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This article makes me think about Kahneman's research into our two selves: remembered and experienced. Quick quote from relevant paper: "consider a music lover who listens raptly to a long symphony on a disk that is scratched near the end, producing a shocking sound. Such incidents are often described by the statement that the bad ending 'ruined the whole experience'. But, in fact, the experience was not ruined, only the memory of it."[1]

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_expe...

This reminds me of Daniel Kahneman's notion of "experiencing self" vs. "remembering self" (the story-telling self). Here's a story he shares in one of his talks[1] about how the "remembering self" dictates what a person gets to keep as a memory:

Now, I'd like to start with an example of somebody who had a question-and-answer session after one of my lectures reported a story, and that was a story -- He said he'd been listening to a symphony, and it was absolutely glorious music and at the very end of the recording, there was a dreadful screeching sound. And then he added, really quite emotionally, it ruined the whole experience. But it hadn't. What it had ruined were the memories of the experience. He had had the experience. He had had 20 minutes of glorious music. They counted for nothing because he was left with a memory; the memory was ruined, and the memory was all that he had gotten to keep.

And here's [2] another reference -- "Memory Vs. Experience: Happiness is Relative".

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_expe...

[2] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/memory-vs-expe...

I saw a good TED talk[1] a while ago about this topic, and the speaker made the interesting point that people use the word happiness to mean different things. You can ask someone how happy they are feeling at a given moment, or you can ask them how happy they are with their life in general. And we evaluate those two feelings in very different ways.

He mentions at one point that studies about how people feel in the moment were very correlated with money, but only up to the point that they didn't need to worry about it anymore. After that, it had little bearing on their experiential happiness. But when asked how happy they were with their lives, the more money, the better, with no limit. Which seems to me more like pride in an achievement.

I wonder if the happiness that wasn't "your own" was because part of you was happy when you thought about where you were in life, but you were also aware it wasn't really improving your day-to-day experience. Kind of a cognitive dissonance between the two ways you were evaluating your happiness.

I don't know, you think that's even close?

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

⬐ themagician

That's somewhat accurate. I'd not seen this TED talk either, so thanks.

The day-to-day didn't really change above a certain income, and that income limit (at least for me) was pretty low. Even living in both Manhattan and San Francisco where things are expensive.

All the things I enjoy aren't really that expensive. You don't need millions of dollars to read a book, watch a movie, listen to an album, or have sex. These things are only very marginally improved above let's say, the $75K mark. You don't even need millions of dollars to go out to eat every night.

Money can give you more discretionary time. But that free time can't be spent in any way (at least none that I found) that feels rewarding while everyone else you know or care about is at work. You are still bound to rest of the world. I think that's what I like about more European, or day I say socialist, lifestyles. I need other people to spend time with. I've found hanging out with extremely wealthy people who don't do anything to be extremely boring and almost uncomfortable.

If I woke up tomorrow and suddenly had $10 million I'm not sure I'd be any happier. I'd go out and buy some new clothes I guess, a bigger apartment maybe. I'd still wake up in the morning and turn on the radio to listen to NPR. I'd still eat the same yogurt, same strawberries.

People start to do silly things with money I don't understand. Giant TVs they don't know how to work, fancy cars they never drive. Or buy some house with rooms that sit empty. I'm just like, why? Why would you do that? When people say these things make them "happy" I wonder if we actually feel completely different emotions.

It's really impossible to rate your life numerically in relation to a "best possible life", so in order to give some kind of answer to this vague question, respondents fall back on some quantifiable measure like money.

A separate issue is that the question "How satisfied are you WITH your life?" is not the same as "How satisfied are you IN your life?". It's possible to have high moment-to-moment happiness, but have a negative view of one's life; or vice versa. Daniel Kahnemann explains this in this TED talk (13:30):

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

He even mentions the Gallup World Poll.

It could be worse :) you reached your goal ! Now the goalposts have moved.

