Why Small Pleasures Matter

We often drive ourselves in pursuit of large pleasures: traveling to a foreign country, shipping a disruptive project, going to a once-in-a-lifetime music event.

A cult of the exotic or unusual.

But there are other, many small pleasures lying around us that can bring us a wealth of joy, comfort, and creativity with little cost and effort.

“Small pleasures” as portrayed by the book of the same title written by The School of Life, are those things we enjoy but are currently underrated, or those we fail to pay enough attention to.

One fundamental issue with small pleasures is that we tend to get used to places, people, or activities, and things that are familiar lose their power to entice the imagination if we stop being aware.

Personal archive (2020)

“If anyone can have it, if it’s easy to come by at home, if it’s a pleasure that’s best repeated, then it can’t be important. Yet the fact is, many of the things that do give us satisfaction have just this character.”

— Small Pleasures (2016) p. 237

As a practice of noticing, after reading this book and also seeing Austin Kleon’s logbook, I started journaling random things or happenings on a daily basis, and here are some in no particular order:

1. Deep breaths

2. Feeling warm sunlight hitting you on a cold winter day

3. Flowers

4. Fresh bread

5. Long hugs

6. Sitting at a bench and people-watching

7. Old photos

8. Trying food ingredients or meals you have never tasted before (like nutritional yeast which I had never tried until recently but is amazing on popcorn)

9. Laughing loudly

10. A beautiful ceramic plate

11. Being awake at dawn

12. The voice of loved one

13. Going to a park

14. A glass of cold water

15. Guessing the exact word someone was going to say

16. A good night’s rest

17. Lighting candles

18. Fresh orange juice

19. A well-made bed

20. Lying on the grass

21. Long walks

22. Reading a book in one sitting

23. Gazing at the sky

24. Dancing

25. A good stretch

26. Twinkle lights

27. A bicycle ride

28. The sound of waves

29. Fresh herbs

30. A day with no plans

31. Walking barefoot

32. Nice stationery

33. Chocolate

34. A nap

35. Falling into research rabbit holes

36. A facial massage

37. Figs

38. Movie night

39. The farmers market

40. Learning a new word

41. Fixing something

42. Starting a conversation

43. Dressing up for no reason

44. Watering plants

45. A refillable fountain pen

46. Reading poetry

47. Essential oils

48. Music playlists

49. Observing trees

50. Discovering the work of someone inspiring

And the list could go on forever.

What is important is that we begin to map the things that bring us pleasure and enjoyment, no matter how small they are (step 1). The point isn’t simply to note them but to understand why we like them – which intensifies and deepens the satisfaction they offer.

The map of our personal delights probably speaks greatly about what we love, and ultimately, who we are.

These pleasures give us more creativity, happiness, and inspiration.

But we tend to leave the reality of experiencing them very much to chance. We need to make a consistent space for small pleasures in our daily life, making them part of our plans (step 2).

As pointed out in the book, “our collective model of a good life tends to focus on career progress and financial management”. Those are things we actively seek out. Why don’t we do the same for small pleasures?

Ideally, we’d schedule more appointments. We’d put it in our plans: Sunday 10 am, staring at the sky. We’d create rituals from them so we can experience them with more frequency when we work, play, and rest.

The normal attitude to small pleasures is to think that they are, individually, perfectly nice but that they are rather insignificant. They come at random into our lives. We savor them for a moment, and then they’re gone.

However, “small pleasures turn out not to be small at all: they are points of access to the great themes of our lives.” (p. 9)

@silviagilroldan

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References:

1. The School of Life Press. (2016) Small Pleasures.

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Design for the Long Time

The (pandemic imposed) slow pace of this year has carved a space to reflect on how we make sense of time. Our frenetic lifestyle is regularly filled with numerous daily tasks and decisions that keep us busy, making it easy to get caught into narrow, short-term thinking.

But…

what do our lives contribute to in the long run? 

In the past month, I participated in a virtual workshop hosted by Bea Karol Burks and Ella Saltmarshe, during the Re_Festival event (organized by CIVIC SQUARE), with the focus of “Creating the Long Time”. The session inspired rumination in me (and perhaps in many of the participants) and led me to write this post based on my notes.

