According to the 19th century philosopher Henry Sidgwick, ‘The impulse towards pleasure can be self-defeating. We fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them’. 

Happiness isn't the only good thing that will elude you if you set out to achieve it. Relaxation, avoiding stress, being more productive - all these things slide further away from you the harder you try to reach them. What's going on? 

The problem, friends, is that it matters how you formulate your goals. Some goals are self-defeating because they interfere with what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called 'flow'. They require you to both be in flow and not be in flow. Ugh, right? 

That doesn't mean that you can't be happy, or relaxed, or productive. But it does mean that you don't have to try so hard. Settle down with the Academic Imperfectionist to find out how.