Hi again :) I’m back from vacation and ready to continue our happiness discussion! I’m not sure how useful this will be since happiness is so subjective, but I’m more than willing to be analyzed as a case study, it sounds fun!
You sound like you are somewhat intimidated by the people here and that they all seem super smart and everything. Don’t be. Your ability to legitimately analyze things and steer your life in the direction you want it is way more rare than you’d guess.
Oh, I still am! I wouldn’t trade my ability to make happiness-boosting choices for all their scientific and historical knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I’m not humbled and impressed by it. Now for your bullet points...
Avoiding neutralness isn’t actually a rule of thumb I’ve consciously followed or anything. It just seemed like a good way to summarize the examples I thought of of acting to increase my happiness. It does seem like a useful rule of thumb though, and I’m psyched that you think it could help you/others to be happier :) I might even consciously follow it myself from now on. But you ask whether the upfront costs of avoiding mediocrity are sometimes worth the long term benefits… you may well be right, but I can’t come up with any examples off the top of my head. Can you?
I don’t have any clear strategies for choosing between short-term vs. long-term happiness. I think my general tendency is to favor short-term happiness, kind of a “live in the moment” approach to life. Obviously, this can’t be taken too far, or we’ll just sit around eating ice cream all day. Maybe a good rule of thumb—increase your short-term happiness as much as possible without doing anything that would have clear negative affects on your long-term happiness? Do things that make you happy in the short-term iff you think there’s a very low probability you’ll regret them? I think in general people place too much emphasis on the long-term. Like me choosing to change my major. If I ultimately were going to end up in a career I didn’t love, and I had already accepted that, what difference did it make what I majored in? In the long term, no predictable difference. But in the short-term, those last 2 years would quite possibly account for over 2% of my life. Which is more than enough to matter, more than enough to justify a day or two in deep contemplation. I think that if I consistently act in accordance with my short-term happiness, (and avoiding long-term unhappiness like spending all my money and having nothing left for retirement or eating junk food and getting fat) I’ll consistently be pretty happy. Could I achieve greater total happiness if I focused only on the long-term? Maybe! But I seem so happy right now, the potential reward doesn’t seem worth the risk.
I love that you asked about my competitive running. I do enjoy running, but I rarely push myself hard when I’m running on my own. The truth is, I wouldn’t have done it on my own. Running was a social thing for me. My best friend there was a Guatemalan “elite” (much lower standard in for this there than in the US, of course), and I was just a bit faster than she was. So we trained together, and almost every single practice was a little bit easier for me than it was for her. Gradually, we both improved a ton and ran faster and faster times, but I was always training one small notch below what I could have been doing, so it didn’t get too painful. In the races, my strategy was always negative splits—start out slowly, then pass people at the end. This was less painful and more fun. Of course, there was some pain involved, but I could short-term sacrifice a few minutes of pain in a race for long-term benefits of prize money and feeling good about the race the whole next week. But again, it was the social aspect that got me into competitive running. I never would have pursued it all on my own; it was just a great chance to hang out with friends, practice my Spanish, stay fit, and get some fresh air.
Is strategic thinking worth it? I have no idea! I don’t think strategically on purpose; I just can’t help it. As far as I know, I was born thinking this way. We took a “strengths quest” personality test in college and “Strategic” was my number one strength. (My other four were relator, ideation, competitive, and analytical). I’m just wired to do cost-benefit analyses, I guess. Come to think of it, those strengths probably play a big role in my happiness and rationality. But for someone who isn’t instinctively strategic, how important are cost-benefit analyses? I like your idea of allocating large chunks of time, but not worrying too much in the day-to-day stuff. This kind of goes back to consequentialism vs. virtue ethics. Ask yourself what genuinely makes you happy. If it’s satisfying curiosity, just aim to ‘become more curious’ as an instrumental goal. Maybe you’ll spend time learning something new when you actually would have been happier spending that time chatting with friends, but instrumental goals are convenient and if they’re chosen well, I don’t think they’ll steer you wrong very often. Then, if you need to, maybe set aside some time every so often and analyze how much time you spend each day doing which activities. Maybe rank them according to how much happiness they give you (both long and short term, no easy task) and see if you spend time doing something that makes you a little happy, but may not be the most efficient way to maximize your happiness. Look for things that make you really happy that you don’t do often enough. Don’t let inertia control you too much, either. There’s an old saying among runners that the hardest step is the first step out the door, and it’s true. I know I’ll almost always be glad once I’m running, and feel good afterward. If I ever run for like 5 minutes and still don’t feel like running, I’ll just turn around and go home. This has happened maybe 5 times, so overall, forcing myself to run even when I don’t think I feel like it has been a good strategy.
