I agree. 

Possibly its best to use this reasoning (" Whenever I do anything now, I try to think about how it will affect me in twenty years.") for daily recurring habits, rather than the occasional burger.

Yes, I think that's it. I will ask myself "why?" (as in "why do i do this?") more when going about my daily life.

I get what you're saying, but it sort of reminds me of how sometimes people don't want to make more money because then they'll be paying too much tax.

There's a difference between being paralyzed by decisions, and thus never doing anything, and using a simple heuristic (will I likely be glad I did this in twenty years) to make better decisions. I probably should have used an example besides work to make the point more clearly though. Last week a reader tweeted me a deal to go to Peru for $390, so I booked it immediately, knowing that it's something I'll be glad I did twenty years from now.

I agree with this, too, and to me that's actually a different issue. People like you and me will appreciate every experience we have and make the best of it. In terms of personal enjoyment, it almost doesn't matter what we do.

So, with that in mind, I try to do things that will make me a better person, give me a better perspective, and make me more likely to be a good influence on others.

I could... but that's like saying I should put $1000 on the 6 on a roulette wheel, because I might win $36k. It's a matter of what is more likely to have an impact. So while going for a burger may have some amazing impact on my life (or a bad one, if I crash the moto on the way down), it's pretty unlikely. On the other hand, if I work on SETT, I'm building something that could literally help foster millions of conversations around the world. 

Going to reply on this topic to Brian, too, but the short is this: I believe that happiness is 99% controlled by the mind, that it has very little to do with actual events and everything about our interpretation of those events.

Happiness is a skill, and for whatever reason, it's something I'm very good at. I actually don't think the two types of happiness are that different if you're working on them... both are just the skill of putting things in perspective and seeing the good. Experiential happiness might be having thought loops like "It's raining every day, but man... how amazing is it that I'm in Thailand?" and remembering happiness would simply be defining your memories using the high points, like "In Thailand we rode elephants, pet tigers, went to the beach, etc."

So in terms of happiness, all I really care about is my ability to be happy. I could eat hamburgers every day, or program every day, or just sit in jail, and I believe I would be roughly equally happy.

But you're right in noticing that I'm not maximizing for happiness. I see it as a very tiny component of life, just a skill to get proficient at. If I die as the happiest man in the world....so what? I'm still dead. I maximize for having the biggest positive impact on the world. Right now that takes the form mostly of working on myself. I need to be stronger, smarter, more empathetic, more vulnerable, more strategic, etc. to increase what I can do. At the same time I write, because people have told me my writing has had an impact on the, and I build SETT because I believe that it will contribute to the conversations taking place between people around the world. 

I was just coming over to mention Kahneman! Here's a good blog post today (on a great blog) about something similar:

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/how-do-we-find-meaning-in-life 

Kahneman was the first person I read talk about the distinction between the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self", and I think it's a huge, huge deal. Essentially what Tynan is saying is that he tries always to maximize the benefit for the remembering self. And it sounds kind of noble when people talk about not wanting to have regrets on their deathbed or whatever, but when you actually stop and think about it as "I am always preferring the remembering self over the experiencing self" it doesn't seem quite as cut-and-dried.

I especially like Kahneman's point about the little study they did where they asked people, "How much would you pay for this amazing vacation?" and then asked, "How much would you be willing to pay if we told you that you couldn't bring a camera and your memory would be wiped of the event immediately afterwards?" It's so much less, and when you think about that, it makes sense viscerally. It's almost like, why bother doing anything I won't remember later?

But that supposes that the time I spend experiencing it isn't worth anything at all. And in the video (assuming this is the same video I'm thinking of) he points out that the pleasure we derive from the remembering self isn't as big as we think it is. Maybe we only actually reflect on a past experience for... what, a total of a few hours for the rest of our life?

I do think there's a kind of holistic quality to the remembering self, though, where it's not entirely about the minutes I am actively recalling the experience from my memory, but the gestalt of all experiences and the way they shape my self-identity and give me ground and confidence and whatnot.

I'll say that travel in particular is a case where experiencing vs. remembering self really conflict sometimes for me. Like, a lot of travel is not constant pleasure in the moment. I remember having that insight. I was right here:

https://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=%2B5%C2%B0+53'+58.31%22,+%2B102%C2%B0+42'+54.37%22...

It's the most canonical tropical beach I've ever been on in my life. Crystal-clear aquamarine waters, millions of tropical fish, beautiful soft sand, mango smoothies and umbrellas.

And at some point I noticed I was getting kind of annoyed at having to move to stay in the shade of the umbrella because the sun was moving so quickly across the sky, and how it'd disturb my relaxation when the light came in my eyes.

And an instant later I noticed that I had just thought that, and marveled at how even in an amazing tropical paradise, all my usual little tendencies stick with me.

The reality of my experiencing self was that trip entailed a lot of time on cramped buses and super uncomfortable boats, time getting hassled at border crossings and a week where all I could bring myself to eat was yogurt because the regional cuisine with its intense heat seemed to have killed all the flora in my gut. It's also the case that southeast Asia's climate is pretty rough, super humid and super hot. A good chunk of the trip was finding ways to fight mildew in my clothing. Also one of the nights on the Perhentian Islands, our "chalet" (shack) was dive-bombed by a huge colony of bats who kept swooping through all night and flapping around inside our little 9'x9' hut on stilts. That was more like an episode of Fear Factor than a paradise island.

There was plenty of pleasure for my experiencing self, too, to be fair, a lot of marveling at the beauty of things and drinking in new experiences and the like. But my point is, to my remembering self, it's ONLY good. It's almost entirely positive. I think back on that trip and it's one of the most life-enriching, perspective-broadening trips I've ever taken. I remember the tough parts but they don't come back up as viscerally negative. If anything I laugh about them now, like the bats. At the time we were completely terrified.

I don't really think about that particular trip all the time. Like Kahneman says, maybe I'll spend... ten hours, total? reflecting actively on it through the rest of my life.

But I think a good portion of my sense of well-being comes, overall, from identifying as someone who is "worldly", who "has traveled" and "does travel" and being able to come up with exciting stories by drawing on all of this stuff, put together. And I do think that it passively influences my perspective. Even if I'm not constantly thinking about it, the exposure I've had to developing nation living conditions (meager, to be fair, probably a few months total spent in developing nations, but spread over several trips) relieves me of a lot of worry about status and gives me a basic sense of safety, knowing not just in my head but also my heart that I can basically do whatever I want because I'm not going to just end up destitute in a ditch somewhere. It's very liberating. Having spent time with many different people and having worked in situations where I didn't speak the language and was reliant on the kindness of strangers gives me a much deeper sense of gratitude, humility, and compassion than I would probably otherwise have.

I haven't experienced a reduction of randomness, or at least in any negative sort of way. It's mostly just a reduction of low expected value activities. Still a lot of variance, but skewed towards more worthwhile experience.

Also, are you working on optimizing the mobile version of Sett? I didn't respond to your survey but that would be my biggest feedback.