The Happiness Feedback Loop
Breaking up or staying together? Where do you want to live? Switching careers? A system for finding unregrettable answers to life's toughest questions.
There are important questions that we ask ourselves either too rarely or too often.
Depending on the day, the answers can change, and it’s never quite clear what we should do. We get stuck in thought-terminating clichés and feel guilty that something should be done but we don’t know what.
The fear of making an irreversible mistake is paralyzing.
The biggest life questions appear as forks in the road of life, and the science of building feedback loops can help us choose the right path.
Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.
Eckhart Tolle - The power of now
First, let’s review my personal case study losing weight to understand how feedback loops work in a simpler environment.
Weight control with feedback loops
My objective: Losing weight. I bought a digital scale to have an objective measurement of my progress. The 2 major pitfalls of using a scale are:
Relying on single measurements.
Using them infrequently or irregularly.
What gets measured, gets managed.
Peter Drucker
Relying on single measurements: I weigh myself daily under the same circumstances, like a ritual. I wake up, I pee and I step on the scale wearing only my underwear. Regardless of this routine, I see 1kg variations from one day to another.
This is because our mass changes constantly throughout each day due to eating, drinking, water retention, going to the toilet, sweating and even breathing.
To mitigate this, I work with averages. The last 7 days give me a weekly weight that won’t fluctuate as much as my daily weight. The good days balance with the bad and the trend becomes a more reliable indicator of my progress (or lack of it).
Weighing ourselves infrequently or irregularly: The more data the better, right? No, beware of the law of diminishing returns. Measuring too frequently creates noise, and doing it sporadically delays the execution of any potential corrective action.
Finding the right cadence for capturing data is crucial.
I could weigh myself every other day, loosening the feedback loop, and my actions would be the same. It’s just more convenient to stick to a daily routine.
Weighing myself twice as often would double the data points without changing my behavior. Twice the effort for zero marginal returns.
We Are Goal-Seeking Machines
We set a target in life’s GPS and move towards it.
How often should we look at the GPS when driving? Keeping our eyes on the screen increases the chances of crashing, whereas never doing it can lead us far away from our destination.
The environment determines how tight the loop should be.
Machines can read a plethora of signals from sensors, only limited by their computing power. Bigger chips mean larger processing power, leading to tighter loops.
Living beings use complex but non-digital sensors such as feelings and emotions. We also have limited tools and energy to process them. We aren’t helpless, we can engineer a feedback loop that moves us to a happier life.
Measuring happiness
Happiness feedback loops require us to ask big, scary questions that influence the foundations of our happiness. We spend too much energy on trivialities like choosing between pizza and tacos on Tuesday night, which won't move the happiness needle at all.
Do I want to live in this house? This city? What about this country?
Do I like my job? Should I change companies? Changing careers?
Am I happy with my current partner? Are we together just because it’s comfortable? Would I be happier being single?
These questions are tough to answer because every option comes with a set of pros and cons.
If the answers were clear, you would have already executed and this question wouldn’t be on your mind.
After struggling with these questions, I’ve discovered a method to navigate life-changing decisions with clarity and confidence. While people praise my courage, it's not just bravery, but using effective systems that truly works.
The next tool will make life dilemmas... manageable.
Weighted Average Decision Matrix (WADM)
This idea is borrowed from the book The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. This technique isolates and prioritizes factors relevant to your decisions. First, you must define 3 things:
Which factors do you care about? (left column)
How much do you care about each? (green numbers)
Which value does each option have for each factor? (blue numbers)
Let’s answer a real question I’ve been struggling with for a long time: Do I want to live in this city?
Do I want to live in this city?
Every inhabitant of northern Europe complains about this topic, especially during winter. Sadly, not many make a conscious decision about it.
There are a multitude of factors to consider: The largest being the sunshine tax: High-income jobs are available in places with terrible weather.
It’s challenging to be completely honest with factor weighting, and ultimately, this tool is just that—a tool. List all the factors that matter to you and grade their importance.
Once you complete the table, it’s time to calculate the overall score for each option.
Own your life and do what feels best instead of obeying the table’s results. If the outcome doesn't sit well with you, it’s a clear signal about what you truly want. The table gets you unstuck, it shouldn’t dictate how you live.
3 strikes and you are out!
If I ask myself Do I want to live in this city? every day, the variance of the responses would drive me crazy. The noise-signal ratio is too high due emotional variables like the weather*, job, interpersonal relationships, health, and stress levels.
Finding the right cadence for you and your question. Some examples:
Every 3 months: Do I like my job?
Every 6 months: Do I want to live in this city?
Every 12 months: Am I happy with my current partner?
The 3 strikes rule: If the last 3 answers suggest a change, there is a strong case for it. A single bad quarter at work doesn’t mean you should quit. Consistent dissatisfaction signals a need for change.
Record your answers and revisit them during the next happiness review cycle to assess if it's time for a change. To help you with this, I've created a free digital template to track your answers and build your happiness feedback loop.
Unstuck yourself fast
We all find ourselves trapped in various areas of our life. I want help everyone break free from the cages we’ve built out of fear, because often, they are open all along.
You’ve reached the end—thanks for reading! I'm curious to hear about the biggest question you're facing right now. Feel free to share, and let's discuss how we can tackle it together.
Bonus note on the importance of the sun
Growing up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I took sunshine for granted.
It’s impossible to explain how depressing it can be to live with only barely seeing the sun. You have to experience it in your skin, words cannot capture the feeling.
Buenos Aires averages 2525.2 hours of sunshine annually. It’s a city where people take notice when it’s raining. Compare that to Amsterdam, where I lived for the past 7 years, averages a meager 1662 hours of sunshine yearly, and people celebrate when the sun finally appears.
Besides all the amazing things Amsterdam has to offer, I don’t want to be happy for only a few months each year.
I travelled a lot on vacations, but in reality, I was escaping from a sense of misery.
Hungry for more?
Some related content I consumed and enjoyed which inspired this post: