Life is a rat race.

It has always been a rat race.

From the 200 million sperm ‘that could’, to the 7 billion that ‘got lucky. Although the opportunity to collaborate has often presented itself, the appeal for teamwork is often superseded by the impatience of individuals simply unable to sit back and twiddle their thumbs whilst the rest of the group catch up. The longing to butt heads is, no doubt, one of mankind’s stranger fetishes. 

The race makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Why wouldn’t we believe that distinctions and accolades – combined with a healthy dose of suffering – can improve our overall existence? The desire to be exceptional has sent many an explorer off toward pastures new, or persuade a world-class footballer never miss a training session despite all the wealth and admiration of millions. Why settle for an A when you could get an A*? 

The fight is hardwired into us. 

As such, the conventional model has stood its ground. Doing more stuff produces more traditional success. 

But then what? 

As Ryan Holiday puts it, “this is the point where a lot of smart, driven, born-lucky people drive themselves higher and higher… till they fall right off the edge. And no one hears the screams of the fallen. When you’re out, you’re out. Anyone who has ever managed to save themselves from the blind pursuit of success will press others to open their eyes and hunt for something more meaningful – before it’s too late. But we turn a deaf ear to their pleas. As far as we are concerned, they have been forced to pull out from the race and therefore are in no position to challenge our beliefs. We’re hardwired to drown out any voice that doesn’t tell us to ‘keep going’—any deviation from the ‘well-beaten track of achievement’ is to be roped off with immediate effect.

There is the idea that every human being falls somewhere on the spectrum of recognition. A deep-seated pecking order pulls the strings- invisible algorithms deciding who should have ‘status’, and who should not.  Hard work -> success -> wealth -> smiles is a doctrine that has been relentlessly skewered into us from the moment we could look up at the stars and dream of skipping the first step. 

“There are no shortcuts.”

For years people have been strong advocates of this ‘traditional path’ – get an education, find a well-paying job, and be set for life. No doubt it is a well-beaten track to the top. However, our journey is less of a pleasant meander through the moors and more a precarious cliff face, with many of the loose footholds and crumbling ledges complemented by fierce rockfalls and spontaneous(-ly terrible) weather. Getting to the top isn’t easy, we are told. In fact, it’s nigh-on impossible. But is that demoralizing statement supposed to deter or incentivize? Well, the sheer number of climbers should give you an answer. then again, so too should the faceless masses at the bottom. The ones who dedicated a lifetime toward launching themselves up, only to fall.

Lone drops in society’s ocean of average. 

And the darkest truth is that many of these people on the ground had, at least for a while, actually succeeded in their endeavours. They had tasted ‘summit air’. However, their short-lived happiness is a result of everything we know about success -for it tells us to never stop climbing. And the precious few who have what it takes to do that -fall right on over the edge.

We all think some external accomplishment is somehow going to change everything, but it hardly ever seems to.  You begin with the words ‘in hindsight’ and treat yourselves to a nice little fairytale truth be told, it doesn’t change the way you take your coffee in the morning, let alone how you see yourself. However, retrospect can hurt, especially when you’re reaching for dizzying heights. Looking back means looking down. And that’s something we are told to never do.

Optimum

Fame and money have a clear, well-defined peak. Building up an admirable reputation for yourself unlocks the floodgates for tidal waves of serendipity. Making the effort to get some way up this mountain can lead to better friendships, jobs, relationships, and more fun in general. But as that reputation expands, it will most likely precede you. Money definitely helps us meet our basic needs,

The first bit of financial surplus can be great as suddenly you can splurge on a lot more than basic amenities. but after your 3rd-holiday villa, things basically start to go downhill as people begin scrutinizing your life choices and harassing you on the street. . The “reward” becomes frequenting the headlines in gossip magazines and walking out the front door only to be ambushed by paparazzi. Privacy becomes non-existent. Secrecy suddenly comes arm-in-arm with a hefty price tag. Although, at the extreme end, you needn’t worry about this as your small army of security personnel will be all over it by the time you feel confident enough to leave your quintessential fortress of solitude. Although still enjoyable for some, it’s hard to prepare for.

So, what then? Should we seek anonymity in an effort to be content? Should we renounce the material world and live like a sage in the foothills of Cambodia?

Maybe we’re looking at it all wrong. instead of either pursuing the life of an icon (or that of a recluse), we should opt for a different kind of recognition. To paraphrase Brian Groat, “There are two types of fame in this world; Kardashian fame vs Munger fame.”  If you know who both of them are, the choice is clear. If you know only one, the choice is clearer still.

Bottom Line: choose Munger fame.

This pattern is infinite. A curve with a maximum value in the middle. The optimal amount of exercise to do in a day. The volume at which you will enjoy your music most. The hours of sleep you get per night. The number of people with whom you can maintain a solid relationship. Enzymes have an optimal temperature at which they function. Any lower and they cease to be efficient. Any higher and they simply die. There will always be an optimum value.

Having said this, what’s our optimal value. How much of things do we need? And will it ever be enough to be ‘happy’?

Hedonic Treadmill

The hedonic treadmill – or ‘hedonic adaptation’ is a theory propounding a phenomenon that people a baseline level of happiness consistently resets to a fixed value, regardless of circumstances that may befall them.

Here’s what Jean-Jacques Rousseau had to say about it in his 1754 Discourse on Inequality:

“Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them.”

The hedonic treadmill theory argues that our circumstances alter our mood states temporarily and that there is a default emotional ‘set point’ we will always revert to.

It’s important to note that whilst this includes positive maxima such as winning the lottery, hedonic adaptation can also be taken to the other extreme, say – the loss of a limb. Though such an event would likely lead to a fundamental change in one’s lifestyle, the shapeless fringes of our emotion will inevitably expand to accommodate new hardship.

