"Do what feels like play to you, but looks like work for others." -- Naval Ravikant
Recently, I've been on a quest to more thoroughly understand my own identity, and in that vein, inspired by the concept of Fulfillment Stories from Wanting by Luke Burgis, I decided that it would be worth it to attempt to understand what exactly my currency of fulfillment is.
The fulfillment exchange
The term currency of fulfillment seems to necessarily imply the idea of immutable quantity. Though this is likely true, I also believe that fulfillment is an innately personal thing that is highly proximal to identity (post coming up on this soon...), which means that everyone's unit of fulfillment (i.e. currency) is necessarily different, and thus that there is likely no absolute way to understand fulfillment.
As someone who usually craves a set, black-and-white standard, this is oddly liberating; because there is no true measure of desire and fulfillment, there is no competitiveness and external value metric that enforces a particular picture of fulfillment, and thus even the exceedingly rational side of me understands that one must necessarily exclusively index on one's own personal desire.
This thus begs the question of why understanding fulfillment is even a thing. More specifically, I've found it relatively enjoyable in the past to operate (or at least philosophise) under the perspective that
Life is a greedy search algorithm.
So why not continue to abide by that?
Optimising for today vs. tomorrow
The vast majority of my school (and greater life) experiences have always come under the standard operating procedure of "optimising for tomorrow"; in other words, frontload your hard work now so that when you get into a good college, or get a good job, etc. you'll be able to relax a little bit more. Though this is extremely helpful in terms of breeding ambition and understanding desires, goal-setting, means vs. ends perspective, and a number of other things (all upcoming posts), it is also an extremely strong form of arrival fallacy. The idea comes from this Oliver Burkeman post where he recalls author and podcaster Sam Harris discovering the "illusion that [one] will one day reach a point in life where [there] no longer [exist] any problems," i.e. understanding that life is an infinite gamescape and that there is no realistic way to ever truly complete the game of life.
Given this, it is a natural jump to then think about optimising for today instead, or in other words attempt to find the actions that most strongly maximise immediate fulfillment. This is the side of the spectrum that is closest to greedy search, where one simply operates on the principle of enjoyment and listening most closely to their own desires.
What, then, is in between?
The threshold of investment
The crux of the question of fulfillment, I think, is the tension between present, shortsighted desires and emotions (subject often to temporal discounting and other similar manifestations of temporal myopia) and anxiety, worry, or anticipation for the future. More simply: every single decision would be trivial if you knew exactly and completely how it would affect you in the future, since you wouldn't need to guess at anything and could instead truly operate algorithmically (since there is literally no uncertainty). Since this isn't possible however, there needs to be some sort of missing factor that allows us to either throw caution to the wind and "Do What Excites" (shoutout Kelly Wakasa) while accepting the future consequences or that keeps us on the beaten path choosing less delectable options in the present for only a promise of expected value in the future. This, I believe, is where the idea of fulfillment comes in.
Quantifying the quantifiable?
It is admittedly hard (and probably an overrationalisation or oversimplification) to attempt to quantify, even as roughly as outlined above, something like fulfillment or motivation. But given the scaffolding that we've already established, I believe that we can tease out a couple principles that allow us to more thoroughly understand what we're fulfilled and motivated by:
- Activation energy. Things that are more fulfilling should tend to have less activation energy, both physical and mental. In other words, they should be easy to get into because it's something that you truly want to do, even if it's something that is presently unpleasant or sparse in reward/gratification.
- ROI on execution. Again, ROI is an extremely quantity-based metric that simply serves as a heuristic of language here. The idea is that there should be some sort of immeasurable return that you feel (including things like energy, satisfaction, mirth, safety/comfort, etc. that might not be immediately tangible or considered "return" in the traditional sense) that, even in expectation, is enough (which is linked to the above).
- Inertia. In the vein of "thick desires" from Wanting, I believe that the desires that are truly fulfilling and that come from a place of intrinsic motivation and fulfillment will be hard to disrupt, simply because they are (as above) easy to get into and continue, proximal to your identity, and offer a return that is visible, even if not proximal temporally.
- Vulnerability. Finally, the idea of accepting a lack of control and accepting the outcome, even in the worst case. This one specifically is likely more strongly inductively biassed than the other 3 factors, which I think are more general (and also probably more naive, in a sense) since I've historically been averse to the potential of loss (this, in my opinion, is different to traditional loss aversion; reach out if you have questions about this), but it spawns from a very interesting conversation I had with a friend recently. The story proof for vulnerability is essentially that even if you're not sure if you can handle something (think taking on more research projects or doing more volunteer assignments than your calendar says is reasonable), the fulfillment and enjoyment that you expect more than outweighs any anxiety, negativity, or uncertainty within the decision, feeding into a reduction of activation energy and inertia as a result.
Epilogue: overphilosophising
In another dinner conversation with a friend, we talked about the idea of being entirely too self-aware and, as a result of that, losing the authenticity of the experience because you feel like you're a spectator watching yourself in specific situations that you've manufactured in order to generate some sort of experience. I don't think I'll ever completely agree with the idea of overphilosophising simply because I tend to enjoy this level of introspection and, in some sense, overthinking.
But is it not also beautiful that, in some sense, this is exactly what #4 above refers to? The idea that, in the face of life, there is no need to be in complete control and that it is the spontaneity and vulnerability that we show that drives our most valuable, authentic, and memorable experiences after all...