Articles tagged as "happiness"

Happiness wasn’t always discussed so fervently. Since 2000, the word “happiness” has increased in usage by about 300% according to Google’s ngram. There are books about how happiness gives you an edge professionally, how there may be an equation for happiness, or adventures in forcing happiness to happen. We are drowning in a chorus of happiness. If you’ve come here for an answer on how to be happy, I don’t have it (sorry), but I did want to reflect on one pattern that I have noticed in myself over the past decade; I get excited for something thinking that it will change my life, only to be let down when the event occurs. Formally known as hedonic adaptation, we always seem to adjust to whatever our circumstances allow. What if we kept better track of that phenomenon? Perhaps we wouldn’t get so surprised the next time something disappoints us, or learn to more accurately forecast just how happy some future event or thing may make us feel. The journal of great expectations is a technique/tool to do just that.

Over the past few months, I finished Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Solidly in the self-help category, this book was more a reminder than a lesson, but one important takeaway that I had was around the paradox of choice. Even in a world of abundance, we still face the key constraint of time, and this single element of our lives inherently limits the scope of what we can achieve. The term “paradox of choice”, first popularized by Barry Schwartz in a book by the same name, has even more significance in a world that is digital, fast-paced, and rooted increasingly on comparison and expectation. We all know and recognize that it impossible to live a perfect life, yet we may be tempted to maximize our life to the best of our ability. We do this against a backdrop that feels like a never-ending series of choices. I could be doing so many things right now, how can I possibly know that writing a blog post is the best action to take.

Every week, it seems like there is a new book published on how we can do better. “Stolen focus” by Johann Hari says that the solution is to get rid of distractions. “Atomic Habits” by James Clear lays out concrete methods for how we can accomplish the things we set out to achieve. “How Not to Give a F*ck” by Mark Manson offers relief by positing that none of this matters anyway in the face of death, and so the solution is to stop caring altogether. These books are all popular, enjoyable, and offer valuable insight, however I was looking for something more fundamental and grounded in science. As someone who is approaching a life milestone and exiting graduate school, I wanted to see if the lessons of others could teach me anything about what I should plan to do next.