The Focusing Illusion
When we think about a cool job, a lucrative promotion, going on vacation, retiring early, and so on—we tend to focus on the good stuff and overlook the bad stuff. With the promotion, for instance, we focus mostly on the higher salary and the prestigious title, not the longer hours, the added responsibilities, the higher expectations, and the increased stress. In psychology, this cognitive bias is known as The Focusing Illusion—a term coined by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. In a paper on the relationship between income and life satisfaction, Kahneman and his collaborators write, “The Focusing Illusion is a source of error in significant decisions that people make.” Essentially, The Focusing Illusion causes people to make decisions based on inaccurate predictions of what will make them happy, leading to choices that don’t actually maximize life satisfaction. “Our research,” they write, “suggests a moral, and a warning: Nothing that you focus on will make as much difference as you think.” Things that people overly focus on, dream about, and idealize—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
It’s Just Bricklaying
Most jobs that people romanticize and idealize turn out to be just like most jobs: they involve a lot of mundane, unglamorous, repetitive work. “I like to remind my computer science friends,” Jeremy Giffon says, “that they’re just bricklayers. Yes, a small percentage of them are doing difficult, innovative, cutting-edge work. But generally, it’s basically just bricklaying. There’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t kid yourself. It’s just building things with existing tools and methods. There’s established codes, frameworks, infrastructures, and blueprints. And so you don’t need to be overly romantic about it.” Jeremy’s observation isn’t meant to diminish computer science. Rather, it’s a subtle reality check that helps combat The Focusing Illusion in how we perceive different careers. When we think about professions we’re not in, we tend to focus on their most appealing aspects while overlooking the more mundane day-to-day realities. This skewed perspective can lead to unnecessary career envy or dissatisfaction with our own paths.
The Man In The Car Paradox
In college, Morgan Housel worked as a valet at a nice hotel in Los Angeles. “Guests came in driving Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royces—the whole aristocratic fleet,” Morgan writes in The Psychology of Money. “It was my dream to have one of these cars of my own, because (I thought) they sent such a strong signal to others that you made it. You’re smart. You’re rich. You have taste. You’re important. Look at me.” As he drove these cool cars, Morgan realized he never thought about the guests who owned the cars. “There is a paradox here: people tend to want wealth to signal to others that they should be liked and admired. But in reality those other people often bypass admiring you, not because they don’t think wealth is admirable, but because they use your wealth as a benchmark for their own desire to be liked and admired…When you see someone driving a nice car, you rarely think, ‘Wow, the guy driving that car is cool.’ Instead, you think, ‘Wow, if I had that car people would think I’m cool.’” Morgan’s realization isn’t an argument against wealth or luxury. Rather, “it’s a subtle recognition that people generally aspire to be respected and admired by others, and using money to buy fancy things may bring less of it than you imagine. If respect and admiration are your goal, be careful how you seek it.”
Expensive Purchase, No Response
In his iPhone notes, the comedian Kevin Hart records random thoughts and observations that later develop into the material for his comedy. “If I show you my notes on my iPhone,” he told Jerry Seinfeld, “you wouldn’t understand it. It’ll go, ‘Expensive purchase, no response.’ In my head, I know what that means. ‘Expensive purchase, no response’—that was when I was buying expensive shit because I thought that an immediate response from the world comes with expensive shit. Nobody noticed my expensive shit when I got it. Nobody said anything. That’s a true story. That was about a watch. I bought this fucking watch. I took it back.” Seinfeld replied, “that’s the shit I like: taking something small and making it big. That is a really small, little, funny human thing. You think when you buy something expensive, that everyone’s going to notice. Nobody notices.”
Learn To Know Yourself And Your Resources More Intimately
Before he went on to become a pioneering psychologist and philosopher, for years, William James dreamed of being a naturalist. He loved reading about the great naturalists throughout history. He loved imagining the thrill of uncovering new species or natural phenomena in exotic locations around the world. And he idolized the internationally celebrated naturalist Louis Agassiz. Then, in 1865, James got to join Agassiz on an expedition to Brazil. “W.J.” James wrote in his journal, “in this excursion, you will learn to know yourself and your resources more intimately than you do now, and will come back with your character considerably evolved and established.” Out in the Brazilian wild, he quickly realized that in all of his idealized visions, he completely overlooked the day-to-day realities of being a naturalist. “My coming was a mistake,” James wrote to his family a few days into the excursion. Fleas, mosquitoes, ringworm, violent itching, uncomfortable sleeping quarters, and tasks that seemed meaningless—“I am now certain that my forte is not to go on exploring expeditions,” he wrote. “I am convinced now, for good, that I am cut out for a speculative rather than an active life…When I get home I’m going to study philosophy all my days.”
Strip Away The Legend
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes, “Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the [Emperor’s] purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood…Perceptions like that—latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare…to strip away the legend that encrusts them.” Whether it’s a cool job, a fancy car, an expensive watch, trips to exotic locations, or the Emperor’s robe—don’t excessively focus on the legend that encrusts them. Lay them bare. See them as they truly are.