Mr. Dolan, are we the designers of our happiness?

We can be. Designing happiness refers to changing what you do in order

to feel happier, rather than just changing how you think. Some of the

most influential books on happiness focus a lot about how to think

yourself happy, take a positive approach, and so on. But it is very

hard to change the way you think. It’s why there are so many

unsuccessful self-help books. Instead, I think we should change how we

behave, and behavioural science provides us with many lessons about

how best to do this.

How could we design our happiness?

First, you have to figure out what changes you could make to be

happier. I recommend getting feedback on your experiences of happiness

by keeping a diary or even asking other people to consider what makes

you happy and what doesn’t

. Then, once you know what makes you happy, you can make some

changes to design your environments to make it easier to do what makes

you happy. In general, it is a lot easier for you to nudge yourself

happier in small but effective ways than it is to try to “shove”

yourself into becoming a whole new person or into adopting a wildly

different lifestyle. There are four principles in the book that I

recommend using – priming, defaults, commitments and social norms.

Priming refers to changing your immediate environment to change your

behaviour. For example, if you want to use Facebook less, you could

change your password to ‘donotcheckme’; if you want to clean more, you

could buy a citrus air freshener, which studies show help people to

clean up. Commitments refer to the fact that we are more likely to do

something when we publicly promise to do it – so if you’re trying to

spend less money, for example, tell other people about your goal to

curb your spending. Defaults work when you make a behaviour automatic

– eating healthier by getting farm fresh vegetables delivered to your

door weekly, for example, or setting up automatic email reminders

about your friends’ birthdays. And social norms means that we are more

likely to do what other people like us are doing, so if you’re

interested in volunteering more, for example, schedule a lunch date

with other friends who also volunteer.

What are the main factors that contribute to happiness? What

should we do to maximise it?

Happiness is very individual, so the most important thing is to work

out what makes you happy and what does not. But studies from many

people suggest a few things that make most people happy, and those are

listening to music you like, spending time with people that you like,

and avoiding distractions from anything that detracts from happiness

you are experiencing in the moment, such as traffic noise or text

messages.

Can happiness be learnt?

Yes, I think it is possible to learn what happiness is, and to learn

how to become happier. That’s part of the reason I wrote the book. I

hope making what I know about happiness and human behaviour public

will enable people to design their own ways into greater happiness.

Could happiness be genetically determined?

Yes, some of our happiness is genetically determined, but some of it

is not. Research shows that we do not all have a “set point” of

happiness that we return to. Some things can permanently alter or

lower people’s happiness, so it is possible to become happier despite

our genetic predisposition towards a particular level of happiness.

Are we our worst enemies towards happiness?

No, I don’t think so, because within each of us is the ability to

become happier.

What’s the difference between satisfaction and happiness?

Satisfaction is a problematic word for measuring happiness, I think,

because it can mean many different things – ‘having just enough’, for

example, which is not really what the word happiness gets at.

Satisfaction generally refers to how people think about their lives

overall, rather than how they experience the moments of their lives. I

think we should prioritise the latter, rather than stories and

constructions about what we think should make us happy that are

usually brought about when we think about whether we are satisfied

with our lives overall.

Does happiness exclude suffering?

If someone is experiencing happiness, yes, then they are not feeling

suffering; however, someone can still experiences mostly happy moments

and still feel sad moments from time to time. Suffering is the flip

side of happiness and they are interrelated. We need to accept some

sadness in our lives from time to time. It is a natural human response

and we should not always treat it as pathology.

In your new book Happiness by Design you said because our time is

limited we should focus our attention on those things that make us

feel happier. Is happiness an attention problem?

Yes, I think happiness is an attention problem. In general, we should

ignore what makes us unhappy and pay attention to what makes us happy,

although it is also important to pay attention to what makes us

unhappy sometimes so that we can change it. If we can’t change

something and it makes us unhappy, we should not pay attention to it,

but if we can change it, then we should pay attention to it so that we

can change it.

Previous attempts to explain the causes of happiness have all

mistakenly sought to relate inputs, such as income, directly to the

final output of happiness. But my approach recasts the inputs as

stimuli vying for your attention, with their effects on your happiness

determined by how much they are attended to. So the effect of income

on your happiness is determined not only by how much money you have

but also by how much attention you pay it. The same inputs—money,

marriage, sex, stammering, or whatever—can affect your happiness a lot

or a little depending on how much attention you pay to them.

How could we shift our attention towards the things that make us

happy when most of us are living life on autopilot and when we are

preoccupied with our daily concerns?

By designing environments that put our autopilot into ‘happy-mode’. By

this I mean designing environments that make it easier to do that

which makes us happiest, even if we are on autopilot. For example, if

you are on autopilot when you get ready for work in the morning, and

you want to cycle instead of drive to work because you think cycling

will make you happier, loan your car to a friend for a few weeks. This

will force you into the automatic habit of cycling. You’ll cycle

automatically because you can’t drive because you have created an

environment where you can’t drive.

Your daily concerns are exactly what it is important for your

happiness – find out if what you do during the day makes you feel

good, and if it doesn’t, work for ways to change it. If you can’t

change it, try and pay more attention to anything that does make you

happy, rather than to that which does not.

Why do you recommend that we should delegate some decision-making

to our friends? How wise is it to ask our friends for example if we should take a

new job?

It’s very wise, as long as you choose the right friend - someone who

is like you and who cares about your happiness. It is vital that you

ask the right questions in order to more accurately get at the likely

effects of your decision on your happiness. So don’t ask your friends,

“What do you think about me taking the new job?” where the focus of

attention will be on differences between the jobs that may not show up

in the experiences of your decision. Instead ask, “How do you think my

day-to-day life will be in a couple of months if I take the new job?”

Does money buy happiness?

People who are not able to afford what they need to live, such as

money and food, are generally unhappy, and so in this sense yes, it

can. But after this point money generally matters much less than other

things, like your relationships. Also, the same life events and

circumstances can affect your happiness a lot or a little depending on

how much attention you pay to them. We tend to think more money will

make us happier for longer than it actually does because we fail to

predict that we will get used to having more money and not pay so much

attention to it anymore.

Can happiness be described as moments of pleasure?

Although most people interpret the word ‘happiness’ as referring to

pleasure, that’s only half the story. Happiness is about experiencing

purpose, too. Some activities are generally more pleasurable than

purposeful, like watching TV, and others are usually more purposeful

than pleasurable, like work. We need a mix of both in order to be

truly happy.

What’s the relation between happiness and social media? How much

time should we spend on social media to be happy?

That’s a great question and I hope someone answers it soon, but I

suspect the answer will be different for each individual. In general,

we are happier when we are paying attention to what we are doing and

who we are doing it with, so if social media is detracting from your

experiences of happiness in the moment, then you should be using it

less than you are now. I have written further about this topic here:

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Why do you recommend having modest expectations to be happy?

This is based on a study showing that people with high expectations

about and big plans for the millennium celebrations were less happy on

the night than those with low expectations and not much planned. And

you know that about nights out on the town: the best ones tend to be

unplanned. Expecting to be very happy is probably a surefire way of

not being so.