According to Lerner and Schlechter, “If your roommate shows up packing an Xbox, it is likely to cut thirty minutes off your study time each day and lower you GPA by .2 points.” In the previous chapter, Lerner and Schlechter reported that “good humor helps you score gigs that put you in a better position to succeed.” If an Xbox put you in a good mood, couldn't that help you "score gigs"?
How can you determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success?
Who is best suited to make that kind of judgement about an individual—the individual themselves?
Someone close to them? Or an outsider?
Answer any or all of the above.
ReplyDeleteHow can you determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success?
Determining when short-term happiness can become a threat to long-term success is when maturity and self-control work together to create the task of cutting yourself from the things that rob you of your valuable time, especially in college. It's the difficult part of becoming an adult - realizing that the only one who will do this for you, is you. It’s your choice to decide when you’ve had enough of something. Short-term, temporary happiness from something or someone is very beneficial until it becomes a priority, exceeding others of more importance. The important part about this is recognizing when to adjust your time with a person or doing something before it becomes overbearing and eventually overtakes your schedule and becomes a habit over doing the right thing first. Though the person or activity might bring joy right then and there, it is far more influential to you than just in the moment. Knowing when to look ahead and see how damaging it is can determine how easy or difficult you make success for yourself as an adult.
Lizzie Jones
How can you determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success?
ReplyDeleteShort-term happiness is a burst of positive feelings that can go away just as quickly (hence the "short-term"). Say I wanted to buy an ice cream for myself every day or go see a movie twice a week; thinking in the moment, these expenses don't seem all that drastic. But if I were to keep that up for a long time, like a year, and added up the total cost, I could have a potential financial problem, because even though it brought me a small bit of happiness, it costs me a lot more in the long run. You could also use the example of an addiction like smoking. We all know that smoking is habit-forming because of a number of chemicals that give the brain a feeling of euphoria. The problem is, people will spend their whole lives trying to reach that first feeling, so they spend their whole lives feeding their addiction in search of that short-term happiness. I don't think I need to go into much detail over the long-term issues that this puts on one's health.
We can determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success based on if we are doing whatever activity is in question so much that it adds up quickly and is a distraction to our goals.
How can you determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success?
ReplyDeleteWho is best suited to make that kind of judgement about an individual—the individual themselves?
Short term happiness can be a serious threat to long term success when it starts to creep into the prep time needed for the long term success. You need something to kill time and help relieve stress or else you will suffer and be miserable. For many that is video games or movies or cheesy reality TV shows. It is so easy in many of those situations to say "One more episode, One more round" until its 11:30 and you have math homework due at 11:59. That is when It can become a problem when the time crept up on you and the time you actually needed to do homework or study was wasted on something dumb and now the panic you feel may be overwriting however good it felt to lie there. I believe that someone should make their own timeline and decide when they can goof off and when they should do actual work, but some people are weak and may need that extra kick in the pants from a friend or family member to get going.
Didn't realize I was posting as anonymous, Luke West made this post
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DeleteHow can you determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success? Who is best suited to make that kind of judgment about an individual—the individual themselves? Someone close to them? Or an outsider?
ReplyDeleteI think that short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success when an activity that makes someone happy short-term gets in the way of someone actually being successful. For example, say playing video games makes someone happy, however, playing video games will only make someone happy only for the time that they are actively doing it. This will result in being less successful for two reasons. First of all, it will take more time away from doing something that will make someone successful. Second, because video games only provide for short-term happiness, a person would not necessarily be as happy while doing homework as they would be if they were engaging in an activity that promotes longer-term happiness. Because they are not truly happy while doing things that would make them successful, this can lead to negative impacts on their personal success. An easy solution to this is by replacing an activity that results in short-term happiness with an activity that provides long-term happiness. It definitely depends on the situation, but I think that both an individual or someone close to them would be best suited to make judgments about activities that provide short-term happiness getting in the way of success. In situations when an individual is too caught up in their activities that provide them short-term happiness to be able to see how those activities have affected their success, then I think it is reasonable for someone close to them to make those judgments. In other cases, I think that an individual alone should be responsible for making those judgments and enacting change in their lives.
I personally disagree, I believe short term happiness can be a very beneficial resource to long term success. I believe due to what the book claimed about happy people being more successful. Using the books example where short term happiness in the form of candy boosted the results of people taking a test. So short term happiness is not necessarily a bad thing. I think if you use it properly as like a reward it can make you more successful and happy in life. like how you can't just cram all night and do well on a test. Rewarding yourself after each time you study, and starting many days in advance is the best way to prepare for a test. So short term happiness being used as a reward could probably boost your success more than just sheer studious dedication can.
