lifestyle
Contrarian living
Contrarian investing is all about buying when others are selling and selling when the world is buying. It is all about timing and swimming against the stream. This can be a useful strategy for investors with courage, but I believe that it can also revolutionize other areas of your life.
Consider Contrarian Career development. Most people guide their careers by looking at the demand in a particular industry today and seeing what is hot in the market. If an area looks promising, they head back to school or start working on their portfolio. When they are prepared, they take their shiny new qualifications or CV and stand in the queue with a billion other people who looked at the same predictions that they did. Their newly enhanced professional portfolio, has just landed them in the same place that everyone else is. They have gone with the flow and now they are in a career log jam.
How much better would it be to look for signs of industries that people aren’t interested in. Pick an industry (perhaps residential construction) that has just been through a boom. Now the big players are laying off their executives because there is an oversupply. Every one will tell you that construction is a bad industry to be in. Your contrarian ears prick up. If it takes you 5 years to be ready for a job like this, then start training today. In five years time, the 7 year real estate cycle will be on the upswing and you will be first in line with a shiny new career. While everyone else is heading one way, you head the other and you will have your pick of the best jobs.
Another example might be your morning commute. On average, people live out of the city and work in it. Every morning people stream into the hub and every evening they race out. A contrarian thinker might choose to live in the center and work in the suburbs. This could give you a faster and a more relaxed commute as well as a totally different neighbourhood and increased employment oportunities.
A third example would be consumption. Simply being contrary in your timing and patterns of consumption can really work wonders for your lifestyle. If everyone wants a booking for 7:00, then book your table for 5:00. You will be guaranteed a vacancy as well as getting better service. If the supermarket is busy after work, go before work. If the world celebrates Valentines day on the 14th, get in early and take your partner out on the 13th. (which is a lot better than the 15th if you want to make it look deliberate). Contrarian consumption might mean buying before the trend or buying out of season. It might mean consuming with uncommon decision criteria. It might even mean simply reducing your consumption in a world that tends to increase it.
My last (but by no means the last) example is in production. Imagine you were a strawberry farmer. If you plant, fertilize and harvest at the same time as everyone else then your market conditions are the same as everyone else’s. You will effectively be a market price taker (you will take whatever price the market offers you). If you manage to harvest at the opposite end of the year - if you are contrary to the crowd - you will have little competition and will become a market price maker ( you have the oportunity to set your prices higher than normal because yours are the only strawberries on the market).
Contrarian living can be applied to any area of your life. Sometimes it makes sense, others it does not. A little thought and practice will help you to see when to take a contrary stance and when to go with the flow.
Bucking the trend is useless if you do it for its own sake. Bucking the trend to get a better experience, a better deal, a better lifestyle is a secret that not many people systematically put to work. In fact this is the only reason that it works. If everyone wanted a Contrarian Lifestyle, there would be no such thing. So lets keep this a secret.
Can anyone give me an example from their lives of where a little contrary thinking and action can make a big difference?
Thanks
Tom
Discussion
12 comments for “Contrarian living”
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You have tapped into a powerful lifestyle concept here. Sometimes being different and going against the flow, brings perspectives, opportunities and value that wouldn’t come from doing it like everyone else.
My wife and I decided to live on one income so she could stay home with our children. Most of our friends have two incomes, and a very different lifestyle from ours. But when our son was born, and had some special needs, my wife was able to be his advocate, and get him in to all of the necessary specialists. Since she was available to take my son in during the day, appointments were much easier to get. Without my wife’s hard work and flexible schedule, I don’t know if the outcome would have been as positive as it has been.
Due to a custody agreement, my family ended up celebrating Mother’s Day a week early this year and it was so fantastic that we’re going to continue the new “tradition.”
Why? We had brunch at a reasonable price and not the totally jacked up Mother’s Day prices AND without the insane crowds. Our server had the time to treat the kids extra special and dote on us in general.
We’re also having Thanksgiving on Saturday this year, but this is the first time so we’ll see if we like it.
Hi Quint.
You’ve raised an important issue there. Contrary ideas are very much dependent on timing. Your decision to become a one income family (which is the same as ours) is actually a return to a previously popular way to live. Maybe we can search for more of these contrary ways to live by looking at other times and other places.
Try this on for size. Our world today is obsessed with consumption. Our grandparents world was all about production. Is there a productive way to live a contrary life focusing on production? I think there is potential.
Thanks Quint, you’ve made me think
Hi Sarah
That is a great example. If you were stuck in the same ruts as the rest of the world, things would have been very different. Isn’t it exciting when our circumstances help us move in ways that we don’t expect. Especially when we have such a positive experience as a result.
Please let us know how your Thanksgiving goes.
Thanks
Tom
Bravo, you really hit a huge concept here! However, what would happen if most people would start using this idea?… big mess. Anyhow, it won’t happen and I digress.
I’ve been living my whole life by this concept. I have an unconscious drive of doing the opposite of what others are doing, thinking the opposite of what others people think. I’m fully contrarian.
If someone tells me they love a car, that usually makes me want to hate that car. And I start researching its bad parts and all… of course, I’m not doing it mindlessly. If after a while the counter-arguments to my opposed view prove to be real and stronger than my view, I will accept the fact that the car is good.
When thinking deeper about it, I realize that this is a really complex concept. I’m really glad that I’m a natural at it.
You’ve done a very good job in extracting and presenting its core!
PS: example of contrary thinking that has helped me a lot: when people say a book is good, I assume it is the worst one there is. If with time I reach the conclusion that the book is good, I’ll read it; if not, I saved myself some time. There are countless other examples…
Movies ! I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to see movies simply because critics hated it. 98% of the time I’ve love them. Don’t usually waste my time with movies that “everyone is raving about”.
Hi Armannd
Nice perspective. Sounds like you have developed the ability to stand on your own opinions. I wonder as I read this if you ever throw the good out with the bad? I mean if you go into a movie with a negative preconception (or even a positive one) do you really see it for what it is?
Thanks
Tom
Hi Jack
That is interesting that you say you deliberately go to movies that others hate. I am all for heading off the mainstream but are there any critics or friends whose opinions you trust. For example if I told you what my favourite movie was, before you saw it would you take a negative or positive attitude with you? I am interested in how we preconceive events. How we prime our sense of value before it has even occurred.
Thanks
Tom
Whoa!
Nice read, and nice comments.
Hi Bart
Any comment with a “Whoa!” in it is alright by me.
Thanks
Tom
[…] recently read “Contrarian Living“, an article by Tom L. at www.lifegoalaction.com. This was a jumping off point to what […]
Hi Tom,
I can really relate to this idea and I wholly support it. It seems like I’ve been going against convention for a long time but it’s now bringing great dividends.
My whole approach to personal development is very different to the conventional approach. You can get an insight here.
http://www.nickpagan.com/blog/21/conventional-vs-contrarian/
It’d be great to get your opinion.
I can certainly relate to this! I jumped on the IT bandwagon right before the tech bubble burst. I often wonder what might have been if my thinking had been more contrarian.