Happy living & working: Avarice is not cool

We save and save and forget what it costs us: namely time, productivity and ultimately Quality of life. That's greed fast no longer horny. What helps: Unwelcome Tasks outsource and free up capacity.

Whoever is stingy loses life time

Recently, my laptop quit its service after several years of running: The hard drive was no longer recognized, total failure can be said. In the course of the brief frustration with the defect, I thought about how much time the device cost me.

Because the computer never really ran smoothly: Windows was unusable on the small screen. Ubuntu, for example, was not really compatible with the graphics card, I couldn't get newer versions of Ubuntu to work at all. And in the end I was at Joli OS, which was reasonably reasonable after I figured out how to operate it as a non-cloud system. In short: an odyssey.

Chasing the best deal

I chose this example because it is so illustrative. Why didn't I buy a decent laptop right away? Maybe because I don't really believe that problem-free devices exist. But also because I got this (alleged) luxury category laptop as a “free” test device and the task of somehow getting it to work optimally spurred my ambition.

This is just one of many examples – not just in my life, by the way – of how the desire for thrift determines our lives to an extent that can no longer be understood rationally, because the Costs outweigh the benefit for a long time. I'm thinking, for example, of people who shop in five supermarkets because they want to pick up the offers everywhere. Or the hour-long ones Internet-Research to save a few bucks. But also on Peoplewho eat cheap meat and thus ruin not only the environment but also their health.

The main thing is to win

That's exactly the point I'm getting at. A few years ago, Saturn shaped the lifestyle of an entire generation with its striking advertising slogan "Greed is cool": Saving, not because you have to, but because it feels cool, once again Money to have saved. Even if this saving effect significantly reduces the quality of life and costs an incredible amount of time.

Cornelia Topf has described this aspect very beautifully and aptly: Our Brain releases dopamine when we gain an advantage. Apparently it's all about winning - by making a bargain, for example. Then the happy hormones boil over. Resourceful marketing strategists have long recognized this and pretend the savings effect to us, but that is another topic.

Free up capacities thanks to outsourcing

In the delirium of joy about the great deal or the great bargain, we quickly forget that it also costs us something: namely pure lifetime. Productivity. And creativity. That we had 10 good ones at the time in question ideas could have made more money too to earn when we were saving, we often didn't think about it - we don't even know about the good ideas because we didn't have the leisure to have them.

If you don't believe that, I recommend trying it out and leaving the annoying, time-consuming little everyday tasks behind or outsourcing them (for a fee, of course). For example, I have had a cleaner for a long time. True to the motto “You can do a bit of household chores with your left hand”, I debated with myself for a long time whether I should take this step. The result amazes even me: not only has it become much easier, Order to keep; I also don't always have somewhere in the back of my mind "But I still have to clean". Thanks to the capacities in my brain and in life that have been freed up, I have been able to carry out many a project better.

From Business to Being: To Have or To Be?

The documentary “From Business To Being” by Hanna Henigin and Julian Wildgruber from 2016. Three Executives are looking for ways out of the “hamster wheel of being driven”:

A former investment banker at Lehman Brothers, a major project manager in the automotive industry and a regional manager for the dm drugstore chain. Get out of the hamster wheel of digital acceleration, switch off and come to yourself, to “being”: that's what this film is about. And he asks the question: How do we want to live and work?

The busy society: overemphasis on doing

"Haben oder Sein" is a popular socio-critical work by the social psychologist Erich Fromm from 1976. In it Fromm explains the differences between the two character orientations of having and being. The trailer for the film says very nicely: “In our Society there is an overemphasis on doing and low Significance of being”. And maybe that's exactly what ours is Working world needs:

Away from the constantly busy, perfectionist-fear-driven race in the hamster wheel and towards more Esteem for the moment and being in the here and now. Or as one of the managers interviewed puts it so beautifully: "What happens tomorrow is not that important for my current well-being."

Social change desirable

The film, produced by Concadora Verlag together with MadeVision, apparently hit a nerve at the time: it premiered at the “International Documentary Film Festival Munich” (DOKFEST). He was voted one of the audience's favourites. The film was funded entirely by foundations and crowdfunding. Almost 90.000 euros were collected for this. However, the filmmakers Henigin and Wildgruber are not only interested in gaining insights into human beings emotions, but about social change. In a statement on the website, they wrote:

“We want to live in a society where we meet each other as people, where we love each other feel and in which we do what interests us passionately. We believe that this is not a utopia and we know that in order to make this happen, we have to start with ourselves. In our search for ways and means of making this vision a reality, we let ourselves be guided by encounters with inspiring people. These encounters have developed into a film. From Business To Being is therefore an experiment to invite everyone to ask themselves: “How do I want to live and work? And at the same time it is our answer to this question.”

How do we want to live in the future? questions and answers

The ones that were thrown up Ask concern most people these days. In search of answers, the filmmakers leave out experts Economy, science and meditation practice that bridge the gap between “business” and “being”, including: Jon Kabat-Zinn, Janice Marturano, Arthur Zajonc, Tania Singer and Rudi Ballreich.

• How do we live and work?
• Can meditation and awareness training help us free ourselves from stress-generating patterns of thought and action?
• What skills do managers need in the future?
• How do organizations in a globalized world have to be redesigned and designed to enable people to work together better?

And how do you want in Future life? What do you want to outsource in the near future? Or would you rather stay stingy in business mode?

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