The Good Life
What constitutes the good life?
This is the single question that I think about the most. I won’t attempt to fully answer this question in this blog post. Humans have grappled with this since the dawn of time.
I argue that any (non-nihilistic) answer contains a characterization of thought and action, where:
“Thought” is:
(a) setting meaningful goals
(b) making plans to achieve said goals
“Action” is:
(a) implementing and improving upon one’s plans
(b) making the right decisions in unplanned circumstances
When people disagree about ways to live a good life, their disagreement can often be placed into one of these categories. At a high level, moral philosophy and religion answer the questions of “what things are right to pursue?“ [Thought (a)], and “what is the right way for one to conduct themselves?” [Action (b)].
Thought (b) is often left to the realm of domain expertise. For instance, if one has the goal of becoming an influential physicist, philosophy and religion will not be very instructive in the way of determining the most effective method of achieving this goal. Rather, a good plan to achieve this goal would be sourced primarily from an understanding of the field of physics.
Action (a) is, quite literally, doing that which one sets their mind to. I wrote about my thoughts on this in detail in my blog post on the 4x4x48 challenge, where I discussed the relationship between intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and discipline. Challenges like the 4x4x48 are my way of practicing the skill of actually implementing a challenging plan.
In this blog post, I will share my perspective on Thought (a). I believe making your bed is a good “meaningful” goal to start with if you don’t do so already. Of course, making your bed shouldn’t be your only goal, and it’s also not the only good place to start on the order of meaningful goals. However, by the end of this blog post, I hope you understand the meaning I derive from making my bed every single day.
The Folly of Man
In August, there were severe wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. Living in Seattle over the summer, the city was covered in thick smoke from the nearby wildfires for a couple of days. Pictured below is the view outside of the Amazon office in Seattle before and during the wildfires.
A naive view of natural disasters is that they serve as a reminder that, as a society, we sometimes suffer atrocities that are completely outside of our control. It’s simply a fact of life that, one day, a natural disaster could occur in your city and leave you with nothing.
However, there’s another, more nuanced view of natural disasters, which is illustrated pretty well by Godzilla:
History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man – Blue Oyster Cult, “Godzilla”
Here’s the thing — the first view is only reasonable if, in fact, the disaster truly was outside of our control. I use “our” because no individual can have too great an effect on preparedness for a natural disaster.
In this more nuanced view, a natural disaster first prompts us to consider if we truly did everything in our power to minimize its severity. The primary responsibility of a society is to keep its members safe — if we didn’t do everything in our power, we should put measures in place to do better next time. If, in fact, we did do everything in our power, then the natural disaster is viewed as a reminder of the power of that which is beyond our control.
It’s well known that those in “wildland-urban interfaces” (those living near brush and forestry) should take precautions against wildfires. However, out of the 63,661 Communities at Risk for wildfire, only 30.3% have taken the first step by creating a wildfire protection plan, and a measly 5.1% have successfully implemented protective measures (National Association of State Foresters). If you’re interested, here’s a good Scientific American article on what works for wildfire protection; a quick road trip with these recommendations in mind makes it clear to me that most communities have not taken adequate precautions.
I haven’t delved too deeply into the specifics of the wildfires from August. While I won’t take a stance on whether these specific wildfires could have been prevented or substantially mitigated, I’m not the only one asking these questions. After all, Maui’s Lahaina is indeed a wildland-urban interface and largely had not taken the necessary precautions, despite forewarning.
If we can take action to mitigate the effects of natural disasters, even by a smidgeon, it’s worth evaluating closely. The safety and well-being of all are impacted.
I don’t mean to be overly bleak here – humans are indeed capable of effectively managing the effects of inevitable natural disasters. As an example of such a society, see the Dutch.
26% of the Netherlands is below sea level, and another 33% is above sea level but susceptible to flooding (Netherlands Environmental Association Agency). They have established a standard that each dike should last 10,000 years, and they are evaluated against this safety standard every 5 years. A recent test found that only about 25% of the dikes could use improvement.
Above all, these strategies have proven incredibly effective in quite literally keeping the Netherlands above water. The Netherlands has prioritized that which matters most and successfully protected the safety of its citizens in this regard.
