Infinite Games
youngmoney.co
youngmoney.co
> You return from the peak and think, “Damn. I need that rush again. I need to climb another mountain.” But here’s the thing about that next mountain: it has to be greater than the previous one.
This is basically what it's like being a popular YouTuber or Twitch streamer. You reach 1k subs, you want 10k. You reach 10k, you want 100k. Reach 100k, want a million. Etc.
You become obsessed with numbers, driven by the initial feeling of joy as you reach each one. You become more and more obsessed with fame and fortune, and likely end up feeling just as hollow as you did at the start.
All while risking serious burnout, and driving away the people around you.
Becoming rich will certainly make things easier and help happinness wise, but if you're too obsessed with achievements and fortune, you probably won't get to enjoy it.
Hmm...but the evidence suggests happiness increases with income, even above $500k/year for some people. Maybe not a pot of gold, but having more money can make life easier anyway.
In the context we're using the word, "satisfaction" might be a good replacement for "happiness". It isn't about pleasure, or even feeling good necessarily, but contentment with your place in the world.
If your unhappiness is caused by your car being broken down, money can buy that.
Not having money to fix your basic life problems with is probably one of the biggest sources of unhappiness in the world.
Money doesn't buy happiness, it removes a lot of unhappiness
If you have enough money, you can stop ironing your shirts, cleaning the house, doing chores and all the other stuff that drain our “free” time. Generally speaking, a third of our time goes to work, another third to sleep and the remaining third is our life. We need to make the work part interesting, engaging, joyful and something we look forward to so that it doesn’t make us unhappy. We can try and reduce a little bit the sleep part to gain time, but for sure we need to handle more efficiently the last part and maximize it. This is where most of the happiness will come from.
For example: Car broke down? No problem, just drive the other car or take Uber for a week. Rent goes up? No problem, just buy less clothing each month. Very ill? No problem, just pay for immediate health care.
Always remember that the phrase "money doesn't buy you happiness" is a means to make the proletariat accept their lot.
Beyond simply fixing problems, it also allows you to just not have to think about them at all, which removes stress. Eg if you have enough money, then bills just aren’t things that ever need to take up time or space in your mind.
Being able to choose where to live based solely on what would make me happy or being close to the people I care about, without having to make suboptimal decisions based on cost.
Not having to work would free up a lot of time to spend with loved ones, on hobbies or activities that bring meaning and joy to my life, or on travelling and seeing wonderful things or places and meeting new people. Even if I want to work, I could at least choose what I want to work on based on what gives me joy and meaning rather than based on financial need.
Money allows you to do these things for others: reduce their stresses and financial worries. Doing things for others is usually rewarding.
So beyond removing unhappiness caused by basic life problems, I think that money really can meaningfully improve your level of happiness. Yes, you’d eventually hit a point where more money doesn’t improve things, but that number is far higher than the $75k figure usually quoted because $75k isn’t even close enough to quit my job, live closer to my friends, Tavel the world and work on my hobbies and personal projects.
It's certainly a trope that many achievements can leave an empty feeling in the space that chasing that dream used to occupy. I think the warning here is not to make your life unbearable to chase happiness after some arbitrary achievement. But I think the advice I appreciate more is just to make sure you're also enjoying the journey, and that you diversify your streams of contentment.
It's nice to have stuff that brings you joy while you search for something new after achieving something you had been focussing on.
Has this changed this dramatically during the past decade?
[0] https://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/deaton_kahneman_...
https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=...
What's the connection between wealth and income? Linear or something else?
Adjusting it for inflation[1], $75k in 2010 would be $103k today.
Off topic and personal: I have enjoyed the tech industry for almost 50 years, but being in my 70s I just don’t have the energy to do everything I want to do. I still play the Infinite Game though as a 40 year AI practitioner by spending 2 hours a week working as an advisor to an AI startup, by closely following deep learning and specifically LLMs, spending about 1 hour a day trying papers + code, and about 2 hours a day writing whatever my “new book project” is. I also allow myself 30 minutes a day, usually during my morning coffee, to scan HN, Twitter, TLDR AI, etc., where I write down things I may want to look at in depth that day. (I wrote about this process yesterday http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2023/03/time-and-attention-f...).
Anyway, I still feel in the game, I limit tech/gentleman scientist research/coding/writing to about 4 hours a day - that leaves plenty of time for friends, family, and reading.
I really think that some people try to achieve too much in life. Lower expectations and be happier.