6 ms·

This very much captures the hedonic treadmill: when you increase your baseline level of happiness, you re-normalize to the new level, with relatively little cha

This very much captures the hedonic treadmill: when you increase your baseline level of happiness, you re-normalize to the new level, with relatively little change in your absolute happiness. But while I do think appreciating what you have is part of how to avoid the hedonic treadmill, I don't think it's a matter of learning to be happy with a routine. I've found it possible to make a conscious effort to avoid hedonic adapation, and enjoy novel things without allowing them to become a new baseline. If you can maintain your expectations at the same level, while improving your actual circumstances noticeably above that level, you can maintain a higher level of enjoyment of your life.

dehrmann 5y ago
I find this very depressing, but the reason the nordics have some of the happiest people in the world is they have low expectations.
- camillomiller 5y ago
  Source? The nordics have some of the highest suicide rates in the world, actually. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
  - tedeh 5y ago
    Top 10: 1. Lesotho 2. Guyana 3. Eswatini 4. Kiribati 5. Micronesia 6. Suriname 7. Zimbabwe 8. South Africa 9. Mozambique 10. Central African Republic
  - matthewmacleod 5y ago
    Did you mean to link to some other data? This list shows that the Nordic state with the highest suicide rate is Finland at number 38, in which suicides are about 30% higher than the European average (although of course Greenland remains an interesting artefact). I don't think that really fits your description. It's always been pretty interesting (and I'd say quite well-known) that the Nordics do have a somewhat higher suicide rate than other similar states. But it's also likely a pretty bad proxy; I'd be suspicious of a metric suggesting the average North Korean citizen is substantially happier than the average Finn. Probably better is the World Happiness Report (https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-for-world-happiness/ https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-fo...). It's a bit arbitrary for my taste, but does at least have a pretty long history as well as plenty of transparency about what it's measuring and why. And it consistently places the Nordics in the top ten.
- teddyh 5y ago
  Not “low” expectations – reasonable expectations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27061860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27061860
skohan 5y ago
So if I'm not mistaken, the hedonic treadmill is not about baseline happiness. It's about increasing your set-point for joy and/or excitement. Happiness is a state, joy is fleeting. So the goal is generally to increase your level of happiness - to have a higher baseline in terms of feeling good and having a sense of well-being. It's futile to chase joy in place of happiness, because each hit of joy makes the next one feel less exceptional. Although joy feels like happiness, it's not the same thing, and it's barely related. Joy often has to do with doing more. Doing something extra and exceptional to move the needle. Happiness often has to do with doing less. With being less focused on doing/attaining/obtaining something new, and more focused on mindset: on finding happiness in what we already have.
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  If joy is the upwards deviation from the norm, then keeping the norm low allows more things to produce joy. In any case, I'm not claiming a universal recipe here, just observing something that seems to have worked well for me.
  - skohan 5y ago
    But it's not an upward deviation from the "happiness" norm, it's deviation from the joy baseline. They're entirely separate systems. To give an extreme example, someone who's addicted to drugs might receive extreme joy from their next hit, while at the same time being deeply unhappy, and unable to take joy from anything else. That's the hedonic treadmill at the extreme. At the same time, someone who's very happy might be able to take joy from something simple - like a fried egg yolk with the perfect consistency - because their mind is not preoccupied with seeking bigger and better joy, they may be more free to find it in simple places where it arises naturally.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It does make me think it's - once again - a privilege thing. A lot of people can't afford vacations full stop. Another group can, but only in their own country or only stepping over the border. Single, full-time working people, especially in tech, start to unlock the ability to travel abroad, maybe even one of those big two-three week Life Changing things to somewhere exotic, but only once in a lifetime or once every few years. Middle / upper-middle class incomes eventually get to a point of wealth and freedom where they can take vacations abroad multiple times a year. And I think you need to be even above that level, where you don't have to worry about your base income or mortgages or whatever, where you can have this lifestyle where you can have novel things and experiences all the time. And even then there's a risk people get used to it.
- arisAlexis 5y ago
  Good point. We should take into account that Seneca wrote the letters as a life framework that would help others and mostly they were poor.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Bull. This is such a boring way to look at life. You can’t go on ‘vacation’ unless you’ve reached a certain (extremely high) level of material success? Maybe if you think of vacation as a place you go for a little while, eat nice food, stay in an Airbnb, and when you come home, your dog is waiting for you at the pet hotel to go back to your condo where all your stuff, subscriptions, job and ‘real life’ is still waiting as if you never left. Even with very little means you can travel and see the world. It’s just a matter of priorities and what kind of life you want to make for yourself. If you think you have to establish the standard life package first and then go see the world when you have spare time and money, sure, maybe you won’t until you’ve made it pretty far. Right out of high school, instead of going to university, I decided to travel abroad. I didn’t have family money. I’m from a poor family in a small town. I just saved a little money working service jobs and traveled on the cheap. CouchSurfing, hitchhiking, camping out, hostels, etc. I’m not special. My little sister is doing the same thing now on waitress money. I’ve met countless people out on the road living interesting and meaningful lives, traveling abroad without being a single, full-time tech worker. You just have to ask yourself whether you need to compete materially with everyone who’s staying in one place and accumulating stuff. To think you only deserve a couple Life Changing, two or three week trips, even as a high earning tech worker… Such poverty of spirit makes me depressed just thinking it. Consider a few great authors, like Orwell for example. As a broke 20 something he was tramping around living a series of great stories. If he’d chosen to play it safe, stay home and work at some Important Career and collecting stuff, he’d probably never have gone to Spain in 1936, and the world would probably never have received his most important works as a result.

