Want to be happier Stay in the moment Matt Killingsworth

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so people want a lot of things out of

life but I think more than anything else

they want happiness Aristotle called

happiness the chief good the end towards

which all other things aim according to

this view the reason we want a big house

or a nice car or a good job isn’t that

these things are intrinsically valuable

it’s that we expect them to bring us

happiness now in the last 50 years we

Americans have gotten a lot of the

things that we want we’re richer we live

longer we have access to technology that

would have seems like science fiction

just a few years ago the paradox of

happiness is that even though the

objective conditions of our lives have

improved dramatically

we haven’t actually gotten any happier

maybe because these conventional notions

of progress haven’t delivered big

benefits in terms of happiness there’s

been an increased interest in recent

years and happiness itself people have

been debating the causes of happiness

for a really long time in fact for

thousands of years but it seems like

many of those debates remain unresolved

why is with many other domains in life I

think the scientific method has the

potential to answer this question in

fact in the last few years there’s been

an explosion in research on happiness

for example we’ve learned a lot about

its demographics how things like income

and education gender and marriage relate

to it

but one of the puzzles this is revealed

is that factors like these don’t seem to

have a particularly strong effect yes

it’s better to make more money rather

than less or to graduate from college

instead of dropping out but the

differences in happiness tend to be

small which leaves the question what are

the big causes of happiness I think

that’s a question we haven’t really

answered yet but I think something that

has the potential to be an answer is

that maybe happiness has an awful lot to

do with the contents of our

moment-to-moment experiences it

certainly seems that we’re going about

our lives that what we’re doing who were

with what we’re thinking about have a

big influence on our happiness and yet

these are the very factors that have

been very difficult in fact almost

impossible for scientists to study a few

years ago I came up with a way to study

people’s happiness moment-to-moment is

they’re going about their daily lives on

the massive scale all over the world

something we’ve never been able to do

before

called track your happiness org it uses

the iPhone to monitor people’s happiness

in real-time how does this work

basically I send people signals at

random points throughout the day and

then I ask them a bunch of questions

about their moment-to-moment experience

at the instant just before the signal

the idea is that if we can watch how

people’s happiness goes up and down over

the course of the day minute to minute

in some cases and try to understand how

what people are doing who they’re with

what they’re thinking about and all the

other factors that describe our day how

those might relate to those changes in

happiness

we might be able to discover some of the

things that really have a big influence

on happiness we’ve been fortunate with

this project to collect quite a lot of

data a lot more data of this kind than I

think has ever been collected before

over 650,000 real-time reports from over

15,000 people and it’s not just a lot of

people it’s a really diverse group

people from wide range of Ages from

eighteen to late 80s a wide range of

incomes education levels people who are

married divorced widowed etc they

collectively represent every one of 86

occupational categories and hail from

over 80 countries what I’d like to do

with the rest of my time with you today

is talk a little bit about one of the

areas that we’ve been investigating and

that’s mind wandering as human beings we

have this unique ability to have our

mind stray away from the present this

guy is sitting here working on his

computer and yet he could be thinking

about the vacation he had last month

wondering was gonna have for dinner

maybe he’s worried that he’s going bald

this ability to focus our attention on

something other than the present is

really amazing it allows us to learn and

plan and reason in ways that no other

species of animal can and yet it’s not

clear what the relationship is between

our use of disability and our happiness

you’ve probably heard people suggest

that you should stay focused on the

present be here now you’ve probably

heard a hundred times maybe to really be

happy we need to stay completely

immersed and focused on our experience

in the moment maybe these people right

maybe

wandering is a bad thing on the other

hand when our minds wander their

unconstrained we can’t change the

physical reality in front of us but we

can go anywhere in our minds since we

know people want to be happy

maybe when our minds wander they’re

going to someplace happier than the

place that they’re leaving it would make

a lot of sense in other words maybe the

pleasures of the mind allow us to

increase our happiness with mind

wandering well since I’m a scientist I’d

