4 Frameworks to Live a Happier Life
How can we build a life that we can truly love?
This is a question that I’ve been pondering over the last week. It’s not easy to answer, but it’s certainly worth thinking about.
On one of my Sunday walks, I found some answers while listening to a podcast episode featuring Sahil Bloom.
Sahil is the Founding Partner at $10M fund SRB Ventures, an angel investor in more than 30 companies, and over the past two years has become a viral content creator with his Twitter following growing from 0 to over 1 million followers. But what’s more impressive is he’s done all this while being a husband and at the same time a father to his first child.
In the 1-hour podcast episode, he distilled ways to systematize our life so that we can obtain wealth beyond money, create tools for health and relationships, and maximize advice that can lead us to a more fulfilling life.
Here are 4 of them which I find to be incredibly useful.
1. The Yes-Damn Effect 😅
The best predictor of how busy we are going to be next week is how busy we are right now.
Most of us are overly optimistic with our time. We mistakenly believe we’ll have more time in the future than we actually do. That’s why we commit to plans that we eventually regret in the end.
I fall prey to this time trap quite often. Once, my friends planned to have lunch on a Saturday. That same day, I also had a meeting with one of my college orgs. I promised to attend both.
“I’m pretty busy now, but I bet I’ll have time on Saturday,” I told myself.
But I didn’t. I still had tons of course requirements to finish that day. And to make things more complicated, I got invited to an event that would have been relevant to my career. I just couldn’t say no, so I ended up saying yes to three commitments despite knowing that I won’t have enough time and energy for all of them.
When the day came, I managed to attend all three. But when I got home, I was completely exhausted. Midway through the day, I wanted to just go home and rest, but I couldn’t because I said yes and I wanted to honor my commitments.
This phenomenon of overcommitting is called the “yes-damn effect.” It’s a term coined by Gal Zauberman of the Wharton School of Business. It’s a cognitive bias that describes our tendency to say “yes” to things which we’ll eventually regret, even if we know we should have said “no” instead.
It’s called the “yes-damn effect” because you say yes in the moment, but when the time comes you say, “Damn, why did I agree to that?”
Now, making decisions is often never easy. And it’s in our nature to overestimate the amount of time we have in the future. That’s why Sahil gives the following advice:
📌 As a rule of thumb, if you’re going to say yes to anything because you think you’ll have more time or energy for it in the future, say no instead.
It’s also helpful to consider the following before making a choice:
Delay your decision. We’re more likely to say yes in the moment, so it’s wise to give ourselves time to think before deciding. Give yourself at least one day.
Ask yourself: Could I do this tomorrow? You likely won’t have more time next week than you would tomorrow, so consider whether you could say yes to the commitment if it’s already scheduled for the following day. If the answer is “no,” it’s probably going to be “no” in the future as well.
Make it clear when you say no. I often sugarcoat things when declining an invite since I don’t want to hurt or offend anyone. But by being unclear about my “no,” I’m giving people hope that I could attend when I actually can’t. I didn’t know then that this creates an inconvenience to others. So it’s much better to say no and be clear about it.
Of course, there are exceptions. If a commitment is truly important like your best friend’s birthday or an occasional family trip, you may want to prioritize that. Do the reverse and commit to those events over everything else.
The key thing here is that in making decisions, we should be careful about how much time we think we have in the future. This will protect us from making decisions we regret, which will help us take care of our happiness and well-being.
2. Deferred Happiness Syndrome 🙃
Sahil’s advice on how to avoid the yes-damn effect is useful for when you’re prone to overcommitment. But just as important, we should also remember the opposite version of the yes-damn effect, which is this:
📌 If you want to do something assuming you’ll have time for it in the future, just find time to do it as soon as you can.
We have this tendency to fall prey to the “deferred happiness syndrome.” We believe in the idea of working hard today so that we could enjoy happiness in the future.
This idea seems to make sense, except the idea we believe in is put to the extreme. Our culture makes us believe that we should exert all our time and energy to our careers today, so that when we retire, we can finally enjoy the good life.
The problem with this is that it doesn’t tell us how difficult it would be to enjoy our retirement plans at age 55 or 60. Because while we would have more time, we’d no longer have as much energy.
It’s not hard to see how traveling the world when you’re 30 is more enjoyable than when you’re 55. But even in things that don’t involve money, the value still decreases over time. For one, spending time with your family now is much more valuable than it would be several years into the future.
