[Off-Topic] Carpe Diem and the Myths of Happiness
“But what is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.” - Don Draper
One of the great myths of modern society, perpetuated by a torturous daily repetition on social media, is the false “goal” of the “pursuit of happiness.”
On top of that comes the myth of “motivation”. TL;DR: motivation is overrated, far more than it actually deserves.
“People can have two different mindsets, she says. Those with a “fixed mindset” believe that their talents and abilities are carved in stone. Those with a “growth mindset” believe that their talents and abilities can be developed. Fixed mindsets see every encounter as a test of their worthiness. Growth mindsets see the same encounters as opportunities to improve.” - Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Then comes the repeated mantra of “do what you love.” As I discussed back in 2014, that idea is a petty way of devaluing other people’s work.
“…, the big problem with the ’love what you do’ narrative is that it’s tied to a discourse of happiness that means ‘being on top of the rollercoaster all the time.’ As if a normal, day-to-day, routine life couldn’t be a life of satisfaction. All of that makes this scenario worrying.” - Bárbara Castro - “5 Reasons why ‘do what you love’ isn’t the solution”
In our small big world of tech, this leads many people to conclude: “I’m going to work at a startup or start my own.” The decision by itself has nothing wrong with it. The problem is reaching it driven by the previous myths, which turns into a huge source of unnecessary frustration, as I already explained in 2013.
“I won’t mince words: I am deeply skeptical of this system. I’m skeptical of this system’s slavery, self-congratulatory fetishization of “disruption,” while at the same time becoming so obviously the kind of impassive institution it wants to replace. I’m skeptical of the short-term vision of the startup community. And I’m particularly skeptical of its disregard for the lives of the people who participate in it and the lives of those who live in the world that startups seek to reshape. Let’s not even start to discuss the collusion, cartelization, and other market corruption activities that are so common in the VC world. The point being: it’s a bad game, and a fraudulent game.” - Alex Payne
Add to that the social media “consensus” that the world never stops getting worse. Everything today is supposedly worse. People, worse. Jobs, worse. The environment, destroyed. Everything offends everyone all the time, and nobody can stop judging others.
I disagree, as I’ve explained back in 2013 and repeat every year: the world is better, constantly improving, and the future will be even better. I’d like to take this chance to honor one of the men who helped change my perspective on the world, the recently deceased Dr. Hans Rosling.
The Perpetuation of the Myths
There’s no shortage of books, talks, TV shows, movies, and everything else built around the idea that everyone “must” be happy, all the time. And that if you’re not happy, you’re doing something very wrong. The relentless pursuit of “ideal happiness” has become one of the most unhealthy and cruel obsessions of the past two centuries, right next to the excessive consumption of sugar. That’s another subject, though sugar and happiness do tend to be correlated.
There are 2 concepts everyone needs to understand:
- You probably don’t have depression. These days everyone “is depressed,” of course, because “figuring out what you love to do” takes a lot of work and brings a lot of “suffering”…
No, you’re just bored, momentarily.
Saying “I’m depressed” instead of “I’m bored” has become so common that the real clinical condition needed another name to set itself apart, “Major Depressive Disorder”. That one is a medical condition, far too serious to be treated with such carelessness.
- Normally, even after going through events we consider very bad, or very good, we tend to return to the same level of “happiness” (or boredom) we were at before them. This is called the “Hedonic Treadmill”. It’s the main reason the “pursuit of happiness” is such a cruel journey: whoever doesn’t grasp this mechanism lives frustrated all the time.
“When enough is not enough, a Hedonist is born.” - Sukant Ratnakar
Have you ever thought “I’ll finally be happy when I get married.” Or “if I get this job, I’ll feel completely satisfied.” Or maybe you relate more to the other side of the coin: “I’ll never be happy now that I got this medical diagnosis.” Or “I can’t be happy while I have to pay these debts.” Psychological research has revealed two important findings when it comes to these beliefs: The things we think will make us happy never make us happy for as long as we imagine. At the same time, negative life events and challenges don’t have a lasting impact on our happiness either, as we believe they would. - Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D - The Myths of Happiness
“We seem obsessed with motivation, rallying ourselves to something beyond the life available to us right now, and we treat this motivation as if it were a major part of the history of wisdom, which it is not.” - Jennifer Hecht - The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn’t Working Today
Because of Hedonic Adaptation, any change seems to supply fresh “motivation,” the feeling that “we’ve finally locked onto the right path.” Unless it brings a new purpose, it’s just more of the same. We soon get used to the “new normal” and drift back to boredom.
Without understanding this, you stay stuck in the endless, unsatisfying cycle of “the grass is always greener on the other side.” The most twisted effect of these myths shows up when a person starts blaming others for their own problems. “I can’t because my husband…”, “I can’t because my family…”, “I can’t because my coworkers…”, “I can’t because my boss…”, “I can’t because society…”
At this point you’re lost. You want changes, but you want everything around you to change, except yourself. That’s the best definition of a coward: living on superficial justifications and excuses to avoid effort, to avoid pain, to maximize short-term pleasure. It’s the behavior of an addict, and judging everything and everyone is the drug.
Only you are destined for great things, but something or someone is holding you back. Only you are special. Only you deserve special treatment. In the old days we’d politely call this “immaturity” or “childishness.” Today I’d say most people actually fit into “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”.
“Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism … (this) causes problems in many areas of life, such as relationships, work, school or financial affairs. You may be generally unhappy and disappointed when you’re not given the special favors or admiration you believe you deserve. Others may not enjoy being around you, and you may find your relationships unfulfilling.” - Mayo Clinic
In the modern world, I’d reduce this to the “Like Culture.” Sad.
Conclusion
This relentless pursuit of “ideal happiness,” this “doing only what you love,” and this certainty that “the world is going to end” make people very weak. Low self-esteem, low empathy, sky-high narcissism, and a sense of “depression” that ends up paralyzing them. In the end, the person just lashes out in every direction, for lack of “purpose” and out of constant frustration with everything and everyone.
Fortunately, I never had this problem. I’ve known people who do, and this article is dedicated to them, as a “wake up call.” That doesn’t mean I haven’t had my unhappy moments and personal crises. I’ve lost a lot, financially and personally. Businesses, friends, relationships. I’m not exaggerating. But I accept my losses and I pay for them, as part of life: No Pain, No Gain.
A “fancy” work environment was never a concern. I once worked under a tarp (!) when they were painting the small office where I was an intern, in summer, with no air conditioning, because they were going to throw a party and the work couldn’t stop. I worked inside a logistics warehouse, with a zinc roof, only a fan, and trucks coming in and out right next to me.
I slept on the office floor dozens of times. I carried furniture down the middle of the street to move offices. I pulled many unpaid all-nighters. I got chewed out for things that weren’t even my responsibility (I was an intern). I did all kinds of things unrelated to my real job, fought with managers, with “coworkers,” with vendors.
I never treated any of this as “the end of the world.” It was just the inevitable. The famous “accept it, it hurts less.”
It’s no accident that I’m an Engineer. An engineer solves problems, and our obsession is always finding a more efficient way to do the same thing. No engineer ever solved anything just by whining.
There’s also no such thing as “work that devalues me.” If I have to crop a Photoshop, I won’t treat it as useless manual labor. There’s no useless work. There’s bad will. Any ordinary, underestimated task, done with your head engaged, can lead to great accidental discoveries.
“The inventor of the Coca-Cola wasn’t a shrewd businessman, a seller of sweets, or a dreamer looking to strike it rich in the beverage business. John Pemberton just wanted to cure headaches. A pharmacist by profession, Pemberton used two main ingredients in his hopeful headache cure: coca leaves and cola nuts. When his lab assistant accidentally mixed the two with carbonated water, the world’s first Coke was the result.” - 10 Awesome Accidental Discoveries
Many of these narcissists, in their aura of self-importance, believe they need the perfect environment, that someone must give them the conditions to achieve great things (emphasis on “give” because they refuse to earn what they need on their own). That’s a load of nonsense. I’ve yet to see anyone who thinks that way achieve anything relevant to anyone.
In my experience, all the great discoveries were born in humble conditions, with people who had a real interest in what they were doing. Only that. Professionals, “craftsmen,” interested in perfecting their own knowledge, who as a consequence came out with great things that benefited more people. You don’t plan something revolutionary. It happens by accident, given the ideal conditions of temperature and pressure at that moment.
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” - by Akita.
I am not a programmer with the goal of one day surpassing Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds. You can do good work without being blindly arrogant. 30 years in, I still have fun with trivial things: a new piece of code that compiles, a configuration that optimizes my GPU, setting up a Raspberry Pi, testing a new language, tweaking my text editor, researching, learning, evolving, and so on. “Doing what you love” is doing these small things well. And “being happy” is a process of trial and error, always in motion, something you win little by little rather than reach as a final destination.
Whoever enjoys the present, what exists around them and within their reach right now, instead of wasting time on “what if in the future…”, is the one with the best chance of doing what others can’t, blinded by the journey of impossible happiness. Constraints lead to Innovation, as I’ve been repeating for years.
“carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero” - “Make the most of the (limited) time you have”.
“Whoever lives in the past is a museum. And whoever suffers over the distant future is mentally ill.” - Unknown.
Coincidentally, while I was researching for this post, the Hipsters Ponto Tech podcast came out where I made a small appearance precisely to talk about the topic of Careers in tech.
And reread my old posts mentioned above, related to these topics:
- The World Today Is Very Good! Happy 2013!
- Letter to a Young Programmer Considering a Startup
- Constraints are liberating: less is more
- Don’t Do What You (“THINK”) You Love
TL;DR: Learn how to learn, and make better use of your life.