Date: 2024-05-18 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00018026
People Measurement
Quality of Life / Happiness
Daniel Hill ... I Tracked My Happiness Every Day for Two Years — Here’s What I Learned
Daniel … thank you for this initiative. It is a useful confirmation of some of my own conclusions and validation of some of the ideas about management metrics (TrueValueMetrics) that I am looking to implement. Did you conclude by any chance that your own happiness was linked in any way to the trend of the various components of your day to day life rather than the absolute state of the element. One of my hypotheses is that happiness deteriorates significantly when the trend is down and improves a lot when the trend is up regardless of the absolute situation. How does this fit with your findings? PeterB
Peter Burgess
Visualization of average weekly happiness ratings from low (red) to high (blue) over two years.
You know that book 10% Happier — about how meditation can increase your happiness by ten percent?
Well, that’s not true for me.
Meditation makes me 2.527% happier. I also know that spending time outside makes me 6.016% happier and listening to a podcast on my walk to work makes me 1.548% happier. I know these things because I’ve been tracking my habits and happiness every day for the past two years. And after doing this for two years, I’ve become much more intentional about how I spend my time.
Why did I do this.
We all have assumptions about what makes us happy. Even as you read this, maybe some ideas rush to your mind. Going for a run. Spending time with friends. Petting a dog. Or seeing a dog. Or just thinking about dogs.
I wanted to test my own assumptions of what makes me happy by using data. But not just what habits, I was interested in knowing the frequency of those habits that makes me the most happy. Does exercising make me happier? If so, am I happiest when I exercise three or four times a week?
How did I do this.
To me, the blank page of a journal is daunting. I either end up writing a novel or nothing at all.
I like numbers. And spreadsheets. And statistically significant correlations with conditional color scales.
So I began by breaking down all of the different habits and activities in my life that I thought could contribute to my happiness. From doing that, I found five categories emerge:
- Health
- Learning
- Productivity
- Creativity
- Relationships
I then created a simple Google Survey with a yes/no question for each habit. Did I exercise today? Yes/No. Did I spend time with friends today? Yes/No. Did I read today? Yes/No.
Screenshot of daily habit tracker survey.
The final question is a rating of my happiness for that day between one and ten.
At the end of each day, I completed the survey. 17 questions total. About 20 seconds to complete. Those daily survey results would then pull into a Google Sheet that compiled the results into a week-by-week tracker and dashboard.
Screenshot of week-by-week tracker and dashboard.
After doing this for a month, I started to calculate correlations between habits and the effect they had on my daily happiness (e.g. meditation makes me 2.527% happier that day). And from that data, I started to set weekly targets (e.g. I’d like to spend time with friends three times a week).
Throughout the years, I’d analyze the impact that my habits and frequency of habits were having on my happiness and adjust my goals and behavior accordingly.
By no means did I track everything that contributes to happiness. Things like stress, weather, world events, travel, etc. are all big contributors. But many of those things I can not control, so for the purpose of habit change, I did not track them.
What did I learn from this (and from others trying it).
Happiness is obviously not some life hack you can make a spreadsheet and suddenly be happier with each passing day. But this experiment in self-reflection has taught me a lot. Looking back on the past two years, I’ve learned which habits make me happiest. Maybe to a level of detail that some might describe as “excessive” or “a bit much” or “yikes.” But I’ve also applied that data into tangible changes in how I spend my time and attention.
For example:
- I’ve learned that some habits, like eating healthy or doing cardio, don’t always make me happier that day, but they do make me happier the next day.
- I’ve learned that I don’t love the act of reading, but I really enjoy learning, so I’m happier when listening to a podcast or audiobook instead.
- As an introvert, I’ve learned there is an optimal number of social gatherings for me per week before they start to make me unhappy (3 per week is my sweet spot).
- I’ve also learned that my seasonal affective disorder is very real, as shown by my happiness dropping when the days get shorter each year, and to prioritize time outside during the winter.
Last year, I let 85 other people try this and in total, they tracked 256 unique habits. Everything from “Did I eat breakfast today?” to “Did I dance today?” to “Did I hug Michelle today?” to…well, something more intimate than hugging.
And after several months of tracking, I found that no two people had the same top habit that contributed to their happiness. Each person had their own unique combination of habits that made them happiest. Which leads me to my biggest lesson.
Happiness is aggressively personal. There is no “Top 5 habits to make you happier” list that will apply to all of us. The only way to know what makes you happy is through self-reflection.
Whatever your preferred method, whether it be journaling, using data, or something else, I would encourage everyone to try this type of reflection for a month. This exercise can provide evidence of how our small, daily behaviors impact our happiness, which can allow us to change our habits and potentially be happier. Even if it is only 1.293% happier.
And if you’d like to try this particular method for yourself, fill out this form.
) Self Improvement Happiness Habit Building Data Goals
WRITTEN BY Daniel Hill ... Manager at Environmental Defense Fund. Cofounder of Green Impact Campaign. Tracker of habits, happiness, and dark chocolate.