DeleteHow can you determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success?
ReplyDeleteAt some point in an individual’s life, they must pause and take a moment to self-reflect on the current things going on in their life. Self-reflection is the key to determine if a short-term thing is a threat to long-term success. As a student, it is very easy to get off track or put your schoolwork on the back burner. “Let’s go out to eat tonight, I’ll do my homework later…” Does that sound familiar? Because it sure does to me. Say the next couple days things get in the way, you got called into work, or you have an unexpected event come up. Now you wish you wouldn’t have gone out to eat the other night because now you have to pull an all-nighter to be able to turn your paper in tomorrow morning. This is the crucial moment of self-reflection and realization that everyone needs to start doing more of, including me. Like just about anything else in this world, you live, and you learn. At this point is when you can determine whether the short-term happiness (a full stomach) is a potential threat to your long-term success (good grades). Now next time you want to go out and eat, you will surely think twice about it.
Who is best suited to make that kind of judgement about an individual—the individual themselves?
ReplyDeleteThis is a challenging question. Some could argue that the individual themselves knows what's best for them, but sometimes that clearly isn't the case. In my opinion, the person or people that should make that judgement are your close friends. Friends are there to help you stay on the right track, and if that's not who your friends are, then you need to re-evaluate your relationship with them. Friends should only want best for you, not to bolster your occasional irresponsible decisions.
I think the difference is when short term happiness acts as a blockade to your long term happiness. When the short term (addiction, gaming, drinking) begins to keep you from your long term (work, friends, school, family). If you are the one struggling, the best way to figure out if this you, is to ask someone close to you if they feel as though you are ignoring the actual things that make you happy.
ReplyDeleteI do not think short-term happiness is a complete blockade to long-term success. I think that short-term happiness, in moderation, can be a mood booster and can actually help us achieve long term.
DeleteI don’t think that playing some video games or watching a movie at night for a stress reliever will necessarily affect your GPA or other possible successes in the future. However, if someone spends so much time doing these things that they do not make time to study or do homework, than this is a problem. It is never good to let things of zero importance get in our way of doing things that actually are important. At that point short-term happiness can definitely become a threat to success. Short-term happiness also becomes a threat to success when you use harmful things such as drugs and alcohol for stress relievers and enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteShort term happiness begins to affect long-term success when you start to value these short serotonin boosts over doing things that in turn will bring life long happiness. Isolating yourself instead of going and leaning on others, choosing gaming over doing homework that is already so stressful without procrastination, and begins affecting all aspects of life turning into an addiction.
ReplyDeleteMallory Forgione
DeleteI think it can be very easy to determine when short term happiness can affect long term success. I think when that happiness starts to take you away from bettering yourself it can be a good sign to know that it will hinder your success. For example, when you start to choose to play Xbox instead of studying. Not just playing it in general, but replacing valuable study time with it.
ReplyDeleteI think the individual themselves is best to make the judgment about themselves. They know what they've been through and how to react to it. Now that doesn't mean other people won't also be able to make helpful observations about it as well. I would want my best friend to reach out to me and help correct me back onto my path.
It can be difficult to see when you are putting your short-term happiness above your long-term success. The most obvious answer to this question is to look at how much time you spend on the activity that brings you short-term happiness. However, this can often be more difficult than it sounds. Sometimes you do not realize how much time you spend on a particular activity and thus will not make any changes. Another way to check yourself is to evaluate how much time you are spending thinking about short-term happiness. This is an indicator that short-term happiness is a threat to your long-term success. I you spend more time thinking about what brings you short-term happiness, this often means that your desire is to play the Xbox is greater than studying for an important exam. Thinking about the Xbox is also a distraction to your studying. The greater the gap in thinking about the Xbox and studying, the greater the threat could be to your long-term success.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOne of the ways I determine if short-term decisions are threats to my long-term success starts with one question: "what decisions right now will affect me in 5 years?" If there are decisions or other things in the next few weeks that would affect my long-term goals, like class finals or important applications, those get upmost priority over things that do not affect me in the future, like playing games or scrolling on social media. The person best suited to make judgements about an individual’s future varies from person to person.
