yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Being Unhappy Is Very Inefficient


2m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Besides, I'm too smart for it. The other objection is I don't want it to lower my productivity. I don't want to have less desire or less work ethic. Fact-check, and that is true. The more happy you are, the more content and peaceful you are. That's less likely you want to run out there and change the world.

But at the same time, being unhappy is very inefficient. The peaceful person doesn't have extraneous thoughts going through their head. If you are a driven, unhappy person, your mind will be on 24/7. What are the consequences of this? Your sleep is much worse, you're much more likely to react, to become angry, and dig yourself into a hole that you don't have to dig yourself out of.

Your decisions are going to be emotional, impetuous. You're much more likely to be in the busy trap, where you're busy all the time, running from one thing to another, because you can't mentally prioritize. You don't have peace of mind, so when it comes time to make judgments, you have too many threads going through your head. You'd have time to devote to making those judgments.

So, there's a trade-off. If you become the Buddha tomorrow, it's unlikely you'll also launch rockets to the moon like Elon Musk. But on the other hand, there are enough successful, optimistic leaders, scientists, and innovators, especially as they get older, that you see it's not necessarily the case that happy people have to be ineffective.

As I became much happier in my life, I actually became much more effective. I was able to form relationships with people that earlier in my life I would have kept at a distance. Whatever preconceived notion, I can make decisions much more clearly now because I see what the long-term outcome is going to be.

I cut straight to the chase. I don't try and negotiate an extra 20 percent here or there because I know that that's gonna make me unhappy long-term. It's gonna make the other person unhappy, and it'll make the deal less stable. So, I've actually been more productive even though I worked less hard because I've made better decisions.

More Articles

View All
How to Escape from a Car Window (SLOW MOTION) - Smarter Every Day 144
Hey, it’s me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. Have you ever been driving along and you suddenly stop and realize that you’re moving around this world in a bubble of glass? It’s kind of weird if you think about it. But it’s really cool. Engineer…
Tarpit Ideas: The Sequel
When some of the people ask me, “Oh, is my idea a tarpit?” I’ll be like, “Hey, well, have you talked to any users?” And they’re like, “No, I just—no, I thought you would tell me, though.” Like, it’s funny. It’s like, “How you been watching the videos?” I …
It Started: My Thoughts On The Joe Biden Tax Plan
What’s up guys? It’s Graham here. So normally, I don’t make videos like this, and I try to stay away from topics that could be taken out of context or politicized. But lately, there’s been a lot of talk about a brand new tax plan that would soon increase …
A Serious Warning To All Investors
What’s up guys, it’s Grahe here. So I had another video that was scheduled to post today, but given the rather abrupt and dramatic selloff throughout everything, including the official start of an S&P 500 bear market, I felt like it would be more appr…
Inside the Mission to Save the Rare Helmeted Hornbill From Poachers | National Geographic
This is about the second week of this expedition. We are at our third location here. My mission is to photograph the helmeted armbands. These hella nerd hornbills have been occupying these forests for thousands of years, but recently they’ve fallen prey t…
Classical Japan during the Heian Period | World History | Khan Academy
What we’re going to do in this video is talk about roughly a thousand years of Japanese history that take us from what’s known as The Classical period of Japan through the Japanese medieval period all the way to the early modern period. The key defining …