Thanks! I don’t think it will taint me too much. Honestly, I think I had exceptionally strong rationality skills even before I started reading the ebook. Some people have lots of knowledge, great communication skills, are very responsible, etc...and they’re rational. I haven’t developed those other skills so well (yet), but at least I’m pretty good at thinking. So yeah, honestly I don’t think that reading it is going to make me happy in that it’s going to lead me to make many superior decisions (I think we agree I’ve been doing alright for myself) but it is going to make me happy in other ways. Mostly identity-seeking ways, probably.
I got a kick out of your money ripping story. I can definitely see how that could make you way more happy than spending it on a few restaurant meals, or a new pair of shoes, or some other materialistic thing :) I wouldn’t do it myself, but I think it’s cool! As for not taking school seriously for the sake of fun, I can relate… I took pride in strategically avoiding homework, studying for tests and writing outlines for papers during other classes, basically putting in as little effort as I could get away with and still get good grades (which I wanted 90% because big scholarship money was worth the small trade-off and 10% simply because my competitive nature would be annoyed if someone else did better than I did). In hindsight, I think it would have been cool to pay more attention in school and come out with some actual knowledge, but would I trade that knowledge for the hours of fun hanging out with my neighbors and talking and playing board games with my family after school? Probably not, so I can’t even say I regret my decision.
As for me flipping a coin… I think that goes with your question about how much cost-benefit analysis it’s actually worthwhile to do. I seriously considered like 6 majors, narrowed it down to 2, and both seemed like great choices. I think I (subconsciously) thought of diminishing marginal returns and risk-reward here. I had already put a lot of thought into this, and there was no clear winner. What was the chance I would suddenly have a new insight and a clear winner would emerge if I just invested a few more hours of analysis, even with no new information? Not very high, so I quit while I was ahead and flipped a coin.
How much has my happiness actually increased? Some (probably due to an increase in autonomy when I left home) but not a ton, really… because I believe in a large, set happiness range, and the decisions I make keep me at the high end of it. But like I said, sometimes it will decrease to a “normal” level, and it’s soo easy to imagine just letting it stay there and not taking action.
I don’t think you’re getting carried away, either, but maybe we just think really alike :) but happiness is important to everyone, so if there’s any way it could be analyzed to help people, it seems worth a try
Long-term planning depends on an individual’s values. Personally I think most people overrate it a bit, but it all depends on what actually makes a person happy.
Hi again :) I’m back from vacation and ready to continue our happiness discussion! I’m not sure how useful this will be since happiness is so subjective, but I’m more than willing to be analyzed as a case study, it sounds fun!
Oh, I still am! I wouldn’t trade my ability to make happiness-boosting choices for all their scientific and historical knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I’m not humbled and impressed by it. Now for your bullet points...
Avoiding neutralness isn’t actually a rule of thumb I’ve consciously followed or anything. It just seemed like a good way to summarize the examples I thought of of acting to increase my happiness. It does seem like a useful rule of thumb though, and I’m psyched that you think it could help you/others to be happier :) I might even consciously follow it myself from now on. But you ask whether the upfront costs of avoiding mediocrity are sometimes worth the long term benefits… you may well be right, but I can’t come up with any examples off the top of my head. Can you?
I don’t have any clear strategies for choosing between short-term vs. long-term happiness. I think my general tendency is to favor short-term happiness, kind of a “live in the moment” approach to life. Obviously, this can’t be taken too far, or we’ll just sit around eating ice cream all day. Maybe a good rule of thumb—increase your short-term happiness as much as possible without doing anything that would have clear negative affects on your long-term happiness? Do things that make you happy in the short-term iff you think there’s a very low probability you’ll regret them? I think in general people place too much emphasis on the long-term. Like me choosing to change my major. If I ultimately were going to end up in a career I didn’t love, and I had already accepted that, what difference did it make what I majored in? In the long term, no predictable difference. But in the short-term, those last 2 years would quite possibly account for over 2% of my life. Which is more than enough to matter, more than enough to justify a day or two in deep contemplation. I think that if I consistently act in accordance with my short-term happiness, (and avoiding long-term unhappiness like spending all my money and having nothing left for retirement or eating junk food and getting fat) I’ll consistently be pretty happy. Could I achieve greater total happiness if I focused only on the long-term? Maybe! But I seem so happy right now, the potential reward doesn’t seem worth the risk.