Individuals who are self-sufficient, have good organizational skills, and initiative can be mostly trusted to make their own decisions about their long-term success. Contrastingly, some individuals have trouble with achieving their long-term goals and need other people to help them with decisions and push them in a good direction. These individuals have their starting and ending points, but they have difficulties making long-term decisions for their success.
Both groups would benefit from another person to help them with their long-term success. Individuals who have plans for their long-term success could benefit from another person’s feedback about backup plans or for seeing their plan from a different perspective. Individuals without a plan could work with someone to make a plan and help enact it.
How can you determine when short-term happiness is a threat to long-term success?
ReplyDelete-If engaging in the activities that provide you with short-term happiness start to interfere with your goals that will lead you to long-term success, that is an indicator of it becoming a threat to your success. For example, if playing video games is your source of short-term happiness but you find yourself choosing to play video games over doing something important towards your long-term success, (such as studying for an exam), then you know that your long-term success is being threatened. I think it is important to set boundaries and learn to balance the things that bring us happiness so that you are able to do these things without it harming future success.
Short term happiness is not a threat to your future success. In fact, in the book, it says happiness can increase your performance in anything you do, from taking exams to your performance at a job. The problem is how people obtain this happiness and where their priorities are. If you do something harmful to your body regularly for happiness like say drugs it does not matter how happy it makes you, it is a problem. If you prioritize even good activities that grant you short term happiness over making progress towards your future, that is also a problem. The way I determine if this short term happiness is causing me problems is well, to look for the problems. you'll have ample warning, the work will start piling up, and you will start missing out on opportunities you planned to take, there are many various tells for it. The more attention you pay to these tells the earlier you will catch it becoming an issue and correct it.
ReplyDeleteThe short-term happiness I might get from eating a Taco Bell burrito might, in the long term, affect my personal health. The true test of whether or not a moment of short-term happiness might affect long-term goals is how you feel when thinking about them. If you’re thinking of doing something because it will make you happy at that moment, but there is any form of hesitation, you should heavily reconsider that action. Doing so might help you avoid some nasty long-term effects. When it comes to the decision of doing the action, it should truly only be up to the individual doing said action. However, that cannot be said if the action might directly or indirectly harm others, physically or mentally. While some short-term happiness might be felt by making a seemingly harmless joke, a person with a different perspective might see it as a personal attack or an insult to their character.
ReplyDeleteShort-term happiness becomes a threat to long-term success when it is cutting into the time necessary to complete tasks related to long term success. I don’t believe the existence of the XBOX in a college student's life is what is causing the change's negative effects, it is the students' time management. When they need X amount of time to complete a homework assignment,they should alot that time for that homework. What happens instead is s student spends too much time on the XBOX and ends up with only .5X leftover time for the homework assignment. Gaming consoles can also be used as a tool for procrastination. For example, if a child is offered to play an hour of Fortnite OR do an hour of homework they will choose Fortnite. If you offer someone with time management skills an hour of Fortnight and then tell them they have an hour worth of homework they should choose the homework. When the homework is finished they may play the game, utilizing time management and prioritizing necessary work over optional play.
ReplyDeleteI believe that a person is perfectly equipped to make that judgment about themselves, however, it is much easier for a person to make excuses for themselves. It is much harder to ignore if a trusted friend tells someone they are worried about their behavior. It is harder to argue with the points of a trusted individual than it is for one to ignore their own mind. This is especially true when a person has to make a decision to withhold from pleasure to begin a task that is unenjoyable.
Instant gratification and short-term happiness are often linked closely together, as it is commonplace that both go hand-in-hand. While not necessarily bad on its own, society often views both phenomena in a negative light due to its possible infringement on long-term happiness. However, I believe that it depends on the situation whether or not it can be considered a threat. More specifically, that determination is based on the circumstances of the individual, and it is entirely up to them whether or not it negatively impacts them. Taking the “Xbox metaphor” as an example, games often reward players with instant gratification to ensure they continue to play the game. If someone prioritizes that short-term happiness over a more important responsibility, that prioritization of short-term happiness could be considered as a threat to their long-term happiness. However, when a person is playing the game responsibly, that game-enforced instant gratification can span from neutral to positive, touching on the possibility that Lerner and Schlechter posed, where the Xbox that puts you in a good mood could ultimately lead to a more positive outcome.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, the threshold of threat relies on other factors, as well as the responsibility of the individual. Don’t play games when you have a test to study for.
Bailey Howe