Poor. Choices.

This morning I found myself hiking a relatively tame, local trail as the sun rose. Two miles in, a rest at a lakeside park, and two miles back out to my car.

And during this time, I caught myself constantly thinking about what would come “next”.

I thought about what I would make for dinner later tonight. I thought about my upcoming week at work and vaguely whether I should look for a different job. I even thought about the next time I’d be on a hiking trail and where it might be.

I spent an especially long time thinking about the pros and cons of a small tear drop camper I’ve been considering for purchase. Just imagine all that time I could spend in nature! As if the trees and squirrels and dirt path in front of me were merely the back drop of a stage play with me in the audience looking on.

However, with a sufficient amount of mindfulness practice under my belt, I was able to become aware of this “nexting”. I was able to wake up over and over again.

That’s when it hit me. All this personal finance talk about “keeping up with the Joneses” misses the mark. The real financial killer is devaluing the present moment. Of course, I then immediately thought about future me writing this article.

Ignoring this reality causes us to plan our next vacation while on our current one. It convinces us that while this day at the beach is great, a boat would make it even better. It makes us think the 2023 model is good, but the 2026 model has a heated steering wheel and it comes standard.

None of those things requires us to envy and copy our neighbors. They are internal battles and subconscious thoughts. (Don’t I work hard? I deserve this. It’s better for the environment.)

And it’s not just boomer candy like nice houses and cars that steal happiness from today in service of a tomorrow that never comes. Twenty-somethings are just as, if not more, afflicted by this Great Devaluing thanks to social media:

• Endless travel upgrades – not content with just “a trip,” it becomes a chase for ever more exotic destinations and boutique resorts.
• Wellness & self-optimization spending – supplements, retreats, and a sick drip. Each one promising a “better” you.
• Status through experiences – festivals, VIP events, bucket-list adventures where the story or social capital justifies the spend.
• Education-as-consumption – may as well get a master’s degree rather than join the workforce cuz entry level jobs have all been replaced by AI.

The idea of more and next is addictive in all forms.

While there’s a kernel of truth to the pitfall of buying things you don’t need just to match those around you, I think it’s a symptom of the problem, not the root cause.

The Real Trap: Dopamine in a Modern World

The urge is internal. We don’t measure today against yesterday; we measure today against tomorrow with all its limitless possibilities. The “Joneses” have lived inside our own heads this whole time.

This is dopamine at work.

I’ve been reading The Molecule of More. In it, Daniel Lieberman explains how dopamine doesn’t reward us with satisfaction in the present moment—it rewards us with wanting. It craves novelty. Dopamine in the modern world is more suited to keeping us miserable than keeping us alive.

Many people mistake dopamine as the “feel good” chemical. If you do something pleasurable, they think, your brain produces dopamine. It doesn’t. The “feel good” chemicals are actually serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins to name a few. Dopamine is the “seeking” chemical. It’s focused on the future and it’s never satisfied.

On the bright side, that drive fuels innovation, long-term planning, and motivation to wake up each morning. Companies rely on all this to reinvent products to make them faster, better, cheaper – not surprising since companies are comprised of dopamine-having humans. It’s one reason I trust the long-term chances of the stock market: it’s a machine underpinned by the best survival chemical in the world.

But there’s a dark side. At the intersection of “novelty” and “more” sits addiction. We escape all these uncomfortable thoughts with substances, screens, or behaviors that promise just enough “next” to keep us hooked.

How to Step Out of the Race

So how do you keep your ambition without letting it consume you?

By building practices that anchor you in the present moment over and over again:

• Meditate—even a few breaths a day.
• Count the sounds around you.
• Learn to time travel.
• Take a hike without music or podcasts.
• Volunteer and don’t tell anyone about it.
• Read paper books instead of scrolling feeds.
• When you catch yourself daydreaming about your own future or regretting something in the past, remind yourself: the purpose of life is right here, right now and you already have it.

With sufficient practice, you’ll be able to catch yourself more and more often. I’m not just talking about catching yourself moving the goalposts as you hit certain milestones either. I’m talking about realizing there aren’t any goalposts to begin with.

You are already okay, already enough, and already connected to everything and everyone on earth.

Just enjoy the hike.

---

More reading: