#31: Hedonism and other paradoxes
According to the 19th century philosopher Henry Sidgwick, ‘The impulse towards pleasure can be self-defeating. We fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them’.
Happiness isn't the only good thing that will elude you if you set out to achieve it. Relaxation, avoiding stress, being more productive - all these things slide further away from you the harder you try to reach them. What's going on?
The problem, friends, is that it matters how you formulate your goals. Some goals are self-defeating because they interfere with what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called 'flow'. They require you to both be in flow and not be in flow. Ugh, right?
That doesn't mean that you can't be happy, or relaxed, or productive. But it does mean that you don't have to try so hard. Settle down with the Academic Imperfectionist to find out how.
Episode transcript:
Are you accidentally setting goals that it’s going to be impossible to achieve?
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
I’ve mentioned the paradox of hedonism on this podcast before. And I’ve mentioned a few other themes that, to my mind, relate to it. So, in this episode, I want to draw them together and see what we can learn.
The paradox of hedonism is the idea that - in the words of the 19th century philosopher Henry Sidgwick - ‘The impulse towards pleasure can be self-defeating. We fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them’. The idea is, basically, that happiness comes from not trying too hard. To be happy, you need to focus on other things and let happiness arise (or not) as a by-product. So, if you throw yourself into satisfying your curiosity about something, or working to help do what needs to be done in your community, or fighting climate change, or some other project that you find worthwhile and rewarding and satisfying, you’re more likely to end up happy than if you’re preoccupied with doing whatever you think necessary in order to make yourself happy. Now, while the term ‘the paradox of hedonism’ is associated with Sidgwick, the idea that pursuing happiness directly is self-defeating goes way back. You find it in Buddhism, for example. And more generally, plenty of religions teach that ultimate happiness arises indirectly, including from doing stuff - making sacrifices, denying ourselves what we want, serving others - that doesn’t make us particularly happy in the short term.
Happiness isn’t the only good thing that is best achieved indirectly. I talked in episode #9: Cancel your productivity anxiety, about how trying to be as productive as possible can be self-defeating. If we care too much about being productive - specifically, if we care so much about it that we feel like a failure if we’re not productive enough - then productivity becomes infused with anxiety, and that makes us want to avoid doing the things we need to do in order to be productive. I talked, too, in episodes #19 and #20 - Not writing is an essential part of writing, and Don’t just write it, ferment it! - about how writing is best accomplished by doing an awful lot of things that aren’t writing, and how chaining yourself to your desk and forcing yourself to write can produce lacklustre results.
Thing is, though, I’ve barely scratched the surface here. We are constantly being urged to pursue the wrong sorts of goals. They’re not ‘the wrong sorts of goals’ because they’re goals that are not really worth achieving. They’re ‘the wrong sorts of goals’ because pursuing them is self-defeating - or, at least, pursuing them directly makes it a lot harder to attain them.
Consider some of the buzzwords that are frequently thrown around in higher education. ‘Excellence’ - in research, teaching, and seemingly everything else. ‘World class’. ‘Innovation’. ‘Cutting edge’. ‘Internationally renowned’. Sorry if I just made you shudder. We’re constantly urged to make these things our goals - but they’re funny sorts of goals. People don’t get to be internationally renowned by trying very hard to be internationally renowned - they get to be internationally renowned indirectly, by making impressive insights or discoveries or inventions, and by focusing on making those insights or discoveries or inventions rather than on becoming internationally renowned. So, if it’s your goal to be internationally renowned, trying to achieve it requires some awkward mental gymnastics, where you first have to work out precisely what you need to do in order to become internationally renowned, and then you need to forget all about your goal of becoming internationally renowned while you focus on that other thing you need to do. The problem is that if that other thing is motivated primarily by wanting to become internationally renowned, then forgetting all about wanting to become internationally renowned is going to undermine your motivation for doing what you need to do. So, if it’s your goal to become internationally renowned, you have to forget about wanting to become internationally renowned while also not forgetting about it. If you’re already exhausted just thinking about it, you’re not the only one.
