november

I feel like most of the time when I post nowadays, I post during a period of time when I am relatively not busy/stressed (i.e. my last post). Unfortunately, over the span of the last couple days, I realized that my next 2 weeks or so will be much busier than I anticipated. I am a little daunted at the sheer number of things I have to keep track of over the next two weeks. To be honest, sometimes when I sit down to do something, I get a pretty big wave of procrastination anxiety and I have to do something less demanding until it passes. Hopefully, I will figure out how to deal with that and start getting into a groove because if I don’t, it’s going to be a rough two weeks.

ikea effect

The IKEA effect is a cognitive effect when individuals place a disproportinately high value on objects that they have partially created. This is significant in two ways: first, people expect others to also share their altered opinion and second, people are willing to pay way more for things that they partially create.

Obviously, this is named after IKEA, where one has to assemble the furniture they purchase from the store, and this act of assembling is gratifying for the individual in some sense. I definitely see this in my own life: I find the food I cook to be much better than if I had bought a similar quality food from a restaurant (I’d probably be pissed if I got that kind of food), I like the photos I take/edit, and, more recently, I value keyboards I can custom build a lot more than buying a pre-assembled one.

My friend first mentioned this concept to me after I remarked that buying parts for a mechanical keyboard to then later assemble is more expensive than just buying a stock keyboard straight up. Obviously there are some quality differences and prices will fluctuate because of mass-production logistics, but the end effect is the same. I am willing to pay more because I know I will derive lots of enjoyment from the act of building the keyboard itself. And, weirdly enough, I’m okay with that. I think the point of for-fun hobbies is that they’re not wholly productive/logical, and engaging in a fun hobby can make one’s life more unique, interesting, and otherwise a nice relief from the often monotonous aspects of school/daily life. I’m really excited about getting to build my keyboards once I return to California, although it may have to wait a day or two while I finish up all my other work first.

systems not goals

Going off of that, I talk about this concept a lot (even was in my high school common app essay: “I’m a fisher not a catcher”), but I really do enjoy the process of doing something rather than the goal itself. I believe that’s a much better way of achieving overall happiness in life. Goals, or how I like to refer to it is “hoop jumping,” is a little deceptive in the sense that after you’ve achieve it, you’re happy for x amount of time, possibly even really happy for quite some time if it’s a particularly notable goal. But, most individuals will start looking for the next goal (which is good, that’s how one achieves progress), and you’re kind of stuck in this loop of being mostly unhappy because you haven’t achieved your next goal yet followed by a short burst of happiness (if you even achieve the goal).

Over the past whatever years I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s much better to focus on the overall process rather than the end result, both in terms of overall gratification as well as general success in achieving one’s goals. Back in senior year when I wrote my common app, I touched upon this by saying that I personally find fishing super fun because beyond actually catching the fish (which is one of the best feelings in the world), the entire process of practicing and prepping for the eventual catch is immensely fun for me. This similarly extends to many other things in my life. I think overall becoming more productive is a great goal to have, but I quite enjoy reading content about productivity, minimalism, and working on different methods of habit building. Talking to friends about my progress, watching them attempt things alongside me, and even writing posts for this blog—all of this is quite enjoyable for me and is the primary reason why I pursue “productive thinking” so much. I don’t think actually achieving a super productive state is ever necessarily going to conclude or allow me to enter this magical nirvana state of ultimate satistifaction. However, I do know that becoming more productive will help enhance my life in many ways which makes me happier overall, and the overall process has been loads of fun.

Along these lines, I believe that focusing on building systems rather than goals is far more productive/you will be a lot happier if you shift your mindset in this direction (this concept is talked about in “Atomic Habits,” a book I’m currently reading). This is not to say goals are bad—they’re great for providing direction/motivation for your work. However, relying on achieving goals to determine happiness is, in my opinion, inherently worse than focusing on developing systems to achieve those goals. At the end of the day, one achieves goals anyways only through this long process of building up a system to make progress, and, if you enjoy this process of system building, you’ll be having fun the whole time, not just after you’ve accomplished your goals.