Unavoidable Tradeoffs
Overview
In this article I share my view that there are many unavoidable tradeoffs that we can choose to accept, or reject. I start off by explaining why this is true, and then I share three unavoidable tradeoffs that I’ve found have the largest effect on my life: Remembering Self vs Experiencing Self, Happiness vs Impacting the World, and Technology vs Presence.
Unavoidable Tradeoffs
The world around us is constantly telling us that we can have our cake and eat it too. Instagram fitness trainers pose with six pack abs and a slice of cake in hand. Hollywood celebrities post pictures of themselves in expensive sports cars with a caption about mindfulness and gratitude. Rising tech billionaires smile and look like normal people, almost convincing you that they’re happy. If you aren’t critical enough they may even succeed in convincing you that one person can actually have all these things.
Expecting to have all these things at once is an unrealistic expectation. In fact, it’s an impossible expectation. There are rules of nature and physics that govern what can be accomplished at the same time, and you can’t just break them. For example you can only be in a single location at any point in time; though that doesn’t stop you from creating the illusion that you’re everywhere at once by making an Instagram post with images of you in different locations. You might be able to fool some people, but you can still only be in one place at one time.
It’s obvious that being in one place necessarily means that you aren’t in another. The two possibilities are mutually exclusive. But not everything is this black and white. Take losing weight and eating ice cream as an example of two things that one might try to do at the same time. While it’s possible to do both, it’s a given that each scoop of ice cream will detract a certain amount from one’s goal of losing weight. In this sense, the two goals are clearly opposed. You can plot a graph of what it might look like to try and balance both goals.
If you decide to only have a single scoop of ice cream a day, you’ll still be able to lose weight at a good rate. Make that 2 scoops, and you can kiss losing weight goodbye. And if you make that 3 scoops, then the weight will start going up. If we are to trust the graph, then there is a good balance that can be struck at one scoop of ice cream a day. It does come with a price however: it will take considerable energy to resist eating more ice cream, and you will have to live with the knowledge that you could be losing significantly more weight if you stopped eating ice cream. So is it possible to do both at the same time? Yes; they are not mutually exclusive. Will you be able to get the most out of both? No; the two goals are opposed to each other.
It’s not hard to recognize that losing weight and eating ice cream are opposing goals, but the opposing nature of goals is oftentimes a lot trickier to notice. When you fail to see that two goals are at odds, it’s a recipe for conflict.
Let’s say there are two opposed ways of living that you value. You are currently doing a lot more of one than the other. Then you remember about the other way of living and you start doing more of it. Then even more. If we were to represent the changes in your 2 ways of living with pie charts, it might look like this.
Except that’s not actually how it works. The pie charts look a lot more like this.
There is a pendulum effect that prevents the first set of pie charts from happening, and makes the second set of pie charts happen instead. Remember that you aren’t aware of how the two ways of living are opposed. What this means is that you’ll always run towards one extreme because all you’ll see are the benefits and you won’t see what you’re giving up. But once you’re there, you’ll realize that you’re missing the other way of life. So you’ll do a little more of it, then a little more, then a little more, until you’re at the other extreme, and you realize that you’re missing the first way of life. The propelling force towards the extremes is the false sense that you are increasing the size of the pie, when really you’re eating more and more into the fixed size. This misconception dooms you to keep bouncing back and forth between the two ways of life, never stabilizing, feeling like you’re missing something for the majority of the time.
This predicament may sound scary, but there’s a simple way out of it: see with clear eyes when you are trying to live in two ways that are opposed to each other. It’s the only way to take control of your ways of living and stop the constant flip flopping back and forth between extremes. To do this you have to be honest with yourself, and give up the dream of having it all. Only you know which ways of living are opposed for you, so self reflection is the only guaranteed way to sniff them out.
With that being said, I’d like to give you a head start. You see, you and I, we aren’t so different. It’s a good bet that if two ways of living are opposed for me, they’ll be opposed for you too. So I’d like to share three pairs of ways of living that I’ve learned are opposed for me. With any luck I’ll spare you the time and effort of learning they’re opposed for you too.
