How I learned to Design my Happiness

We can create our own happiness. But how?

This question lingered in my head after reading the title of the book. As I read across the cover, I thought I needed this. It wasn't because I was unhappy with my life, but because I wanted to maximize my happiness.

The sad story is that I didn't get to read it until three years later.

Happiness by Design is a book by Paul Dolan that examines happiness from a behavioral economist's lens. From your perspective, this might be unusual, but as he explains in his book, he measures happiness to create and standardize policies that will help society prosper. I wanted to share with you some of the fascinating thoughts in the book about the concept of happiness.

Find a good mix of pleasurable and purposeful moments.

There are a lot of arguments about what makes a human happy, and there are multiple theories, such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. However, Dolan identifies happiness in the simplest formula:

Happiness = Purpose + Pleasure.

Simple.

Not really.

The inclination to chase either purpose or pleasure differs from one person to another. For example, finding a great job that fits well with your educational background is purposeful. It brings a sense of meaning to your life and makes you contribute to something greater than yourself. The job itself may not be enjoyable, but at the end of the day, it will bring you joy and a sense of accomplishment. It is important to find the right mix between pleasure and purpose. As humans, we need to understand our inclinations: more pleasurable moments or purposeful moments. This is critical and important to know, especially when you need to design your own happiness.

Although happiness is derived from moments, we usually shouldn't look at specific moments in time but instead track the frequency of pleasurable or purposeful moments that we have had in our lifetime.

The value of our lives comes from the experiences of pleasure and purpose over our lifetimes and not from a judgment we might make at an arbitrarily chosen moment in time. - Paul Dolan

Direct your attention to the things that spring joy!

Dolan did a great job in this book in creating an association between the production process and the process of happiness creation. Production usually starts with adding inputs that go through a creation process that eventually produces outputs. If we think of happiness creation as a system that would help us find joy in the things that create those happy moments. We need to effectively find the inputs that can create happiness for us. And that means that we need to direct our attention to the things that spring joy in our hearts, whether pleasurable or purposeful experiences. The more we increase those inputs, the greater the chance of us becoming happier.

But, as part of human nature, we tend to fix our minds to think about the negative. We're triggered by the news we see, social media, the economy, and influences from our subconscious minds.

Behavior and attention can be driven by the unconscious mind.

Our minds operate on two systems. System 1 is where human instincts kick in, and decisions are made based on impulses and usual habits. Marketers are very effective in hacking our System 1, and apply tactics and strategies to drive our behavior.

System 2 is the conscious brain, where we make well-informed decisions based on the data, information, and experiences we draw from our world.

Surprisingly, most decisions are made based on our primitive instincts and not our conscious thoughts. Therefore, our attention is semi-automated, leaving us to instinctually think of the negative rather than focusing our attention on the positive.

However, we can reprogram ourselves by focusing on what makes us happy.

Identify your Happiness

But how do we know what makes us happy? As we go through our routine behaviors, there are ways to identify what makes us happy.

One small way to start is by making your happiness feedback as salient as possible. You need to reflect on your experiences and decide how this actually made you feel. As Dolan suggests, the best way to start with this is through the Day Reconstruction Method, where you write down your activities and rate whether they are more pleasurable or purposeful to you and to what extent.

Day Reconstruction Method Design by Happiness by Paul Dolan.

A Day reconstruction Method can help you track your happiness level and share a direct reflection on your mood throughout the day. But to get indirect feedback, you can seek feedback from family or friends who can share their advice or views on your situation. Sometimes people might have an objective perspective about your happiness based on observations you don't usually find or see in yourself.

Design your Environment

We tend to fall victim to old habits. We go through a vicious cycle of non-stop binge eating and TV drama marathons, or whatever it is that we wish we could change.

Besides making happiness a relevant and noticeable attribute you earn, you need to look at how your environment can help you become happier.

To design your environment, you can apply priming, defaults, commitments, and social norms. Since happiness revolves around building the proper habits, priming the triggers will create the cues of the patterns or the things that can make you happy. For example, spending 5 minutes by the end of the day to calendar block for your Gym visits throughout the week.

Defaults are a pre-existing commitment you don't pay attention to anymore and don't consciously require effort. For example, brushing your teeth before bed becomes a default when you wind down at night.

Commitments are the happiness factors you want to consciously commit to a new habit or project. One way to start with your commitment is to break goals into smaller chunks. This could be a meal prep to help you stay on track with your diet.

Social norms can help us connect with like-minded people in starting a new habit. It could mean attending a new social event or joining a club or a community on social media. Social influence can be the strongest, especially that it is social effect can be contagious.

Doing Happiness

When doing happiness, you need to be mindful of the time you spend with the people you love or the activities you enjoy. Sometimes we get distracted; this can steal so much of your time and effort and leave you unhappy.

Reorienting your attention can help you reclaim that time and focus your energy on the things that will contribute significantly to your present and future happiness. For example, if we experience pleasure, we must switch to something more purposeful. This is because pleasure (such as eating 5 slices of pizza) will diminish over time, and therefore we won't be able to feel the joy the same way.

Do it for your future self, but be humble.

Sometimes we work towards a goal so our future self will be happy. We always see happiness as something we should attain in the future. However, we sometimes need to be humble and probably lower our expectations. As they say, expectations are your worst enemy and often lead to dissatisfaction. Humbling your expectation is an experience that opens up possibilities for you and also helps you overcome being unhappy.

In essence, the book explains why some people are on a never-ending journey to seek happiness. As the old saying goes: "What you're looking for is within." This is what Dolan is set out here in the book; paying attention to pleasurable and purposeful moments can help us design our own happiness.

The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen. - Rumi.