Stumbling On Happiness
I read a great post on a productivity blog that I regularly keep up with. The blog is Trizle.com and the post is entitled Why Your Future Sucks. The post reminded me of a book I read last year by Dan Gilbert entitled Stumbling On Happiness.
The premise of the book was to take a scientific look at how poorly we are at predicting what will make us happy. We are not very good at remembering the past and we overstate when imagining the future.
One of the big takeaways of the book is how I fail to live in the now. I do everything I can so that “future Paul” will be happy. I live to improve “future Paul”. Gilbert states that we are poor at predicting what will make us happy which leaves me in a situation where I put all my energy into “future Paul” which will create results that “future Paul” will be disappointed with. I try to make “future Paul” happy, but if I don’t know what will make “future Paul” happy, I will undoubtedly fail.
Since “future Paul” can not be pleased, why do I obsess with pleasing him? Why don’t I put more energy into “current Paul”? I guess that is the entire premise of having this blog. Try to live with intentionality.
Note: This is were my thoughts get a little spooky.
The other takeaway from the book centers on how we imagine the future. The only method I have for imagining time is by thinking about a clock moving forward. Because of this I can’t adequately imagine the correct context of the future. I envision the future without the context of time passing and/or aging. I know this is weird stuff, but I find it fascinating. Try to close your eyes and envision time passing. Do you think of a clock or calendar? Try to envision yourself aging? Can you imagine time without visualizing a time keeping device? Yes, I’m weird.
Finally this gets me to what triggered thoughts of Gilbert’s book. The trizle.com post talks of immediate action and to “Stop thinking ‘in the future’. Below is my favorite part of the post.
If you ever start with a sentence with,
- “In the future, I will…”
…do this:
- Look in the mirror.
- Slap the @#$% out of yourself.
Then tell yourself:
- “I will most-likely-probably-like-99% never do anything ‘in the future’.”
- “If I want something in the future, I make progress — even if it’s teeny-tiny-tiny progress — toward that future today.”
