John Kay on Obliquity

11.30, Sunday 25 April 2010

Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London

Obliquity might sound like a new aftershave. It is in fact an extremely useful strategy for getting the most out of life: stop pursuing your goals and you are far more likely to achieve them.

 

British economist and business writer, John Kay, takes to our pulpit to champion this revolutionary, if paradoxical, concept.  He argues that many aims – from running a profitable business to living a happy life – are simply more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly, than by running toward them full tilt.

 

Good news for those without a clear game plan. The fact is, that however much we might like to believe that we are rational beings capable of applying hard-headed logic and the weight of evidence to any problem that arises, most of the challenges we face involve too many intricately connected factors to ever be fully understood. It is only by embracing this fact that we can learn to make better decisions.

 

So revel in the joys of muddling through, deviating, changing your mind and getting there in the end. Even the most focused and effective planners among us can learn to appreciate the benefits of adopting an oblique approach. You’ll end up richer, happier and more successful as a result.

 

John Kay is a visiting Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisers. He is a director of several public companies and contributes a weekly column to the Financial Times. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003) and The Long and the Short of It: finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry (2009) and his  book, Obliquity was  published by Profile Books in March 2010.

Read his column in The Observer Magazine here .

Listen to the audio transcript  by clicking on the  box to the right.