A peso in the future is worth less than a peso today. The same applies to time.
In the Philippines, it’s an unspoken rule to give back to your parents once you graduate and start working. While it’s not the child’s responsibility, it’s just the most sensible thing to do if you’ve been raised with love and care for many years.
For those of us who intend to do that, we often make plans for our parents that’s set in the far future. We work tirelessly every day to save up for that trip to Boracay or to buy them a new house. And this is truly a sweet and thoughtful gesture, but don’t forget to also show love and appreciation to your parents today.
One of the biggest mistakes we could make is to get too caught up with our careers that we forget to spend quality time with our family in the present. The same goes for the other things in life that matter to us.
So when you can, take time to think about the following:
What is something you are putting off all because you think you’d have more time for it in the future? Can you find a way to make time for it now, when the value of that time is far greater than it would be in the future?
3. The Friends List 🫂
Let’s face it, we all have this natural tendency to become a sloth—slow to act, too lazy to move.
If we don’t help ourselves decide what to focus on, we’ll do the easiest and most useless thing just to convince ourselves we did something productive. We simply won’t do stuff even if we know they’re important.
This is true even in the context of our friendships. As we become busy with life and adulting stuff (ugh, I know), we’ll start to struggle to find time to reach out to our friends. And before we know it, we have already stopped talking to them for months—maybe even years.
That’s why Sahil urges us to build a system around maintaining our friendships:
📌 ACTION STEP: Create a list of people you want to stay in touch with. Set a schedule each week (be specific on the date and time) to chat, text, or call one of your friends in the list.
Many times in the past, I ended up not talking to a close friend for months just because I was busy with studying or work. That’s why recently, I’ve been more keen about maintaining my relationships. I’ve started building my “friends list” and created a weekly calendar event telling me to reach out to at least one friend in this list.
Just last week, I hopped on a Discord call with my friends from Cebu, who I haven’t talked to for two years! I think it’s crazy how the puhon in “catch up ta puhon” (let’s catch up soon) took that long. 🥲
But now that I have my friends list, I’m pretty sure that won’t happen again.. at least, I hope it won’t.
It doesn’t mean that I’ll only do this once a week though. It’s simply a way to ensure that I make an effort to maintain my friendships regularly, even when I’m super busy.
4. The Life Dinner 🍽️
Every month, Sahil and his wife would go out for dinner and have an honest conversation on topics that are important to them—their careers, relationships, struggles, and overall well-being.
They call this “the life dinner” because it’s a dinner where they talk about life (yup, you guessed it). It’s a simple way to ensure that they still communicate even when they’re occupied by the busyness of life.
We all believe that communication is an important part of any relationship, but how often do we actually sit down and communicate with our partner?
Even among those that have healthy relationships, the time will come when it’ll be difficult to find time to have these kinds of conversations. Life will just get in the way as it always does.
So, what Sahil is suggesting is that in order to avoid this kind of struggle, it would help to block out time each month to have these talks. The dinner itself, in my opinion, is completely optional, but it’s a great way to setup the mood.
📌 ACTION STEP: Decide on a monthly schedule that you and your partner can commit to. Choose to spend that time talking about stuff that matter to the both of you.
If you’re wondering what are the topics you should talk about, Sahil suggests asking the following questions:
What is important in your career right now? How can I support you?
What are the things that matter in your personal life at the moment?
What is something that has been bothering you lately? What kind of help or support can I provide?
These questions may sound generic, but I think they’re great starting points. Treat these as guides that will help you ask better questions. And when you do ask, just be sure to listen (like really listen).
Personally, when I have these conversations with my partner, the most important thing to me is that I remain interested about my partner’s life and how she’s feeling. This makes me understand her better, which then helps me see how I can be a better partner.
To give a quick recap, here are 4 things to keep in mind when you want to build a happier and more fulfilling life:
The Yes-Damn Effect 😅
Deferred Happiness Syndrome 🙃
The Friends List 🫂
The Life Dinner 🍽️
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I hope you found them to be profoundly helpful like I did.
Ever since I graduated, I’ve been more keen about living a life that I actually love. My goal is to spend the rest of my days as best as I can while being in full control. And I’ve always found tools and frameworks to be helpful, especially with how easy it is to get too caught up with the busyness of life.
Anyway, that’s pretty much it.
Ad meliora,
Linart 🐢