There’s a lie that incredible wealth makes people happier. That has never been true. It can remove certain stressors from your life, but it’s a trade. It comes at a cost. You have new stressors and those cannot ever be satisfied.
It’s not just a belief. There’s been studies confirming this. After a certain point adding wealth does nothing to your happiness. Go far enough and you end up miserable, enslaved by your wealth.
It’s a trap. Only a fool wants to be rich.
Woz understood this. He’s the real deal. Jobs did not. Jobs was a pretty damaged person and kept trying to fill that hole with wealth. It didn’t work. It just made him rich and angry. Woz was well adjusted and comfortable. He’s getting what he actually wanted out of life.
John Carmack is another one. For all he’s done, his net worth is only 50 million, but he spends his time developing new tech. I wouldn’t say Carmack is well adjusted, but he doesn’t seem to think making the lives of other people worse will make his life better.
Carmack very visibly just enjoys mental exercise. Watch any of his Quakecon keynotes if anyone needs to see it for themselves. The fact that it results in groundbreaking code for game engines, VR hyper-low latency algorithms, and rocketships is just a byproduct.
And that’s probably the best way to not be turned into an alien by money: never be in it for the result, always find happiness in the process.
There’s a lie that incredible wealth makes people happier. That has never been true. It can remove certain stressors from your life, but it’s a trade. It comes at a cost. You have new stressors and those cannot ever be satisfied.
It’s not just a belief. There’s been studies confirming this. After a certain point adding wealth does nothing to your happiness. Go far enough and you end up miserable, enslaved by your wealth.
It’s a trap. Only a fool wants to be rich.
Woz understood this. He’s the real deal. Jobs did not. Jobs was a pretty damaged person and kept trying to fill that hole with wealth. It didn’t work. It just made him rich and angry. Woz was well adjusted and comfortable. He’s getting what he actually wanted out of life.
John Carmack is another one. For all he’s done, his net worth is only 50 million, but he spends his time developing new tech. I wouldn’t say Carmack is well adjusted, but he doesn’t seem to think making the lives of other people worse will make his life better.
Carmack very visibly just enjoys mental exercise. Watch any of his Quakecon keynotes if anyone needs to see it for themselves. The fact that it results in groundbreaking code for game engines, VR hyper-low latency algorithms, and rocketships is just a byproduct.
And that’s probably the best way to not be turned into an alien by money: never be in it for the result, always find happiness in the process.