The Complex Promise of Progress
Progress promises us relief, but unless we understand our own patterns, we risk building and buying our way into the same feelings we were trying to escape.
Technology, we were once told, would give us back our time.
Email would replace long meetings. Laptops would untether us from the office. Zoom would let us meet from anywhere, in our pyjamas! Smartphones would mean we could work on the move, so that, in theory, we might work less.
But we all know what happened. The emails never stop. The laptop is always open. And the phone has to be turned on every quiet moment so that we can be notified when someone looks at our Substack post.
This is a version of what economists call the Jevons Paradox; the idea that when we make something more efficient, we often use more of it, not less.
We see it with roads. To reduce traffic, we build more lanes. For a while, congestion eases. But then more people use the road. They move further out, take more trips, drive when they previously wouldn’t have. And so the road clogs again. The solution becomes part of the problem.
The British economist William Stanley Jevons noticed this in the 19th century. As James Watt’s improved steam engine used about 75% less coal than earlier models, it made coal-powered energy cheaper and more appealing.
But what followed was not restraint, but expansion. Between 1800 and 1860, Britain’s coal consumption rose from around 10 million tons to over 80 million tons. Engines became more efficient, but the number of engines, trains, factories and desires, multiplied.
Now, hold that thought.
I want to give you another, more personal version of this same cycle. Something we call hedonic adaptation.
It’s what happens when we go on holiday to a peaceful coastal town. We’re struck by the quiet, the friendliness, the slow pace of life. And in a flush of longing, we find ourselves thinking, I could live here. We imagine that by transplanting ourselves into this setting, we’ll carry the feeling with us.
We start looking at real estate ads in the main street windows.
But if we did move, the peace would eventually become ordinary. The cafés would become routine. We’d have to get a job and go to work. The slowness might even begin to irritate us.
This is hedonic adaptation: our tendency to return to a baseline of contentment no matter what we acquire or change. The new becomes normal. The thrill recedes.
The Jevons Paradox and hedonic adaptation are two sides of the same coin: that humans are exceptional at adapting, both collectively and individually. We make systems more efficient, and we expand our use of them. We make our lives more pleasurable, and then crave something new.
Progress promises us relief. But unless we understand our own patterns, we risk building and buying our way into the same feelings we were trying to escape.
It’s not that we shouldn’t innovate or aspire. But perhaps we need to pair those instincts with a quieter skill: knowing when enough is enough.
So why do we adapt? Why is hedonic adaptation even in our DNA?
Put simply, it’s the tendency to return to a baseline level of contentment, no matter how good or bad things get. That new job, the renovated kitchen, even falling in love, all of it eventually becomes ordinary. And frustrating as that can feel, there’s a reason it happens.
Hedonic adaptation isn’t tied to any specific object. It’s a general-purpose drive or motivational system that evolved to keep us moving. In the unpredictable world of the savannah, survival depended on vigilance. Food wouldn’t last. Shelter could be lost. A partner might not stay.
So nature didn’t reward contentment; it rewarded persistence. The people who kept searching, striving, wanting just a bit more, were the ones who survived. And crucially, they passed that restless motivation on to their descendants… us. The predisposition that helped them survive became part of our psychological inheritance.
It’s entirely normal, then, that we still want more.
More comfort, more recognition, a more attractive partner, a better phone, a new challenge. These impulses aren’t moral failings. In fact, they’re echoes of our biology.
But, what makes us different is the prefrontal cortex; the part of the brain responsible for planning, reflection, and self-restraint. It allows us to imagine futures, weigh consequences, and pause before we act.
Our ancestors had one too, but theirs wasn’t as developed as ours. Over time, this part of the brain has evolved to become more sophisticated, giving us a greater capacity to regulate our behaviour, to notice our desires without automatically following them.
But this capacity comes at a cost. The executive brain is energy-intensive. It’s slow. And it doesn’t work well when we’re tired, anxious, overwhelmed, or stretched too thin. In those moments, we revert to older systems, the fast, automatic ones that just want more.
The key here is if we’re serious about resisting the constant pull to consume or achieve, it’s not just about willpower.
It’s about creating the conditions, things like rest, nourishment, calm, that allow the thinking brain to do its job
