With a new semester under way, and preparing for teaching MBA students again starting in March, I’m back to thinking about enoughness. It would be easier to address the challenge of raising the “how much is enough?” question with students if I’d come up with a good way to raise it with adult audiences, which I have not. With faculty/administrator audiences, the idea of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations—and ways to reward and encourage people who are variously motivated—is a relevant topic and it’s amazingly difficult to stimulate people to take the step from thinking about “how do I motivate group/person X?” to “what motivates me and what implications does that have for my life and aspirations?” And that’s with people who, usually, are not petrified about finding a job and paying off their student loans.
We do so many truly artificial things with education that another of the challenges, beyond the very topic itself, is getting students to think that what they do in their classes has any relevance to their lives. The first time Steve and Laura and I taught our counseling and interviewing course for law students, for example, we were taken aback at how many couldn’t apply the most elementary principles of law from other courses, like what confidentiality provisions applied in interviews between lawyers and their clients. When we would ask how many had taken the course in which that is discussed (professional responsibility), all the students in the course that semester had. A large number, though, seemed to feel that it was unfair to ask them to remember and apply something from a course in which their final was already over and the grade recorded. So we now routinely teach that, as well as the basic law applying to interview situations we put before them, or at least flag that “here’s a place you’ll need to look up the applicable law in order to succeed in this exercise.” Designing and teaching that course was educational for us in a variety of dimensions! (It was in the pilot semester of that course, which must have been in the fall of 2005 or maybe 2004, that the shoulder incident Amanda remembers occurred: that is the first tumor-symptom we can tie down with any temporal specificity.)
As to the relevance of courses or not to their “real lives”, huge numbers of MBA students in a required ethics course clearly approach it as an ordeal to be endured rather than as anything with any relevance to their coming careers (if any of them will be getting jobs in this economy, which is a big change from the last time I taught this course). For both law students and the freshmen I teach, every semester I get blind, raw panic as the response to a standard negotiation course assignment (I got it from a colleague here who teaches in another college, for example) to apply their skills in the real world and write about it. Doing “that stuff” in class in one thing, but with real people, companies, stores?!?
We’re taught to work hard for more and better and to advance and to measure ourselves against how others are doing. Law school amplifies that in painful and often damaging ways with its enormous emphasis on class ranking—as if there is really any meaningful difference between someone who is 27th in the class and 42nd. Will any of the recent financial scandals affect how students think about success and the world at large? And if not, shouldn’t that be something that we can approach in some meaningful way? Or, is that completely a pipe dream?
In any event, it seems to me that “enoughness” is an important topic and I’m still not getting traction on it and how it interacts with good life choices and ethics. Any and all comments and suggestions welcome.
P.S. Over the weekend and while traveling last week, I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is notable because it marked a return to being able to read a whole book in several gulps. It’s been a long time since this was possible and it was wonderful. I’m hopeful that being able to read reliably for pleasure will be returning as a feature of my life. Thanks to Nancy for loaning it to me, Now, with high hopes, I'm back to Trollope, thinking perhaps my brain will let me indulge there, too. It's great to have this to anticipate. Off for a day primarily devoted to teaching.
Showing posts with label Enoughness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enoughness. Show all posts
Monday, February 2, 2009
Friday, October 3, 2008
Enoughness
My mind is finally starting to wake up. It feels like it will be a slow process with this self-absorbed recovery process still commanding a lion’s share of attention, but yesterday’s post at least did get me thinking again about an issue that I have been puzzling about for quite a while: the concept of “enoughness.” The catalyst was writing about one of Shea’s really fine qualities, that she stops when she is full, no matter how good something is or what she is leaving uneaten. That is a form of “enoughness” and it is a powerful and important quality.
