Motivation

“Am I going to regret not doing this later?”

This is the question I ask whenever I have a choice and the side I’m leaning towards is opting to not do it (getting out of bed, going to the gym, eating healthy, etc…). It’s probably what all the outliers with 10,000 hours do instinctively. Warren Buffet probably reached that number before he was 21.

I’m reading Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman, the best thing I’ve learned is that after the first bite, ice cream’s value decreases drastically. It’s something you know, but seeing data and psychological experiments to support it make it somehow concrete in my mind. I believe the same applies to hard work, but in reverse. It sucks at the start, but then it just becomes normal.

Another interesting fact from the book is that happiness is not affected permanently by anything external (outside of the obvious baseline of money). Seligman goes on to list how cancer patients, people with limbs removed, and otherwise unhealthy people adjust and end up just as happy as they were before their condition. Lasting happiness comes from helping others.