For comparison, I'm 31, and my net worth is about 10.000 dollars :P . I definitely made a lot of suboptimal decisions along the way, but I think I'm finally on my way up.

While I'm a nonbeliever (no afterlife for me), I think that the blog post misses the "experienced happiness vs remembered happiness" point that people like Kahnemann and others have talked about:

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-good-life/201010/exp...

If there is one thing I dislike more than self-help, it's self-help based on anecdotal evidence from one person with no background in psychology. Even more so when the title of a post states an extreme personal hypothesis as if it were a fact obvious to everyone.

If you want to know more about happiness from a scientific point of view, read or listen to experts like Daniel Kahneman. For example:

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

⬐ mcormier

Yup, this is a good example of pseudoscience --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience

⬐ wtvanhest

He says:

"My theory is that a founder’s happiness is tied to the rate of change of their startup’s success. In other words, your happiness graph is the first derivative of your success graph."

He is stating a theory, not a peer reviewed scientific journal. He isn't saying it is a fact, just a theory.

Personally I found his first derivative theory to be interesting and in many ways true of my life.

I know when things feel like they are about to go well, that is as enjoyable as when things are actually going well, but when they slow down I become unhappy.

If you have concrete evidence his theory is total garbage, by all means post it, but providing a random link and saying that anecdotal evidence is complete garbage is obnoxious.

Maybe someone who has the time to spend to prove the OP's theory or disproves it sees this post and it becomes a landmark paper you feel comfortable citing or reading.

It isn't the OP's job to prove it. His job is just to provide something interesting and insightful for people to read which helps get his startup's name out there. In my mind he accomplished both parts flawlessly.

⬐ dgabriel

I believe the author is a woman.

⬐ ricardobeat

She.

⬐ geuis

It's not a theory, it's a hypothesis. Something doesn't become a theory until it can be experimentally tested from which inferences and conclusions can be formed.

⬐ wtvanhest

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory?s=t

Her* sentence fits the second definition of theory.

There is no such thing as "consistently happy." If you're interested in the subject, I recommend paying attention to Daniel Kahneman's work instead of vapid self-helpy blog posts.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/...

My ideal company would have a culture where people would want to work there for free. Above a certain amount, money stops contributing to real happiness. Some people have even suggested that number is as low as $60,000 in the United States. [1]

Unfortunately jobs are not the stuff we often fall in love with. Those opportunities are few and far between. But I think it is a far nobler goal to try and make more places like that than to have the most competitive salary policies.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper... (see q&a in at the end of the transcript)

⬐ Drbble

The 60k is about spending. It ignores savings for retirement and insurance again the uncertain future.

So, double the number to account for those factors and geographic variance of costs, and where are you? The numbers most middle class people talk about.

⬐ coliveira

I would be ok with that if the owners of such a company also worked only for the happiness and not for the profits - in which case, they would forgot any personal compensation over about 60k.

But... you and me know that there are no such business around. Even people like the Google founders claim that their major goal is job happiness, but they don't think twice before buying a huge yacht with their billions. In other words, they have just talk and no attitude.

Why do you think that employees should be happy with getting only a base salary, without raises?

⬐ rorrr

60K is what, around $3500/month after taxes. If you live in NYC or SF, that's not a lot. Barely enough to get a small apartment, food, and go out once in a while, and save a little.

⬐ Drbble

More like $5000. 30% effective income tax kicks in around $150k annual salary. Still, your point holds. Not retiring or having a very healthy and actualized child or three on that salary.

⬐ kingnothing

$5,000 * 12 = $60,000. I don't think the OP's suggestion of $42,000 a year, take-home, was too far off assuming a marginal tax rate of 25%.

⬐ r00fus

This logic holds IFF you don't have kids or a mortgage/rent in an expensive metro that push the "real happiness" number up.

I'd agree there is a the "real happiness" number, but it's different for everyone.

