Happiness, Information Alchemy, and Domestic Coziness
July 2020 - Evergreen Thoughts
What’s on my mind…
🙂
Predicting happiness is hard
We are bad at predicting how events affect happiness (impact bias). This is partly because we are incredibly resilient and quickly normalize to new circumstances (hedonic adaptation). This can be annoying. Your next vacation, salary increase, or shiny new purchase likely won’t increase your happiness as much (or for as long) as you expect. However, it can also work to your advantage. Staining your favorite shirt or being quarantined for months on end due to a pandemic likely won’t decrease happiness as much (or for as long) as you think.
But we can reliably increase happiness
While we tend to overestimate how material goods and larger events affect happiness, there are ways to sustainably improve how we feel. These include: gratitude journaling, random acts of kindness, meditation, regular exercise, and connection with others. If you’re looking for a quarantine happiness boost I highly recommend The Five Minute Journal.
Key Inputs
Ep 1 and 2 of Dr Laurie Santos's Happiness Lab
Learn more about…
Impact bias from James Clear
Hedonic adaptation from Mr. Money Mustache
Stumbling on Happiness from Dan Gilbert
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How to turn information into knowledge
We live in the golden age of information. Yet there seems to be an inverse relationship between how much we consume and how much value we get from it. It’s the fast food equivalent of knowledge. There is a growing community of people interested in helping us process information better. Below are a couple of my favorite techniques:
Sonke Ahren’s How to Take Smart Notes (Summary)
Having a clear, tangible purpose when you attend a lecture, discussion or seminar will make you more engaged and sharpen your focus. By doing this, you will elaborate on the meaning, which will make it much more likely that you will remember it.
If you want to learn something for the long run, you have to write it down. If you want to really understand something, you have to translate it into your own words.
Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes:
It’s not enough to just highlight or write marginalia in books: there isn’t much pressure to synthesize, connect, or to get to the heart of things. And they don’t add up to anything over time as you read more. Instead, write Evergreen notes as you read.
Tiago Forte’s Progressive Summarization
The challenge of knowledge is not acquiring it. In our digital world, you can acquire almost any knowledge at almost any time. The challenge is knowing which knowledge is worth acquiring. And then building a system to forward bits of it through time, to the future situation or problem or challenge where it is most applicable, and most needed.
If I had to summarize what’s been most useful, it’d be:
Understand what problems and topics you’re most interested in and why
Choose what you read based on these topics as much as possible
Summarize key ideas into your own words
Connect these ideas to your projects, interests, and each other
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TikTok, Gen Z and 👁👄👁
Earlier this year I learned about two ideas that brilliantly describe a shift in consumer behavior: premium mediocre and domestic cozy. This slide from Emmett Shine’s presentation does a better job of explaining these concepts than I ever could:
While premium mediocre perfectly describes the Millennial mindset, domestic cozy perfectly describes Gen Z attitudes and preferences. As the oldest Gen Zs start to enter adulthood, we should expect domestic coziness to increasingly permeate our culture and behaviors.
Less Sweetgreen. More Chris Cuomo TikTik videos. Less makeup. More virtual theme parks made of blocks. Less truffle fries. More viral emoji memes that are mistaken for the next big consumer app.
While it’s going to take time to phase out the premium mediocre mindset, this shift is moving full steam ahead. And in a move that confirms my Millennial premium mediocre tendencies, I fully approve of this strange new world and am jumping on the domestic cozy bandwagon.
Key Inputs
The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial by Venkatesh Rao
Domestic Cozy Blogchain by Venkatesh Rao
Premium Mediocre, Domestic Cozy, & More by Emmett Shine
🎧 On repeat: Jon Batiste, The Wallflowers
🍿 Worth binging: Love Life, The King of Staten Island
🛒 Product recs: Oura Ring, Copilot, Perfect Bar
📚 Read: How to Take Smart Notes (5/5), Limitless (4/5), Obsessed (4/5)
📖 In Progress: Setting the Table, Creativity Inc, Thinking in Systems
If you like what you read, consider sharing it with a friend.
👋 Until next time,
Adam