dehrmann 5y ago

I find this very depressing, but the reason the nordics have some of the happiest people in the world is they have low expectations.

camillomiller 5y ago
Source? The nordics have some of the highest suicide rates in the world, actually. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
- tedeh 5y ago
  Top 10: 1. Lesotho 2. Guyana 3. Eswatini 4. Kiribati 5. Micronesia 6. Suriname 7. Zimbabwe 8. South Africa 9. Mozambique 10. Central African Republic
- matthewmacleod 5y ago
  Did you mean to link to some other data? This list shows that the Nordic state with the highest suicide rate is Finland at number 38, in which suicides are about 30% higher than the European average (although of course Greenland remains an interesting artefact). I don't think that really fits your description. It's always been pretty interesting (and I'd say quite well-known) that the Nordics do have a somewhat higher suicide rate than other similar states. But it's also likely a pretty bad proxy; I'd be suspicious of a metric suggesting the average North Korean citizen is substantially happier than the average Finn. Probably better is the World Happiness Report (https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-for-world-happiness/ https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-fo...). It's a bit arbitrary for my taste, but does at least have a pretty long history as well as plenty of transparency about what it's measuring and why. And it consistently places the Nordics in the top ten.
teddyh 5y ago
Not “low” expectations – reasonable expectations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27061860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27061860

skohan 5y ago

So if I'm not mistaken, the hedonic treadmill is not about baseline happiness. It's about increasing your set-point for joy and/or excitement. Happiness is a state, joy is fleeting. So the goal is generally to increase your level of happiness - to have a higher baseline in terms of feeling good and having a sense of well-being. It's futile to chase joy in place of happiness, because each hit of joy makes the next one feel less exceptional. Although joy feels like happiness, it's not the same thing, and it's barely related. Joy often has to do with doing more. Doing something extra and exceptional to move the needle. Happiness often has to do with doing less. With being less focused on doing/attaining/obtaining something new, and more focused on mindset: on finding happiness in what we already have.

JoshTriplett 5y ago
If joy is the upwards deviation from the norm, then keeping the norm low allows more things to produce joy. In any case, I'm not claiming a universal recipe here, just observing something that seems to have worked well for me.
- skohan 5y ago
  But it's not an upward deviation from the "happiness" norm, it's deviation from the joy baseline. They're entirely separate systems. To give an extreme example, someone who's addicted to drugs might receive extreme joy from their next hit, while at the same time being deeply unhappy, and unable to take joy from anything else. That's the hedonic treadmill at the extreme. At the same time, someone who's very happy might be able to take joy from something simple - like a fried egg yolk with the perfect consistency - because their mind is not preoccupied with seeking bigger and better joy, they may be more free to find it in simple places where it arises naturally.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

It does make me think it's - once again - a privilege thing. A lot of people can't afford vacations full stop. Another group can, but only in their own country or only stepping over the border. Single, full-time working people, especially in tech, start to unlock the ability to travel abroad, maybe even one of those big two-three week Life Changing things to somewhere exotic, but only once in a lifetime or once every few years. Middle / upper-middle class incomes eventually get to a point of wealth and freedom where they can take vacations abroad multiple times a year. And I think you need to be even above that level, where you don't have to worry about your base income or mortgages or whatever, where you can have this lifestyle where you can have novel things and experiences all the time. And even then there's a risk people get used to it.

arisAlexis 5y ago
Good point. We should take into account that Seneca wrote the letters as a life framework that would help others and mostly they were poor.
eloisius 5y ago
Bull. This is such a boring way to look at life. You can’t go on ‘vacation’ unless you’ve reached a certain (extremely high) level of material success? Maybe if you think of vacation as a place you go for a little while, eat nice food, stay in an Airbnb, and when you come home, your dog is waiting for you at the pet hotel to go back to your condo where all your stuff, subscriptions, job and ‘real life’ is still waiting as if you never left. Even with very little means you can travel and see the world. It’s just a matter of priorities and what kind of life you want to make for yourself. If you think you have to establish the standard life package first and then go see the world when you have spare time and money, sure, maybe you won’t until you’ve made it pretty far. Right out of high school, instead of going to university, I decided to travel abroad. I didn’t have family money. I’m from a poor family in a small town. I just saved a little money working service jobs and traveled on the cheap. CouchSurfing, hitchhiking, camping out, hostels, etc. I’m not special. My little sister is doing the same thing now on waitress money. I’ve met countless people out on the road living interesting and meaningful lives, traveling abroad without being a single, full-time tech worker. You just have to ask yourself whether you need to compete materially with everyone who’s staying in one place and accumulating stuff. To think you only deserve a couple Life Changing, two or three week trips, even as a high earning tech worker… Such poverty of spirit makes me depressed just thinking it. Consider a few great authors, like Orwell for example. As a broke 20 something he was tramping around living a series of great stories. If he’d chosen to play it safe, stay home and work at some Important Career and collecting stuff, he’d probably never have gone to Spain in 1936, and the world would probably never have received his most important works as a result.