Speculative Investing Made Personal

How we've turned ourselves into speculative projects—and then pulled others into our schemes.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

On our second or third date, back in 2013, Sean and I agreed that we would never “run for fun.”

It took four years, but I eventually broke that promise.

Today, I find running, if not fun per se, rewarding. It's an activity I look forward to. But I didn't start because I thought it would be something I'd actually enjoy—see my previous stance on the issue. I started running because all of the successful business owners I knew were dedicated to some form of daily exercise, whether it was hiking, biking, swimming, yoga, or CrossFit.

Having spotted that pattern, I decided to become a runner. I started running because I thought it would make me the kind of person who could run a thriving company.

My new pursuit was a bet on a more valuable version of myself.

Just a few months before I started running, I decided to make a drastic change to my business. Instead of offering the business coaching program I'd offered for years, I'd focus all of my energy on helping small business owners help themselves and each other in a membership community.

I was burnt out on being the person with The Answer. I was tired of marketing myself as a person with Good Advice. I didn't want to be responsible for telling You what You Should Do. And I wholeheartedly believed (and still do) that we can learn more from each other than we can from gurus or Advice Givers.

My decision to start running was not just a personal choice, but a strategic move—a speculative investment—in my business. It was an investment in the person I needed to become to realize my vision for our community and the company behind it. I recognized areas where I had room to grow as a leader and entrepreneur, and I was prepared to make the necessary changes to meet the challenge. I believed that by shaping myself into the best version possible, I could maximize the return on my investment.

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The Anticipatory, Speculative Self

My experience of identity-shaping is an example of what scholar Alison Hearn dubs the "anticipatory, speculative self."¹ Similar to the ways the economy is increasingly based on financialization and speculative investing, as people, she writes, "we become sites for capitalist speculation, individual projects looking for the investment and endorsement of others."²

Further, this self-speculation isn't a once-and-done kind of project. It's ongoing. We feel compelled to anticipate, speculate on, and work toward self-transformation such that the "actual intent, content, or outcome matter little—what matters is that they are pursued, and ceaselessly, relentlessly so," writes Hearn.

The ongoing project of our self-transformation and growth is sold as a positive right. We have a right (nay, a duty) to make ourselves into the best, most marketable, successful, and valuable version of ourselves. In fact, our livelihood and position in society depend on it. This is why Byung-Chul Han sees this process as a "form of compulsion and constraint—indeed, a more efficient kind of subjectivation and subjugation" than constraints and directives issued by institutions.

While many of us claim to be cultivating a more authentic self and realizing our innate potential, we are instead tracking the market and anticipating who we should become to please the algorithms. The result is, as Han argues, many of the emotional and psychological harms endemic to the 21st-century economy.

We're invested in maintaining and acquiring skills, argues Hearn, "intended to act as a hedge against the high risk, unpredictable (presumably algorithmically computed)" shifts in what (or who) is considered valuable and in demand. Instead of locating these pressures in broken systems and disintegrating communities, we locate them in our own ambition or, at the least, our survival instinct.

After all, we're free! The selves we perform online, in the office, on stage, or in the Zoom room are of our own making. What a privilege it is to be able to make a living this way, right? Start your own business and live life on your own terms, right?

It is a privilege, and many of us do have more flexibility as a result of business ownership or independent work. At the same time, “our own terms” turns out to be an internalized manager who insists on long hours, higher quotas, and bigger results. Our internalized managers have a plan for us—new titles, new responsibilities, new perks—if, and only if, we can live up to their expectations.

"As a project deeming itself free of external and alien limitations," writes Han, "the I is now subjugating itself to internal limitations and self-constraints, which are taking the form of compulsive achievement and optimization." We don’t need the demanding schedule set for us because we’ll do it ourselves. We don’t need the bar raised on our performance because we’re all too happy to set it as high as possible. We’re invested in being an uncompromising boss to ourselves.

I don't regret beginning to work for myself and eventually realizing I had started a business. I'm not sure how I'd be able to do work like this otherwise.

I don't regret becoming someone who runs for fun. Aside from some overuse injuries, it's only ever brought positive things into my life.

I don't regret trying to build a better way for small business owners to support each other. In the end, it wasn't right for me, but that experience brought me back to an intellectual, political, and creative practice that is right for me. While life and work could certainly be less stressful, I feel pretty good about who I've become and who I'll continue to evolve into.

From the Speculative Self to the Speculative Other

As I mentioned, 2017 was a year of significant and rapid change for me. It was also a period of significant and rapid change in the online spaces I inhabited. And I began to notice some things that struck me as odd. One of those things was the persistent use of second-person language (i.e., “you”) in online content.

