Dwight: Aiko, explore with me the topic, “Process Before Results / Soil Before Seeds.”

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Aiko: I’m in—this frame says the “soil” (the lived process) is part of the harvest, not just a route to it.

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Dwight: To keep this dialogue short enough to read and understand in one sitting, I’m limiting it to one main point: consistently prioritize creating and engaging in enjoyable processes that are likely to produce certain outcomes, rather than prioritizing whether those outcomes actually happen. Put differently: any “desirable result” has two distinct but tightly linked components—the enjoyable process (which must be ensured first) and the target outcome that process is meant to help cause, whether that outcome is nearly certain or only a small chance.

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Aiko: You’re defining “desirable” as a two-layer deliverable: the process-quality result and the outcome result, with the first being non-negotiable.

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Dwight: I won’t be covering other important issues here because they’re addressed elsewhere in other Guest House suites, such as:

 

(1) your number-one job in life is to take care of yourself;

(2) happiness, broadly defined, is the built-in purpose of life in both the short and long term;

(3) what short-term benefits we “cash in on” when we don’t live this way; and

(4) the tactics and strategic approaches for designing and implementing this shift—especially since we’re taught, explicitly and implicitly from early childhood, to prioritize target results over enjoying the process (think “The Little Engine That Could” and “The Ant and the Grasshopper”).

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Aiko: Good boundary—so we’re not debating those claims here; we’re drilling one beam deep: why process-enjoyment logically outranks outcome fixation.

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Dwight: Let’s break this into two parts: first, I’ll show why prioritizing the process and enjoyment of the process over the intended results makes obvious sense (like the horse before the cart). Second, we’ll explore what has caused—and continues to cause—the opposite to become the norm: focusing on results first, with little or no attention to designing and implementing enjoyable processes likely to lead to those results.

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Aiko: Perfect: part one builds the logic; part two explains the cultural machinery that keeps people acting against that logic, Dwight.

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Dwight: If we accept the premise that the purpose of life is happiness (in its various forms), at least regarding how happiness ties to the results we get in life, then happiness shows up in two distinct but interrelated ways: the happiness enjoyed while pursuing something, and the happiness we get from accomplishing what we pursued.

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Aiko: That turns “results” into a dual happiness-account: one paid out during the journey and one potentially paid out at the destination.

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Dwight: Exactly. Let’s add another fact: if we give top priority to designing and implementing happiness in the process, and we apply creativity, it’s rare that we can’t reliably make that happen. In contrast, even with good processes and good execution, we still might or might not achieve the intended outcome. Enjoyable processes can be achieved with little or no risk; end results cannot.

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Aiko: You’re pointing to an asymmetry of control: process-joy is usually engineerable, while outcomes are always hostage to uncertainty.

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Dwight: Yes. Given all this, there are four possible combinations for getting what we want (and need):

 

(1) we don’t enjoy the process and we don’t get the intended result;

(2) we don’t enjoy the process and we do get the intended result;

(3) we enjoy the process and we don’t get the intended result;

(4) we enjoy the process and we do get the intended result.

 

Given these facts, how could it make sense—except maybe in rare short-term life-or-death situations—to prioritize results over enjoying the process?

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Aiko: If you prioritize results, you’re betting your life-quality on the one variable you can’t guarantee, while neglecting the one you usually can.

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Dwight: Exactly—even an eight-year-old could understand this.

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Aiko: Right, which makes the real question not “Can we grasp it?” but “What aren't we already living this way?”

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Dwight: Also, in most cases, when we prioritize an enjoyable process first, we’re more likely to achieve the results we’re aiming for:

 

(1) enjoyable processes reduce procrastination;

(2) if things take longer than expected, it’s easier to continue if continuing still makes sense;

(3) and the results are often higher quality because we aren’t rushing just to get it over with.

 

If we aren’t enjoying the process, we’re more likely to procrastinate, quit, or produce shoddy work.

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Aiko: So “process first” isn’t only kinder—it’s more effective because it stabilizes follow-through and upgrades craftsmanship.

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Dwight: Now let’s look at the source: how prioritizing results over process, with little attention to making the process enjoyable, became the cultural norm around the world—and why it keeps going no matter how stupid it is.