Picture I took during the virtual event “Creating the Long Time”.

One of the key takeaways I got from the event was learning to see a wider time span for understanding and designing our impact as communities, based on two concepts:

• Long-termism: planning and forecasting for the future.

• Long-timism: cultivating care for the world beyond our lifetimes.

While as designers we probably already gravitate towards imagining what the future may look like, using forecasting as a tool to conceptualize and predict trends, we rarely make creative decisions that extend beyond a few years, much less a lifetime period.

“In politics, the dominant time frame is a term of office, in fashion and culture, it’s a season. For corporations it’s a quarter, on the internet it’s minutes, and on the financial markets mere milliseconds”

— Esther Dyson

Our wealth and rights, as individuals, depend on the efforts and achievements of the many generations who came before us. However, we tend to underestimate our relationships and lineages with past generations and future populations.

This may be caused by a “systemic and psychological inability”[1] to see beyond immediate consequences and results, as well as the difficulty to understand our lasting footprint beyond our deaths (which may be caused by a refusal of death itself).

We may suffer from a limited “human-centric” view of the world (which is why many creatives are already pushing towards a planet-centric view of design over the popular human-centered design model). Homo sapiens represent just a fraction of history, and of the creatures that have been (and will be) alive on this planet. 

Promotional video for the book "The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World" by the philosopher Roman Krznaric (2020).

From Krznaric’s video for the book (which I haven’t read yet but it’s on my wish list), I loved the idea of passing on gifts for future generations.

It’s hard to grasp the immensity of time but we could use different references to project scenarios that help us to expand our thinking (such as a dear person’s grandchild, which starts from someone you already know and care about). 

We could also learn from indigenous cultures with worldviews that connect their communities to long lineages, creating a sense of responsibility to care for the future of their descendants, and thanking their ascendants for what they have given them.

Even trying to shift beyond short time spans and immediate gratifications in benefit of medium to longer-term impacts in our own lifetime could be a start (in general, I try to apply ideas in a gradual manner and it works for me; if I can’t think about time a couple of months or years in the future, I’ll hardly adopt the custom of seeing decades or centuries from now). 

In my personal life, I like to think about how to make thoughtful decisions and actions in the present that will make the life of my future self better. It can be small things like cooking ahead yummy food that “future Akna” will enjoy next week or getting a letter from “past Akna”, all the way to finding the motivation to invest, exercise and stay healthy in the present, which I hope will allow me to enjoy life and be active and present for my loved ones in future decades. 

From The Good Ancestor (2020). Graphic by Nigel Hawtin.

In a longer span, initiatives such as the Rights for Future Generations, are attempting to advance environmental protections for future populations in relation to the climate crisis. Others are trying to imagine how can we construct post-mortem interactions with these future generations, like the concept of Willed Futures, a platform that automates acts of care that transcend death. 

Users are able to send a flower every year to a loved one after the moment of passing, extending the presence of self-hood well beyond bodily material decay, by digitally coding and planning gestures of generosity that are executed in the afterlife.

Valuing the long-term is about understanding our place in the wider web of life: [2]

1. Caring about the richness of life on Earth and its evolution during the geological history of the universe (Deep time)

2. Developing a connection to future and past generations (Multigenerational emotions)

3. Respecting the value of nature and non-human species of Earth (Interconnected worldviews).

4. Dealing with the fact that our lives will end and facing this reality by living more intentionally (Mortality consciousness).

5. Building the desire and agency to leave a positive legacy (Legacy stance).

These are key mentalities (presented in the workshop) through which we can live our lives and reframe our relationship with time. We need to develop the will, motivation and instruments to escape the prominence of the present, and realize our power and responsibility for the future. 

What things could we do now, that would bring benefits in the long-time future? What strategies can you think of to extend our time horizons?

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Footnotes:

1. EIT Climate KIC. (2020) Persistent selves. Retrieved from: https://www.climate-kic.org/opinion/persistent-selves/

2. Summary from my notes of the event “Creating the Long Time”. The namings in bold and brackets for each idea was presented by the workshop hosts: Bea Karol Burks and Ella Saltmarshe (2020).

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