Compare this to an at-risk community that neglects its wildfire preparedness, or one with so-called “orphan dikes.” These communities are actively working to make life better for their members, and they are indeed putting their funding somewhere. They’re not just doing nothing. However, they’ve prioritized some auxiliary goals, and neglected their core responsibility of safety.
It should be noted that, despite their best efforts to mitigate the severity and frequency of these inevitable floods, the Netherlands has still seen a handful of floods since the dikes were introduced. However, when a flood does occur in the Netherlands, the aforementioned “naive” view of the natural disaster as a great force outside of their control is not naive – it’s justified.
Responsibilities
I think the best way to bridge the gap between the priorities of the Netherlands and the priorities of an individual is by way of example. I’ll survey the situation of my own life, explain how I manage my competing priorities, and then abstract from there.
I’ll begin by analyzing my responsibilities. First and foremost, I’m responsible for my mind and body. My mental and physical health are fully within my control. As far as physical possessions go, I live in a small space, which I share with a roommate. Within my half of the room, I’ve got a couple of drawers of possessions, a closet full of clothes, a desk, and a bed.
Outside of these tangible items, I have relationships with family and friends to maintain. I also have an internship at Amazon which brings additional tasks and responsibilities.
Given the real and symbolic contracts that I’ve entered, I’m obligated to take care of each of these things. It seems natural that they should be prioritized above all else.
This being said, I aspire to make a bigger positive impact on the world than I do now, which will require me to take on even more responsibility. For instance, in the future, I may have children who depend on me to raise them, I may be leading others in my work, or I may write a long blog post sharing my thoughts on the good life.
Now wait a minute, why don’t I get started on some of these things now? Nobody needs to entrust me with anything in order for me to write that long blog post, so why don’t I get started on that right now, irrespective of the state of my other responsibilities?
Here’s the thing – in order to be justified in assuming more responsibility, I need to demonstrate that I can confidently handle my existing responsibilities. If my mind, body, or house has descended into chaos, why would I take on more responsibility, or wish that anyone bestow upon me more responsibility? I’ve demonstrated that I cannot handle at least one fairly simple task that affects only myself, so how can I be trusted to handle more complex tasks that affect both myself and others?
Before putting their own lives in order, many get in over their head and take on too much responsibility. They try to influence the world without getting their own ducks in a row. This error in prioritization is the same folly into which a society that fails to mitigate the effects of a foreseeable natural disaster falls. Just as a society’s primary responsibility is ensuring the safety of its members, an individual’s primary responsibilities are maintaining their health, family, possessions, and work.
When a society assumes auxiliary responsibilities before addressing its core responsibilities, it leads to unnecessary, avoidable suffering. It’s the same on an individual level, but in a smaller and less visible manner than a partially avoidable natural disaster. One should expect that whichever of their core responsibilities they are neglecting will come back to bite them, an individual Godzilla of sorts.
Some of these effects are clear — for instance, if one neglects their health, it will catch up to them eventually in a very tangible way. However, some of these effects compound with attrition — for instance, if one does not put away their laundry, it’ll subconsciously loom over them every day when they come back to their room, and they’ll always wish that their room was a little bit cleaner.
Goals
On the flip side of this negligence, when I think of those who have assumed immense amounts of responsibility and used it for immense amounts of good, they’ve usually had their lives in order. Marcus Aurelius, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela come to mind as people whose accomplishments are as admirable as the way in which they lived.
Before taking steps towards more lofty goals and ambitions, I urge you to begin smaller. Make it your goal to put your existing responsibilities in perfect order. If you don’t already, a good place to start is by making your bed every day. It’s the first step towards putting your room in order, which is the first step towards putting your home in perfect order. From there, you can take care of your body – adopt a healthier diet and exercise consistently. From there, you can take care of your mind, interpersonal relationships, and existing work.
Doing all of this is by no means easy. Most people have things in these categories that they already know they could improve. I’ll be the first to admit that I certainly do. Make it your goal to go fix those things.
In fact, it’s not even possible to achieve “perfect order.” No matter how deftly you’ve handled your responsibilities, there will always be chaos lurking. See, for instance, the yin/yang symbol – one color roughly representing order, the other chaos, but each with a small dot to indicate that there is always some part of the other present.