Remembering Self vs Experiencing Self
The thing we call “I”, the main character starring in our mind, is nothing but a story we have made up about ourselves by sewing together our memories. This sense of a distinct and coherent self is crucial to the mind’s stability, because it provides an easy way to organize information about ourselves into something clear and practical. It is so central to our existence (in a sense the story IS our existence), that it’s hard to imagine it could be any other way. We’ve all had times when the story breaks though; just think about a moment that was embarrassing. In these moments we do something that goes completely against our story, and our sense of internal order is thrown completely out of whack. The moment’s incongruence with our story of “I” causes us anguish for a long time, even though the present self is far removed from the incident.
Another way to think of our story is as a scoreboard with limited space, that uses memories as its points system. Proud memories, exhilarating memories, memories of love, all count as positives and give us the feeling that we’re “winning”. Shameful memories, sad memories, angry memories, all count as negatives and make us feel like we’re losing. When we ask ourselves how is “I” doing, a large part of the answer comes from looking up at the scoreboard and seeing what the net sum of the memories is.
To understand what memories make it to the scoreboard and which don’t, remember that the scoreboard has limited space. This biases it towards extreme experiences: peaks and valleys. Storing the memory of a blissful long walk would require lots of space, so unless there’s a highlight that makes the walk stand out, it won’t be featured prominently on the scoreboard. Winning an award, a shouting match with a loved one, an epic concert, failing miserably on a test; these are the kinds of experiences that are front and centre on the scoreboard.
This never ending story of our most memorable experiences is a huge part of what we call “I”; so much so that we forget it isn’t real. It’s a fabrication that exists solely in our minds. In the present moment it does not exist any more than the narrative you might construct about Michael Jordan’s illustrious basketball career exists. Certain events obviously happened but they’re in the past now. They only exist as far as we give them thought and breathe life into them.
Unlike the story of “I”, which doesn’t exist, what does exist is our moment to moment experience of the world. This starts with our 5 senses: what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste, what we touch. It then extends to a broader understanding of how we feel: our mood, our energy level, how hungry we are, etc. This experience of the present moment is another part of “I”; it’s the “I” that remains when you strip away the story.
Thus we have two selves: the remembering self which is responsible for the story of “I”, and the experiencing self which is responsible for the present experience of “I”. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point when I tell you that the two selves are often opposed.
To show how the two selves can be opposed, consider the famous cold water experiment. In the experiment each subject undergoes two trials, one for each hand. In the first trial they submerge one hand in freezing cold water for 60 seconds. In the second trial, they submerge their other hand for 60 seconds in the same freezing water as the first trial, but then the water is made a little less freezing and they must keep it in for another 30 seconds. So the first 60 seconds of the trials are identical, but the second trial includes an additional 30 seconds of keeping one’s hand in slightly less cold but still painful water. The results seem to defy rationality: 70% of subjects said they preferred the second trial more, saying it was less painful, less cold, and overall easier to cope with.
What this experiment does is pit the remembering self against the experiencing self. There is no doubt that the second trial, with its extra 30 seconds of pain, is worse for the experiencing self. However, the remembering self sees the situation differently. It does not hold onto the entire experience; rather it follows the peak-end rule. Instead of remembering the experience as a summation of the total pain over the entire time interval, the peak-end rule gives priority to the peak experience (which can be a low) and the end experience. Both trials have the same peak: the first 60 seconds of freezing cold water. The difference is that the second trial has a more pleasurable ending, since the water is made less cold at the end. What the remembering self fails to consider, but what the experiencing self must undergo, is the duration of an experience. To the remembering self the duration is not important: what matters far more are the peak and end of the experience.
The implications of this experiment are vast: what is good/bad for the experiencing self is not the same as what’s good/bad for the remembering self. It turns out there are actually two selves that are satisfied by different types of experiences. The experiencing self loves prolonged activities that provide sustained stimulation and enjoyment. The remembering self loves memorability: a peak experience that is easy to capture with a few mental images.
Each self implies different lifestyles. A person who aims to satisfy their remembering self will spend their time seeking peak experience. This person’s life is like a movie — you’d probably do well to follow them on Instagram. A person who aims to satisfy their experiencing self likely has hobbies that they enjoy pouring time into. Their life is almost certainly less exciting — some might even call it boring — but this person doesn’t think so because their hobbies are exciting to them.
