Rob Wiblin: …How have you ended up five or 10 times happier? It sounds like a large multiple.
Will MacAskill: One part of it is being still positive, but somewhat close to zero back then...There’s the classics, like learning to sleep well and meditate and get the right medication and exercise. There’s also been an awful lot of just understanding your own mind and having good responses. For me, the thing that often happens is I start to beat myself up for not being productive enough or not being smart enough or just otherwise failing or something. And having a trigger action plan where, when that starts happening, I’m like, “OK, suddenly the top priority on my to-do list again is looking after my mental health.” Often that just means taking some time off, working out, meditating, and perhaps also journaling as well to recognize that I’m being a little bit crazy.
Aside from starting from a low baseline and adopting good mental health habits, I’d be interested to know how much of the 5–10x happiness multiplier Will would attribute to his professional success and the growth of the EA movement. Is that stuff all counteracted by the hedonic treadmill?
Relevant excerpt from his prior 80k interview:
Aside from starting from a low baseline and adopting good mental health habits, I’d be interested to know how much of the 5–10x happiness multiplier Will would attribute to his professional success and the growth of the EA movement. Is that stuff all counteracted by the hedonic treadmill?