Happiness vs Satisfaction
Daniel Kahneman (author of Thinking Fast and Slow — an excellent read if you are interested in cognitive biases), recently discussed the difference between happiness and satisfaction.
Happiness is a momentary experience of feeling good, such as from having a fun night out or a good meal. Satisfaction is a long-term feeling from meeting our goals and being able to tell the life story that they want. A person with many “happy” moments may thus not feel satisfied. He observes that we want to maximise satisfaction and not just happiness.
Satisfaction is about hitting yardsticks we set, often influenced by society and what we see of others. However, if the goals we set for ourselves are not properly defined, too varied, or constantly changing, then we will never be able to achieve them. We end up forever unsatisfied.
The 5/25 Rule
This brings me to another idea I want to share. There is a well-known story about Warren Buffet’s 5/25 Rule — where Warren Buffet asked his pilot to list out his top 25 career goals in order of importance. The top 5 are the high priority goals to be worked on. The next 20, to be avoided at all costs.
Whether or not 5 and 25 are special magic numbers, the lesson in prioritisation here is that, we have too many “important” goals to focus on at any point in time. We need to put some things aside to work on the highest priority.
Our top 5 goals define what makes us satisfied
I recently applied this method to myself, not in the context of purely career goals, but to list out my interests and life goals. After some struggling I came to this top 5 list:
1. Quality time with my family and closest friends 2. Improving my Wing Chun 3. Gaming 4. Writing (eg this newsletter) 5. Learning new skills (Kind of a learning daily idea, without any focus on whether I succeed or the skill is useful — current this is learning to draw)
I did not realise it then, but this defined what made me “satisfied”. It created a benchmark for each day. As long as I had moved forward on one or more of these goals, I feel my day has gone well. Whenever I see things outside of these 5, I do not feel inadequate that I am unable to do or experience the same. I also do not wonder if I should have been doing things that are more “productive”.
It was a tough decision to cut out some things I really enjoyed, such as playing the guitar. learning to cook, or keeping fish. However, on balance, I definitely feel more satisfied with life, and my mood has improved greatly as a result. I feel less pressure and rush each day to do more, and rarely feel unaccomplished. Since these 5 items are truly important to me, getting to work has little inertia and feels like less effort.