This isn’t a problem that’s confined to higher education, however. Encouragement to pursue the wrong sorts of goals is everywhere. We’re encouraged to find our passion. To relax - properly. To avoid stress. To practise self-care. There’s a problem with all of these goals. Like with wanting to attain happiness or become internationally renowned, in order to achieve them you need to forget that you’re trying to achieve them, which is pretty tricky if you also want to maintain your motivation to achieve them. You don’t find your passion by looking for your passion. It’s hard to relax - properly - without forgetting that you’re trying to relax. It’s pretty stressful to devote yourself to avoiding stress. And so on.
A year or so ago I had a vivid, and pretty stressful, lesson in how self-defeating it can be to try to relax. Both of my kids were having sleepovers with friends, and I had an afternoon and evening to myself. I’m a single parent and I have my kids 100% of the time, so kid-free time is pretty rare for me. I knew I had to make the most of the resulting alone-time. I took a book and went to one of my favourite coffee shops where I ordered a cake and some coffee. It was nice, but I spent the entire time worrying about whether I was relaxed enough. Was I really going for it, relaxation-wise? Was a coffee shop really the best place for my extreme relaxation - should I have gone for a hike instead, or taken a nap, or watched a movie? Should I make plans for the evening, so as to ensure that I’d spend it relaxing to the max, or would making plans be too much like not relaxing? Should I meditate instead? Should I try to stop stressing about relaxation, or would that just make me even more stressed about it? And so on. It was almost a relief to get the kids back so that I could stop failing so dismally to achieve excellence in relaxation.
At this stage, you’re probably wondering what makes the difference between the right sort of goal and the wrong sort of goal. How do you know which goals are going to be self-defeating? This is a tricky question. I’ve spent a lot of time recently staring into space and thinking about it. One reason that it’s tricky is that different goals can be self-defeating for different reasons. Pursuing happiness directly is self-defeating because that’s just not how happiness works. Pursuing excellence in too many things is self-defeating because we end up spread too thinly to really excel at any one thing. Pursuing the avoidance of stress is self-defeating because it’s actually pretty stressful to worry about whether or not we’re successfully avoiding stress. Some goals can be self-defeating when some people pursue them, but not when others pursue them. So, setting a goal to attain a certain level of productivity can be helpful for some people, but for others it can introduce anxiety and lead to work avoidance and reduced productivity. Is there a common theme here?
I think that the psychological concept of ‘flow’ comes close to being a common theme. The term ‘flow’, used to describe a particular type of experience, was coined by the Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote: ‘“Flow” is the way people describe their state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake.’ It’s that feeling we get when we are happily lost in some task or project, when our focus comes effortlessly, when our skills and abilities are matched to the level of the challenge, and when we lose track of time and ourselves. This sense of doing something for its own sake is important: according to Csikszentmihalyi, it’s easier to experience flow while doing a particular thing if you’re autotelic; that is, if you find what you’re doing rewarding and enjoyable for its own sake, rather than merely because it helps you attain some more distant goal. So, for example, it’s easier to get into a flow state while solving a challenging Wordle puzzle (assuming you find Wordle enjoyable) than while going to work in a boring but well-paid job, even if you really want the money.
What does flow have to do with self-defeating goals? Well, there are a couple of ways in which flow relates to the sorts of goals I’ve identified as being self-defeating - and it’s the combination of those ways that makes the goals self-defeating.
First, goals like ‘be happy’, ‘be productive’, ‘relax’, ‘be internationally renowned’ are ones that are going to be much easier to achieve through getting into a flow state. We find happiness through engaging in activities and projects that we care about, that we find rewarding, and that make use of our abilities - all hallmarks of the flow state. We get to be productive or internationally renowned through making insights or discoveries or creations - things that we can do best when we can immerse ourselves in a particular activity (research, writing, making music, whatever it might be) and when we can be led by our own curiosity - again, things that are characteristic of flow. And we relax through doing stuff that is satisfying and absorbing for its own sake. More flow. Getting into flow is important for achieving these goals.
