What's up, guys? It's Justin Khan and you are listening to my podcast the quest where we dive into the roller coaster stories behind every Trailblazer today. I want to do another episode of quest University where I just Riff on some random shit, whatever. I feel like I got a lot of positive feedback on the quest University episode. We did about habit tracking and habit formation, and I wanted to do another knowledge drop for you guys.
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So today I want to talk about the hedonic treadmill.
The nanak treadmill was something that I didn't learn about until much later in my life. But once I did I realized it described my experience perfectly human beings are adapted by Nature. I often hear this pushed in the business world. People say never be satisfied. I remember when I was younger thinking I'm always going to be one of work and I'm always gonna want to build more and greater and bigger and we tend to glorify this idea of this endless Conquest. It's a very Western
I think but the spirit of pursuit and accomplishment can be a very double-edged sword the idea that we want to achieve more and more and more. That's one way that we're driven, but it can also create a lot of feelings of inadequacy and resentment and that's what's known as the hedonic treadmill, which is probably the reason you're unhappy right now, but first a couple points of housekeeping as always if you enjoy the podcast, please give us some feedback.
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So the hedonic treadmill, it's this idea that we're endlessly running after new attractive objects things in the future thinking that if we just achieve this one more Milestone we're going to get closer to happiness will finally find that Fountain of happiness that we've always wanted so that could mean a lot of different things depending on your situation. It could be a promotion or raise up next valuation for a company for an entrepreneur more status more.
More Twitter followers, but the satisfaction of achievement is super short lived and there's this constant pull to accumulate more and more things which can keep you running in place forever always thinking that the next Milestone around the corner is the one that's finally going to do the trick.
My experience is when I started in the tech industry, you know, I was constantly surrounded by people that I perceived as more successful than me. And then even though I was achieving an accomplishing oftentimes beyond my expectations that I had set out in the beginning I would always adapt and see someone who is slightly ahead of me or doing better than me and think that that was where I should be and torture myself about it. I remember the beginning see my friend Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian who were the founders of
Right, it sell their company to Conde Nast. This is in 2006 when we were just starting
off
and I was amazed, you know, they sold it for something like 10 or 13 million bucks. And each of them became a millionaire overnight and I'll never forget what I told my Justin.tv and twitch co-founder Michael Seibel we were sitting around and I said to him, you know, one day we could be like Steven Alexis and actually sell a company and each make a million dollars.
And at the time I thought that idea was completely wild. I was like if we could just make a million dollars in this industry, we would be set but of course, you know the story we end up blowing past that goal and 2012 and up sewing Socialcam that was kind of a spin-off company from Justin TV for 60 million dollars and then in 2014, we've completely blew past that and sold twist for 970 million. But the funny thing was that despite exceeding my wildest expectations and blowing Beyond them.
You just reset me to a new standard and after a couple months actually was probably a couple of weeks. I just wasn't any happier. You know, I was holding on to more things, but my accomplishments were enough. I looked around me and I thought they're people who have done better. You know, if I was a better entrepreneur, I could have taken this further. If I was a better entrepreneur, I would have raised more money on had an opportunity to go bigger and I looked at my friends with started Dropbox or B&B and thought you know, well, I'm not doing as well as them.
You know, even though I had this billion-dollar company there were people with 10 billion dollar companies or you know now a hundred billion and so that's the Trap, you know, it sounds ridiculous to somebody who's outside of it. But no matter where you're at whether it's making $50,000 $100,000 a millions of dollars of tens of millions of dollars. There's always a next accomplishment around the corner and you always adapt your circumstances and there's always someone who's doing better than you that you can look at and be jealous of
and that really drove me for a very long time afterwards. So I you know, I spent after at which I was at y combinator for a couple of years and after a couple of years there start to get restless and you know been a couple years since we sold twitch and I wasn't hitting any new heights it felt to me that my fame and fortune had plateaued and selective memory about how hard startups were kicked in.
And I started to think oh, well, maybe I could do it again. Maybe I can do it bigger. I started looking at some of the founders weed back during YC when I was a partner and now they're raising money at valuations of hundreds of millions of dollars or billions and I'm thinking these guys aren't any better than me. You know, I should be back in the game starting a new company building something big and it's going to be even bigger than twitch. You know, I started thinking this time it's going to be different and that's the treadmill.
Yeah done. Well, but I friends have done better and my ego was super hungry and wanted to be fed. The desire for more was just something that was constantly present with me and that's why I you know, eventually I decided to leave my sea and start a new company and this time I was like, okay, I'm going to start a company the most mercenary way. I can think of to build something really really big and I was completely dominated by the size of the potential outcome not what was I interested in? What was I passionate about but like what could support what's an industry that
Support a big company, you know ten billion dollar company or a hundred billion dollar one and eventually, you know, the story went on we started this company Atrium with the points on a tree. I'll talk about a tremendous another time here. I want to talk about that's the hedonic treadmill and it's not always obvious when it's affecting us. We might not be aware about it. But that's the struggle that most of us are getting on and off throughout. Our whole lives to me. The irony is that the pursuit of happiness can lead us into this it
Thermal trap of chasing unhappiness being mindful of this is the first step off the treadmill and in the right direction and that direction is in words. So here are some of the lessons that I learned on this path. The first is that it's never enough. If you have a dollar you're going to want 10 if you have $10 you're going to want a hundred the same applies no matter where you're at. You could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars and want Millions. You could be making millions of one tens of millions. I have friends in every
Street whether it's music Finance Sports who are looking at people who are doing better than them or that next Milestone and they're hung up on it. And that pulls them out of the present into living in the future and having anxiety about the future or living in the past and having a regrets about things done in the past or not done in the past that would deliver an outcome different outcome today.
Number two is that the outside world never delivers lasting happiness lasting happiness only comes from within and number three is how I found that happiness. So for me the path to getting off the hedonic treadmill was instead of looking at the external looking inside and starting to focus on what are the things every day that are satisfying. What are the things every day that bring me joy on the satisfying side, you know, the things that helped me set up my day for Success. It was building Habits Like meditation.
To exercise and things I've talked about on this podcast. Those are the things that set up my day for success in a way that no external validation or external achievement can and the second part of that was really activating and triggering my own Joy. So what are the activities that I would do that I would do for free, you know you what was the job that I would do even if no one was paying me. What's the art that I would make even if no one was watching or no one saw it. Those are the things that I want to fill my day with and that's
really how I structure my thinking now in order to stay in that place where I am activating my inner joy and off the hedonic
treadmill.
So
that's it. That's my thought for the day. I hope you guys enjoy it. I hope you guys think about how to apply that thinking and understanding and awareness of the hedonic treadmill into your own lives so that you can choose something different. I wish someone had told me about this 15 years ago. All right, if you like the podcast as always, like I said leave us feedback bang that five star rating on iTunes. And also let me know who you want to see on the podcast. I've been having a ton of fun with this I often get
Get asked why do you want to do a podcast Justin and for me? It's just a really amazing opportunity to connect really deeply with someone for 60 minutes or an hour and a half. I don't know about you guys, but in my life, I don't even spend that much time with my friends asking them about their history and how they're feeling and so the opportunity to do that a couple times a week with this podcast has been really huge blessing. Actually. I love it. So tell me
do you want to see will try to get them on the podcast and I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much, and I love you all.