like to try to resolve this debate with

some data and in particular I’d like to

present some data to you from three

questions that I asked with track your

happiness remember this is from sort of

moment-to-moment experience in people’s

real lives there’s three questions the

first one is a happiness question how do

you feel on a scale ranging from very

bad to very good second an activity

question what are you doing on a list of

22 different activities including things

like eating and working and watching TV

and finally a mind wandering question

are you thinking about something other

than what you’re currently doing people

could say no in other words I’m focused

only on my task or yes I am thinking

about something else and the topic of

those thoughts are pleasant neutral or

unpleasant any of those yes responses

are what we called mind wandering so

what did we find

this graph shows happiness on the

vertical axis and you can see that bar

there representing how happy people are

when they’re focused on the present when

they’re not mind wandering as it turns

out people are substantially less happy

when their minds are wandering than when

they’re not now you might look at this

result and say okay sure on average

people are less happy when their mind

wandering but surely when their minds

are straying away from something that

wasn’t very enjoyable to begin with at

least then mind wandering should be

doing something good for us nope as it

turns out people are less happy when

their mind wandering no matter what

they’re doing for example people don’t

really like commuting to work very much

it’s one of their least enjoyable

activities and yet they are

substantially happier when they’re

focused only on their commute then when

their mind is going off to something

else it’s amazing so how could this be

happening

I think part of the reason a big part of

the

is that when our minds wander we often

think about unpleasant things and they

are enormous ly less happy when they do

that our worries our anxieties our

regrets and yet even when people are

thinking about something neutral they’re

still considerably less happy than when

they’re not mind wandering at all even

when they’re thinking about something

they would describe as pleasant they’re

actually just slightly less happy than

when they aren’t mind wandering if mind

wandering we’re a slot-machine would be

like having the chance to lose $50 $20

or $1 right you’d never want to play so

I’ve been talking about this suggesting

perhaps that mind wandering causes

unhappiness but all I’ve really shown

you is that these two things are

correlated it’s possible that’s the case

but it might also be the case that when

people are unhappy then they mind wonder

maybe that’s what’s really going on how

could we ever disentangle these two

possibilities well one in fact that we

can take advantage of I think a fact

you’ll all agree is true is that time

goes forward not backward right the

cause has to come before the effect

we’re lucky in this data we have many

responses from each person and so we can

look and see does mind-wandering tend to

precede unhappiness or does unhappiness

tend to precede mind-wandering

to get some insight into the causal

direction as it turns out there is a

strong relationship between mind

wandering now and being unhappy a short

time later consistent with the idea that

mind wandering is causing people to be

unhappy in contrast there’s no

relationship between being unhappy now

and mind wandering a short time later

in other words mind wandering very

likely seems to be an actual cause and

not merely a consequence of unhappiness

a few minutes ago I likened

mind-wandering to a slot machine you’d

never want to play well how often do

people’s minds wander turns out they

wonder a lot in fact really a lot

forty-seven percent of the time people

were thinking about something other than

what they’re currently doing how does

that depend on what people are doing

this shows the rate of mind wandering

across 22 activities ranging from a high

of 65 percent when people are taking a

shower brushing their teeth

to 50% when they’re working to 40% when

they’re exercising all the way down to

this one and short bar on the right that

I think some of you were probably

laughing at 10% of the time people’s

minds are wandering when they’re having

sex but there’s something I think that’s

quite interesting in this graph and that

is basically with one exception no

matter what people are doing their mind

wandering at least thirty percent of the

time which suggests I think that mind

wandering isn’t just frequent it’s

ubiquitous it pervades basically

everything that we do in my talk today

I’ve told you a little bit about mind

wandering a variable that I think turns

out to be fairly important in the

equation for happiness my hope is that

over time by tracking people’s moments

moment happiness and their experiences

in daily life will be able to uncover a

lot of important causes of happiness and

then in the end a scientific

understanding of happiness will help us

create a future that’s not only richer

and healthier but happier as well thank

you

[Applause]

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