I finally finished reading Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow this past weekend.
It’s a monumental read, dense with insight into how our minds don’t work the way we think they do, and how much of the thinking we do is an uphill battle against biases that are hard (or impossible!) for us to see.
The book closes with one of the more tragic biases: the focusing illusion, which Kahneman poses as this:
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.
As he tells it, the illusion first struck him during a family debate about whether or not to move to California.
We’re all familiar with the trope that Californians love California—but the idea that living in California alone improves the quality of their lives, Kahneman realized, is an outcome of the focusing illusion. The reality is that Californians aren’t always walking around in a state-induced haze. The reality is that Californians aren’t much happier on average than anyone else in the country. But if you ask them whether they like where they live, they focus on California with its mild weather and progressive policies and sunny outlook.
When my wife and I moved across the country from New York to Colorado five years ago, we were convinced that Colorado was a better place for us to live than Manhattan. We’d convinced ourselves, in fact, that Colorado made us happier.
But five years later, the nearness of the move has faded. I no longer think, randomly and elatedly, as I used to—”I live in Colorado!” With two small kids to look after, there’s not as much free headspace for such thoughts.
But when someone asks me about life in Colorado, the focusing illusion kicks in, narrows my thinking. Tee me up with “How do you like living here?” and I will happily swing away.
But am I happier? I think so, but that may have more to do with who I am today rather than where I live.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Taylor Coe 