Most of us likely need a mix of the two. Myself, I lean significantly to the experiencing self. Still, once every week or two I feel the need to do something new, something that will make the week memorable. No matter how much time I spend doing enjoyable hobbies, I know that if I don’t do something intentionally memorable, I’ll look up at the scoreboard and I won’t see myself winning big. Other times, I’ll have memorable experience after memorable experience and know that in theory I’m up big on the scoreboard. Except the scoreboard stops mattering when you feel drained and unfulfilled because you neglected your experiencing self.
The tradeoff is unique for each person. I only need to allocate a small amount of time to satisfying my remembering self, and I quickly reach a point where it’s fully satisfied. Someone else might be different: they may get a lot of happiness from their remembering self but it quickly diminishes when they invest in their experiencing self. There are many possible configurations, but two possible curves could look like this.
You can construct the curve that is true for you. Then, it’s up to you to decide where you like it most on that curve.
Happiness vs Impacting the World
The individuals we’re taught to look up to from a young age are the great figures of history: Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan. The achievements and character of these individuals are celebrated and used to inspire us to become like them, and for good reason: the world was different after each of them left it. In fact these figures are so legendary that they are perfect candidates for the halo effect: the tendency to assume positive traits about people we like. This is what makes it surprising to find out that while these figures are touted as embodiments of what a fully potentialized human life looks like, many of them were not happy at all.
It sounds heinous to proclaim these legendary figures aren’t happy because it feels like that somehow takes away from what they’ve accomplished. It robs them of their storybook glow; the sense that they were these perfect characters that roamed the Earth. But then you realize that the very things that make their lives so legendary in retrospect, are the same things that prevented them from being happy. Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln both led their countries through dark times: very epic, but obviously not fun to go through. Michael Jordan is famous for his relentless competitiveness: this makes for a great documentary, but not for a happy existence.
The same is true about all figures we look up to in our lives: the reason we idolize them isn’t because they’re happy, but because they went through hardships to accomplish something great. Parents, the world’s everyday heroes, have to sacrifice a lot to give their children good lives. Ask parents how happy they were on a moment to moment basis throughout the process and you’ll find out it’s not always a happy time. Yet that doesn’t take away from the impact of their sacrifices; if anything, it only magnifies them.
It might be the case that if people knew how hard it is to leave a large impact on the world, a lot fewer people would sign up to do it. Hearing about the hardships that the greats had to suffer through makes for a great story, but if you put yourself in their shoes you probably wouldn’t like it as much. I think the stories of the greats are intentionally glorified to make them more desirable, so that more people will want to become like them. However, there would only be a need to do that if leaving an impact on the world and being happy were opposed.
Being happy and leaving an impact aren’t mutually exclusive; but they require you to spend your time in different ways. At its core, happiness is about spending time doing the things you enjoy doing. This goes directly against what impacting the world requires of you, which is to work even when you don’t feel like it. Even if you’re incredibly passionate about your work, there will be days where you have to power through lethargy. This is necessary for getting something big done, but it doesn’t agree with what makes humans happy.
Another critical component of happiness is variety. Our brains release dopamine in response to novelty to encourage us to seek more novelty, because new things have the potential to reward us. We yearn for new experiences, new people, new places. If you want to impact the world though, variety gets in the way; what you need is singular focus. World changing things don’t happen overnight, so you have to be willing to dedicate most of your time to accomplishing the one thing.
At its core, the conflict is that to make a large scale impact you have to sacrifice your own well being, whereas to be happy you have to invest in your own well being. To be happy you have to consistently invest time in yourself. To make a large scale impact you have to invest time into the work.
The tradeoff is between happiness and scale of impact; not depth of impact. By deciding to focus your impact on a smaller scale, you can achieve a greater depth of impact in a manageable amount of time. Being a good parent, a good coach, a good person; these are all ways you can leave an impact. It will certainly be on a smaller scale, but it can be just as big, if not bigger, for those you do impact. Think of it like a flashlight where your happiness is your energy source. There is a fixed amount of light at any happiness level, but you can decide how you want to spread that light.
When you narrow down your scale of impact there is more synergy with happiness because you get more interpersonal interaction and the resulting impact from the effort you put in is constantly validated. For example if you coach a team, or volunteer at a soup kitchen, or you’re a good manager, the impact you’re making is immediate and you’ll be rewarded with positive energy. But when your scale of impact is large, you operate much more in a state of uncertainty where you aren’t sure how impactful you’re being. Usually you’re in a state of chasing, which once in a while culminates in a large payoff of impact. For the most part though, you’re feeling the work, not the impact.
