Hedonic Treadmills & Hitting Tennis Balls

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Thanks to a couple of features in the excellent Feed Me newsletter, this humble newsletter has ~doubled its following in the past 2 weeks (from “very small” to “small”).

It’s boom times. We’re hiring for every role imaginable, we’re installing bone broth taps in our headquarters¹, and we’re in talks with the Chainsmokers to headline our next all-hands.

But hypergrowth, as always, comes with a catch.

I get an automatic email whenever someone subscribes, and it has been interesting and deflating to watch my brain over the course of the past few weeks as these emails have come in more of a flurry than a trickle.

When I first began writing here about 10 months ago, it was a rush of validation when someone subscribed. That faded a little, but not much, and the first day or so after Emily kindly told her readers about EBITDOG I had a consistent dopamine high from all the new people, some of them with fancy email addresses, who seemingly care what I have to say.

But in the past two weeks that feeling has dulled considerably. I’ve found myself annoyed if I open Gmail on my phone and I don’t have a little notification about new subscribers. I still get a hit of pleasure when I see one, but it’s become clear that the feeling is ephemeral and even draining; after a day where I got a lot of notifications my brain feels a little bit worn out, like it’s been treading water in a warm pool all day.

I shouldn’t be surprised by this. The diminishing psychological returns of money past a certain point, for example, is a cultural trope, and I’ve experienced this same phenomenon with lots of things. The first soft serve cone of the summer hits way harder than the 3rd of the week in the depths of August². Having a beautiful view in your office is stunning & surreal for the first month and then eventually becomes nice but mundane (although does sometimes pop off at golden hour).

If you’re ever in FiDi and want to get coffee with a view lmk!

The real surprise is that my brain is so bad at internalizing this truth, such that there is still a part of me that believes that if one day I gain enough notoriety to be invited to decadent underground dinner parties with the people who run the world, that will be an everlasting fountain of happiness.

So what to do about this?

I think the essential thing is to find rewards that burn cleanly, that is to say, rewards that do not leave your mind feeling cluttered or sluggish or anxious at the end of the day.

I often think about this passage from Graham Duncan, a writer & hedge fund guy I like a lot (perhaps not coincidentally, he’s exactly the type of person whose dinner parties I’d like to be invited to):

Novak Djokovic said in an interview with the Financial Times that “I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball.” The interviewer replied in surprise: “are there really players who don’t like hitting the ball?” Djokovic answered “Oh yes. There are people out there who don’t have the right motivation. You don’t need to talk to them. I can see it.”

If you can find the thing you do for its own sake, the compulsive piece of your process, and dial that up and up, beyond the imaginary ceiling for that activity you may be creating, my experience is the world comes to you for that thing and you massively outperform the others who don’t actually like hitting that particular ball. I think the rest of career advice is commentary on this essential truth.

Graham Duncan, Letter to a friend who may start a new investment platform

There are lots of rewards to being a professional tennis player. Money, adulation of lots of fans, being freakishly hot and having Heineken pay you for it:

But for the amount they have to hit the tennis ball, that had better be one of their primary and most sustainable rewards.

I feel lucky that I enjoy hitting this particular ball. I like writing and I get pleasure from it independent of any other reward. But it seems beneficial to make sure I structure things so that the rewards from it are sustainable.

When I think about the rewards I get from writing, the ones that “burn cleanly” are

• The act of writing & analysis itself. It’s gratifying to create something new and I feel pleasantly fatigued after hitting publish, like I just ran a few miles.

• Talking with people about ideas: some of the fondest associations I have with this little newsletter are my grandfather and my uncle and some of my friends and colleagues actively commenting on my posts or bringing them up to me. And I love when someone I don’t know yet emails me about a piece and we can chat.

The ones that do not burn cleanly are:

• Getting new subscribers, followers, upvotes or likes

• Money — I’ve made perhaps $200 off of my writing over the years and it has the same psychological dynamic as these other things, even at low amounts. Which is not to say it wouldn’t be nice to earn some money, but I shouldn’t fixate on it (I think this is generally good advice and part of why I think you shouldn’t know your net worth)

So, I’m turning off the notifications I get when I get a new subscriber or a like. But I really would love it if you respond to this email to introduce yourself, or comment and let me know how you think about rewards like this!

1. This is a real thing that a real software engineer earnestly requested at a real company I worked at

2. That third soft serve cone in August still rocks though