early 2011, remains a hot topic. The MBA-oriented site Poets & Quants recently ran a three-part series by Deborah Knox, Train Your Mind, Improve Your Game: Meditation for the 21st-Century Leader. Workplace.com had a September 6 feature about mindfulness training and multitasking. The August 21 Chicago Tribune piece Be Mindful for a Better Workplace quotes Mirabai Bush, co-founder and Associate Director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, who is interviewed in an extensive feature in transform, Mirabai Bush: The Work of Compassionate Action.
Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic turned best-selling author and Harvard Business School professor, has given a considerable boost of credibility to mindfulness and meditation for the benefit of work. In particular, see his 2010 post about a two-day mindful leadership retreat. Having returned from Japan not long ago, I was interested to see Overcoming stress / Psychological, physical methods for mindfulness in The Daily Yomiuri Online on September 9. The British site Personneltoday.com ran Mindfulness: helping employees to deal with stress, on September 3.
There are also a lot of good mindfulness resources for work and beyond at mindful.org. In fact, there are so many good print and online resources about mindfulness that it is difficult to be sufficiently mindful when writing a blog post about mindfulness!

The new semester has started for many teachers and students, and more will join in after Labor Day. Although I am not teaching this semester, I’ve decided that now is a good time to write an updated version of my 2010 post about self-management for the new semester and school year. Even if you are not a teacher or student, it’s possible that teaching is part of your work, and all of us are engaged in continuous learning.
1.    Get Attuned to Your Well-Being. The influential psychologist/author Martin E.P. Seligman has extended his work on happiness into this area, under the acronym PERMA: positive emotion (including happiness), engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement.
2.    Look For Flow. Mihaly Csiskszentmihalyi introduced the world to the concept of flow. He is another psychologist/author who, like Seligman, is connected to the field of positive psychology. If you are in this state, inside or outside of class, you are completely engaged in a task and lose sense of time.
3.   Maintain Your Health. Because teaching and learning can be draining and stressful, it’s important to engage in exercise, and such mind-body techniques as yoga or the Alexander Technique.
4.    Connect to the World Beyond the Classroom. You can approach your own subjects with a fresher mind by occasional reading outside your discipline. Also, try to set a goal of attending one lecture or presentation by a visiting speaker on campus (or another campus in your area) in subjects different from your own.
5.    Understand Your Present Reality. You’ll have more mental space to teach and study if you understand what constitutes your “total life.”
I hope you find this streamlined set of tips to be useful on your teaching and learning journeys, this semester and beyond.

Tom Butler-Bowdon, author of the 50 Classics series, has a new book, Never Too Late to be Great: The Power of Thinking Long, that should provide considerable inspiration to many people who need it the most. Among those who should find it especially interesting and helpful are late bloomers, career changers, people in transition and even procrastinators. The premise is that significant success, even and especially in middle age and beyond, is possible if you think strategically in long enough time frames, while working hard and doing what is necessary to make it happen (e.g. additional learning, networking, and gaining experience in a field any way possible). And try not to be too impatient.
He is a master synthesizer of information who tells a story succinctly and effectively. A key message is that success is rarely preordained. Although the stories of Howard Schultz of Starbucks and Ray Kroc of McDonald’s have been told often, they still seem fresh here, especially when told from this vantage point. Hard work, diligence, a fierce entrepreneurial spirit, ingenuity and vision for the future propelled people like Schultz and Kroc to success, not anything in their background. And I found particularly interesting the roots of Amnesty International and its founder Peter Benenson; and the Lonely Planet publishing empire, founded by Tony and Maureen Wheeler. Ditto the long climbs of such literary figures as the novelists Lionel Shriver and Vikram Seth.
Butler-Bowdon wrote the book when he was 43, and many of the examples are of people who did not find their greatest successes until they were 40 or older, some much older. He explains some of the main ideas from the book in a recent Huffington Post, Life Isn’t Short: What it Means For Your Success. I interviewed him in 2010 for my blog, and in 2008 I wrote about and interviewed him for USA TODAY. While his message is important for middle age people, I think that younger readers will also find inspiration in these examples. When you have potentially many years stretching ahead of you, thinking long from the start can give you a tremendous advantage, and even peace of mind.

In 1975, the Relaxation Response, a book by Herbert Benson, a Harvard Medical School cardiologist, became a surprise, multi-million selling best-seller and led to his subsequent books such as Your Maximum Mind, Timeless Healing, The Breakout Principle and Relaxation Revolution. Benson is still writing and researching, and the January-February 2012 UTNE Reader has a fascinating Q&A with him, conducted by Daniel Redwood, about the roots of the relaxation response, and Benson’s work in stress reduction and related holistic health areas.

Relaxation in this sense is not engaging in relaxing activities, but the response of our bodies to techniques that, among other things, decrease heart rate, breath rate and blood pressure; and provide an alternative to the “fight-or-flight” response. Benson is now the Director Emeritus of the The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. The site describes the response and also provides directions for eliciting it. Meditation is one vehicle, but the interview points out that there are others, including yoga, repetitive prayer, and even activities like knitting or crocheting. There can be a religious or spiritual component, but it is not necessary. Benson points out in the interview that it is “very important to note that health and well-being is akin to a three-legged stool. One leg is pharmaceuticals. The second leg is surgery and other procedures. There has to be a third leg, and that leg is self-care. Within that self-care leg we have the relaxation response, nutrition, exercise, the beliefs of the patient, socialization, and cognitive restructuring.”

