Dolan - Happiness by design: change what you do, not how you think

T here are two central issues in the study of happiness (I tend to prefer the label of subjective well-being). The first is a classic distinction, which goes back at least to Aristotle, between two views of the good life: a life of pleasure, contentment, and other positive feelings, or one that is well-lived and meaningful. A clear choice of one over the other has its problems. A preference for joy over meaning gets you labeled a hedonist, which is not a compliment. On the other hand, you are properly called a scold if you proclaim that pleasure is frivolous and that only virtue and meaning matter. How should you define happiness if you wish to be neither a hedonist nor a scold? The other great question about happiness is how to measure it. Should we study how people feel as they go about their life, whether they mostly experience happiness or misery? Or should we ask people to stop and think about their life, and report whether or not they are satisfied with it?

The two questions appear to be related. It seems natural to use measurements of life satisfaction to study whether people find meaning in their life, and to identify happy feelings by measuring ongoing experience. That was also my view for many years, but Paul Dolan has a different idea. To begin with, he is much more interested in peoples experiences of life than in their evaluations of their life. The novel idea is to consider meaningful and meaningless as experiences, not judgments. Activities, in his view, differ in a subjective experience of purposefulnessvolunteer work is associated with a sense of purpose that channel-surfing lacks. For Dolan, purpose and pleasure are both basic constituents of happiness. This is a bold and original move.

The question What does happiness consist of? is not answered by listing facts about happiness. It is about the proper use of the word: when people speak of happiness, what do they have in mind? No answer can be completely satisfactory, because people do not always have the same idea in mind when they use the word. Among the imperfect definitions of happiness, the pleasure-purpose concept that Dolan offers is, I believe, a strong contender. It is a good description of what I wish for my grandchildren: a life that is rich in activities that are both pleasurable and meaningful.

Paul Dolan is an inveterate optimist who has overcome many obstacles on his way to becoming an internationally recognized expert on well-being. The optimism shows on every page of this book. In particular, Paul is optimistic about you, his reader. He believes that you can make your life both pleasurable and meaningful with deliberate choices, about the environment you create for yourself and about the aspects of life that deserve your attention. He offers a great deal of sound advice on how to make these choices and how to follow through with them. The rest, he says, is up to you.

Daniel Kahneman