I spend a lot of time reading, thinking, and writing about happiness.
For years before I started writing here, I was just looking for ways to improve my own life. I wanted to understand why people who seemed like they had everything were still unhappy.
I wanted to find the traps that others fell into so that I could avoid them.
It is quite clear to me at this point that most people are not as happy as they could be.
And I believe that the main culprit is mistaking comfort for happiness.
When I was growing up, the consensus of the intellectual crowd was that video games were bad for you.
No good could come of sitting in front of a screen instead of going outside. Video games were going to turn our brains into mush.
In some more extreme cases, violent video games were blamed for school shootings.
Since then, however, there has been a quiet revolution. Continue reading “Make Your Life More Like a Video Game”
Over the last couple weeks I’ve run through a lot of my philosophy behind saving and investing. I discussed that I invest at least as much as I spend every month because I want to buy options for my life, because I see the value of labor declining over time, and because I don’t want to need to start a new career path if mine gets automated out of existence.
The big question for most people at this point is: “Is it worth it?” Continue reading “Is It Worth It? (Why I Save So Much, Part 4)”
Last week Cait Flanders wrote about how some people treated happiness as a general vibe that they exude and others pursued happiness as a destination. Thinking about this idea started me on a path that had me digging back through my notes on happiness research.
Our culture tends to treat happiness as a destination. Happiness is a goal for which you strive. And of course, the most surefire way to reach happiness is to be successful.
If we stop and think about this premise though, it falls apart. If success causes happiness, then we should be able to see the results. Continue reading “Happiness Causes Success”
Last week I talked about some time management goals that I had for 2017 and some things that I still need to work on in that area. I said, “I’m pretty good at time management, but I want to be better,” and that “I’ve completed the entry level time management tips.”
I also said, while discussing my prioritization issues that I’ve read around 100 books this year, which was flagged in the comments as a lot of reading.
And it certainly is. There is no doubt that I did better with time management in 2016 than I had in previous years.
Today, I want to share with you five of the tips and tools that I used to get there. Continue reading “Five Tips for Better Time Management in 2017”
If you stop and think about the times when you were most happy in your life, you probably don’t think of times when you were sitting around and watching television. Instead, maybe you’ll think about a time you skied a difficult slope. Maybe you’ll think about a time where you were hanging out with your friends or playing with your kids. Maybe you’ll think about completing a challenging task.
The thing that ties our happiest moments together tends to be that we are completely engaged with what we are doing and lose track of time.
This is a state called flow. Understanding flow is a key to living our happiest life. Continue reading “Finding Happiness Through Flow”