Don’t let this stop you from treating perfect order as your ideal. Take a moment and think about how you could do a better job at managing your core responsibilities – it probably won’t take long until things start jumping out at you.
Maybe you should stop eating ice cream sandwiches every day, actually pick the laundry up off the floor, or rekindle a relationship with a long-lost relative. Quite literally, start by picking one of these nagging things that you know you could do better and improve on it. Then, rinse and repeat.
Eventually, you’ll get your existing responsibilities as close as they can be to perfect order. Until then, make this your goal. You should be happy with your state of affairs, and there should be nothing more that you know you’re doing wrong. Over time, maintaining order won’t require discipline; rather, it’ll become natural and easy.
In fact, just demonstrating competence over your sphere of influence will often cause others to want to bestow even more responsibility upon you. If, for instance, your work is in order, your manager will likely ask you to take up even more important tasks. If you have additional bandwidth and this doesn’t happen, then you’re justified in seeking out some more responsibility yourself.
After settling into my internship at the beginning of the summer, I felt as though my life was in order. I took on some more responsibilities, for instance restarting my blog posts and self-studying a couple of Stanford courses.
This being said, while I thought I had a handle on my Amazon internship project, it unexpectedly descended into chaos a few weeks in. For a period of time, putting my Amazon project in order became my top priority, and I temporarily forsake these additional, self-imposed responsibilities. I’m getting closer to homeostasis once again, and hence am reintegrating these additional responsibilities, one of them being with this blog post.
The bottom line for goal setting is this – begin by bringing order to the most basic, essential things. Take a hard look at everything you’re responsible for and fix everything you know you could be doing better, one thing at a time. If there’s too much, deprioritize auxiliary responsibilities and focus on the core responsibilities. Making your bed every day is a good place to start.
Make it your goal to get each of these responsibilities to the point that you can effortlessly maintain order. From there, you can consider the possibility of expanding their sphere of influence. However, if anything begins to descend into chaos, focus once again on restoring order before continuing to increase the scope of your responsibility. As this process continues, you’ll become a better person and get closer to fulfilling your purpose.
Doing it Well
If it was as easy to clean up your life as I made it sound, you’d be doing it already.
Suppose you are compelled by my argument and decide to make your bed every morning. One way you could view this is, “great, Raj has assigned me yet another task that I have to slog through each day, so I’ll do it.” You may even go further and make a list of similar habits that you should do every day, then begrudgingly complete each of these for its own sake.
This approach is not conducive to improvement. Eventually, you’ll think to yourself, “gee, making my bed every day is not fun, and I don’t see it helping me much.” The next time you wake up slightly late to work or school, you’ll skip making your bed, and then you’ll skip it the next day and the day after that. Before you know it, your room will descend into chaos once again.
“Well, thanks for the forewarning that it’ll be tough, Raj. I’ll just try really hard not to let myself slip up, and I’ll get through it no matter what. That’ll work, right?”
Even if you’re successful in applying this brute-force mentality to get yourself to make your bed every day, you’ve defeated the purpose of the task in the process. Every day, you’ll struggle against yourself to make your bed. It’ll never be effortless, so you’ll never truly achieve such a state of order that you have the bandwidth to expand your sphere of influence.
To avoid this, when sitting down to actually fix the basic problems in your life, seek to fix them impeccably well. Again, this is your primary goal in life for the time being. If you can’t do an astoundingly good job at these simple tasks, how will you do more difficult tasks? Treat these core responsibilities with the seriousness they deserve. No matter how simple, solving these problems is never beneath anyone. View them as a precondition for achieving any greater purpose in life.
Is making the bed an easy task? Good – you should be able to do an excellent job, quickly. Don’t just strive to maintain your fitness or strength, push to the point where you’re improving every day.
As an example to help set your internal standard, imagine that you’ve stayed the night at someone’s house, and are making the bed before you leave in the morning. You want your host to be happy, so you make it as well as you reasonably can. Your standard for how well your own bed is made should be at least this high. You should be proud of how well your bed is made every day when you’re done.
