You can see the other videos at the Interesting New York website.

Social Media Enthusiast | The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption | GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values & Communications Technologies | Poet | More About Me

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Inspired by the TED conference, David organized the first Mandala NYC event in August with the intent to kick off meaningful conversations about ideas that matter in an informal, accessible, and affordable setting. Since then, David has hosted an impressive list of speakers (August, September and October) and created a small but engaged community of regular attendees. David’s next event, under its new branding — Lucid NYC — is on 20th November and, if you are in NYC, you must not miss it.

At yesterday’s well attended event, my fellow speakers were relationship coach Michael Jascz, artist Steven Hirsch (do check out his Courthouse Confessions project) and green energy enthusiast Jonathan Colby.

I once again used my story about little girls who own a hundred dolls to explain my off consumption experiment to the audience and the story is becoming a sure hit with women at conferences –

By the way, my belief in serendipity was reinforced when David invited me to speak at the event on a day when I was attending another event in NYC — The Feast Social Innovation Conference. I should attend conferences in NYC more often; every time I’m visiting NYC to attend a conference, I’m asked to speak at one.

Social Media Enthusiast | The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption | GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values & Communications Technologies | Poet | More About Me

Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail.

1. Delete 120 minutes a day of ’spare time’ from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.

2. Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:

- Exercise for thirty minutes.
- Read relevant non-fiction.
- Send three thank you notes.
- Learn new digital techniques.
- Volunteer.
- Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
- Give a speech once a month about something you don’t currently know a lot about.

3. Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.

4. Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.

Almost eighteen months back, I decided to live my life more purposefully, when I made my 30-by-30 list. Since then, I have tried to live my life on the same back-to-the-basics principles that Seth writes about. It hasn’t always been easy, and I haven’t always managed to stay on course, but these simple changes have transformed my life.

So, go ahead, test it for yourself. It will be difficult, and it will take time, but, if you manage to do most of these things most of the time, I promise you that you’ll gift yourself a whole new life within a year.

An increasing number of consumers are rejecting their roles as consumers and refusing to define themselves by the things they buy. Instead, they are choosing to define their identities from the experiences they have, the relationships they build, and the meaning they create by expressing themselves creatively.

If you are a marketer, you can react to these trends in two ways. You can ignore them until they hit you, or you can immerse yourself in them, like I have chosen to.

After studying these trends for almost six months, I see that there is a way for brands to stay relevant, even if the seven social trends I talked about move closer to the mainstream.

Simplicity, authenticity and community are the three themes that run through the seven social trends that are changing consumption. Brands that help us clear the clutter in our lives, or enable us to have authentic experiences, or assist us in forming and connecting with communities will become the most important necessities, the only things we can’t do without.

I’m thankful to Drew for letting me share my thoughts with his readers.

Do head over to The Marketing Minute and participate in the conversation.

It’s really ironic that a subculture with a liberal/ anti-establishment/ anti-brand philosophy has transformed into become a an empty, recursive, self-referential focus group for marketers.

In Chapter 2 of ‘Hip: The History’, John Leland lays out the history of this connection between being hip and saying no to consumption —

Within hip’s juggernaut is a quest for the real, a belief that enlightenment involves stripping away sophistication, not adding it… Hip promises truth received, not constructed… This call to primitive experience resists (America’s) cult of progress. In place of status or achievement, the writers offer non-material values by which people could define themselves. This impetus — repeated by bohemians, beboppers, action painters, hippies, punks, hip-hoppers etc. — has been remarkably resilient over American history. Though we often think of these as discrete responses to the mainstream, they are really an ongoing part of what makes America American. They are not footnotes; they belong to the story. By our rebellions are we sometimes best known.

Consider Henry Thoreau, who removed himself from society, retreated to the countryside, and build a crude house in the woods around Walden Pond, the setting for his best-known book ‘Walden‘ –

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world.

Then, there is Walt Whitman, whose 1855 preface to ‘Leaves of Grass’ can stand as a “founding hipster manifesto” –

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but n the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Perhaps, like Thoreau and Whitman, I’m a hipster myself, even if I don’t look like one.

