Focusing illusion: why your job gets too much weight.
The focusing illusion means that whatever you are paying attention to gets too much weight when you compare two lives. So your job, which you think about daily, looks like the whole difference. Meanwhile, the rest of your life, which would follow you, barely counts.
The California study in two questions.
In 1998, David Schkade and Daniel Kahneman questioned students in the American Midwest and Southern California. First, they asked how satisfied each student was with their own life. Then they asked how satisfied someone similar would be living in the other place.
Everybody agreed that Californians must be happier, because of the sunshine and the beaches. However, both groups reported the same life satisfaction. It was not close, it was identical.
Why the visible difference wins.
When you compare two lives, the difference between them is the only thing you can see. For example, climate is visible from a long way away. But everything else is your actual life, which stays roughly the same wherever it happens. Schkade and Kahneman concluded that drawing attention to a change exaggerates its perceived effect on wellbeing.
Your job is your sunshine, and the focusing illusion feeds on it.
You have been thinking about your job for months, in books, imagined conversations and shower decisions. As a result, the focusing illusion is doing to your estimate what sunshine did to students comparing Ohio with San Diego. So the job gets the weight, while most of your life gets almost none.
Weaken the focusing illusion this evening.
List five parts of your life that would follow you if you left, such as sleep, money and family.
Next to each, write whether leaving the job would actually change it, yes or no.
From the book.
What is that doing to your estimate? It's doing exactly what the sunshine does to a person comparing Ohio with San Diego. The job is the visible difference between the two lives you are comparing, so it gets the weight, and everything else in your life, which is most of your life and would follow you across, gets almost none.
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 focusing illusion.
How does the focusing illusion affect my career choice?
It makes your job seem like the main difference between two lives. Therefore you overrate how much changing it will change your wellbeing.
Were Californians really happier in the study?
No. Students in both regions reported the same life satisfaction, despite everyone predicting California would win.
Why does thinking about my job so much matter?
Since attention drives judgement, months of focus make the job look bigger in your forecast than it is in your life.
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.