Strange loop

A strange loop is one where you keep on going one way, but you end up coming back to where you came from. So instead of climbing the stairs upwards like you'd think, something strange happens, and the stairs are actually cyclical and lead you to your starting point. Like in a cartoon!

So there's a misconnect between what we perceive (up or down only, linear) and what really happens (cyclical). And just like the Penrose stairs, once you become aware of this paradox and how it works - once you look at it from a new perspective - I believe you can break it.

The clearest (loose) application of the strange loop for me is lifestyle inflation, the idea that as you become wealthier, your expectations and expenses rise with roughly the same proportion as your income, and thus you don't feel any happier or more financially secure. You have risen upwards, but paradoxically are still in the same place.

Breaking free from this loop requires one to stop viewing it from the first-person view - the person who's climbing the stairs, and only sees that there's more and more to climb - and to force a third-person view - seeing the entire staircase and realizing it's an illusion. There's something off! And then you figure out what it is (in the case of lifestyle creep, it's clear that one's own standards are what's trapping them in the loop).

Earlier, I wrote about the Tangential goal trap, where you pursue a derivative of your goal instead of the real thing. Instead of being entrepreneurial and getting customers, you study entrepreneurship from books and courses and fill your days with podcasts. The latter is linked just enough to the real thing that you can easily fool yourself into believing progress on the fake thing leads to progress on the real thing. And progress on the fake thing is so. much. easier. As a result, you can constantly do things and keep busy and "make progress", yet find yourself stuck in the same place, year after another.

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In general, if you find yourself running in circles in any area of life, you should entertain the possibility that you're in a strange loop. Just going forward won't cut it, you need a change of perspective.

• Similar paradoxes, like Catch-22. To get job experience, you must first have job experience. To gain confidence, first act confident. Recursion.
• You could find links between this strange loop idea and the Prime number maze. Or the midwit meme.