We so often use the phrase "quality of life", but so rarely examine it. In practice, what we often call quality quietly dissolves into quantity: more achievements, more possessions, more experiences. Our cultural fixation on accumulation begins even in the language we use to describe a good life.
But if we are trying to examine quality, we must exclude everything related to quantity.
Quality of life is not determined by the number of... children, houses, cars, travels, diamonds, clients, or diplomas one collects. To speak about quality, we need completely different criteria.
Over many years of working with people 1:1 and listening to hundreds of life stories, I began noticing a pattern. Disclaimer: my observation is not a scientific study - there no longitudinal datasets or randomized trials behind it. It is simply a conclusion based on experience.
The pattern is this:
The more intellectual and cultural dimension a person’s life contains, the higher their subjective sense of well-being tends to be. In other words, the higher is their perceived quality of life.
This observation may sound surprising, because intellectual life is often associated with intelligence or education, which are again... measurable. An intellectual life has very little to do with IQ or number of diplomas. And it is not about being “smart.”
It is about having habits that nourish the mind rather than merely occupy it.
These habits can be very simple:
reading difficult books and taking time to think through their ideas
writing down one’s reflections in a notebook or phone
studying something slowly and seriously - a language, a musical instrument, a field of knowledge
allowing space for aesthetic experiences: music, painting, literature, nature
None of this is particularly dramatic, until we realize that we live in an anti-intellectual world. Our society is performative, fast, and relentlessly oriented toward productivity. Activities that cultivate depth often appear as a waste of time, impractical, or even unnecessary. Something we might consider doing when we retire.
The Anti-Intellectual World
People read much less than previous generations, especially the long-form content. Creative hobbies disappear, being replaced with self-optimization focus. After a long day at work the tired mind seeks relaxation and distraction.
And funny enough, many people sincerely believe they already think enough during the day. Work does make us cognitively tired so by evening the brain indeed feels exhausted. But a tired brain is not the same as a brain that has done truly intellectual work, it just did some problem-solving.
Instead of intellectual life, we increasingly see substitutes:
foo-foo dust activities are presented as “inner work”
quick museum visits while traveling presented as “soaking up some culture”
endless podcasts and self-help books presented as “self-development”
These activities are not necessarily useless. But they often replace something deeper: long, patient engagement with ideas.
As a result, life becomes efficient and productive, yet intellectually shallow.
The Suppressed Human Impulse for Growth
Human beings are naturally oriented toward growth. Not only career growth or financial growth, but the growth of the Inner Person. When this impulse is suppressed, personality becomes distorted.
A useful metaphor is the bound foot of a Geisha - intentionally deformed to fit an imposed standard. In a similar way, a life organized entirely around economic accumulation and digital distraction often produces a deformed Inner Person.
We see this pattern everywhere:
no stable interests that are pursued without the expectation of profit
enormous time spent in digital consumption
a constant focus on accumulating economic capital
But intellectual growth follows a different logic. It is directed toward the development of the person:
becoming more thoughtful
understanding oneself more clearly
freeing oneself from inherited assumptions
strengthening one’s values
developing inner authority
This is the ancient philosophical idea of self-cultivation. The Stoics believed that such work on oneself was the most reliable path to a good life.
The Quiet Luxury
For a long time I too believed luxury was primarily material: financial security, comfort, abundance. Today my answer would be different. If someone asked me what I consider my only real luxury, the answer would sound surprisingly modest:
the ability to live an intellectual life.
From the outside it does not look impressive at all. There are no dramatic gestures, no heroic reading schedules, no displays of discipline. I do not wear busy-ness as a badge of honor.
I simply replaced anti-intellectual activities with those that nourish the mind.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly to others, a different way of living emerged.
A Few Questions
If you want to know whether intellectual life exists in your routine, you might ask yourself:
When was the last time you experienced a demanding aesthetic encounter - theater or museum visit, opera & ballet performance, jazz or classical music concert?
What book did you read in the past month? Was it difficult?
Do you have a practice of writing down your thoughts?
Is there a subject you study for years without any expectation of profit?
Your answers may reveal something important: whether your life allows room for intellectual depth, which may be one of the most overlooked foundations of quality of life.