psychology

Our jobs have become prisons from which we don’t want to escape

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — “Maslow used the terms ‘physiological’, ‘safety’, ‘belongingness’ and ‘love’, ‘esteem’, ‘self-actualization’, and ‘self-transcendence’ to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through… [though there is] little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described or for the existence of a

Unknown Unknowns — “Known unknowns refers to ‘risks you are aware of, such as cancelled flights….’ Unknown unknowns are risks that ‘come from situations that are so out of this world that they never occur to you.’ (related: Cynefin framework)

The point is that problems aren’t problems unless you have a corresponding goal. If you don’t have any worthwhile goal, you aren’t able to see the plethora of problems that, once solved, lead to a better life.

Karl Marx had a different view: that being occupied by good work was living well. Engagement in productive, purposeful work was the means by which people could realise their full potential.

What we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood. The love most of us will have tasted early on was often confused with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult

To use 10/10/10, we think about our decisions on three different time frames:

• How will we feel about it 10 minutes from now?

• How about 10 months from now?

• How about 10 years from now?

Dunning-Kruger Effect — “Relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is…[and] highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.” (related: overconfidence

If success is a catalyst for failure because it leads to the “undisciplined pursuit of more,” then one simple antidote is the disciplined pursuit of less .