Friday, August 5, 2016

1843 and Escaping the Rat Race

The Economist has relaunched its lifestyle magazine. Previously called Intelligent Life, the new name is 1843, which is apparently the year that the Economist was founded. As a subscriber, I’ve already received three issues of the newly branded magazine, but I have only just got around to reading the first of these, dated April/May 2016. I tend to try to keep up to date with my reading of the Economist itself and the Guardian Weekly, then catch up on Time when I have spare time and 1843 only when that backlog is eliminated too, generally on long holidays or during mid-summer.

Apart from the rather silly new name, I did not notice much difference between Intelligent Life, a name which at least gave some clues about its content and targeted audience, and 1843. Gone were a few standard features that I rather liked, liked Seven Wonders, and several others that I didn’t, like the Wine List Inspector. Most of the sections remain, albeit in a slightly revised order and sometimes altered names, like travel instead of places. The centerpiece are still feature articles of a satisfying length, and I was pleased to see that 1843 had six of these, because Intelligent Life had been paring down their number to four or five, with one of those little more than a series of photos.

So, a little confused as to the need or purpose of the rebranding, I read the editorial pages and also scoured the web a bit. The culprit, as usual, is marketing. I guess Intelligent Life did not make much money, with its high editorial and printing costs and a limited readership – I noticed that I wasn’t able to buy it on newsstands in the US, I guess to keep down costs, but the target audience in England and English-speaking Europe must have been rather small and unattractive to advertisers and limiting for growth prospects.

So the starting point for the relaunch was to make the magazine more global, and to make it more widely available in the US and elsewhere and also online. They want to link it more to the mother magazine too, probably to make it more widely known, which would explain (though not excuse) the new name. That makes sense, as does the intention to make use of the Economist staffers stationed around the world.

But finding globally interesting content for many of the sections is tough, and I’m not sure that either Intelligent Life or its successor has got it right yet. Examples are the reviews of current exhibitions and plays. Even if I had got around to reading these before the events had actually closed, the chances of me being able to take advantage of such events would be miniscule, and surely that must apply to almost all readers. At least I’m in the cultural metropolis of New York, where one or two of the reviewed events tend to be staged, but is that enough to justify the section? Are there really all that many people straddling the globe sufficiently to be able to enjoy more than a small proportion of the events? Wouldn’t it be better to focus on films and books? Or to go to the added expense of regional content?

This gets to the heart of my main problem with the magazine, before and after relaunch. I am not all that sure that the target audience is very large, and I’m even less sure that I want to be associated with them anyway. The Wine List Inspector seemed to be focused on people ready and able to travel across a continent to a posh restaurant with a posher and more expensive wine list. Even if I used to be close to that category when I did a lot of business travel, it does not describe a very attractive me, one I want to be reminded of or associated with. The first 1843 highlighted a set of travel destinations that were so exotic and expensive and hard to reach that anyone wanting to read about them wouldn’t be someone I’d want to meet, in the unlikely event that I ever made it to such a location. These people might be an attractive group to certain advertisers, but how large is that group, and does anyone else want to be associated with them?

Still, the features are always interesting, and I also generally welcome the content from regular Economist writers. If they can emulate the material they produce for the annual Christmas magazine that would be great. In the first 1843, I did notice a slight change of style, away from elegant poetic language towards the more punchy data-driven style I am familiar with, always with wit, but sometimes not completely suitable for much longer articles. Many of my favourites contributed well – Schumpeter and Bello among them. I hope they keep doing so.

An example was “Why do we work so hard?” by Ryan Avent, an American economics correspondent based in London, seemingly an author of the rather nerdy Free Exchange column. He tackled a question dear to my heart and informed by my experience, questioning why so many people work such long hours and sacrifice so much yet seem unable to slow down.

Typical of an Economist writer, he starts with interesting statistics showing trends in working hours, confirming indeed that a long trend towards shorter working weeks was reversed about fifty years ago, at least for anyone in full-time work. Then he focuses on his own experience with admirable vulnerability, but maybe glossing over the point that, as one of the elite, at least he has the luxury of some choice of working pattern, whereas many others are locked into punitive hours by corporate expectations and wages that offer nothing beyond survival.

He tells us about his own frenetic life, with family time squeezed uncomfortably around work, and muses about alternatives. He refers to a couple he is friends with who resigned their jobs and decamped to somewhere rural, only to find their new life dull and return to the bustle a year later, gaining some macabre comfort from the tale to convince himself that perhaps he wasn’t being such a blind fool after all.

He is honestly refreshing about his motivation for working such long hours. A lot of it is about the thrill of competition and ego. He craves winning – whether against others or against his own limitations, and loves the perpetual challenge to improve, as well as the recognition that comes with success. He even likes to encourage more recognition by falling into the habits of excessive acquisition, designed more to pique the envy of others than anything else.

Where Avent has not perhaps examined himself as deeply is in what he really wants and what he lacks. His description of family activities smack of routine rather than immersion or even love.

This is all eerily familiar to me. If I had had the courage and vulnerability to see it, he could have been describing me in my late thirties. Then I had a stroke of luck. I started to fail, to stop winning, and had a minor breakdown when the years of exhaustion suddenly caught up with me as the adrenaline rush of success stopped. I was lucky enough to have a family, an employer and just enough humility to come through this experience and out the other side not quite broken. As a result I think I can add some insights to the article.

Firstly, it is great to be honest about ego driven motivations, and it is the first step towards finding alternative ways to achieving them. Work is one way to find competition, challenge, recognition and growth. But there are many others too. Don’t wait too long before finding some that can work for you and laying down the groundwork for them and even starting them while in work. Be aware that earning money is a very poor proxy for all these motivations, indeed often gets in the way of them. Most of us are not so shallow as to have money itself, and its visible signs, as necessary for recognition – and if we are like that, we can wean ourselves away from it over time. Clearly Avent’s friends who sold out did not have good alternative ways in place to satisfy their hunger. The things that seem appealing while working, such as peace or nature, will probably not be enough when time suddenly becomes plentiful.

Next, the search for alternatives may seem voluntary now, or even academic or a challenge for the distant future, but be ready anyway. As I found out, ego driven motivations can become a curse when you stop winning those challenges and feel disdain instead of recognition. That change can come suddenly, and it can owe as much to chance as anything else.

Finally, pay special attention to family. Really understand the needs of your life partner as well as your own. It can be a shock suddenly having more time together, and not always a pleasant one, especially where there is unfinished understanding or other external pressures to deal with. By the way, Avent’s whole mindset strikes me as quite a masculine one – most women seem to find balancing ego with other priorities much more difficult and seem to suffer more guilt in their compromises, so transitions might be especially hard for women as well.


Perhaps Avent is a microcosm of 1843 in some small ways. The magazine might do better to think through its target readers’ alternative ways of reaching satisfaction, or even to help them find them. Bragging rights on yet another global exhibition or exotic but fleeting travel experience might be what the advertisers think they want to see, but I am not so sure.

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