The Happiness Project: I've been getting more sleep.

I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, a memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happy--from Aristotle to Martin Seligman to Thoreau to Oprah. On this daily blog, I recount my adventures as I grapple with the challenge of being happier. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will hit the shelves in December 2009 (Harper).

Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

First: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Second: One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Third: The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)
Fourth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

What Started Me Thinking

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." Mark Twain.
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

I've been getting more sleep.

My new, not-exactly-original resolution is to go to sleep when I feel sleepy, instead of staying up to read, work, watch The Sopranos on TiVO, pay bills, whatever.

Before I learned the counter-intuitive—but true—rule that well-rested children sleep better than sleep-deprived children, I’d made critical errors like thinking that if my children stayed up late, they’d sleep later in the morning. Nope. They wake up earlier. Sleep begets sleep.

And this rule is true for adults, too. Now that I get more sleep, I sleep better but I also need more sleep. That’s healthy, sure, but I miss having that time awake.

But maybe my new sleepiness isn’t linked to getting more sleep, but just the level of sleep-deprivation we all suffer. I’ve heard that “sleep is the new sex,” and I was at a dinner party where everyone literally went around the table detailing the best nap they’d ever had.

Posted April 21, 2006

Comments

It would definitely make me happier if I could figure out how to sleep on a plane in Coach. I recent bought a "Bucky," the travel pillow made out of buckwheat. Nope: Still uncomfortable. There's something called the Nap Cap that Velcros your perfectly vertical head to the seatback, but I'm not hopeful about that -- who can sleep with their head that way anyway? The genius who solves plane sleep has yet to arrive.

Posted by: Julie Hilden | April 21, 2006 at 11:07 PM

A good nap is a fine thing indeed. But I'm wondering, why did the guests have to go round the dinner table recounting their best naps? Couldn't they have stayed put?

Posted by: Jeremy | April 22, 2006 at 06:52 AM

There is no greater happiness than a deep uninterrupted sleep!

POWER SLEEP by Dr. James B. Maas says "Boredoem can cause loss of sleep" and "Feel good about yourself, feel needed and loved, and you'll sleep better."

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Posted by: CADENZA EP2000W | September 05, 2006 at 04:06 AM

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Posted by: justme | September 13, 2009 at 05:53 AM

There have been articles that suggest an afternoon nap helps you be more productive for the rest of the day.

Many people I know have started taking Pzizz naps and they are very refreshing. http://www.pzizz.com/

Posted by: Tara Brown | October 14, 2009 at 05:35 PM

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Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On this blog, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.