The enjoyment differential

Recently, due to the pandemic, there's been additional security in shopping malls and at my office. The other day, I thought about all the people whose only job is to check our temperature or make sure that we show our health code before entering a building. These jobs seem extremely monotonous, but necessary - someone has to do them.

Then I thought about my own job, and how with the application peak season upon us, I've begun to also feel stressed about the volume of things I must do that are not what I most want to do. I think my point is that my job is objectively a lot more desirable than most others - I can freely control my own schedule and be flexible about when I'm in the office - and yet I still find it tedious at times. Perhaps on any given day, I'm no happier than the workers who check my temperature when I enter the building.

The insight here, I think, is that human beings naturally adapt to their current situation, which results in happiness levels regressing to the mean. And such adaptions occur when our point of reference shifts. For example, if I worked as a cashier last month but this month I've been promoted to a sales role, I'd be happier - but only for a limited time. Instinctively, we live in and over-value the present, and thus we soon forget that we were once in a worse situation.

I'm beginning to suspect that there are just two ways to keep ourselves motivated and enjoying life:

1. Have an extremely clear vision of a better future and how we can move towards it.
2. Engage in day-to-day activities that have significant enjoyment differential.

I should explain the second. What I mean is - I think we need to have some amount of tedious activity in our lives to truly appreciate and enjoy the good things. In other words, my hypothesis is that we will feel happier if we're regularly faced with unenjoyable tasks, because the contrast would be immediately apparent.

We see this principle in the paradox of choice. When we are given two pairs of shoes and asked to pick one pair to buy, it's an easy task for us to decide which we prefer. However, when we don't have a clear objective and we're faced with an unending list of movies (Netflix), music (Spotify), or information (Wikipedia/Google), we freeze and risk not choosing anything at all. There is no contrast - no real choice to be made. When we can have anything, we end up wanting nothing.

I'm not sure how useful this realization is. It seems that logically, we should intentionally include some tedious activities in our lives as a means of optimizing for happiness.

The best strategy I've come up with so far is to make sure that the tedious activities I choose are ones that generate substantial income. This way, they would serve the dual purpose of providing an enjoyment differential in my life and moving me towards financial security.