Yesterday it was over 70 degrees in Baltimore, where I am for the weekend celebrating a family birthday. The abrupt change from winter to spring weather, which happens every year, felt particularly amazing. It coincided with vaccine successes and the gradual reopening of the economy. I took a handful of meetings outside, went on a walk in the afternoon, and heard the atmosphere described as “the last day of school,” which summed it up pretty nicely.
Throughout this past year of writing, I have been obsessed with this equation: Happiness = Reality – Expectations. I first stumbled upon it in a Tim Urban post on the blog Wait But Why, titled Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy. It’s such an obviously true statement that it felt like I’d heard it before. As Tim says:
It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy.
I’ve referenced this equation often in my writing. It is fundamental to how I approach my life, particularly around my career. I harbor no delusions that I will suddenly become 1) the head of a cool startup or 2) a millionaire anytime soon. Both are possible, sure, but having realistic expectations as a baseline and then striving to do better is important.
I bring this up because, with the arrival of spring and the positive trajectory of our pandemic recovery, I’m realizing that the equation has a whole side to it I’ve never explored. I’d always used it in the context of finding happiness within non-ideal circumstances. In the context of the pandemic, that meant expecting a relatively monotonous daily routine, and finding happiness whenever I was able to do something new. I stayed optimistic that things would get better, but tried not to set goalposts that reality would fall short of. It looked something like this:
I’m glad that was my mentality, because the goalposts kept moving. At work, our return-to-office date moved from July, to September, to January, to the next July, and finally to the next September. It may move further yet. And each time, if I’d gotten my hopes up around that milestone, I would have been seriously disappointed.
But now we’re on an undeniably upward trajectory. My mindset is the same, but I’m no longer hoping for marginally less-worse outcomes. I’m hoping for marginally more-better outcomes. Here’s what that looks like:
Yes, the graph looks like a creepy clown smile. But it also captures something important: The right side of the graph feels much better than the left side. Each small win, whether a faster return to Spring weather or more friends and family vaccinated, is on top of something already positive. The weather was always going to get warmer. People were always going to get vaccinated. But if the atmosphere at work yesterday is any indication, the emotions on the incline are much better than the decline.
In fact, I think that Tim’s original equation, Happiness = Reality – Expectations, needs a rewrite. It’s too general to capture both sides of the graph.
Instead, it should look like this:
We’re on to the joy phase of things. The Roaring 20’s are coming. When they’ll get here, I’m not sure. I’m not setting expectations.