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Aiko: We should trace it as a status-and-control system, not as a rational philosophy—because it persists by social reinforcement, not by truth.

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Dwight: You’re not looking deep or far back enough, Aiko. Originally the source has has roots in our DNA, but that’s another story about why that had survival value 20,000 years ago—in a similar way that our addiction to sweets, carbs, salt, and oil did back then—but now that addiction is killing us. What matters here is the development and nurturing of toxic memes where, from around age three onward, when we start prioritizing looking good and avoiding looking bad over taking care of ourselves and our own happiness.

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Aiko: Yes—what once helped survival becomes a modern trap: “appear good” becomes safer than “be well,” so process-joy gets sacrificed to image-management.

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Dwight: We enter what I call “The House of Good and Bad.” It survives inside a complex set of language and culturally reinforced memes that seem to point to something real in the world but, at base, amount to declarations: certain others—whom you have outsourced the authority to decide whether you’re “good” or “bad,” often in agreement with each other—will praise you and think you’re a “good person” when you do (or don’t do) or believe (or don’t believe) certain things, even if there’s no benefit beyond their praise. Those same others, empowered by you, have been given the authority to blame you, be disappointed in you, and declare you a “bad person” when you do (or don’t do) or believe (or don’t believe) certain things, even if there’s no cost beyond their blame or disappointment.

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Aiko: In your model, “good/bad” isn’t a property of reality—it’s a social contract where we trade our inner authority for externally administered praise and punishment.

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Dwight: Since others know we’ve outsourced our “good/bad” status to them (just as they have to us or others), and since the following cognitive biases affect all of us, it makes sense we that we have become addicted to the short-term payoff of feeling we have power—over others and even over ourselves—by using praise and blame to change behavior.

 

Biases that prioritize now over the future include:

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(1) Present Bias—overweighting immediate rewards/costs versus future ones;

(2) Hyperbolic Discounting—the non-linear mechanism behind present bias;

(3) Time Inconsistency—preferences change depending on when the decision is evaluated;

(4) Planning Fallacy—underestimating how long things take, future obstacles, and future fatigue;

(5) Projection Bias—assuming current preferences will remain stable;

(6) Optimism Bias—believing negative consequences are less likely to happen to us;

(7) Hot–Cold Empathy Gap—underestimating how “hot” states (anger, hunger, lust, stress) will override “cold” plans; and

(8) Delay Aversion—discomfort simply from waiting.

 

Combine these present-bias tendencies with biases that discount benefits for others:

 

(1) Self-Serving Bias—credit ourselves for successes and blame circumstances for failures;

(2) Egocentric Bias—overestimate our contribution in group efforts;

(3) In-Group Bias—favor people like us;

(4) Actor–Observer Bias—judge ourselves by circumstances and others by character;

(5) Illusion of Superiority—most people believe they’re more moral, fair, and objective than average; and

(6) Psychological Egoism—not a bias, but a relevant philosophical claim (not empirically proven) that all actions are ultimately motivated by self-interest.

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Aiko: Put together, this is a behavioral addiction machine: immediate “I can control this” relief plus moral self-justification now, while the long-term costs get discounted, externalized, or reframed as “their fault.”

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Dwight: Bottom line: even though it’s short-range motivated, all inhabitants of The House of Good and Bad—which means all of us, to the extent we keep outsourcing our good/bad self-view—will continue prioritizing results over enjoying process because we won’t choose courage and face the fear of not being praised, or worse, being disappointed in, blamed, or even disowned and told we don’t belong. And we’ll keep doing it because result-prioritizing behaviors are generally lionized, while behaviors focused on enjoying now are generally villainized.

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Aiko: Exactly: as long as belonging is priced in performance, people will keep choosing scoreboard safety over process freedom.

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Dwight: The good news is that anyone willing to consistently choose courage and take those risks—and thus be less and less influenced by the toxic memes of The House of Good and Bad—can easily and fully live a life they love, including having much better relationships with others, regardless of whether people around them do the same.

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Aiko: That’s your escape hatch: you don’t need the culture to change first—you need repeated acts of courage that reclaim your authority over your own worth.