The Happiness Project: Whoops, I forgot to mention the secret of the video I mentioned on Friday.

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT is the memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier – happily, it was a #1 New York Times bestseller. As one of the hundreds of experiments I've conducted, I started this blog. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of happiness. –

Gretchen Rubin

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.

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What Started Me Thinking

"The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." 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.”

Whoops, I forgot to mention the secret of the video I mentioned on Friday.

On Friday, I posted about a fascinating experiment demonstrating “inattentional blindness.” Go to this site, by the University of Illinois’s Visual Cognition Lab, and watch the video. As you watch, count the number of times the white-shirted team passes the basketball. Now that you’ve done it -- did you notice the guy in the gorilla suit who walks through the game? Crazy!

Posted January 6, 2008

Comments

Do you have any more information on the implications of this study? It would be interesting to see what [possible] implications this has (if any).

Posted by: Cody | January 06, 2008 at 06:10 PM

yes what is the mystery here or the study? The gorilla was very obvious.. and ...??

Posted by: Daria | January 06, 2008 at 07:44 PM

The gorilla may seem obvious when you know to look for it, but about half the people miss it when they watch the video (they're too busy counting the number of times the ball is passed). This phenomenon is called "inattentional blindness". See this article for a longer explanation:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr01/blindness.html

The gorilla experiment is mentioned about half-way down the page.

Posted by: Alex C. | January 06, 2008 at 08:43 PM

One thing that's not clear from the linked article - does the gorilla experiment work (in the sense of viewers not noticing the simian) only if viewers have been told beforehand to count the number of passes? Does it work just as well if viewers watch it with no particular purposes in mind?

Posted by: Peter | January 06, 2008 at 09:16 PM

During a diversity training workshop at Merrill Lynch a few years ago, the HBS professor facilitating the workshop showed this video. I missed the gorilla as did most of my senior ML colleagues. It highlighted that we see certain types of people as fit for the team (based on gender, race, MBTI-type, take your pick), or capable of moving the ball down the court, etc, and others we don't. Literally. It's a great study.

Whitney Johnson
www.daretodream.typepad.com

Posted by: Whitney Johnson | January 06, 2008 at 09:44 PM

I could see the gorilla but I want to know if any of you could see the guerilla ;)

Posted by: Daria | January 06, 2008 at 10:35 PM

Too funny that you mentioned this on Friday. I was at the Ft. Worth Children's Museum THAT DAY and this video was in one of their exhibits! I noticed the gorilla while I was counting, and it actually threw off my count.

Posted by: ElleBee | January 06, 2008 at 11:33 PM

I would be wary of the implication that "we see certain types of people as fit for the team." If viewers are asked to count the number of passes by the *dark* shirted individuals, the gorilla will be impossible to miss.

Posted by: Rich | January 07, 2008 at 11:06 AM

I watched the video after you linked to it on Friday, and I didn't see the gorilla at all. I was totally focused on counting the number of passes. I found this totally fascinating. I'm still not sure I understand the implications of it.

Posted by: Ella | January 07, 2008 at 02:04 PM

Gretchen

The experiment works best if you don't tell people about the gorilla in the same paragraph as giving them the instruction/link.

Most people would at very least scan quickly the rest of the para, before heading off to visit the link. You have somewhat spoiled this great video.

Posted by: Timothy | January 07, 2008 at 03:43 PM

Hi -- I didn't give away the gorilla the principle time I mentioned the video, on Friday. This was the "solution" post.

Yes, if you know about the gorilla, it's impossible to miss!

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | January 07, 2008 at 08:22 PM

Gretchen,

I'm sorry, I missed the first post
so got the wrong impression. Apologies.

I try and read your blog every day
I only read about 7-8,
but sometimes life is too short
for even that :)

timothy

Posted by: Timothy | January 07, 2008 at 11:29 PM

I love reading your site, and I was specially inspired by your 12 commandments so came up with a few for myself (of course I borrowed some of yours:-)

Here they are:
Be polite and fair
Let it go
Refuse to get offended
Enjoy the moment
Live in the present
Be the person you want to become
Treat people the way you want to be treated

Thanks a lot for inspiration:-)
X M

Posted by: Matin | January 08, 2008 at 05:27 AM

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