In the New York Times Week in Review a while ago there was an article called, simply, “What’s Your New Plan B?” In it, writer David Segal took a wistful look back at another casualty of the economic downturn: many people’s “Plan B.” What’s a Plan B? It’s the fantasy life you dream of pursuing … the one that would make you really fulfilled or happy. Inherent in that idea, of course, is that you’re not currently living that life now. For some people, that might be because “Plan B” is actually a retirement plan. But for others, it’s evidently because they’re currently pursuing what venture capitalist/author Randy Komisar would call “The Deferred Life Plan.” The “Deferred Life Plan” basically consists of accumulating a nest egg and then doing what you really want to do. And it’s important to note here that Komisar believes it’s a really bad way to approach life.
Segal bemoans the fact that the Blissful, Fanciful Plan B of the past has been replaced by a new concept: the Terrifying Plan B. This new Bad Plan B consists of what you’ll do when you get laid off and have no savings or income anymore. As Segal puts it, “The old Plan B was a lark you could enjoy even if you never got past the dreaming stage. The new Plan B is a menace you can fear even if you’re fully employed.”
At first pass, Segal’s argument seems very understandable. People are definitely scared of cutbacks and layoffs now. Surely, many people would say, this is not the time to start a new business or buy a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont. This is a time to hold tight. Retrench. If the passionate dream was too far a stretch when things were good, it would be ludicrous to consider it now.
But the problem with that argument, and Segal’s whole approach to this “Plan B” business, is that it seems to be built on the premise that following your dreams is somehow supposed to be easy and risk-free. “Part of the old plan B,” he writes, “was an imagined sit down with a professional accountant who would run the numbers and tell you yes, this will work as long as you spend “X dollars” per year, and nothing more.
Boiled down to its core, “Plan B” for many people—or at least for the people Segal talks about—evidently seems to consist of a desire to sit back and have it easy. Stop working. Stop worrying. Retreat, in other words, from the down-and-dirty business of full engagement in the swirling currents and challenges of life. Or, at least, to pursue a dream with no real financial risk or cost.
Not that I don’t sympathize with anyone who suddenly doesn’t know how they’re going to pay for their kids’ college educations. The unexpected downturn in the financial markets is real, and the sacrifice and pain it’s causing is real, too. It’s just that scrambling to figure out how to make ends meet doesn’t cancel out pursuing a life’s dream … if that dream involves passionate engagement in something, as opposed to kicking back on the golf course with a martini.
Three points worth considering here. First. Pursuing a life’s dream or passion (retirement aside) has never, ever, been easy or cost and risk-free. If it were, everyone would be already doing it. There’s not an entrepreneur, entertainer, or writer/artist/head chef/film director/bed-and-breakfast owner out there who hasn’t lost sleep and worked hard and dealt with challenges of risk, failure, financial uncertainty and events out of their control. These people don’t pursue their “dream” life or career paths because those paths are easy. They pursue them because they’re rewarding.
Second. The entire world hasn’t come to a halt. Granted, this might not be the best time to launch a luxury goods print magazine aimed at opulent Wall Street traders. But if you’re really passionate about something, and are willing to be creative and adaptive in how you find a home for it in the world, there’s no obvious or immutable reason you can’t make it work, downturn or no downturn. Last October, well-known entrepreneur and start-up incubator Paul Graham wrote an essay called “Why to Start a Start-up in a Bad Economy” in which he argues, as the title indicates, that now might be a particularly good time to launch a new business.
Third. Easy street is overrated. Easy for me to say, I suppose, since I’ve never actually been there. But consider. Even if Segal’s article was really just mis-named, and was meant to be about people’s retirement plans, not fulfilling life plans … an easy, care-free, retirement doesn’t always live up to its expectations.
Numerous medical studies, including this one (offered just as a sample, and posted on the website of Global Aging), indicate that early retirement may be linked with dying younger. While the correlation undoubtedly has multiple causes, including reduced physical exercise and potentially lessened health insurance or income, “psychological and social effects” associated with retirement are also thought to be a likely contributing cause. We don’t need ease to be happy or stay alive. We need meaning, purpose, and engagement.
This was certainly the ardent belief of John W. Gardner, who was the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson and was still teaching at Stanford University well into his 80s. Gardner believed that the key to keeping quality of life into old age was to “stay interested” in life, keep learning, and stay passionately engaged in the daily work of the world. (You can read an excerpt from an excellent speech he gave on the subject in 1993.) When Gardner finally died at the age of 90, in 2002, Science magazine wrote this, as part of a final tribute to this vibrantly alive man: “A colleague once asked him for advice on a choice, in which the preferred option contained a fairly rich mixture of risk and reward. He thought for a while, and then said this: ‘You don’t want to die with the music still in you.'”
Plan B, Gardner would say, shouldn’t be about an easy or risk-free path. It should be about staying passionately engaged and getting your music out into the world—no matter what the circumstances—while you still have the time.
You’ve done a nice job of attacking a straw man, hombre. There’s nothing in my piece that suggests the old Plan B was a cinch. I give three old Plan B examples: running a bed and breakfast (very difficult), landing a record deal and going on tour (maybe harder) and devising a must-have gizmo in your basement (perhaps harder still). The old Plan B was someting you’d prefer over your current occupation, which means you’d find it more rewarding. But that isn’t the same as easy or risk-free.
See, the you reason you needed to sit down with your accountant to suss out whether your old Plan B was feasible was precisely because it was a risk, financially speaking. If it was not a financial risk, you wouldn’t need to discuss the matter with your accountant — gnome sane, gnome sane?
Hugs not drugs,
Dave
I think there’s a big difference in people’s definition of risk. Fantasies involve no risk. Passions pursued only if there’s a nest egg to support them involve a kind of controlled or limited risk, even if there’s effort involved. Most entrepreneurs or other brave adventurers who succeed at their passions and dreams are those who may look at the money, or the state of the economy … but don’t necessarily let a need for the “safety” a good economy or bank account might provide stop them from the pursuit. If necessary, they’re willing to leap off a cliff and figure out how to build a parachute on the way down.
But I’d love to know what other people think!