On the other hand - and here’s the second way in which flow relates to self-defeating goals - the way in which we formulate these goals pulls us out of the flow state. Take ‘be happy’. Happiness is easier to attain if we can get into a flow state, but explicitly making happiness our goal is a good way to sabotage flow. Flow, Csikszentmihalyi tells us, involves getting lost in a project, losing track of time, losing track of oneself. Asking ourselves, ‘Hey, how am I doing with that whole “be happy” thing?’ is an antidote to that. You can’t be lost in a project if you’re making yourself reflect on whether or not being involved in the project is making you feel the way you want it to make you feel. In the introduction to his book, Flow, Csikszentmihalyi approvingly quotes the British 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill’s remark, ‘Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so’.
Goals are self-defeating when both of these things apply: that is, when flow is important to achieving the goal, and when the goal is formulated in such a way as to sabotage flow when we reflect on it.
Now, that’s not to say that these goals are impossible to attain. People do find happiness, manage to relax, be productive, and become internationally renowned. But here’s our lesson: it matters how you formulate your goals. If you want to be happy, don’t set yourself a ‘Be happy’ goal. Instead, reflect on what sorts of things you value and find satisfying - check out the ‘Resources’ page on The Academic Imperfectionist website for some help with that, especially the Wheel of Life and Core Values exercises. Then set yourself the goal of doing more of those things. So, if you find it rewarding to get more involved in your community, make it your goal to make space in your life for that. For extra credit, make another goal to review periodically what sorts of things you find most valuable and satisfying, and change how you spend your time accordingly. Another example: if you want to be more productive, forget about making that your explicit goal. Ask yourself what sort of productivity you care about - is it producing research articles, writing a thesis, making art? - and then give some thought to how that might come about while doing things that you find satisfying for their own sake. The sorts of things that you can get lost in. If it turns out that you want to be more productive by writing articles about the reproductive cycle of the fungus weevil, then your goal needs to look less like ‘publish 5 journal articles about fungus weevils’ and more like ‘spend 30 minutes a day reading, thinking, and/or writing about fungus weevil sex’. Remember, it’s better if the activity is its own reward. And be realistic: according to Csikszentmihalyi, flow happens when our skills and abilities match the level of the challenge we set ourselves. If we set our sights too high - for example, by telling ourselves to spend 3 hours a day on weevil sex when our daily record so far is 90 minutes - then we risk making ourselves anxious, and anxiety is the enemy of flow.
If I could leave you with one piece of advice from this episode, it would be this: when you’re formulating a goal for yourself, ask yourself how you’re likely to feel when you check in with yourself about how you’re doing along the way. So, let’s say you make ‘Publish 10 journal articles this year’ your goal (which you’re definitely not going to do, right?). Imagine yourself a few months from now, poring over your research notes about weevil sex or whatever it might be, and suppose you ask yourself: ‘How am I doing with that “Publish 10 journal articles” thing, then?’ If that sounds like the sort of question that is going to send a knife of anxiety through your chest, then that’s the wrong goal for you. A goal is supposed to motivate you, not send you running for a bottle of wine and a tub of ice cream, mascara streaming down your face. But what if, instead, your goal is ‘Spend 30 minutes a day reading, thinking, and/or writing about weevil sex’? The chances are that that’s much less likely to be anxiety-inducing. Or if it is, easing your anxiety on that score is only 30 minutes of weevil sex away. Words matter. Feelings matter. Until next time, imperfectionists.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d consider leaving a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at patreon.com/academicimperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com. You’ll find links there to The Academic Imperfectionist on Twitter and Facebook too. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via my website or by tweeting your idea with the hashtag #AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
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