There are some really interesting stories in here, stories that tell me that I’m doing too little myself. I know one or two of these people, but I wish I had the time to know the rest of them before I left.

The Buck Stops Here

India may be in the throes of consumerism, but a growing number of young people are making a conscious effort to stay away from the high life.

By Riddi Shah, riddhi.shah@hindustantimes.com
Hindustan Times, Mumbai, Sunday, August 3, 2008

The rest of his business school buddies are busy reaching out for the next rung of the corporate ladder. But Kaushik Ramu, 27, has chosen to leave all that behind. “I was earning a lot of money without knowing why. It was just something that I had been indoctrinated with by my peers and parents. I was caught in a vicious spiral – buying things I didn’t need and selling products to others who didn’t need them either,” says the IIM-Bangalore graduate. So Ramu did what few others would have had the courage to: he walked. He walked out of the 9 to 5 life and into one in which there is no routine, no pressure to perform and no desire to consume. He has since moved to a small flat in Navi Mumbai and is finding ways to ‘simplify’ his life – from trying to cut out all personal con sumer goods in his life (think areetha and besan paste instead of Palmolive), to learning about sustainable living.

Surprisingly, Ramu isn’t alone in his disillusionment with India’s new materialist mantra. In fact, he’s part of a small but fast-growing commu nity of young people who are look ing to de clutter, de consume and de materialise their lives.

Like Naveen Vasudevan, 25, who identifies with Ramu’s compulsion to get away . “I was set on a career in technology.

My father died when I was young, so money was always a big motivating factor for me. But after more than two years working for a corporation, I decided that life can’t always be about profits,” says the former engineer. Two years ago, he moved from Chennai to Vellore and began volun teering at two farms in Auroville in Pondicherry .

“The more I live this life, the more I realise I can’t go back to the previous one. I wanted to give my family the good life, but now my definition of the good life has changed,” he says. The ‘good life’ for Vasudevan now means getting rid of his cellphone, eating locally produced food and buying only that which is absolutely necessary .

Others follow His decision to rebel against the norm has also inspired others to take similar life changes. “A friend who was pursuing a Master’s degree in Canada has decided to return home and work on a farm instead.

As has another friend studying in Australia,” says Vasudevan.

He adds, “More people are asking these questions today . They’ve realised that money, alcohol and the so-called ‘high life’ fail to bring real satisfaction. And now we have forums across the country so such people can find others like themselves”.

Twenty-seven-year-old former NGO employee and Baroda resident Jignasha Pandya agrees: “Most people are still leading a life of consumption. But I’m definitely meeting people who are looking for alternatives”. Pandya’s own journey into de consumption began more than four years ago. After going through a string of mean ingless jobs after college, she realised that the answer she was looking for was within herself.

“No job, no amount of money was making me happy . I worked in a newspaper and I saw how much manipulation there was; I worked for an NGO and realised that they were slaves to the corporations that funded them,” she says. Now Pandya holds workshops on sustainable living. “I once owned eight pairs of shoes. Now I wear one pair of chappals until they’re completely worn out,” she laughs.

“But I no longer feel like I’m giving up something. Whenever I go to a shop, I stop and ask myself, ‘Do I really need this?’ Most of the time, the answer is no,” she says.

Global Trend For these young people, the desire to step off the earn-buy-earn-buy treadmill is a new. But in the west, the ‘downshifting’ or ‘voluntary simplicity’ movement has been around for over a decade.

“The wealth in emerging nations like India and China is still pretty new. But there is a rebellious layer that is saying, let’s learn from the west,” says Tracey Smith, founder of the UK’s National Downshift ing Week (usually the last week of April during which people are encouraged to live ‘simply’). The movement’s popularity can be attributed to the power of the Internet, says Smith.

“It created a global consciousness. People were dissatisfied and found each other through the web,” she says. Her own website, www.nationaldownshiftingweek.com, has visitors from all over and eventually resulted in the creation of a National Downshifting Week in the US.

