6 Things That Ruin Experience
Insights from an experience brat.
Comparison/competition. Let’s say you love your job, but your arch enemy wants you to hate it. What can they do? Reveal that your coworker—who, let’s be honest, isn’t as competent as you—gets paid more. Just like that, job ruined.
Time pressure. “Into a perfect work,” Thoreau says, “time does not enter.” What a far cry from the average day of the average American! Do one thing at a time. Do it slowly. Allow space between things. So says a framed piece of paper at a fishing cabin my friend and I go every year—rules which we follow religiously as we fish, eat, sleep, and fish. (And drink beer.)
Degree of difficulty. For example, this post was once a much longer essay that was much less fun to write. Then I gave up on it and wrote a list instead. Fun! In general, when things are too easy or too hard, we give up on them.
Distraction/multiplicity. I can enjoy almost anything as long as I’m allowed to do it singularly—yes, even the dishes. On the other hand, almost anything can be ruined by multitasking.
Expectations. Better not to have them, but also kind of impossible. So good luck.
Other people. “Hell is other people,” Sartre reminds us. But, fortunately, so is heaven. “How could I have forgotten,” Edward Abbey writes, “that the one thing better than solitude, the only thing better than solitude, is society.”