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I hold many popular views but, by definition, you may have heard those before, perhaps ad nauseam. So maybe my describing the following unpopular views of mine will thus be of greater value to you:
Work-life balance is overrated. During workweek hours 40 to 60+ it feels wiser to be productive than forcing myself to have “work-life balance.”
Materialism is unwise. I drive a Toyota, currently a Prius, for the 300,000 miles until my car becomes unreliable. I own only a dozen shirts, four pairs of shoes, etc, all of modest cost, no designer labels. I could give many more examples. Not being materialistic allows me to do work I enjoy even when it's not remunerative, to avoid stressful debt, to be generous with money and time, and to save for a rainy day.
The arts are great hobbies but too-risky career choices. I love the arts: writing, acting, directing, playing the piano, etc. Yet despite, as a teenager, having played keyboard at countless gigs, seeing the enormous number of starving artists, I chose to avoid the long odds against making a middle-class living in the arts. I derive more pleasure without risking poverty by doing artistic things as a serious hobby. I've gotten to direct plays and act in good roles in community theatre as well as to do my one-man show, If I tried to be a professional actor, I’d be lucky to get bitty roles and I'd probably never be even marginally self-supporting.
Higher education is overrated. I’ve certainly consumed a lot of education, all the way through a PhD. Yet if I were to start over, I wouldn't even go to undergraduate college. While diplomas enhance employability, I believe that for all that time and money, I could have learned more of career and personal benefit outside academe’s halls. Of course, many people need the structure of school and the pressure of grades to prod them to study, but I believe I'm self-motivated enough to read on my own, find mentors, pursue a range of real-world experiences, take carefully curated workshops and perhaps courses from transformational instructors locally and online worldwide, at a tiny fraction of today’s cost of traditional higher education.
Give to those with greater potential to benefit. Today, society is moving toward additional redistribution from society’s Haves to “the least among us.” Because this is Psychology Today’s How to Do Life blog, I’ll not discuss redistribution's macro manifestations: taxation and policy. Rather, I’ll describe only how, as an individual, I choose to spend my time and money. My early career focused on helping the so-called "least among us." But after a good few years of that, I concluded that all that exhausting effort yielded too little growth in my students and clients. Since then, I’ve worked mainly with people who have already accomplished a lot but have yet unrealized potential for success and/or contentment, and I feel I’ve made a much bigger difference. Similarly, I donate money and time to causes that focus on helping people with high potential, for example, lower-income intellectually gifted kids.
I believe marriage is an obsolete institution. My wife and I have been married for 44 years and we have a good marriage. Yet I believe that today, marriage is an obsolete institution. With women having greater economic viability, the reduced stigma of single parenthood, the growing enmity between the sexes, and that half of married couples divorce—often painfully, expensively, and protractedly—options other than lifetime marriage (of course for LGBT as well as straight couples) are often wiser, for example, the renewable monogamy contract of whatever length the couple or even a larger group agrees to.
In conclusion
Because the aforementioned ideas are unpopular, I’d imagine that many readers will disagree with most or all of them. I certainly would appreciate your willingness to consider them, but at minimum, perhaps my having shared my unpopular beliefs will encourage you to share yours.
Note: A commenter "Your Reader in Pennsylvania" added some things he believe that impress me as wise. I encourage you to read that comment.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
