All tagged The pursuit of happiness
This month's podcasts discusses the idea of happiness. It's such an important ideal and the next few podcasts talk about how we define it, grapple and fight for it, and ultimately, continue to pursue it.
Today's episode closes the month on a philosophical note - the idea that happiness is like Inbox Zero - it is elusive, we will never permanently achieve it, but we shouldn't stop striving for it.
This month's podcasts discusses the idea of happiness. It's such an important ideal and the next few podcasts talk about how we define it, grapple and fight for it, and ultimately, continue to pursue it.
Today's episode focuses on how we define happiness, and specifically how it all boils down to expectations. That is, our happiness is always down to us and what we expect.
“To me, happiness is about an expectation of positive change. Every year before 2016, there was an improvement in my expectations — in the team, the product, or the company. This was the first time in my life when the present year felt worse than the last.“
The above quote come from Sahil Lavingia’s Medium article titled “Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company”, which recounts how he built what by any normal standard would be considered a successful business but a failure by traditional Venture Capital standards (and as he says, his own).
I don’t believe there is any such thing as Inbox Zero.
I think it’s one of those Holy Grail type of scenarios - we all keep searching for it, but we will never find it, because, in all probability, it doesn’t actually exist. Just like there’s no Ark of Covenant, no Loch Ness Monster, and no better football team than the 2003-2004 Arsenal Invincibles. (Yes, I said it.)
But while it may not be practically possible to get to Inbox Zero, that doesn’t mean we should pursue it.