I love that you asked about my competitive running. I do enjoy running, but I rarely push myself hard when I’m running on my own. The truth is, I wouldn’t have done it on my own. Running was a social thing for me. My best friend there was a Guatemalan “elite” (much lower standard in for this there than in the US, of course), and I was just a bit faster than she was. So we trained together, and almost every single practice was a little bit easier for me than it was for her. Gradually, we both improved a ton and ran faster and faster times, but I was always training one small notch below what I could have been doing, so it didn’t get too painful. In the races, my strategy was always negative splits—start out slowly, then pass people at the end. This was less painful and more fun. Of course, there was some pain involved, but I could short-term sacrifice a few minutes of pain in a race for long-term benefits of prize money and feeling good about the race the whole next week. But again, it was the social aspect that got me into competitive running. I never would have pursued it all on my own; it was just a great chance to hang out with friends, practice my Spanish, stay fit, and get some fresh air.
Is strategic thinking worth it? I have no idea! I don’t think strategically on purpose; I just can’t help it. As far as I know, I was born thinking this way. We took a “strengths quest” personality test in college and “Strategic” was my number one strength. (My other four were relator, ideation, competitive, and analytical). I’m just wired to do cost-benefit analyses, I guess. Come to think of it, those strengths probably play a big role in my happiness and rationality. But for someone who isn’t instinctively strategic, how important are cost-benefit analyses? I like your idea of allocating large chunks of time, but not worrying too much in the day-to-day stuff. This kind of goes back to consequentialism vs. virtue ethics. Ask yourself what genuinely makes you happy. If it’s satisfying curiosity, just aim to ‘become more curious’ as an instrumental goal. Maybe you’ll spend time learning something new when you actually would have been happier spending that time chatting with friends, but instrumental goals are convenient and if they’re chosen well, I don’t think they’ll steer you wrong very often. Then, if you need to, maybe set aside some time every so often and analyze how much time you spend each day doing which activities. Maybe rank them according to how much happiness they give you (both long and short term, no easy task) and see if you spend time doing something that makes you a little happy, but may not be the most efficient way to maximize your happiness. Look for things that make you really happy that you don’t do often enough. Don’t let inertia control you too much, either. There’s an old saying among runners that the hardest step is the first step out the door, and it’s true. I know I’ll almost always be glad once I’m running, and feel good afterward. If I ever run for like 5 minutes and still don’t feel like running, I’ll just turn around and go home. This has happened maybe 5 times, so overall, forcing myself to run even when I don’t think I feel like it has been a good strategy.
Thanks! I don’t think it will taint me too much. Honestly, I think I had exceptionally strong rationality skills even before I started reading the ebook. Some people have lots of knowledge, great communication skills, are very responsible, etc...and they’re rational. I haven’t developed those other skills so well (yet), but at least I’m pretty good at thinking. So yeah, honestly I don’t think that reading it is going to make me happy in that it’s going to lead me to make many superior decisions (I think we agree I’ve been doing alright for myself) but it is going to make me happy in other ways. Mostly identity-seeking ways, probably.
I got a kick out of your money ripping story. I can definitely see how that could make you way more happy than spending it on a few restaurant meals, or a new pair of shoes, or some other materialistic thing :) I wouldn’t do it myself, but I think it’s cool! As for not taking school seriously for the sake of fun, I can relate… I took pride in strategically avoiding homework, studying for tests and writing outlines for papers during other classes, basically putting in as little effort as I could get away with and still get good grades (which I wanted 90% because big scholarship money was worth the small trade-off and 10% simply because my competitive nature would be annoyed if someone else did better than I did). In hindsight, I think it would have been cool to pay more attention in school and come out with some actual knowledge, but would I trade that knowledge for the hours of fun hanging out with my neighbors and talking and playing board games with my family after school? Probably not, so I can’t even say I regret my decision. As for me flipping a coin… I think that goes with your question about how much cost-benefit analysis it’s actually worthwhile to do. I seriously considered like 6 majors, narrowed it down to 2, and both seemed like great choices. I think I (subconsciously) thought of diminishing marginal returns and risk-reward here. I had already put a lot of thought into this, and there was no clear winner. What was the chance I would suddenly have a new insight and a clear winner would emerge if I just invested a few more hours of analysis, even with no new information? Not very high, so I quit while I was ahead and flipped a coin.
How much has my happiness actually increased? Some (probably due to an increase in autonomy when I left home) but not a ton, really… because I believe in a large, set happiness range, and the decisions I make keep me at the high end of it. But like I said, sometimes it will decrease to a “normal” level, and it’s soo easy to imagine just letting it stay there and not taking action.
I don’t think you’re getting carried away, either, but maybe we just think really alike :) but happiness is important to everyone, so if there’s any way it could be analyzed to help people, it seems worth a try
Long-term planning depends on an individual’s values. Personally I think most people overrate it a bit, but it all depends on what actually makes a person happy.