Category — Viewpoints

For all the faithful readers, I know, I’ve not been updating this blog/site that regularly. First, life happens and number 2, I get distracted from time to time. The third reason is because I decided to spend less time in front of the computer and pull myself from the computer. This third reason was a partial success. While I stopped doing some stuff on the computer to clear my thinking, being too relaxed to not good. More about this later.

The good part is, I went back to swimming fairly regularly. It is something I really enjoyed from my younger days. Being able to move fast in the water with relaxing bubbling sound works great for me. From just a few laps, I managed to push myself to swim thirty 50m laps. I stopped swimming because I have to drive 20kms to and from the pool. I hate to generate more fumes to get healthy.

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I came across the phrase Hedonic Treadmill today. It seem quite alien to me and I looked up the meaning.

Investopedia defined it as “The tendency of a person to remain at a relatively stable level of happiness despite a change in fortune or the achievement of major goals. According to the hedonic treadmill, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness”

The theory behind Hedonic Treadmill is not all that hard to understand. Human beings adapt to changes in the surrounding environment. So when your financial environment change, we quickly adapt. For example, if you are making say $ 5,000 a month and you can pay all your bill with some left over, if your income doubles to $ 10,000 overnight, you will be happy initially. After sometime, you get used the the $ 10,000 income per month lifestyle and the level of your happiness reverts back to the level when you are making $ 5,000.

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