Daniel Kahneman has a nice TED talk about the distinction between experienced and remembered happiness:

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

It's probably not a very good idea to always put experienced happiness above remembered happiness, though.

Yeah, it's from US data. In some places even $200/mo lets you live like a member of the upper class... I originally remember hearing the figure from a TED talk ( here it is, highly recommended http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper... ), and since then there have been a few other sources I can't remember right now.

Yeah there was a TED Talk that touched on money and happiness. Apparently $60,000/year was the cognitive (or material) line necessary so that the average person could stop worrying about money.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

“Below 60,000 dollars a year, people are unhappy, and they get progressively unhappier the poorer they get. Above that, we get an absolutely flat line. I mean I’ve rarely seen lines so flat.”

Sounds like you're saying the British Empire was more similar to the Romans than to the Third Reich. I don't necessarily disagree, since I consider myself ignorant on large swathes of history to make a confident judgment, but doing a little searching brings up a couple numbers. The Holocaust killed ~15 million (which includes non-Jews too). In the late 19th century, the British Empire was directly responsible for ~30 million deaths from starving people in India. ( http://archive.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&articl... ) The Empire did a lot of good things, but do you think their good outweighs their bad over 250 years? I think it's part of human psychology to say a short, painful event (like the Holocaust) is worse than a prolonged, perhaps even more painful event ( http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper... ), especially if the ending is a peak or decay (Nazis were still evil in the end, British Empire hasn't been very "empirical" after WW2).

⬐ whyleyc

I agree that human psychology seems to pre-dispose us to being more shocked by tragic events that occur within a shorter timeframe (this has been even more amped-up since the advent of 24 hour rolling news of course). However, as I've mentioned below I don't think body counts are a useful indicator of the evil intent of a regime (it opens up a can of worms for many modern states).

In terms of the "balance sheet" for the British Empire, ultimately it's hard to argue for more good than bad in the forced imposition of power from one state on another. The legacy of territorial conflicts birthed by Britain's hasty withdrawal have not helped either.

However, my point was not to try and write a defence of British imperialism, but to try and discredit this notion that the British Empire was more evil than the Third Reich, a state that more than any other plumbed the depths of human misery. It seems strange to argue that Nazi Germany had any benefit to it.

⬐ philwelch

The Third Reich killed 15 million people within barely over a decade, plus a few more dozen million in the wars it started, with virtually no redeeming characteristics. The British empire killed more people than that, yes, but over the course of centuries and with enough redeeming characteristics that they likely saved tens of millions of lives as well, by enriching their empire through infrastructure improvement, free trade, and good government.

It's quite notable that of all the countries Britain supposedly oppressed in their empire, many of them freely choose to remain part of the Commonwealth today.

If you judge any regime by the worst thing it's done, every regime is evil.

i could've sworn that there was an article recently stating that $60k was the magical number for an individual, since you mention it.

edit: its in this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper... and we've talked about it before here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1381927

In Daniel Kahneman's talk "The riddle of experience vs memory", he details how vacations are most important for the memories they create. When we go on a three week vacation to the Bahamas, when we look back, it was just a vacation to the Bahamas - the duration didn't matter. For our happiness' sake, we would have been better off splitting that vacation in thirds, to three different locales, because our vacations, when recited, dissolve the time spent at each location.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

⬐ geden

Nice. I experienced that first hand earlier this month.

During a two week holiday I spent 2 days in a city hotel, then the rest of the week in a campsite and then another week camping in another country.

On the penultimate day I remarked to my wife that I felt like I'd been away for 2 months. Now I know why. Thank you.

It's not so much that money buys happiness, than lack of money that makes you miserable. When you have enough (60000$/year apparently), having more doesn't enhance your happiness. See this interesting TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

⬐ bryanlarsen

No, that's the part that's been debunked. Look at the graph in my link: the biggest jump in happiness is from 75-100K to 100K+.

The correlation isn't high: there are lots of unhappy rich people, and lots of happy poor people, but the correlation is statistically significant.

⬐ liedra

This completely gels with my experience. I like having enough money to live on comfortably: have a place that's just big enough, have money to eat out (not too expensively) when I feel like it, have enough to do something special occasionally, have enough to buy the sorts of foods I like (slightly more expensive locally produced foods, I'm a big fan of local production), have enough to buy some gadget or other if I save up for a bit. For me it's partly the saving up and appreciation of the expensive things that gives me happiness :)

I make about 55k a year, and it's enough for me. Any more and I'd stop appreciating what now takes a bit of time to save up for. :) (though I wouldn't say no to a one off cash injection for a really nice sporty weekender car ;)

There were several articles over here about the "Experience Self" vs the "Remembering Self", all based on a talk by Dr.Daniel Kahneman (http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...)

Some articles have a summary:

http://sheshtawy.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/experience-self-vs...

The remembering self of the old man definitely appreciated the trips better :)

⬐ tome

My comments on Kahneman's talk:

http://web.jaguarpaw.co.uk/~tom/blog.html

I enjoyed Daniel Kahneman on "The riddle of experience vs memory", which is about the ways people structure their lives for experiences they think they will enjoy remembering, rather than things they'd necessarily enjoy doing at the time. There's also a good anecdote about how making a colonoscopy slightly more unpleasant cam leave the patient with a more favorable recollection.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

I think that the value of money has diminishing returns, so that more than $60K per annum doesn't make you more happy (http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper....

If automation and efficiency could bring most people to the point where they could hit this point of diminishing returns at 20 hours a week, I think we'd find more (though not all) people opting for that kind of life.

⬐ reitzensteinm

You're expecting people to behave rationally. I expect them to work 50 hours a week and buy an Aston.

⬐ mquander

"People" are not a homogeneous blob. I'll work 20 and live cheaply, thanks. If other people work 50 and wind up comparatively wealthy, that's fine.

⬐ CodeMage

You're making an implicit assumption that the only thing that matters is the happiness of the "experiencing self" and that the happiness of the "remembering self" is not important. I'm not convinced of that at all and, frankly, watching the video didn't leave me with an impression that Daniel Kahneman prefers one over the other.

You're also making an assumption about which variable will be influenced by "automation and efficiency", as you put it, and how it will be affected. Throughout the human history, the technology has helped us overcome obstacles and "optimize" our lives. Where before you would need to invest significant effort to overcome an obstacle, now you have technology to do it for you. What's the consequence of that? The human effort that was previously needed to overcome that obstacle has become devalued. In other words, technology is more likely to make someone's work obsolete than to allow them to lay back and enjoy having a 20-hour work week. Simply put, whenever technology simplifies a part of your work, you either get more work or you're out of work.

It's not that I wouldn't like having a 20-hour work week. It's just that I don't think technology is going to solve that.

You might check out this Ted Talk. It's about the difference between experiential happiness and remembered happiness.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle...

It seems that the guy who is 30 and living at home to work towards his dream house will have more remembered happiness (which is more similar to satisfaction) at the expense of being less happy in the moment. Meanwhile, you seem to be the opposite. I'm not making any value judgements -- I think both are fine.

In the Ted Talk he asks an interesting question: where would you go on vacation right now if given a blank check? Now -- if you knew you were not going to remember anything about your vacation, would you go to the same place? If no, then you care more about experiential happiness.

⬐ eru

Required reading "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by P.K. Dick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Whol...).

I think this is to do with the difference between the experiential self and the remembering self:

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...

⬐ bitwize

Always and everywhere, REMEMBER YOURSELF...

⬐ j_b_f

The speaker argues that your memory of an event is based largely on the end of the event itself (such as the pain at the very end of a colonoscopy). Hilariously, the end of the speech itself ends strong but then there's a crappy question-and-answer session at the end that sort of ruins it. Or my memory of it, at least!