Convenience Is Ruining Your Happiness
Convenience is great, isn’t it?
Like many people, until recently, I assumed that convenience is always a good thing. Why would something becoming more convenient hurt? It makes my life easier.
Convenience = Easier…For me!
Driving a motorcycle instead of a bike? You go faster and farther in less time! Driving a car instead of a motorcycle? Even better, now we’re weather protected and can fit more people and stuff. Flying in an airplane instead of driving a car? Saves you tons of time and you can cross the ocean!
Computer controlled sprinkler system that waters the grass for you? Saves time so you can do other things, not to mention you don’t have to remember to water the lawn anymore!
Jeans instead of slacks? They’re strong and durable. They last a long time and take a beating!
Hot water heater in your home? No more having to heat water before a bath like we did in the old days. Just turn a tap and the hot water is always there warmed up and waiting.
The list is endless. Our lives are filled with modern-day conveniences!
Daily Life Externalities
The problem with convenience is we never gain anything for free. Whenever we gain convenience, we’re transferring the “work” onto someone or something else. Convenience feels like our problems disappearing, but instead, they’re often just transformed into new kinds of problems elsewhere.
That shiny new sprinkler system? You went from using a hose to using a system of pumps and electronic control systems. Those systems mean more things to manufacture, which means more energy used, more materials used, and more factory workers needed to produce those things. So your life got easier, but the climate got a little worse, the environment was exploited a little more, and people were made to work a bit more. And this is without discussing the energy usage of the sprinkler system itself.
So that’s an example of convenience’s work getting transferred elsewhere, but not only do the problems get transferred to someone or something else, but it’s likely that it reduces your enjoyment of the activity as well.
This to me is the far more important point: convenience can lead to less life enjoyment.
Let’s make an extreme example: you want to be amazingly good at basketball. Your dream is to play as a pro in the NBA. So you practice every day. Every day you work hard to perfect your shot. Maybe you want to start adding some other small things to make your basketball playing better, easier, more convenient. You find a robot exo-skeleton that connects to your body that takes the shot for you. It guides your hands and arms and legs into exactly the position you need to make the shot 100% percent of the time. Convenient!
But have you improved your basketball? Is it you doing the work to get the result? You could argue that you bought and paid for the robot so you “deserve” the results, but I would argue that the rewarding feeling you would get from that machine would probably be gone within a few days. Why? Happiness comes when we see the result of our hard work…When we achieve something we couldn’t do before. The hard work itself leads to fulfillment. Convenience (in excess) leads to emptiness.
Convenience leads to Wall-E
Remember Wall-E? The humans on the spaceship are the perfect example of what comes of too much convenience.
What I’m Not Arguing: Make everything inconvenient!
I’m not suggesting we should go out of our way to make our lives inconvenient. I’m not making the argument that an inconvenient life is a happy life. What I’m arguing is that our happiness comes from working hard and seeing the fruits of our labor: playing a new piece you mastered on the piano in front of an audience, seeing your child go off to college after raising them for 18 years, biting into an apple that you grew yourself, making shots consistently from the 3-point line, eating a delicious meal you learned how to cook yourself, biking all the way to work everyday. You don’t need me to tell you these things are satisfying accomplishments. They’re all difficult. They all take work. But the results are the kinds of things that give your life meaning, and thus happiness.
The Answer? Hard work. Sorry. But also not sorry! Because I’m convinced you’ll find a more rewarding life from your hard work and thank me later.
What does this have to do with sustainability?
So why do I, the sustainability guy, care about convenience? Because very often the reduction of convenience leads to a more sustainable lifestyle. By switching away from jeans to a fabric that is less resource intensive, you lose the convenience of those jeans, but also reduce the suffering of the planet and people who get paid nickels per hour in dangerous working conditions to make jeans. By swapping car-miles to bike-miles, you’re going to lose the convenience of fast travel, but you’re going to be healthier and so will those around you who have less exhaust to breathe.
These are choices that feel impossible. I spent years flying to different countries for travel. I spent decades eating meat every day. I spent decades driving a car all the time. All of these changes were ones that happened slowly over time. Some of them were pretty difficult at first. But bit by bit, as I realized these choices made my life feel more in line with my own moral values, and thus happier and more fulfilling, I wanted to do more. I prefer my life this way and will continue to make changes to make my life more sustainable.
And yes, sometimes…less convenient. But in exchange, I think I gain something far more valuable.
So try and see if you can do with a little less convenience. You don’t have to get rid of all of it. Just try to reduce it a bit. See how it feels. You might like it. You might come back and thank me later. You might find happiness.