Another such website — www.storyofstuff.com — led Bangalore-based engineer Ganesh APP to think about his own consumption patterns. “It made me see that I didn’t need luxuries to be happy,” he says.

Ganesh, 21, has been ‘off consumption’ for the last two months.

“It’s such a liberating experience. You don’t have much to worry about. You don’t have five credit cards, two mobile phone plans, three insurance policies and property tax for lands and houses. And you don’t look at others to measure your suc cess,” he says. Soon, Ganesh will be backpacking around the country with nothing more than a thousand-rupee note. “You just learn to be content with whatever you have,” he says.

At 32, Vishal Jaiswal is more than 10 years Ganesh’s senior, but they have this philosophy in common: that sometimes, less is more. “I was working in the US during the dotcom boom and I had everything — an Audi, a great social life, a huge salary . But I got sacked and had to come back. I turned to yoga during my depression and found that it was my calling,” says the software engineer.

Today, four years down the line, Jaiswal stays away from all electricity, cooks his own food and washes his own utensils. His only indulgence? Comic books. “But I’m trying to get rid of that too,” he laughs.

Next week, India will celebrate its 61st birthday . And all around, there will be signs of India’s recently won economic ‘freedom’ – Nike showrooms, monolithic shopping malls and over—flowing wallets.

But young rebels like Ganesh, Ramu and Vasudevan will be the only reminders of an India that a dhoti-clad man once dreamt of. An India that had empowered its villages; an India that was meant to be simple, spiritual and self-sufficient. Gandhi’s India.

Answer: I’m moving to Washington DC for a year and I’m giving away almost everything I own to three five strangers.

Giving away my stuff, I have learned, is more, not less, work than moving it from one city to another or putting it in storage.

Moving, so far, has been a simple two step process –

- At the old house, I pack everything I need for two weeks into a bag or two to carry with myself and indiscriminately stuff everything else I own into boxes and load them into a truck.
- At the new house, I unload the boxes from the truck and transfer all my stuff straight into cupboards so that I don’t have to look at it again.

So far, I have never really had to worry about the stuff that’s in the boxes. I have never had to ask myself if I really needed it at all.

In every city I have stayed in, I have bought more stuff than I have discarded. As a result, every time I have moved, there is even more stuff in the boxes and even less incentive to sort through it.

This time, I need to sort through every single item I have acquired over the last ten years, to put them into three categories –

- Stuff I need to take with me (clothes/ accessories/ books/ gadgets/ important papers I can fit into three bags).
- Stuff I need to throw away (old papers/ other miscellaneous junk).
- Stuff I can give away (furniture/ furnishings/ electronics items/ kitchenware/ books/ DVDs/ knick-knacks).

The three people who are taking my things have already told me what they want. Others — both friends and strangers — keep dropping in to take the books/ DVDs/ knick-knacks that aren’t taken yet. So, there’s a constantly changing list of the stuff that I’m giving away, with additions as I sort through my stuff and find useful but forgotten things, and deletions as somebody asks for something.

By tomorrow evening, I have to sort through my stuff to identify what I’m taking with me and what I’m throwing away.

Then, I have to label whatever is left so the packers know if it is going to Alok/ Deepika in Thane, Preethi/ Gaurav in Chembur, Nandita in Pune or the orphanage in Madh.

The packers will be here on 5th and 6th to pack everything up and load it into two trucks — one each for Madh/ Thane and Chembur/ Pune — based on the route plan. On 7th, they’ll tell me how much it is going to cost me, after factoring in the octroi they have paid en route to Thane/ Pune.

It sounds like so much work that I haven’t even started so far — instead of sorting through my stuff, I have been researching the hipster subculture on the internet, for the last two days!

So, please don’t ask me again: but why do you need packers when you are giving everything away?

I am selling 6 shares (each of 10% of the U.S. royalties of my second novel) for $2000 per share. This includes all U.S. serial, reprint, textbook, and film (and other performance) royalties.

