→ Do You Need Self Discipline To Have Fun?

I can relate to this excellent post by Scott Young, where he makes the case that ease of doing an activity and its enjoyment aren’t the same. Consider:

Sometimes I’ll see that movie X is award-winning, has 95%+ on Rotten Tomatoes and rave reviews. But it looks like a difficult movie, so I opt for something more poorly reviewed and trashy. However, if I think back over my experience of movie-watching, movies of the first type I almost always enjoy while movies of the latter type I often regret watching.

This above example is something that I’ve done myself, with the same outcome as Scott’s i.e. I end up regret watching a movie that has poorer reviews but was “easier” to watch. He goes on to say:

while pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance are powerful human motives, they aren’t the only ones. Seeking cognitive and physical ease is sometimes a more powerful one, and it can override the desire for a more enjoyable option, if that option is perceived as being more “difficult” in some way.