perpetually dissatisfied individual seeking happiness
the ameliorative/existential and telic/atelic divides
Welcome back to Of Counsel, my monthly advice & asks column. If you ever find yourself wondering, “What would Cece do/think?” then you’ve come to the right place! You can find previous columns here and submit questions here.
It’s also my one-year anniversary on Substack! To celebrate this anniversary and the holidays, I’m running an exclusive holiday promotion until January 1, 2024:
Becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to my inner sanctum—essays and private podcast episodes on nascent ideas that need to be nurtured like newborn kittens. Subscribing also helps ensure that my informational and educational content on Substack and all other platforms remains freely available to all. Thank you so much for reading—I am so lucky to have you here.
Hi Cece! I know you've spoken about always "moving the goalposts" on yourself (i.e., being a star associate, equity partner, etc). Could you speak on how you deal with this perpetual dissatisfaction? I've been experiencing this quite a lot lately. I'm joining one of the largest asset managers in my dream role next summer in NYC (which has been a goal since I was in elementary school watching Suits), but I feel dissatisfied once I've signed it. I feel like I can do so much more–apply to grad school, recruit again for a new grad role in hopes of more compensation, make a real impact by working for the Fed, etc.
- Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Congrats on achieving one of your long-held goals! That’s no small feat, and you shouldn’t sell yourself short on all of the work and efforts that went into making it happen, from that first moment you watched Suits to now.
I’m going to be frank with you: yes, you can do so much more. You can always do so much more. We can both apply to more, make more money, strive to be in different organizations that we think will “have more impact.” This will never not be true, as long as we are alive. We are, and will always, fall short of our full objective potential.
However, we’re not alone. Senior Big Law partners feel this way. Tenured professors at prestigious schools feel this way. Heck, even revered artists like Michelangelo and Gauguin feel this way. Know that this dissatisfaction is not a sign that you’re weird but rather a sign that you’re human, like all the rest of us.
Professor Kieran Setiya, the above tenured professor at a prestigious school (a philosophy professor at MIT), wrote about the phenomenon of the mid-career crisis (akin to the midlife crisis). His article is worth a read in its entirety, but I want to home in on two classifications he makes.
Ameliorative vs. Existential Values
When you are presented with a problem and must come up with a solution, doing so is ameliorative. You are addressing the problem presented, whether that’s your grade in a class, offers for jobs, or helping a client with a multi-million dollar transaction. Fixing things is necessary, sometimes even handsomely paid, but constantly and only fixing things leads to limited satisfaction. The value of working hard is dimmed, if we work only to fix things for other people.
Existential value, on the other hand, attaches to activities that promote your particular vision of the “good life,” whatever that may mean to you. Maybe it’s mentoring underrepresented students to help them attain the same opportunities that you were given. Maybe it’s starting a blockchain group in your company. Or maybe it’s playing guitar again or watching TV. Whatever it is—it can be in the office or outside of it—doing the activity gives you a surge of existential value, that brief synchronization of your heartbeat with the world, where you feel connected with your existence.
Telic vs. Atelic Activities
The second classification Professor Setiya makes is between telic and atelic activities. Telic activities are those that have determinable, terminal states—signing the merger, getting accepted into grad school, making $1 million in a year. “These activities aim at their own annihilation.” These activities bring some satisfaction, of course, because we enjoy surveying the fruits of our labor, but then the next telic task arrives. We must annihilate the next goal.
Atelic activities are those without a determinable, terminal point. When we travel, we are more likely to engage in atelic activities—instead of “commuting” (as we do to/from school and work), we “explore.” Instead of having a coffee chat with a professor with an eye towards asking them for a recommendation letter, we talk to shopkeepers, bartenders, hostel/hotel guests to learn more about them and to connect with others. The difference is minute, and it’s possible to treat all activities as telic even in environments that lend themselves to atelic natures—but the difference is important.
