The problem with lifestyle design blogs

If you've been around the Internet the past couple of years, you would have likely stumbled on at least one lifestyle design blog. The whole craze of streamlining aspects of your life so that you spend more time enjoying it and less time working started with Tim Ferriss's 4 Hour Work Week and has now grown into a whole blog industry, with a proliferation of blogs from people who are experimenting on how to be a non-conformist and break out from "Template Lifestyles", while selling you consulting services, self-help guidance, and reports - usually with a dose of internet marketing and doing good (though usually to benefit yourself rather than the people you're volunteering for).

Granted, quite a number of these blogs do offer valuable information on rethinking finances, finding interesting work, and a whole manner of personal development. However, in their frenzy of preaching about how lifestyle design is the BEST THING EVAR, they're overlooking a very important point.

Lifestyle design is something that is only really possible for people with privilege.

I'm not talking about "being a rich dude with a mansion" type privilege. I'm talking about the privilege of not being considered a low-class citizen intent on terrorism because you're brown and have a green passport, the privilege of having your home currency stretch very far around the world, the privilege of still being able to access a whole host of resources if you end up rock-bottom. The privilege to be able to experiment, to have lifestyle design be optional.

Here's a very clear example of this kind of alarming privilege ignorance, from The Middle Finger Project:

What this is about is showing you that the cards you’ve been dealt do not matter. They are irrelevant. What does matter, rather, are the choices you make, and how much guts you've got.

Actually, they do matter. A lot. A lot of these cards are institutionalised - the stuff that makes up privilege, the stuff that makes a difference on whether lifestyle design is a choice or a necessity for you - and won't make a difference no matter how you play them.

Your nationality, residency, and passport make a huge difference on your ability to travel and migrate - with some passports putting you automatically in the "high risk" category for visas no matter what sort of history you have. It's not as easy to just pack up and move; if you can't prove that you have a substantial amount of money and assets beforehand, they won't let you out of the country.

You don't need to be living in poverty to make lifestyle design inaccessible. Currencies from a developing country - including relatively better-off countries like Malaysia and Singapore - do not travel well, both in terms of what it can buy and also in terms of exchange rates. A filling meal costs RM5 in Malaysia, and AUD8 in Australia - about RM24. That RM5 that got you a meal back home only goes to about AUD1.50 in Australia - not enough for a drink. It works in the lifestyle designer's favour when they travel, because suddenly everything is cheap-as, but not the other way. It's funny that there's so much love for hiring outsourced assistants, saying that it's about "US10 for a week of groceries in Bangalore" and claiming that you hiring them is some form of charity social justice work - how about dealing with the global economic inequality that makes it difficult for an Indian person to buy a week of groceries in the first place?

Many countries have restrictions on work for immigrants, and some big employers have a preference for hiring "local" - though interestingly if you come from a dominant Western White background you're usually able to avoid the "immigrant" issues and be protected in an "expatriate" bubble, courted for your money and social power. Working holiday visas are severely limited, and just having an ethnic-sounding name can hinder you from getting a job (even if - and probably especially - if you're in a country with stronger currencies and better-developed social security services). It can be hard to even launch an online-only business when PayPal restricts what you can do with your money based on where you are.

For some people, lifestyle design is necessary, because a lot of the usual options that "lifestyle designers" take for granted aren't openly available. On the surface my life could be an example of "lifestyle design" - I mostly work on my own creative stuff, I set the hours, I'm not in some 9-5. But I'm not in a 9-5 because circumstances I can't control, such as my name and my Bridging Visa, are making it difficult for me to get a job, or to get any sort of assistance. Most of those fancy consulting/education packages that are making top dollar (even though I suspect they are mostly saying the same thing) are too expensive for me, and probably wouldn't apply anyway. I'm having to be supported by my parents - a move that has gotten me called a "trust-fund kid" with disdain by some people, but normal in my home culture - and also pretty necessary, given that my dad's the one with the regular job (and he's supposed to be RETIRED by now). Lifestyle design, for us, then becomes less about how to design the life of our choosing, and more about how to make the best of difficult and challenging circumstances, usually involving bureaucracy of some kind.

Yet many lifestyle design bloggers don't seem to acknowledge how much of an impact privilege holds on their ability to do what they're doing. Instead, they rudely dismiss the concerns of non-designers, not-so-subtly denigrating them for staying in a conventional "template" lifestyle (while also ignoring that for some people, it is their choice to follow a conventional life, and that's perfectly fine.) Their dismissal and ignorance smacks so strongly of the dangers of "positive thinking", of the idea that everything in your life is merely because of your "attitude" and that everything can be solved if you just adopt the right thinking.

