Just a Little Bit Happier

I often get asked for advice on how to be happier. There is no one answer that fits all, of course, and you cannot be happier by simply flipping a switch. But perhaps a quick mental experiment will help get your thinking a bit:

If you knew your life would end soon and you were looking back on all of it, what would be the things you most enjoyed spending time doing? Whose company did you enjoy the most? What made you laugh? When you had a good day, or a good hour, or a good minute, what was it specifically that made it so?

(Of course it’s rarely ever that easy here in the real world. Perhaps the most important question of all is, to what extent are you able to dedicate more time to the things that are important to you?)

In some ways, the way to make any future better is very simple: do more of the things that have enriched your life so far, and less of what has made life worse. I have noticed two things that have tended to make life worse for most people: video games and social media.

Before you call me a complete curmudgeon: enjoy both in moderation, for sure! But very little feels emptier than spending hours playing video games alone, or scrolling through Instagram, or doing any activity that doesn’t provide us some concrete sense of accomplishment, that can be appreciated by others, and that enriches our lives.

Yes, video games are fun in the moment, but often people find themselves looking up and wondering, “where did the time go?” And in the long run, turning the pages of a good book is far more gratifying than scrolling through Twitter.

The seemingly simple act of doing the things that you set out to do tends to feel pretty good for most people. So step one: think about the activities that you enjoy most when you look back on them. Step two: decide how you intend to spend your time. Step three: make a plan to do it to the extent possible.