Benson’s work is needed now more than ever. Although many of the stressors of life are similar to what they were in 1975, a major trigger that did not exist then is our 24/7 always on, always connected, always expected to be available culture. The benefits from the relaxation response may be a key ingredient in helping today’s knowledge workers remain healthy and productive.

Last week I wrote a guest post for LexisNexis Government Info Pro, Creating Your Total Life List for 2012. Much has been written at the end of last year and the beginning of this one about new beginnings. But as we get deeper into January, it’s easy for the fresh feeling to wear off. No matter how many systems you use to better your life, having handy reminders for self-improvement are always helpful:
1. Time management and productivity: Jason Womack, whose book Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More, will be released next month, is interviewed by Meridith Levinson for CIO.com, in Time Management: 6 Ways to Improve Your Productivity. (Meridith  interviewed me in 2009, for Peter Drucker as Life Coach: Book Shares His Wisdom.) What’s valuable about Jason’s advice is that it is work-specific, and we can never get enough good tips in this realm.
2. Happiness: This a topic gets hotter every year. For evidence see the January-February 2012 Harvard Business Review, with a number of happiness-themed articles, including Shawn Achor’s Positive Intelligence. Shawn wrote a terrific book, The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, in 2010. Also check out The Happiness Advantage: An Interview with Shawn Achor, on the World of Psychology blog.
3.  Mindfulness and Stress Reduction: The British duo of Danny Penman and Mark Williams, authors of Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, have a guest piece for CNN.com, Destress your life in 10 easy steps. Also have a look at their recent posts for Psychology Today. For a personal account of the benefits of mindfulness meditation, see Newsweek’s Mindfulness Meditation Is Rediscovered, by Amy Gross, the former editor in chief of O, the Oprah Magazine.
4. Lifelong Learning: Opportunities abound, from taking classes (both in person and online) to self-directed learning from books and articles in print and online. For quick, painless tips and idea-starters, check out Newsweek’s 31 Ways to Get Smarter in 2012.
Obviously there are many other categories, strategies and techniques for improving your life this year. But any one of the four above would be a great place to start.

Jennifer Schuessler’s super-interesting New York Times post, David Foster Wallace, Self-Help Reader inspired several reading journeys based on the work, life and death of the author who committed suicide in 2008. I wrote briefly about Wallace in 2009, wondering about whether I had unknowingly walked by him at Pomona College, in Claremont, California, where he was a professor, when I was in town to research my book.
The self-help angle was what drew me into the NYT post. When I clicked on the link to Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library, by Maria Bustillos, at The Awl, I expected perhaps a list of some of the self-help books he read. But what I found is a penetrating, extended essay about Wallace’s life, as illuminated by the (annotated and color-highlighted) self-help books in his private collection, which Bustillos examined in their current home, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. I found what she wrote completely absorbing and well worth the time it takes to read it. And looking at the catalog of the books from his library now at the Ransom Center makes for compulsive browsing, especially discovering those with notations in Wallace’s hand. It also makes you wonder what he – or any writer whose private book collection becomes available for public study – would think, if he could, about people reading notes he scribbled in the margins of those books. Schuessler’s post also led me to Wallace’s 2004 NYT review of a biography of Jorge Luis Borges, Edwin Williamson’s Borges: A Life. In the review, Wallace reveals a lot about the mind of one first-rate writer studying the work of another. Describing Borges’ short stories, he writes: “His stories are inbent and hermetic, with the oblique terror of a game whose rules are unknown and its stakes everything.”

If I lived in or near London, I know where I would be tomorrow: attending the four hour (and now sold out) Self-Help Summit. The event will look at the state of the self-help industry from a variety of perspectives, including seeking to determine its relation to happiness. The pursuit of the latter has become a booming industry on its own, complete with social science research, books and blogs. The panelists will include several people I have blogged about in the past, including Alain de Botton, Mark Vernon and Oliver Burkeman. The latter has a new book, HELP!: How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done, a compilation of his columns from the Guardian. The title reflects the tone of many of the columns, which balance being studious, respectful and skeptical to self-help ideas and concepts. The focus on the practical/doable side plays out in his recent article, The 10 best self-help gurus. I compared the list to the selections from Tom Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Self-Help Classics and found the following people on both lists: Richard Carlson (whom I blogged about recently), Tony Robbins, David Burns, Susan Jeffers and Eckhart Tolle (though he appears in Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Spiritual Classics). I recently interviewed Butler-Bowdon for the 300 Words With…feature on my blog. The emphasis on Burkeman’s list is on contemporary names; of the ten, only two are no longer alive (Carlson and Seneca the Stoic). The major happiness guru included is Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness. I doubt that Burkeman meant the list to be scientific or particularly definitive, and many people will have their own favorites that are not included. Self-help has always struck me as mix-and-match among authors and ideas. It would be difficult to follow just one person or school of thought. If you are attending the Self-Help Summit, that might provide a good spark for questions and answers. And if you do attend, your impressions as comments on this post would be appreciated!