I know that's a really weird thing to get hung up on. But once I spotted it and clocked it as odd, I couldn't unsee it. “You” was everywhere. And when “you” was absent, it was often implied by imperative verbs.

The second person thrives in self-help, leadership, and spiritual texts. But it's relatively rare in other subjects and genres. Communicating history or sociology in the second person doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A science communicator might use the second person to make an idea feel more relevant or real, but they won't often tell the reader or viewer to do or change something.

So why was “you” so ubiquitous online? Why did it seem every tweet, quotegram, or blog post was trying to speak to me directly? Why did everyone have an opinion on what I should be doing... and voice it in public spaces? And why had I, up until the moment it struck me as odd, done the same thing?

Thinking about Hearn's account of the "anticipatory, speculative self," I realized that one popular mode of investment in this self is becoming an Advice Giver. The best, most valuable version of myself seems to be someone who believes they know what will make you the best, most valuable version of yourself. The more effectively I wield that belief, turning it into viral truth-telling, the even better and more valuable I become.

And so “you” becomes a symbol of my own striving, my own self-mastery. I perform my wisdom, vulnerability, virtue, playfulness, or even willingness to speak truth to power through my address to the Other. Who am I if I don't have the empathy and generosity to bring you along for the ride?

Hearn's “anticipatory, speculative self” seems to require an anticipatory, speculative You to become fully realized. It's a sort of Ponzi scheme of self-actualization. The ultimate payoff is just as illusive, and at some point, the pyramid collapses under the weight of its unmet expectations.

Psychology researcher Ariana Orvell examined how pronoun use offers insight into self-perception and the perception of others.³ She describes how the pronouns we use can become "windows—providing insight into the
emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and disposition of a speaker, and levers—subtly altering the speaker’s and addressee(s)’ thoughts and emotions."

When we use "we" in a generalized statement, for instance, we signal that the statement applies to both those we're addressing and ourselves. But when we use "you" in a generalized statement, we signal that we are not part of the group to which the statement applies.

The "you" helps position us as an Advice Giver or some variation thereof. We're offering an outside perspective, one that typically comes from experience, growth, or expertise. "You" signals a "particular stance to the addressee(s)," and that stance is often a subtle insistence on the speaker holding a higher status relative to those to whom we speak.

Do I think most people who use the second person in their online content are aware of this? Certainly not. But that doesn't change the effect.

We perform our anticipatory speculative investment in ourselves by projecting that speculation on others.

This is true even when our hearts are in the right place, or we appear to be pushing back against neoliberal logic. Any message filtered through this system of speculation (which is all of the messages) reinforces that system.

Ultimately, our current economic and political systems require us to always be on the hunt for investors—people willing to bet on our future selves. Pushing the "post" button on a charming, motivational message to one's followers can be tantamount to sharing a personal pitch deck. If I address “you,” you might be more likely to invest in me.

Recognizing this, implicitly at first and explicitly later, I significantly changed how I showed up online. I used second-person language sparingly and qualified my perspective by using phrases like "in my experience..." or "what's worked for me..." I eventually stopped posting photos of myself entirely, recognizing that an image of me at the end of a race, for instance, was further proof of the potential return on investing in me.

I also paid more attention to my use of the first-person plural. "We" has limitations since how I use it determines who is included and who is excluded from my speech.

While I still need to ask others to invest in me, I try to avoid speculative investments in myself. I'm not trying to become someone for the return on investment; I don't want to speculate on how I could present myself for maximum yield. This, honestly, is much harder than cutting down on directly addressing "you" on social media or in articles. I can say pretty confidently that backing away from this practice has directly led to a few years of less-than-ideal (and, frankly, unsustainable) financial results.

And while those more material challenges certainly increase my stress levels, I feel less alienated from myself and less likely to dissociate. Sure, I'm still curious about who I am becoming and how I might pursue new paths in life and work. But that curiosity isn't hung up on optimization or value maximization anymore (usually).

I wrote this piece because it's something I've thought about regularly for the last seven years. It’s likely a first pass on a much larger argument. But I recognize in writing it that my perspective still smacks of the anticipatory, speculative self. I may never be rid of that compulsion, that way of translating myself and my thoughts for those who wish to encounter me.

But I’ll invest in great awareness any day.

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1. “Verified: Self-presentation, identity management, and selfhood in the age of big data” by Alison Hearn in Self-(Re)presentation Now (ed. Nancy Thumin) Link to PDF

2. "The Truth About Influence" by Alison Hearn in Re-thinking Mediations of Post-Truth Politics and Trust (ed. Jayson Harsin)

3. “What ‘you’ and ‘we’ say about me: How small shifts in language reveal and empower fundamental shifts in perspective” by Ariana Orvell, et al. Link to PDF