Chasing happiness directly is the surest way to miss it

Philosopher Henry Sidgwick named this the paradox of hedonism: pleasure seems to arrive as a byproduct of absorption in something else — work, love, a hobby — and slips away the moment you chase it for its own sake. Sidgwick concluded that a rational pursuit of happiness has to put happiness 'out of sight' and aim at something else instead, a claim later echoed across psychology's research on flow and intrinsic motivation.

— Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics — 1874