On Fulfillment

I know a lot about Fulfillment. That sounds rather pretentious and elitist but I'm actually disguising this as a double entendre about my field of work. I work in Customer Fulfillment at Amazon so I actually do know quite a bit about how to fulfill customer orders as I've studied the supply chain and devoted significant time and effort into understanding and improving various fractions of arguably the most successful fulfillment engine in history. 

I know almost nothing about true fulfillment. The kind of fulfillment where you feel fulfilled. And I've been doing a lot of thinking about this lately. Fulfillment is an action but it is also a feeling. You can say, "I feel fulfilled," and you can also say "that would fulfill me." But, if you are the one seeking the feeling, is it also you doing the action? Are you fulfilling yourself to feel fulfillment? It would seem that's far too complicated a question to extrapolate an answer. Perhaps it's the wrong question. I'll have to parse it out. 

I suppose the four questions to ask here are: 1. What makes you feel fulfilled? 2. What actions would need to take place to bring you that feeling of fulfillment? 3. Are those actions something you can take or are there dependencies and variables to consider? 4. How long will that fulfillment last? 

In the spirit of true stream of consciousness, I'll start on question 1 and think aloud here. What makes me feel fulfilled? Lots of things, and to varying degrees, but I'll save that as a separate topic. The feeling of fulfillment for me is mostly the feeling of accomplishment. Which is mostly physical in nature when I think about it, but it can and has been mental in nature. I felt fulfilled after passing high level exams in school. I felt fulfilled after winning a difficult chess match. And I feel fulfilled almost daily after I finish a difficult training session. Again, it all goes back to achievement. So therein lies my answer to question 1. I am fulfilled when I achieve. 

Question 2, what actions would need to take place to bring me that feeling of fulfillment? The actions that lead to achievement, either physical in nature or mental in nature, both derive from effort. However, not isolated to effort in a singular sense, or in a instantaneous frame. For example, I am fulfilled at 8 PM on a Tuesday due to the completion of a workout or 4 mile run that occurred from 7 PM to 8 PM. But I also feel a sense of fulfillment when I look in the mirror and see dense lattisimus dorsi that are the result of many hundreds of workouts, and similarly as I check my Nike Run Club app and see my average pace dropping. In other words, there is an element to the sense of fulfillment that is both consequential of immediate effort and also of sustained effort over time. So the answer to question 2 is, the action needed to bring me the feeling of fulfillment is effort. 

Question 3 is a difficult question to answer because it requires that I be very honest but yet not make excuses. Is the action stipulated in question 2 something I have absolute control of or are there other dependencies/variables to consider? When I think about putting forth effort to feel achieved, the physical side is an easier answer. Unless I'm sick or exhausted, I should be able to put forth some level of effort to bring about some level of achievement. It becomes a question of scale though, which is more reserved for question 4. On the mental side, there are more dependencies at play here. There will always be new and exciting hobbies for me to tackle that will yield progress as a result of my effort, and thus bring me satisfaction and feelings of fulfillment. At work there are certainly variables that make this easier or harder but it's not an impossible statement to say that there should always be a degree to which you can put in effort and create positive results, leading to achievement. There again, it becomes a discussion of scale, sustainability, and the degrees of fulfillment. 

There's two parts to question 4, 'how long will that fulfillment last'. Part A is determining how much of that feeling of fulfillment is as simple as a dopamine rush or if there is a secondary component that is deeper, such as the feeling of being in the right place at the right time. Part B is determining how much fulfillment is enough fulfillment - if a 7 min mile fulfills me today, will a 7 min mile fulfill me in 5 months? After all, achievement is a result of doing something that you can self identify as difficult and worthwhile. If a 7 min mile becomes something you identify as routine, then to continue chasing achievement you will attempt to achieve a 6 min mile. But at what point does the effort required to achieve the faster mile detract enough time from other sources of fulfillment that it becomes an impossible effort? I guess what I'm getting at here is that the resource of time is always in scarcity and eventually it would appear that fulfillment hits a plateau because of that bottleneck. 

