Chasing Hobbies over Achievement Boosts Happiness (2023)

It's not that ambition is a curse, it's that people have the wrong ambitions and feel cursed.

Firstly, acquiring money and power does not make people happier. You know what makes people happier? Being happy. Relationships, love, community, sense of purpose, getting good at a skill, a feeling of freedom and agency (not "having" to do what others tell them), a sense of contribution and of caring for something that benefits others, a sense of being cared for by others.

This is not a sudden change. You can go back to Ancient Greek philosophy and find plenty of it there.

What changed is over the last 40-50 years, in the Western World (North America, Western Europe), we've lived in a culture that tells us there is "no such thing as society" (a direct quote from Thatcher), that individualism triumphs the community, that "socialism" - and I'm not talking purely economically here - is evil, and that capitalism is for the benefit of all through trickle-down economics (no longer considered a credible economic policy by most).

This is built on a foundation of extreme individualistic thinking. Ayn Rand reacted against the communist culture in which she grew up, and in a background of the Cold War and a rising influence of venture capital on the major economic forces, her writing has become totemic and influential. It sits underneath everything said by every advocated of Reganism, Trumpism, Muskism, Thielism.

The problem is, we're primates. We're social animals. We know deep down just looking after ourselves isn't very fulfilling. It plays out even with the ultra-rich Randians having - and encouraging others to have - very large numbers of children. But often those children are not part of a family, and so in about 20 years we're going to end up seeing the consequences of that. It'll be horrid. I'm sad for them.

If you want to feel you have a bit more of a blessed life, consider the following:

1. Having a process, and measuring your progress of sticking to it, feels more satisfying than having a goal.

2. Society exists. All of it. Even the people you don't like or don't want in your community. Find out more about them and what the perspectives are. This will tickle the social primate part of your brain, even though it might be scary to start with.

3. If you feel you need more riches, more money, more power, it is quicker and easier to lower those expectations and needs than it is gain more money and power. Even if you got more money and power, you'd just feel you need even more again - it's a trap.

4. "Hobbies" are a luxury for a lot of people. Optimise for energy, optimise for agency and freedom (it's OK to start your own business, just don't aim for a unicorn - it's OK to run a small local business doing something useful your area values), optimise for happiness. You'll find that leads you to a path of more hobbies and less work, regardless.

I've recently been re-reading Rand as satire and realised just how unhinged her - and her fans' - worldview is, how inhumane and unnatural and debased it all is. People who believe it is "true" are running the World, and they're dangerous, and there's not much we can do about that, but you can decide to not live your life that way.

Go well.

In my experience its not that ambition is bad, its just that much more difficult to act upon successfully these days than previous.

I was speaking to friends of mine a few years back, and they mentioned that they successfully created a facilities management and cleaning business for a few years just to have the experience. Made a lot of money and moved on. My parents did something similar, bought a sub 5000 dollar print cartridge restoration franchise, turned it into 50k in 18 months and dumped it.

You try either of those today and the margins are too thin to even contemplate. You can work 18 hour days for a few years and end up with very little. Not to mention the generally poor returns on wage labor compared to cost of living. My parents combined income 20 years ago is less than I earn solo now. They had 2 cars and a house on that money. I rent at more than 5 times their mortgage cost.

I actually tend to blame hobbies, for having such a good happiness return per dollar, for soaking up discretionary spending. Society is fucked to the point where some people toil hopelessly without recreation, and others are devoted almost entirely to recreation. Like the division of labor coming in to play to ensure the people best suited to leisure are completing that task.

First I tracked laps when I swam. That got boring so I tracked time instead. I would try to resist the urge, but I would occasionally pop my head up to see the clock and know how much time I had left. One day, I decided to give that up too and just swim as long or as short as I wanted to that day. It was a good decision that has only increased my enjoyment of swimming and hasn’t resulted in a drop in my fitness.

I think it affects people differently, I'm neutral when I can't push hard, but having a tracker helps me push harder and I feel rewarded when I do. So I'm not getting the negative side of it.

On the flip side, I train only for health purposes, I don't love anything of what I do, so we react differently to similar stimulus

You've phrased it as a goal and achievement, so now it'll just lead to misery

Well, that would definitely have made both my life and theirs miserable, so I won't be passing on the suggestion to my kid :)