Never mind the condescension towards people from "third-world" countries, as well as some crazy appropriating - seriously, "protecting [something] like a father protects his daughter"? Do people still buy into those stereotypes? (And how much of a bad-ass can you really be if you ended up homeless with confusing residency and had to fend for yourself without direct response marketing to save you?)

I think I need a drink.

Comments

1. I think you’ve pinpointed one of the reasons why I am so uncomfortable with lifestyle design spruikers. I know people who outsource work to people living in Asian countries and they have tried to justify it by saying “it’s more than they’d get paid by local employers” but it still makes me really really uncomfortable. I understand the appeal of wanting to work less, but it all seems very… selfish, dispassionate and condescending to me. I can absolutely see that proponents of things like the 4 hour workweek do not take privilege into account. And why would they? Everything is working in their favour!!!

   — Natalie · Apr 3, 04:56 PM · #

2. As someone who does live quite a chunk of the “lifestyle design” life, I have to agree with you that many of their approaches have disregarded the issue of accessibility.

   — Lainie Yeoh · Apr 3, 05:31 PM · #

3. Tiara, you pinpointed both of my companies as well as many of my friends with accusations of ignorance and insincerity, so I felt compelled to respond. You raise many good points, and these discussions are good ones to have, but you’re not making many friends with this approach. A few random thoughts:

   * Yes, some of us have something to sell—we all have to earn a living, and it’s a slippery slope to demonize people for doing so.

   * You might be on a different socio-economic playing field, and that’s a valid discussion to have, but just because someone is “Western” or white doesn’t by definition mean their parents will ever support them with a single $ or that they haven’t overcome their own unique hardships.

   * I would not go so far as to say people like Kirsty from NerdyNomad.com (who you point out in the article) who travels to disaster areas to help with relief efforts, or someone like Dwight Turner from InSearchOfSanuk.com (who I work with frequently) who works to educate slum kids in Bangkok and raise money for orphanages and other charities across Southeast Asia, are doing this for themselves (your words).

   * You’re right, a lot of us ARE privileged, which is why I believe we have a duty to make the most of it and provide value to those around us. There are many people who couldn’t do what we do, who may live in poverty or have all kinds of disadvantages, but anyone who has a computer with internet access, and a beautiful website where they provide freelance services, is privileged (yourself included).

   * Don’t assume everyone writes you off because of where you come from or how much money you make. We don’t. But when you start the conversation by writing others off—whom you’ve never even spoken with to understand more about them—it won’t get very far. Maybe building relationships with people in positions of more “privilege” or influence would be more productive than burning bridges before they’re even built. A lot can be leveraged from friendships, but not if you’re the one complaining in the corner to yourself.

   * I always say when people ask, I think it IS possible for many (not ALL) people in the developing world to practice “lifestyle design”. You may not be able to immediately run off globetrotting, but you’re uniquely positioned to leverage geo-arbitrage to build wealth, by providing services to more valuable markets (i.e., the US, UK, Australia, etc.) at a higher-dollar value than you can at home. Think about this: How can you “brand” yourself and package your services to go after higher-value clients abroad?

   — Cody McKibben · Apr 3, 06:40 PM · #

4. (whoa, I just realise a lot of the comments were hidden!)

   I am not here to make friends or to burn bridges that don’t exist yet. I am here to point out the hypocrises and ignorance that pops up in places like these, on how these places purport to be achievable by anyone who just “thinks right”. Look at @TMFProject’s dismissal of institutionalised circumstances, as though being poor or a minority was “irrelevant” – that’s already pretty rude, not to mention dangerous.

   As for voluntourism, I’m not the first or the last to bring up concerns about people coming in from outside to “volunteer” for a really short time through ways that probably don’t help anybody. Here are a couple of links:
   http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org/join-the-network/blogs/doc/gap-year-voluntourists-told-not.html
   http://www.voluntourism.org/news-wisdom.html

   Instead of asking us to engage with those of you with privilege – because that’s what we have to do ALL THE TIME to be able to exist in this world, bugger the scare quotes – perhaps it would behoove you all to reexamine just how much of your ability to design your lifestyle hinges on aspects that you take for granted.

   — Tiara Shafiq · Apr 4, 06:58 AM · #

5. Hi I can see why some folk are sceptical about ‘lifestyle design’ but your article is really negative. What it all boils down to is simply ‘creating a better life for yourself so that you are happier’. And whoever you are, wherever you are, you CAN work towards improving your life. It doesn’t have to be going dancing in Argentina or diving in Australia, simply getting the most out of your short time on Earth.

   — Prague · May 12, 07:57 PM · #