Identifying what you can do better is just the first step. Remember, the goal is not just to bring order to your core responsibilities, it’s to do so to the point of effortlessness. In order to do that, shift your focus entirely towards completing these tasks to the best of your ability. Making your bed the absolute best you can will simply be the default mode. Eventually, doing it well will be an enjoyable process, not a battle. From there, you can take it upon yourself to clean your room impeccably and keep it that way, to the point that you take pride in how clean it is. From there, you won’t just complete your work, you’ll do an excellent job and enjoy the process of attaining excellence.
My Experience with This Paradigm
I start every day by jumping out of bed, dismissing my alarm, and making my bed. I put my best effort into making my bed, and walk away proud of my accomplishment. It’s a small win, but a win nonetheless, and it gets the ball rolling for continuing this mentality for the rest of the day. When I go out on my morning run, I’ll put in my best effort and be proud afterwards, and the same when I begin my work for the day, etc. This is one of my principal sources of meaning and joy. For every task I face, whether easy or difficult, trivial or nontrivial, I take pride in doing it impeccably well.
I haven’t made my bed daily forever – in fact, quite far from it. I’d like to share my personal relationship with making my bed in order to provide anecdotal support for the argument I’ve made thus far.
I only started making my bed a few years ago. When I do so, I make hospital corners, which I’ve found very comfortable. Getting into bed at night feels like the blankets are giving me a nice, warm hug, which doesn’t even come close to the feeling of getting into an unmade bed. Throughout the day, if I need a pick-me-up, I quite literally think about my bed. I’ll be both proud of winning my first task of the day and I can look forward to getting into a well-made bed later that night. Thinking about my bed quite literally fills me with joy, and it’s completely a product of my own daily effort.
During my freshman year at Stanford, I slept on the top bunk and woke up well before my roommates, which made it logistically impossible to make my bed as I did at home without disturbing the others. I started leaving my bed unmade. It wouldn’t be too big of a deal, right? I had made my bed for about two years before this, and by then I thought I had already learned the lessons associated with making my bed.
And boy, was I wrong. Throughout the year, compromising on making my bed caused some of my most basic responsibilities to descend into chaos. Eventually, I stopped putting away my laundry, I struggled to exercise consistently, and I couldn’t maintain a regular sleep schedule. Needless to say, I could barely maintain order with all of my existing responsibilities and did not assume any more (hence why there was a 6-month gap in the monthly blog posts during the school year).
This summer, I’ve lived in Seattle and New York, this time with no bunk beds. Yet again, for the first week out of school, while I was settling in, I was completely negligent about the cleanliness of my room – I was literally living out of my suitcase because I simply didn’t want to unpack all of my things. Staring at the mess one day, I pondered once again the foundational question I posed at the outset of this blog post. Is this the good life? I decided it was time to put my core responsibilities back into order as I did before freshman year at Stanford.
How did I start? If you haven’t guessed already, I made my bed. From there, I cleaned my room, started working out consistently, started reading again, etc., and continued to improve on these axes before taking on any new responsibilities. I’ve been able to maintain these since.
I can tell that I’m able to work much more effectively towards my passions now that I’m focusing first on bringing order to what is most directly in my sphere of influence. There’s always room to improve, but I can tell I’ve made progress in the right direction since I started making my bed again.
Yet again, making my bed and maintaining order in the simple things in my life has become essential. I don’t foresee myself letting them slip.
Final Thoughts
So, what constitutes the good life?
It seems to me that, as a starting point, one must deeply understand that which I’ve explicated in this blog post when determining how to spend their time.
Those who don’t have their basic responsibilities in order should not assume positions of great responsibility. There is more harm done than good for everyone involved.
Something analogous to a wildfire or flood will come upon that which you hold dear. It’s virtually guaranteed that your health, family, friends, possessions, or work will descend into chaos at some point.
Take a cue from the Dutch and earnestly prepare for these looming disasters. Get your priorities straight, and set your loftier goals aside until your core responsibilites are in perfect order.
Start by making your bed every day.
PS. I’d like to credit Dr. Jordan Peterson for directly and indirectly inspiring many of the ideas in this blog post.
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