The idea of “enoughness” and what it means and how to think about it began to interest me through teaching law and business students. Many of the ethical problems that come up in their lives do so when everything in the environment is measured by money. Yet what draws a lot of students to law school is the desire to make the world better, work for justice, etc. Yes, the desire to have a prestigious, well-paying career is a draw as well, but a remarkable number at least start out idealistically. There is interesting research out there about how law school changes people, not in a positive way, and a fascinating movement among a group of law professors to humanize legal education to help students retain a sense of balance and mission throughout their careers, instead of becoming one of the statistics that make lawyers among the unhappiest, most substance-abusing, most-divorced (and so on) professionals around.
Anyway, a perennial topic in my negotiation course when discussing exercises that raise core questions about each person’s own conduct as a negotiator is managing your money in a way that permits you to walk away from a job if you feel compromised ethically. Many—but by no means all—students cross ethical lines in some of these exercises, which they explain by saying it felt like their obligation to the client, or they knew they wouldn’t look good if they didn’t. (Really.)
An important question I ask during this discussion is whether students want to become the “go-to” person for cutting corners or the person about whom it is said “Oh, don’t ask her, she’d never do that.” That kind of reputation starts at the interview, on the first day, etc: what set of core values are they projecting and what do they seek in their colleagues and supervisors? This is closely related to my ethics lesson on the critical importance of choosing colleagues and supervisors for their character. Anyway, back to the money-managing point, one random piece of advice I always give is to consider sending automatically to savings half of every raise that comes along, and only letting your standard of living/spending escalate by the other half. When you are asked to do something ethically compromising, it is much harder to say no if it means that your mortgage or your children’s tuition might go unpaid.
There’s a seductive trap that young lawyers can fall into of excessive spending because those who go to large law firms work so many hours early in their careers. It can be enticing to spend money on yourself as a form of compensation for not having a life—a feeling of being entitled to toys and fun things because you have so little time. Given the large sums that slosh around in the system for some of these students (last year, starting salaries at the top law firms were around $160,000/year and some include end-of-year bonuses as well), how to develop a sense of proportion?
To cut to the chase, how much money is enough? How much recognition? How much status? How do you recognize enough? How do you achieve balance in your life among your values, including being good at your job and having a satisfying personal life? Before my current adventure started, I was raising this topic with people I ran across because it was on my mind. Elizabeth suggested that maybe the question to ask is “Why more?” She points out that one possible answer is “Because there is more. Why should you have ONLY enough, even if it is enough, if someone else has more or is going for more? There’s a powerful sense that his more will eat away from your more. You have to be at least a little bit greedy to protect yourself from someone else’s greed. Given an ecology of scarcity, only too much is ever enough. Which is why Americans get fat!”
While I started thinking about this in terms of money and tangible “stuff,” the concept is broader. I grapple with it, for example, as retirement looms on my horizon. We have a really good life and we have enough money and enough stuff. We feel fortunate and content in the balance of our lives. We have a great quality of life and live according to a set of values that we believe in. We are incredibly fortunate in our human connections from our family through all of our friends. But how much mattering is enough? How much making a contribution? This medical adventure has not diminished our appreciation of the good fortune of our lives, indeed it has reinforced that sense. At the same time, it increases the intensity of some of the other questions, which also revolve around “enoughness.”
Enoughness raises practical questions well as philosophical ones. So far, the topic has been a slippery and elusive one for me. I continue to think that the idea is important for professionals at the beginnings of their careers. For that matter, it is probably important to people at all stages of their careers. The question is how to get at it in a tangible, useful kind of way. The concept must relate in a fundamental way to some of the social psychology research on happiness and emotional intelligence and maybe even Carol Dweck’s work on motivation, though I have not yet found the right connection or traction point. If any of you have thoughts on enoughness and thinking about it, I’d love to hear them.
Today brings occupational therapy and grading papers. And resting in my new tortoise-incarnation. I hope to have enough energy by late afternoon to go to a retirement celebration. If you’re feeling great today, stop and appreciate your good health, your family and your good friends. Happy Friday.