Shareholders will receive checks (and copies of the royalty statement from my publisher) in the mail every 6 months after the book’s publication (probably Fall, 2009 or Spring 2010). Shares can be resold at any price at any time, I will facilitate trading and promote it on my blog if that is what a shareholder wants.

Based on sales of my first novel I project sales of my second novel to be ~13000 after 24 months (if there isn’t more mainstream attention than with my first novel). If there is more mainstream attention sales will be “considerably higher” I think. Regardless of the amount of mainstream attention that happens I believe that in the long term sales will remain steady and that my second novel will remain in print.

I think shareholders should, at worst, expect to begin making a profit on their investment within 32-40 months, after which they will make profits every 6 months for the rest of their lives without having to do anything.

I quit my job, my last day is in two weeks. People who buy shares will “actually” help me focus more on the novel. I “actually” will work better on my second novel, the way the novel is right now, if I have no obligations or responsibilities at all.

I think this is another thing people can talk about in terms of me and will “in itself” “increase sales” in the long term. If anyone buys shares they will have concrete motivation to promote me and that also will increase sales

I also feel it is “funny” “just to do this offer” which makes me view it like any other “funny” thing I might do in that I feel that something “has already been accomplished” just by making this offer, even if no one buys shares and people “think I’m retarded.”

I am almost tempted to buy the shares myself. It would be a fun thing to do, for the sheer quirkiness quotient of it.

By the way, if I offered 5 shares of 10% of the worldwide revenues of ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ for Rs. 100000 each, would anybody be interested?

Both styles of journalism involve immersing oneself in a situation and writing about the events and people involved in the experience from a deeply personal perspective. Gonzo journalism is more focused on the writer’s life, while immersion journalism is more focused on the writer’s specific experiences.

Edward Humes, Steve Weinberg and Bill Kirtz offer how-to tips on immersion journalism –

The heart and soul of narrative nonfiction is in the reporting, not the writing. But there is a danger inherent in this process: Immersing in a subject tends to generate an almost impossible amount of information, devoid of structure other than what you, the writer, impose upon it.

First, though, you have to get to the point where you have the time and luxury to think about bringing order out of chaos. You have to get there first, you have to get inside your chosen world.

There is a process I use, though I’m sure everyone who does this sort of writing has their own unique method. Mine is a bit like the five stages of grief. (Edward Humes)

In journalism, time sometimes equals truth. Tom Wolfe, in a 1972 essay, called this patient, deep reporting an “essential first move” because scenes, not just disparate facts, are necessary to write compelling narrative. “Therefore,” Wolfe wrote, “your main problem as a reporter is, simply, managing to stay with whomever you are writing about long enough for the scenes to take place before your own eyes . . . The initial problem is always to approach total strangers, move in on their lives in some fashion, ask questions you have no natural right to expect answers to, ask to see things you weren’t meant to see . . . Many journalists find it so ungentlemanly, so embarrassing, so terrifying even, that they are never able to master this.” (Steve Weinberg)

When deciding whom to follow, look for texture, vulnerability, contradiction, a clear line of action that will engage the reader and reveal character and theme.

Zoom in. Find a simple frame. Follow one love struck teen, not the whole seventh grade.

Get the details: the dog’s name, the song title, the brand of the beer.

Keep asking: for their diary, for the contents of their purse. Never assume your subject will say no. Time and again, you’ll find that people are more generous and brave than you would imagine. (Bill Kirtz quoting Tom French)

Reading about immersion journalism has made me think: how would I write ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ if I was not the marketer who went off consumption? It’s an almost impossible question to answer, but I’ll need to answer it, if I don’t want to end up with two hundred pages of empty ego-tripping.

By the way, Metafilter has an interesting thread on books written in the immersion journalism style. It’s a good list.

The first part of Kulikauskas’s treatise — before he starts talking about open-source software — is truly mind-bending, especially in context of my own experience of giving (almost) everything away.

I accept the idea that I should give everything away. The challenge is to put this into practice. This is a design problem for personal life and social economy.

