Contentment and Satisfaction #

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.

Heller responds,“Yes, but I have something he will never have — ENOUGH.”

In my experience, it is natural to want to make progress in your endevours. Some examples:

• Getting promoted in your job
• Reading more books about a certain topic
• Getting degrees
• Ranking up in an ELO system (like chess)
• Getting new belts in a martial art

I think that the billionaire in the above quote perhaps had put his focus strongly on job performance, to the exclusion of other areas. It could be that this led him to fixate on that aspect of his life to satisfy the desire for progress, to the exclusion of other areas. This exclusion could have led to a vicious cycle where desire for progress -> more focus on the job -> less ability to satisfy design through other means -> etc. The killer piece here is that the billionaire’s job may very well give bad/shaky signals for when progress is made. Money is often just a number, and when it goes up it can not feel as impactful as anticipated.

If this theory is correct at all, then a way to avoid the above problem is to diversify your endevours, at least adding some that have clear progress marks you can feel satisfied about.

Categories: Mind