The idea of “enoughness” and what it means and how to think about it began to interest me through teaching law and business students. Many of the ethical problems that come up in their lives do so when everything in the environment is measured by money. Yet what draws a lot of students to law school is the desire to make the world better, work for justice, etc. Yes, the desire to have a prestigious, well-paying career is a draw as well, but a remarkable number at least start out idealistically. There is interesting research out there about how law school changes people, not in a positive way, and a fascinating movement among a group of law professors to humanize legal education to help students retain a sense of balance and mission throughout their careers, instead of becoming one of the statistics that make lawyers among the unhappiest, most substance-abusing, most-divorced (and so on) professionals around.
Anyway, a perennial topic in my negotiation course when discussing exercises that raise core questions about each person’s own conduct as a negotiator is managing your money in a way that permits you to walk away from a job if you feel compromised ethically. Many—but by no means all—students cross ethical lines in some of these exercises, which they explain by saying it felt like their obligation to the client, or they knew they wouldn’t look good if they didn’t. (Really.)
An important question I ask during this discussion is whether students want to become the “go-to” person for cutting corners or the person about whom it is said “Oh, don’t ask her, she’d never do that.” That kind of reputation starts at the interview, on the first day, etc: what set of core values are they projecting and what do they seek in their colleagues and supervisors? This is closely related to my ethics lesson on the critical importance of choosing colleagues and supervisors for their character. Anyway, back to the money-managing point, one random piece of advice I always give is to consider sending automatically to savings half of every raise that comes along, and only letting your standard of living/spending escalate by the other half. When you are asked to do something ethically compromising, it is much harder to say no if it means that your mortgage or your children’s tuition might go unpaid.
There’s a seductive trap that young lawyers can fall into of excessive spending because those who go to large law firms work so many hours early in their careers. It can be enticing to spend money on yourself as a form of compensation for not having a life—a feeling of being entitled to toys and fun things because you have so little time. Given the large sums that slosh around in the system for some of these students (last year, starting salaries at the top law firms were around $160,000/year and some include end-of-year bonuses as well), how to develop a sense of proportion?
To cut to the chase, how much money is enough? How much recognition? How much status? How do you recognize enough? How do you achieve balance in your life among your values, including being good at your job and having a satisfying personal life? Before my current adventure started, I was raising this topic with people I ran across because it was on my mind. Elizabeth suggested that maybe the question to ask is “Why more?” She points out that one possible answer is “Because there is more. Why should you have ONLY enough, even if it is enough, if someone else has more or is going for more? There’s a powerful sense that his more will eat away from your more. You have to be at least a little bit greedy to protect yourself from someone else’s greed. Given an ecology of scarcity, only too much is ever enough. Which is why Americans get fat!”
While I started thinking about this in terms of money and tangible “stuff,” the concept is broader. I grapple with it, for example, as retirement looms on my horizon. We have a really good life and we have enough money and enough stuff. We feel fortunate and content in the balance of our lives. We have a great quality of life and live according to a set of values that we believe in. We are incredibly fortunate in our human connections from our family through all of our friends. But how much mattering is enough? How much making a contribution? This medical adventure has not diminished our appreciation of the good fortune of our lives, indeed it has reinforced that sense. At the same time, it increases the intensity of some of the other questions, which also revolve around “enoughness.”
Enoughness raises practical questions well as philosophical ones. So far, the topic has been a slippery and elusive one for me. I continue to think that the idea is important for professionals at the beginnings of their careers. For that matter, it is probably important to people at all stages of their careers. The question is how to get at it in a tangible, useful kind of way. The concept must relate in a fundamental way to some of the social psychology research on happiness and emotional intelligence and maybe even Carol Dweck’s work on motivation, though I have not yet found the right connection or traction point. If any of you have thoughts on enoughness and thinking about it, I’d love to hear them.
Today brings occupational therapy and grading papers. And resting in my new tortoise-incarnation. I hope to have enough energy by late afternoon to go to a retirement celebration. If you’re feeling great today, stop and appreciate your good health, your family and your good friends. Happy Friday.
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