Accepting that I should give everything away, I realize that it’s not clear what this exactly means. What is mine to give away? At any moment, I have some cash on my person and in my accounts. I may own a car, laptop computer, desktop computer, software, bicycle, books, hiking equipment, chairs, clothes and shoes, eyeglasses, phone cards, kitchen utensils, paper and pen, toothbrush. I have a credit line that I can draw against at a particular rate of interest. I have family, friends, and even strangers on whom I can call for help. I am employable by virtue of my connections, work experience, education, enthusiasm and helpfulness. I have citizenship and civil rights. I have my time, my health, my organs, and my life expectancy. Moreover, I have gifts of creativity, invention, thoughtfulness, playfulness, friendship, concern, love. I have a mind for cultivating and applying these gifts. I have truths of life, and a moral sense. Finally, I have a capacity for good will, a free will by which I may defer to others.

I can start simply by giving away what I have extra, clothes I no longer wear, books I will not read, equipment I don’t make use of. Even these modest steps force me to consider: What am I using, and what will I use? I find out that I can’t give anything away unless I risk the regret of doing so. In order to give things away, I need to accept greater insecurity.

If I accept insecurity, then there isn’t much reason to save any extra money I may have. If the money has no designated purpose, then there is nothing to keep me from giving it away. I may practice doing so, and make gifts to charitable organizations, and also to people I know, until my surplus has dwindled. Then I edge closer to vulnerability. I will be touched by waves of mistakes and misfortunes. Chances are good that I will find myself in debt.

I will learn that I must call on others and accept their help. I become sensitive to the extent that I may impose on them. Asking for help may strengthen our friendship, but asking for too much may end it. And how may I reciprocate? I find that I must give up the ideal of an independent life. I depend on others for help. I start to notice the many ways in which each of us depends on others. I make available my resources to others, including my line of credit. This intertwines our lives, forces me to grow closer to others, exercise my judgment and examine our values. I also find it easy to accept what I am offered, the used clothes, books, equipment. As I give freely, so I take freely. This may work greatly in my favor. I find myself able to take large gifts, or accept business opportunities, that might have threatened my financial independence, when I felt I had that.

I still have many things to give away: the last of my shoes, my eyeglasses, my toothbrush. I may continue, but I realize that I am already depending on others, and this can only make life harder for them. I find my obligation to care for myself, just as for others. Frankly, who needs my eyeglasses or my toothbrush? Who would put them to better use? I find myself at a dead end, unsure how to give more away. Therefore I take to heart a general principle, that I myself have nothing, it is all available to those who make best use of it. I may not say of anything: this is mine, to do what I please with. Rather, I must ever be mindful of when I’m not making best use of something.

All of the meanwhile, I have also thought about the most important things I have. I have my life, and what shall I do with it? My gifts, my talents, my loving parents, my secure upbringing - all of this was given to me, I did not create this. All that I have must serve all, not myself.

Who is to decide what to do with me? Certainly, my parents have their effect, as do others. But only I can apply my own free will. Therefore I do everything I can that I may be worthy to decide what to do with myself, how to apply myself. I discipline myself, educate myself, direct myself. I develop my dreams that focus my efforts.

I work to devote all of myself to the most important parts of life. At any moment, I must play out the sweet kindnesses and small challenges by which we engage each other and this life we live. In the big picture, I must flesh out the largest visions that might inspire me to apply all of myself with that much more vigor. Certainly, this is a wonderful life to live.

The more I give away, the more I understand how much work this is! I now think of wealth as a large burden of responsibility. What is the best use for it? I appreciate that some people are much better than others at making good use of wealth. They should certainly govern more, with the understanding that they have no right to do as they please, but must always use it as best for all.

I also learn the anxiety of poverty, the energy I must spend to weight what I might ask of each friend, and calculate how I might salvage my situation. This does not help me apply myself, nor does it help others. How may I apply myself, as much possible, to what is important in life? I should reduce, as much as I can, the responsibility of irrelevant wealth, and also the anxiety of irrelevant poverty. As I find this middle way, I grow more sensitive in poverty, and more able in wealth.