As we’ve explained, this blog is (at least partly) about life experiments and examination, that we undertake in order to find ways to improve our lives. This, in itself, deserves some further exploration — what does it mean to improve life? How can we tell if experiments are succeeding if we don’t know what their goals are?

There are plenty of blogs dedicated to earning more, improving your career, conserving every last penny and generating passive income streams. We have nothing against making money and being fiscally conservative, and income is an appealing thing to measure, in that can actually be measured concretely, but we prefer to think of life improvement in more general terms.

The other extreme would be to state simply that we wish to be happier. However, to the disappointment of psychologists and economists, there’s not really any reliable consistent way to measure or record this. How happy we feel at any given moment will be quite dependent on immediate circumstances, from whether we recently received a thoughtful birthday card to feeling naseous from eating something bad.

Despite this, the field of “positive psychology” does offer some pointers about what generally makes people say that they are happier:

• Having a strong social circle. Both the number and closeness of friends contribute.
• Feelings of control over ones life
• A good mix of novelty and predictability
• Physical health and fitness
• The experience of “flow”, complete involvement in an activity to the exclusion of everything else.

Perhaps contrary to popular opinion (although somewhat obvious when you pay attention), the acquisition of more “stuff” does not seem to have any impact on overall happiness, beyond having what you need to live modestly.

So for now, let’s define an experiment as successful if it:

• Gives us more free time
• Helps us meet interesting people who enrich our lives
• Strengthens relationships with people we already know
• Eliminates drudgery or pointless obligations
• Leads to novel, but not too uncomfortable, new experiences
• Creates activities that we find completely absorbing
• Get us in better shape
• Makes us laugh

This list will surely grow and change, but hopefully you agree that it’s a good start.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.