Drilling down on Part A, it's difficult to ascertain how much of a present feeling of fulfillment is a result of dopamine and how much is a deeper feeling of meaning. I can say with a moderate degree of confidence that an event leading to fulfillment, that is directly the result of dopamine and immediate accomplishment usually will not last more than 1 day. There is no use in breaking down that time into anything more specific than that. The realization that there is a short term bifurcation to "how long will is last" that approximates something around 1 day at a maximum is sufficient. The feeling of being in the right place at the right time is a dopamine inducing experience that has a longer median longevity. It is separate but not indistinguishable from the previous example, it's just more sustainable. Meaning can be derived consistently if purpose can be derived in tandem, consistently. I'm incapable of stating how long this can possibly last. Perhaps one day I will understand this more, when I am married and have children and have a purpose that extends well beyond myself. Perhaps then I will know the answer to the duration with which a sense of fulfillment will last that is not derived from short term dopamine or contrived through the various elements I described earlier. I sense that the equation will remain similar, but the variables will change. I do question whether that fulfillment can last forever given the right circumstances and the proper balance of variables. But I don't question whether I'll pursue it anyway. I believe that's the point of life. Seeking fulfillment more than satisfaction and happiness. More than purpose and meaning. Throw meaning, satisfaction, responsibility, achievement, good health, and good fortune into a blender, and you get sustained fulfillment. That's the goal. 

Finally Question 4, Part B; how much fulfillment is enough fulfillment? In the previous paragraph I used the example of decreasing mile times. Imagine a scenario in which person A is decreasing their mile times through intense effort, whilst also increasing their GMAT score through intense studying. Both are creating sensations of fulfillment, one mentally and the other physically. At some point, when person A has achieved a 700 GMAT score and a 6:30 mile time, a fracture begins to happen. Time becomes the bottleneck to improve the GMAT score to a 730 and the mile time to 6:00. There isn't enough time to devote to both. At this point in time, does fulfillment cease? Can fulfillment be sustained through the concentration on one of the two focuses? Or will sustained fulfillment come from the realization that the best cross section has been reached? I find myself in a situation such as this, where my top 5 interests are at all time peaks, and time has become my bottleneck. The way I've rationalized it is by creating a formula. If Achievement = Effort x Time, and I'm performing at max effort, then the thing I can modify is time. I was able to decrease my mile time from 8 min to 6 min through sustained 3x weekly runs for 4 months. If I hope to drop it from 6 min to 5 min at 3x weekly runs, it would take 6 months. But if I wanted to do it utilizing 2x weekly runs it would take 9 months. The same formula can then be applied to the GMAT. You can then use a parabola formula, where you have two unknowns to account for, and an intercept can be reached, in which a common time frame is established to reach the goal. Ex: Y = Mx^2 + B. Where Y = Achievement, B = Effort (because it's constant), and Mx^2 is the intercept of that effort and time used for two separate activities. The answer may then be, 2 runs per week and 3 studying sessions per week, will yield the maximum fulfillment (progression) over 6 months. Through this the constant readjustment of time frame, you can create progress that is seemingly infinite.

But this doesn't yet answer, how much fulfillment is enough fulfillment? As I've been sitting here writing this for the better part of 4 weeks, I realize I cannot finish this thought, or rationalize an answer, because there isn't one. It's too individualistic. In fact, I believe the right answer is, "it's up to you." You decide how much fulfillment is enough fulfillment. Humans are exploratory. We are creative and we always strive for more. More experience, more money, more social status, more life. Because that is the nature of our biology, it's the reason we developed from a minor species, to the one that dominates Earth in a matter of tens of thousands of years, and not hundreds of thousands or millions. For us, enough fulfillment will never be enough. The individual must decide how to balance their lives, and how much fulfillment is enough for them. At 30, perhaps a balance of 30% career, 25% fitness, 25% relationships, and 20% exploration is the formula for maximum fulfillment. And perhaps at 50, the balance changes to 40% career, 15% fitness, 35% relationships and 10% exploration. But at the end of the day, to decide how much is enough, is to think holistically about the time available for spending, the options available for allocation of that time, and the feedback loops from each activity, then balance it according to who you are. And like most things in life, there are no answers, there is only direction. There are only choices. I think the Desiderata sums it up perfectly, "whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul." When you've done this, you'll know how much fulfillment is enough.