Comment by JeanPierre | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JeanPierre | Hacker News Reader

Happiness = Outcome - Expectations. The key to enjoying life is keeping expectations low to the degree that you're always pleasantly surprised.

I find this a bad advice due to many different reasons. First and foremost, startups must have high expectations in order to, well, start up. People would never, ever create a company assuming it would go straight to hell after six months.

What also bothers me with this statement is that, by keeping expectations low, you would probably not work as much as you would if you had higher expectations.

As a final note, I have always kept my expectations very, very high. I always aim for A's at university. Yet, I do not feel less happy than the average Joe, even though I sometimes get a B or a C.

I think you are mistaking "expectations" and "ambitions".

by keeping expectations low, you would probably not work as much as you would if you had higher expectations.

I think the opposite is true-- there are many startups that have failed because they expected the traffic to be there when they launched, because they expected the world to sit up and take notice, instead of realizing that there was a lot of hard work they had to do to get it. Lower expectations, in this case, leads to harder work (and a higher likelihood of success.)

You don't start a company to become happy, and most young entrepreneurs have to work at it for years until they get ROI, so if they went into it with high initial expectations, they're almost guaranteed to burn out before reaching their goals.

Speaking of goals, you're confusing them with expectations. Having high goals and low expectations is generally the most potent mix to ensure that you're working hard. If you're working hard for an exam, but expect you'll only get a B, getting that A makes you happy. If you instead expect the A, and only get a B, you'll be unhappy and discouraged. We all know about that one star student who cried because they got "only a B".

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