Ha! I'm familiar with the phenomenon, but I hadn't heard it described as a "treadmill" before. Most metaphors out there (eg most computer science jargon) fit we

Ha! I'm familiar with the phenomenon, but I hadn't heard it described as a "treadmill" before. Most metaphors out there (eg most computer science jargon) fit well on a superficial level, but the analogy breaks down when you go deeper. But sometimes, someone comes up with a metaphor for something that's such a good fit that it just makes my day. The Hedonic Treadmill is definitely one of those. It's not just the repetitiveness, but also the exhaustion, the endlessness, the pointlessness even to some extent. And, in some sense, maybe even the progress you can make over a long time when using a treadmill frequently. Like, you learn to embrace the pointlessness of being on a treadmill, running but going absolutely nowhere, and that insight in itself makes it so that you're not running nowhere at all. Kinda sorta.