There are things I value in addition to being happy. Creating quality art. Contributing to global human flourishing. But I definitely value happiness for its own sake. I don’t try to maximize happiness, but there’s a certain amount that I need to satisfice on.
I don’t know exactly what makes me happy—it’s includes “working on fulfilling projects,” “having a good social network”, “getting exercise”, and “having close, intimate friends/romantic-partners”. but not necessarily all of those things, all the time.
One important thing I learned last year is that sometimes, something I think of as “important” turns out to be making me unhappy. It’s useful to me to look at “total happiness GDP”, see when it started going down, and then figure out which variable was the cause.
This year, I started going to a bunch of new meetups, which were individually fun and valuable for my long-term non-happiness goals. But for some reason I became increasingly stressed and unhappy. Eventually I realized that I had forgotten I was an introvert, and even though I enjoy extroverted activities, I need to ensure I get alone time.
I cut back on meetups, and I feel much better now. I appreciate this because I feeling good is good, and also because it means I can get other things done.
Not sure if that explained it very well. I could write multiple pages about how I think about happiness, but if I’m doing that it probably should be a fully-formed post.
There are things I value in addition to being happy. Creating quality art. Contributing to global human flourishing. But I definitely value happiness for its own sake. I don’t try to maximize happiness, but there’s a certain amount that I need to satisfice on.
I don’t know exactly what makes me happy—it’s includes “working on fulfilling projects,” “having a good social network”, “getting exercise”, and “having close, intimate friends/romantic-partners”. but not necessarily all of those things, all the time.
One important thing I learned last year is that sometimes, something I think of as “important” turns out to be making me unhappy. It’s useful to me to look at “total happiness GDP”, see when it started going down, and then figure out which variable was the cause.
This year, I started going to a bunch of new meetups, which were individually fun and valuable for my long-term non-happiness goals. But for some reason I became increasingly stressed and unhappy. Eventually I realized that I had forgotten I was an introvert, and even though I enjoy extroverted activities, I need to ensure I get alone time.
I cut back on meetups, and I feel much better now. I appreciate this because I feeling good is good, and also because it means I can get other things done.
Not sure if that explained it very well. I could write multiple pages about how I think about happiness, but if I’m doing that it probably should be a fully-formed post.