Arrival fallacy: what reaching a goal really felt like.
The arrival fallacy is the belief that reaching a long-imagined goal will transform how you feel. For example, the author imagined a number one best seller for three years. However, when it happened, the feeling lasted about forty minutes, and then came an email about a missing tax number.
A Tuesday in Stockholm.
In June 2023, at about a quarter past four, an orange tag appeared. As a result, the author's book Everything in Excess is Good was number one in business strategy on Amazon UK Kindle. At the time, he sat on an unmade bed in a rented Stockholm apartment. Meanwhile, his French bulldog slept against his ankle while the radiators ticked.
What he expected and what came instead.
For three years, he imagined his chest opening and his anxiety finally putting itself down. In addition, he pictured champagne and calling his mother. Instead, his shoulders stayed up and his pulse dropped. So he drew one line through a notebook goal. After that, he drank cold coffee and opened a client email.
In fact, it came from Guadalajara, about a Queretaro invoice missing an RFC.
Why the arrival fallacy matters before you decide.
By five o'clock, the feeling was gone. Then one irritating thought arrived: the result now had to stay there tomorrow. In short, three years of imagining bought forty minutes of arrival. Therefore, whatever you picture after your notice period, it will be a Tuesday, and you will be the same person.
Check your arrival fallacy before you resign.
First, write the exact moment you imagine after leaving, then describe the ordinary Tuesday that follows it.
Next, list three tasks likely waiting for you that Tuesday afternoon.
From the book.
Whatever you are picturing on the other side of your notice period, it won't be the picture. It'll be a Tuesday, and you'll be in it, and you'll be the same person you were the Tuesday before.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 6: You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong
Questions about arrival fallacy.
What is the arrival fallacy in this story?
It is expecting a long-imagined goal to transform you. Instead, the feeling lasted only about forty minutes.
What replaced the feeling?
Instead, a worry arrived that the ranking had to stay there tomorrow, or it would look like a fluke.
Why share this before I decide?
Because knowing it in advance is strange, but finding it out afterwards is much stranger.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 6, “You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Impact bias: why you misjudge future feelings.
- 02 Focusing illusion: why your job gets too much weight.
- 03 Self employed life satisfaction: the five-year gap.
- 04 Job satisfaction vs life satisfaction: two scores.
- 05 Hedonic adaptation: why autonomy does not wear off.
- 06 Impact bias criticism: what the research can claim.
- 07 Mood diary: a one-line log for two weeks.
- 08 Arrival fallacy: what reaching a goal really felt like.