This is a hugeugh field for me that I have been meaning to explore for a long time. I think the reason why I never actually explore it is because it feels like a very deep rabbit hole that is intimidating to start going down.
When I was a sophomore in college, after reading How to Start a Startup, I decided that I wanted to start startups, make a ton of money, and then use that money to make the world a better place. And I wanted to pursue these goals really, really hard. My mindset was:
I care about achieving them so yes, I’m going to make an actual effort to achieve them. But if I fail, then the fallback plan is still good. It’d be reaching for the stars but landing on the clouds. Eg. having a cushy life as a programmer that would provide me with way more money than I’d know what to do with, the ability to retire early, as an upper-middle class person in a first world country in the 21st century, with a million interests that I could spend time pursuing, etc.
Fast forward eight years, I haven’t really had any success and my happiness set point has changed. Achieving my goals makes me feel normal. Call it a 5⁄10. Not achieving my goals, and feeling “behind”, which is where I spend most of my time, makes me feel anxious. Call it a 2⁄10. It shouldn’t be like that though. I should feel like a 7⁄10 when I don’t achieve them and a 10⁄10 when I do.
One path forward is to fix this bug in my brain. But is that possible? Well, “possible” is a very low bar. I think a more useful question is whether it is plausible. In exploring that question, I look around at successful people, similar to what you’ve done in this post, and I find that they all have similar problems. Their set point changes, it feels normal when they achieve their goals, upsetting when they don’t, and that their default state is “feeling behind” and trying to “keep up”. It doesn’t feel like there are too many exceptions to this.
I’m not inside other people’s heads so I can’t say for sure, but if it’s true, well, I think it is a pretty big blow to the idea that being ambitious makes sense. Not a fatal blow — maybe when you go under the hood and look at the gears it turns out that this is a fixable problem — but still a big one. Another thought: maybe some goals are important enough that they’re worth pursuing even if doing so won’t make you happy.
Here’s another angle at the same bug, I think. I have a gut intuition that goes like this:
Real success is a Pareto improvement.
There should be some direction you can move from where you are now, where you literally get more (or at least not less) of every single thing you want. Whatever direction that is should be what we call “success” in our heads. (And since social approval is quite important to most people this definition actually lines up decently well with the conventional definition anyway.) So when people say things like “I’m happy where I am now and wouldn’t want to be more successful/ambitious,” or when people do striving-like stuff and ostensibly make progress but then somehow end up worse off, or when people say things like “I plan to do so-and-so which will improve my life, but I’m just not there yet” instead of diving straight in … my gut translates these actions as “I don’t want what I want” and just gets very very confused and cynical.
I definitely see the logic to this. However, here is where it goes wrong for me, and where I moderately strongly suspect it would/does go wrong for others too.
I can and do try to tell myself to just focus on the process and on making forward progress. To be happy and content with this, rather than focused on the destination. But at the end of the day, the destination is still in my head. I can’t get it out of my head. And I care a lot about it. And I’m not capable of the self-deception or compartmentalization it would take to simultaneously care about the destination while also not caring about it and instead only caring about the process. So when I try to just focus on the process, my mind doesn’t cooperate and continues to care about the destination.
I also recognize this feeling of “You have not done enough” or worse “This goal was meaningless in hindsight”. It’s probably very instrumental, pushing us and our genes to ever greater heights.
So should we lean in to it? Accepting happiness is forever lost behind some horizon? You will just walk around with this internal nagging feeling.
Or should we fix this bug as you say, but risk stagnation? One way may be to become a full-time meditating monk. Then you may have a chance to turn your wetware into a personal nirvana untill you pop out of existence. But that feels meaningless as well.
I’m trying to find a blend; take the edge off the suffering while moving forward.
This is a huge ugh field for me that I have been meaning to explore for a long time. I think the reason why I never actually explore it is because it feels like a very deep rabbit hole that is intimidating to start going down.
When I was a sophomore in college, after reading How to Start a Startup, I decided that I wanted to start startups, make a ton of money, and then use that money to make the world a better place. And I wanted to pursue these goals really, really hard. My mindset was:
Fast forward eight years, I haven’t really had any success and my happiness set point has changed. Achieving my goals makes me feel normal. Call it a 5⁄10. Not achieving my goals, and feeling “behind”, which is where I spend most of my time, makes me feel anxious. Call it a 2⁄10. It shouldn’t be like that though. I should feel like a 7⁄10 when I don’t achieve them and a 10⁄10 when I do.
One path forward is to fix this bug in my brain. But is that possible? Well, “possible” is a very low bar. I think a more useful question is whether it is plausible. In exploring that question, I look around at successful people, similar to what you’ve done in this post, and I find that they all have similar problems. Their set point changes, it feels normal when they achieve their goals, upsetting when they don’t, and that their default state is “feeling behind” and trying to “keep up”. It doesn’t feel like there are too many exceptions to this.
I’m not inside other people’s heads so I can’t say for sure, but if it’s true, well, I think it is a pretty big blow to the idea that being ambitious makes sense. Not a fatal blow — maybe when you go under the hood and look at the gears it turns out that this is a fixable problem — but still a big one. Another thought: maybe some goals are important enough that they’re worth pursuing even if doing so won’t make you happy.
Here’s another angle at the same bug, I think. I have a gut intuition that goes like this:
Real success is a Pareto improvement.
There should be some direction you can move from where you are now, where you literally get more (or at least not less) of every single thing you want. Whatever direction that is should be what we call “success” in our heads. (And since social approval is quite important to most people this definition actually lines up decently well with the conventional definition anyway.) So when people say things like “I’m happy where I am now and wouldn’t want to be more successful/ambitious,” or when people do striving-like stuff and ostensibly make progress but then somehow end up worse off, or when people say things like “I plan to do so-and-so which will improve my life, but I’m just not there yet” instead of diving straight in … my gut translates these actions as “I don’t want what I want” and just gets very very confused and cynical.
I definitely see the logic to this. However, here is where it goes wrong for me, and where I moderately strongly suspect it would/does go wrong for others too.
I can and do try to tell myself to just focus on the process and on making forward progress. To be happy and content with this, rather than focused on the destination. But at the end of the day, the destination is still in my head. I can’t get it out of my head. And I care a lot about it. And I’m not capable of the self-deception or compartmentalization it would take to simultaneously care about the destination while also not caring about it and instead only caring about the process. So when I try to just focus on the process, my mind doesn’t cooperate and continues to care about the destination.
I also recognize this feeling of “You have not done enough” or worse “This goal was meaningless in hindsight”. It’s probably very instrumental, pushing us and our genes to ever greater heights.
So should we lean in to it? Accepting happiness is forever lost behind some horizon? You will just walk around with this internal nagging feeling.
Or should we fix this bug as you say, but risk stagnation? One way may be to become a full-time meditating monk. Then you may have a chance to turn your wetware into a personal nirvana untill you pop out of existence. But that feels meaningless as well.
I’m trying to find a blend; take the edge off the suffering while moving forward.