Page 92 - Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money_ Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)
P. 92
purpose media-making machines, can theoretically be as productive at 2
p.m. in the main office as at 2 a.m. in a Tokyo WeWork or at midnight on
COBACOBA
the couch.²⁹
Compared to generations prior, control over your time has diminished. And
since controlling your time is such a key happiness influencer, we shouldn’t
be surprised that people don’t feel much happier even though we are, on
average, richer than ever.
What do we do about that?
It’s not an easy problem to solve, because everyone’s different. The first
step is merely acknowledging what does, and does not, make almost
everyone happy.
In his book 30 Lessons for Living, gerontologist Karl Pillemer interviewed
a thousand elderly Americans looking for the most important lessons they
learned from decades of life experience. He wrote:
No one—not a single person out of a thousand—said that to be happy you
should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you
want.
No one—not a single person—said it’s important to be at least as wealthy as
the people around you, and if you have more than they do it’s real success.
No one—not a single person—said you should choose your work based on
your desired future earning power.
What they did value were things like quality friendships, being part of
something bigger than themselves, and spending quality, unstructured time
with their children. “Your kids don’t want your money (or what your money