We each have a limited amount of time, and we can choose to spend it however we like. Painting in broad strokes, your time is either going towards making yourself happy, or leaving an impact on the world. There is definitely significant overlap between the two, but if you choose to pretend that there’s no tradeoff, you’re risking not getting the benefits of either. So when it comes down to it, you have to make up your mind about a fundamental question. Would you rather be remembered, or live a happy life?
Technology vs Presence
Presence, awareness, mindfulness: these are all words that describe the state of being in the moment. It’s difficult to describe what they feel like, but it’s known what their prerequisites are. The first is a clear mind. If your mind is overrun with thoughts and you are engaging with them, then you are in the world of your mind, not in the world of the present. The second is an acceptance of what real life is like: slow, calm, simple. If you don’t have these two things, then you will struggle to cultivate presence.
If you wanted to eliminate the chance of being present, then you’d eliminate those 2 prerequisites; and that’s exactly what attention grabbing technology does. I’m talking about social media, YouTube, Netflix, and videogames.
To destroy a clear mind you’d want to fill it with thoughts that feel urgent, and that’s precisely what social media does. It bombards you with sensationalized information about people or the world, which are both candy for the mind. The information about the world is decontextualized, rendering it impractical and resulting in you “knowing a lot of things”, but not having any way of using the information or connecting it to other things you know. And the information about your friends tends to stir up emotions of jealousy and insecurity, because you’re being fed the best side of everyone, which distorts your sense of what real people are like. If you’re consuming a steady diet of this kind of information, you aren’t giving your mind a chance to calm down.
Technology gets you used to a pace that is completely different from real life, which breaks the second prerequisite for presence. It gets you used to receiving a never-ending stream of stimulation which you do not have to work for (video games being the exception). So what happens when you try to return to real life? You find that its pace is too slow and that it’s not stimulating enough. You can try to resist technology’s pace and only consume its content, but that’ll take up a lot of energy. The moment you let your diligence slip, you will speed right back up to the pace of technology, leaving you completely out of sync with the pace of real life.
It’s worth thinking about the times in your life when you fell into the hole of using technology more than you’d like. If you dig deep within yourself, what was the reason for it? Were you running away from something? Were you scared to confront your thoughts? Were you trying to numb the pain? Technology is often a way to escape reality; presence is all about accepting reality. The two are at odds.
No matter how deep in the hole you are, you can always put down the technology and choose presence instead. You’ll be surprised with how quickly your mind clears up and how you begin to experience the world as it is. Surprisingly, you’ll experience the world so tangibly that it’ll be tempting to think you’ve permanently unlocked presence, and that you can reintroduce technology. That’d be a mistake; the reason you are feeling presence is BECAUSE you’ve removed technology.
We’ve looked at the experiencing self vs the remembering self, and at happiness vs impacting the world, and we’ve seen that the pairs have some synergy. There are ways to get a good amount of both. Technology and presence aren’t like that. They are essentially mutually exclusive. You can think of them like this:
Maybe for you it looks more like a curve. But in my experience, you either choose more of one, or more of the other.
Conclusion
It’s hard for people to accept that there are tradeoffs in life because we like to think we can have it all. But whether we believe in them or not, they are there. These tradeoffs aren’t in our heads; they’re governed by nature, science, and psychology.
Don’t expect the world around you to understand though. The truth is that most people aren’t aware that they’re making tradeoffs. One of the ways we try to convince ourselves we aren’t making tradeoffs is by convincing others. So if a celebrity poses in front of a Lamborghini and has a caption about gratitude, they likely haven’t accepted the trade off between consumption and gratitude. If a workaholic tech billionaire is on the cover of some magazine, don’t believe that they’re happy: they aren’t immune to the tradeoff between impacting the world and happiness. And if you know someone who is deep into self help and doesn’t let themselves deviate from their strict habits ever, don’t be surprised if their remembering self is suffering.
It can feel restricting to accept we have to make tradeoffs, but I don’t see it that way. I think it’s restricting to be ignorant of them, because you’ll feel like you’re fighting an invisible force that’s preventing you from living the life you are envisioning. You might see it differently.
In the end it’s up to you. Would you rather reject the idea of tradeoffs, and dream of having it all? Or would you rather accept the reality of tradeoffs, and aspire to something achievable? You’ll be making a tradeoff either way. My advice is to choose carefully.