Balancing Ameliorative/Existential and Telic/Atelic
Now, you probably already see how the moving goalposts you have—getting a job at the asset management firm, getting into grad school, getting job offers out of grad school with even higher comp, working for the Fed—are primarily telic activities. They exist for the sake of one day not existing. It’s no wonder that achieving them feels empty—their very aim is to become empty.
All of my life goals and achievements in life thus far have been ameliorative and telic. Get into college; get good grades; get into law school; get a Big Law job; get 100,000 followers; get a book deal. They all seek to solve a problem that society—through my parents, teachers, culture at large—have posed to me. They all demand that I achieve their non-existence.
Recognizing that I am exceedingly attuned to ameliorative/telic activities (most activities in school and a professional services career like law are ameliorative/telic), I have been trying out—and actually taking note of—which activities in my life I find existential/atelic. For a week, I did mood tracking in my Notes app—just a simple bullet with every hour, my mood on a scale of 1-10, and the activity that I was engaging in at the time. (There are also apps and wearables that help with mood tracking.)
What I discovered:
Emails worsen my mood. If I woke up and immediately looked at my emails, even if they weren’t for urgent tasks, I was immediately in a worse mood for the morning. The emails weighed on me, and I kept on drafting responses in my head even while I was supposed to be present for other activities like yoga or coffee with someone.
I really enjoy watering my plants. This was an unexpected one, because historically, I often slowly killed my plants. I’d recognize that I should water them, be thinking about needing to do something else (usually emails), and then decide I don’t have time to water them that day. They would slowly wilt, and then whenever I thought about watering them, I would look at them wilting, criticize myself, and then give up. What’s the point; they’re already dead. But it turns out that I love taking care of them. When I look at them growing, changing, every week, it makes me happy.
I love talking to people. Coffee chats, dinner parties, even Zoom calls (if they’re not 100% of my human interaction)—they all improved my mood. These meetings would frequently run over—the 30-minute meeting becomes 45, the restaurant is closing—and I’d still be happy afterwards. I’d only ever get upset with myself if I then started thinking about something else I needed to do—again, usually emails—which would make me feel guilty about the activity I just engaged in. Basically, I annihilated an enjoyable activity’s enjoyableness. Because of emails.
In light of the above, I realized I was structuring my life to maximize ameliorative/telic activities and minimize existential/atelic activities. Which is silly! Why was I starting off my day immediately with an ameliorative/telic activity? Why did I often skip or guilt myself over existential/atelic activities that I found enjoyable? Am I daft??
As with all things in life, of course, the goal isn’t to have all ameliorative/telic activities or all existential/atelic activities. In fact, many ameliorative/telic activities have existential/atelic components, if we just know where to look. I hate answering emails, but what if I time-bound when I answer emails and view emails more as talking to people? The goal isn’t to never have goals, after all. The goal is to attain a balance, be mindful of where we currently are in the balance, and know that balance will never be truly ours. We will tilt back and forth, a dinghy in a storm, with only one imperative we can actually achieve: keep on navigating forward.
If you’re curious to learn more about these types of productivity anxieties, I highly recommend Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.* Or binge-watch all of Attack on Titan, which has a stunning conversation at the end on this very idea. (Warning: Potential mild spoilers, but I think it’s pretty self-contained and doesn’t give much away.)
Do these reflections and restructurings “fix” everything? No; my anxieties about the future still overwhelm me and steal my joy. But it happens less often now, and I even sang karaoke again for the first time in a decade. ◆
* This newsletter may contain affiliate links, which are denoted with a *, which means I earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Thank you for reading debrief! If you enjoyed this post, consider upgrading your subscription or sharing this post:
Becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to my inner sanctum—essays and private podcast episodes on nascent ideas that need to be nurtured like newborn kittens. Subscribing also helps ensure that my informational and educational content on Substack and all other platforms remains freely available to all. From now until January 1, 2024, you can subscribe for 25% off forever!
Please know, though, that having you here and being able to be in conversation with you is the most important thing to me. If you are a student without disposable income, un-or under-employed, or a minimum-wage worker, just email me or fill out this form and I’ll comp you a free subscription, no questions asked. If you’d like to donate one of these subscriptions, you can do so here.