When professional athletes win the Olympics, they often reportedly feel a hollowness in themselves. They expect to feel ecstatic, but there is nothing there. Their achievement, which is a tribute to the unbelievable capabilities of humans, feels like nothing1.
Hedonic adaptation is the name of the game our mind plays with us. Even though most of us won't win the Olympics, and neither the Nobel Prize, we achieve things. The problem is that we increase our baseline constantly. When I was working on my first paper for a big conference, it felt like the most exciting thing ever. Afterward, it became a paper. The same works with salaries, exotic vacations, or new gadgets. You want a bigger/better one, but when you get it and get used to it, then it ceases to bring the same happiness. Alas, unless you remind yourself of how great these things are.
A mundane personal example is that when I moved to Tübingen to start my Ph.D., I encountered the beautiful mountains of the Swabian Jura. Then I constantly reminded and still remind myself how wonderful this landscape is. It takes some effort, but it brings me more joy even without constantly striving for more to get the same feeling of fulfillment—which is a good strategy, after all, since mountains stop shy of 9000 meters.
It is natural to strive for more; the problem is that we can become “addicted to” success, leading to an unhealthy relationship with money, work, sports, etc.
It can be instructive to think about happiness as the following simplified equation:
Happiness = Reality — Expectations
The problem is not necessarily with our achievements (reality) but our expectations on at least two counts. Constantly upping the bar (hedonic adaptation) can make us feel miserable since the goalpost is ever moving. So I heard...
The second problem is intertwined with how we measure our reality/achievements. By default, we tend to focus on the outcome (papers, medals, awards), but we could focus on the process (giving your best).
What can focusing on the process bring?
The answer lies in the components of the above equation and how they are affected by things outside and within our control. Let's take our expectations: we omit external influences when defining the state that (we think) will satisfy us. The problem is that reality is influenced by randomness2.
Again, the point is that we define our expectations as not depending on randomness. At least I have not met a single soul saying: “My expectation is to publish five papers this year if I get nice reviews, but I will be happy with two if my reviewers are too harsh.” You want those five papers, don't you? I usually do.
Since our expectations do not depend on noise (at least not in our imagination), they stay the same agnostic to the circumstances. The problem is that by randomness, reality (the outcomes), and thus our happiness will fluctuate. This begs the (simplified) question:
What a silly thing is to let our own happiness be defined by randomness?
If we consider the same equation but formulate reality and our expectations in terms of a process, the problem goes away—that is, if we drop external factors from how we define our expectations. If your expectation is to do your best, then happiness becomes intrinsic, independent of everything external. Still, the result in the colloquial sense will depend on the circumstances, but you will not care (that much). And that is a revelation.
Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg from The Growth Equation formulate this as:
Focus on being the best in becoming better.
If you expect me to say, “Let's get rid of our ambitions and lead the life of a hermit,” then I must disappoint you. I neither want to nor would be able to do that. But I do believe that how you define success and happiness does make a difference.
Resources
Shameless marketing
If you are passionate about neural networks, robotics, or intelligent systems and looking for a Ph.D. in Europe, I cannot help but recommend both graduate programs I am partaking in: the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS-IS) and the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS).
Most of the insights I write about are related to my experience as an IMPRS-IS and ELLIS scholar. In the following weeks, more is coming.
Important dates and resources
IMPRS-IS application deadline: November 15, 2023, 23:59 CET. Find out more on the IMPRS-IS website.
ELLIS application deadline: November 15, 2023, 23:59 CET (yes, they are—not coincidentally—the same). Find out more on the ELLIS website.
If your goal transcends you (such as inspiring or helping others), that can fill you with meaning.
Gracefully, I will plug everything we do not have influence over into the randomness part, even if how our “opponents” work/train is not a random thing per se (at least not in the same sense as rolling dice is), though we can treat it as random since we do not (cannot) know how others function (even if in a deterministic way).