Can you remember the last time you were dreaming of some big purchase? Do you recall fantasizing about your increase in overall ‘happiness’? If you finally did acquire something ‘you’ve always wanted’, then hallelujah! it’s a great feeling – for a while. 

When things that once seemed unattainable are suddenly within reach, it can trigger an intense state of euphoria. but does this last? According to a bestselling author, he was mowing the lawn one day when his agent rang to inform him he’d made the New York bestseller list. The author thanked his agent, hung up and continued mowing his lawn.

The duration of your euphoria seems to share an inversely proportional relationship with the number of things you get.

We can become indifferent, desensitized to the pain and pleasure of simply ‘being’.

Perfectionist Syndrome

Perfectionists suffer most on the hedonic treadmill. 

 The official definition of a perfectionist is a person who refuses to accept any standard short of – well – perfection. But the truth is, having such intractable standards can have dangerous implications for the self and for others. Take Bill, for example.

Bill is your textbook perfectionist. Everything in Bill’s life to which he assigns meaning has simply got to be ‘perfect’. Oftentimes, when reality does not fall on par with his expectations, he can become overwhelmed by a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and, in most cases, even guilt.

Bill is a scientist who has been researching how stem cell therapy may lead to the formation of tumours and has just presented his findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology. He had spent the previous weeks painstakingly reviewing and restructuring data, whilst practising his speech such vigour that he was soon able to recite the entire script, verbatim. After reaching the last slide of his presentation, the room erupts with applause. Many people approach Bill afterwards to congratulate him on a stellar demonstration of his findings. On the surface, Bill is smiling, but deep down he’s kicking himself. He had wanted to deliver a flawless talk – but the occasional stutter and slip of the tongue had robbed him of that opportunity. Could the people near the back of the room even hear him? He has compared his speech to what could have been, and his ineffably high standards fail him once again. Akin to the cancer cells he’d been researching, Bill’s malignant thoughts start to divide exponentially, drowning out any the praise before it can register.

Driving this attack – a mutation, triggered by 5 words:

“I could have done better.”

Though the solutions of the future may lie (somewhat) in the past, it’s the answer is never as straightforward as recreating past events. Bill may have presented identical findings hundreds of times before that day, with ‘perfect results’. That should be evidence enough that he wasn’t going to make a single mistake. But, alas, he did. So, to refute Einstein, doing the same thing over and over again may well lead to different results. And expecting such an outcome certainly doesn’t insinuate madness. 

If you take nothing else away from this article, remember this: A historian can always outsmart history. A child reading about the Battle of Waterloo may arrive at the conclusion that he or she could have been a greater military leader than Napoleon. An that’s hindsight bias, in a nutshell.

The crux here is that irrespective of Bill’s actions in the past, the only thing he’s capable of controlling is his future actions. These actions are difficult because the outcome is not so easily predicted. But his impeccably high standards means Bill looks exclusively to the past for answers to the present that might help him in the future- all through the rose-tinted spectacles of hindsight. And, for most people, it’s especially difficult to look past hindsight and judge the past from the perspective of how it seemed at the time. For example, electromagnetism is a fundamental aspect of physics, one that took centuries of iteration and endeavour to conceptualise. Yet, when one thinks about the north pole end of a magnet being attracted to the south pole of another magnet, the framework of the electromagnetic theory feels simple!

For Bill, factoring in the idea of hindsight bias into his reflections is a virtually impossible feat. Looking back becomes a spiralling myriad of “what if’s” and “wherefores”. Remember, when you’re trying to climb up toward prominence, looking back means looking down- which is strongly advised against. Intuition and past data alone is nowhere near capable of setting a trajectory for future accomplishments.  For as long as Bill (and other so-called ‘perfectionists’) cannot fathom that, no achievement or standard will ever be ‘enough’

But what about all those success stories about the people who found satisfaction after landing their ‘dream job’? About those who sacrificed everything, only to spend the rest of their lives in bliss? Surely that’s an example of where we can take some evidence from the past and apply it directly to the future?

As it turns out, we’ve got the story backwards.

One should not aim to do the work with the hope that it will someday make them happy. There’s no point sitting passively, waiting for something to come along and excite us. instead, we should search for what we enjoy. Happiness should be the motivator enabling us to do the work itself. Becoming content is not the be-all and end-all – it’s not the final frontier. Perceiving it as such means that you will be forever chasing the rainbow. instead, one must acknowledge happiness as a stepping stone- a thrust int he direction we are headed – rather than the destination itself. It takes the form of the path in front of us, and anyone who recognises this will have a reason to smile. Perhaps we should eschew the luxury of panoramic vistas at the top in favour of some killer milestones we surpassed along the way.

Don’t be fooled: ‘everything you could ever want’ is as detrimental as it gets when it comes to human happiness. It’s just one more thing to get bored of having. 

There is a concept in Latin known as ‘Amor Fati’. It translates to ‘love of fate’. Perhaps this is the answer. We should aspire to love everywhere we’ve been in life, so one day we may learn to love the road we are on Granted, there may be no objective value for ‘enough’, and who can say if we’ll ever figure out where we’re going? But even though humans are stupendously adaptable creatures, with a stupendously adaptable stomach for ‘things’, but there’s always a point when we’ve had ‘too much’. Our success is personally governed by our actions. and, in turn, the success moulds our desires. 

Being ‘full’ is an incredibly subtle state of being, thus knowing when to rise from the table may be our single, greatest privilege. We will each know what is enough when the itch to sit back down is no longer there. When the tradeoffs are too great, and the struggle is no longer justified. If ever we lay still and realise there’s nowhere else to be but here. Amor Fati.

And so one should always be prepared to answer:

What are you chasing?

That’s good enough.