I’ve always measured success in terms of progress and given that, the first 11 months of being 25 has hands down been the most successful period of my life.
Whether it was checking off small things like getting laser eye surgery, bringing on a PA and picking up new hobbies like salsa/bachata or big things like exploring South East Asia, launching this blog or the massive growth of Video Husky and selling Altanx; almost everything that I wanted to achieve actually happened.
The Consequences of Success
Yet as great as it has been having everything turn out right, there have been some unintended consequences and the last month, in particular, has been a challenging one.
To begin with, achievement doesn’t equal happiness. While life’s undoubtedly better than 12 months ago, I don’t think I’m a significantly happier person. It’s from a different set of problems but I still have stress in my life and don’t think that’s going away any time soon.
But more worryingly, as the journey behind each goal ended, there was a slight loss of identity and meaning in my life. While each ending individually would have been manageable (and exciting), seven out of eight multi-year long term goals that I had completed or ended within a couple of months, leaving me with little to aim for and a sense of both emptiness and meaninglessness.
The Cost of Achievement
The typical thing to do is to find a new direction and by doing so, generate new meaning. But for the first time in my life, I’m wary about setting new goals.
For one, while achievements don’t equal happiness, they are huge dopamine hits. The value, joy, and appreciation that come from tangible results are real and whether it’s bringing on additional customers, meeting new people or living in new places; the rush of emotions that come being able to point at something and say “I did that” is an amazing feeling. Yet while I think validation is important (especially in the beginning of any endeavor), it’s also so easy to become addicted. Everybody knows the bodybuilder who spends too much time in the gym, the serial dater who can’t commit and the entrepreneur buried in his work; once you learn to play a game well, it’s so tempting to identify with your results and I don’t want to get stuck in that “more is better” mentality.
Moreover, there are not only diminishing returns on achieving goals but also increasing costs of achieving more. As the goals that interest me become more difficult, naturally, it takes more to attain them. While in the past I’ve always been able to optimize what time, money and energy I had to fit my objectives, this year was the first time I had to decide between two things that mattered to me, and so influenced my decision to not to move to Japan and staying in Cambodia. Running up against these limitations was difficult because it meant acknowledging that while I could do anything that I wanted, I couldn’t do everything. But perhaps more importantly, that achieving tomorrow’s goals isn’t worth sacrificing the success and happiness that I already have today.
Slow is Fast, Less is More
So what now?
The first is to appreciate more. I’ve always been someone who focuses on what could be, as opposed to what is and so it’s easy to take the incredible things and people I have in my life for granted.
The second is to only work on great goals. This year I spent just shy of 500 hours studying Japanese only to realize that moving to Japan for a year didn’t make sense. Both goals were merely short term “good” goals on a list that I could check off and realizing that they didn’t hold any longer-term meaning was difficult to accept. Looking back, when younger it’s more important to try to achieve and use that validation to build self-confidence. But nowadays I’d rather make sure what I devote my time and energy to will make sense in the long run.
The third and most important is to shift my perspective on what growth means to me. For the longest time, growth provided two things: a sense of control and a sense of worth. Yet life is uncertain, and my worth is immutable, so those feelings are false realities. While I’ll never stop planning and working to make things better, I’ve come to realize growth is less important than accepting the unknown for what it is and myself for who I am.
It’s hard to imagine that 26 will be more eventful than the past year, but almost every year of life has been better than the previous one, so am looking forward to seeing what happens!