The Happiness Project

This Wednesday: Eight psychological terms to help you strengthen your friendships.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Eight psychological terms to help you strengthen your friendships.

Ancient philosophers and modern scientists agree: the most essential key to happiness is strong relationships with other people.

We all have many kind of relationships that contribute to our happiness, and one of the most important is our friendships. My happiness-project resolutions aimed at friendship include “Cut people slack,” “Show up,” “Make three friends,” “Bring people together,” “Remember birthdays,” “No gossip,” and “Say hello.”

Here are eight psychological terms and principles that I’ve found helpful as I’ve been trying to build and strengthen my friendships.

1. Triadic closure. In a phenomenon called “triadic closure,” people tend to befriend the friends of their friends – and this is very satisfying. Friendships thrive on inter-connection, and it’s both energizing and comforting to feel that you’re building not just friendships, but a social network. I now make much more of an effort to help my friends become friends with each other, and to befriend friends’ friends. (Total non sequitur: “befriend friends’ friends” is quite a phrase! Bad writing, but I couldn’t resist.)

2. Emotional contagion. “Emotional contagion” is a strong psychological effect in which we “catch” the happy, sad, or angry moods of others. Someone in a happy, energetic mood will help boost the moods of others, and obviously, this creates a very pleasant atmosphere. Unfortunately, negative moods are more contagious than positive moods; if I’m crabby, I can trigger a wave of crabbiness in my friends. I’m trying to do a better job of living up to my duty to be happy.

3. The mere exposure effect. Familiarity breeds affection. The "mere exposure effect" describes the fact that repeated exposure makes people like music, faces -- even nonsense syllables -- better. Because of the "exposure principle," the more often a person sees another person, the more intelligent and attractive that person will be ranked. So I try to put myself in situations where I’m going to see a lot of the same people over and over.

4. Fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is a psychological phenomenon in which we tend to view other people’s actions as reflections of their characters, and to overlook the power of the situation to influence their action. In other words, we over-emphasize the role that personality plays in shaping others’ behavior, and under-emphasize the role of outside forces. I assume that the guy in the drugstore is an inconsiderate jerk because he rushed ahead of me to get to the counter, when in fact, he’s very considerate, and he’s rushing to get home with the medicine for his sick girlfriend.

5. Warmth. Attraction is reciprocal; we tend to like people more when we think the like us. So if I’m friendly and openly pleased to see someone person, that person is more likely to feel friendly toward me. Instead of playing it cool, I try to show a lot of warmth.

6. Smiling. As obvious as it seems, studies do show that we’re perceived as more friendly when we smile more (it also helps to have an expressive face, to nod, to lean forward, to have a warm tone). The sheer amount of time smiling makes a very big difference on perceived friendliness.

7. Subliminal touching. Studies show that subliminal touching – that is, touching touching a person so unobtrusively that it’s not noticed – dramatically increases that person’s sense of well-being and positive feelings toward the toucher. And vice versa. This fleeting touching might be something like touching a person’s back as you walk through a door, or touching his or her arm for emphasis.

8. Situation evocation. In situation evocation, we spark a response from people that reinforces a tendency we already have — for example, if I act irritable all the time, the people around me are probably going to treat me with less patience and helpfulness, which will, in turn, stoke my irritability. If I can manage to joke around, I’ll evoke a situation in which the people around me were more likely to joke around, too. In other words, I make my own weather.

As with many aspects of happiness, people often assume that friendship should flow easily and naturally, and that trying to "work" on it is forced and inauthentic. But in the bustle of everyday life, it's easy to forget to take time for our real priorities. Since I've started trying to keep my happiness-project resolutions, I've found that my friendships have expanded and deepened. It's worth the effort.

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A while back, I posted about getting my "Style Statement" with Carrie McCarthy and Danielle LaPorte. Now they have a book, Style Statement: Live By Your Own Design, and I just got my copy.

The “style statement” is a two-word phrase that sums up your personal style. It’s descriptive, but also prescriptive, because it not only describes you, it’s meant to help you think about your decisions and actions with more insight into what makes you happy. The first word in the phrase describes your dominant style, and the second word, the individual edge – in an 80/20 balance. For example, I’m “Constructive Insouciant.”

The book helps you figure out your own “style statement” and, knowing that, to think about how you might bring your life into better alignment with your style. Thinking about being “Constructive Insouciant” has given me real insight into certain decisions I’ve made.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

Happiness interview with Zen Habit’s Leo Babauta.

I’m starting something new: from time to time, I’ll post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness.

During my study of happiness, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies.

There’s something peculiarly compelling and instructive about hearing other people’s happiness stories. I’m much more likely to be convinced to try a piece of advice urged by a specific person who tells me that it worked for him, than by any other kind of argument. I ask the same set of questions in each interview, the better to compare different people’s experiences.

Today’s interview is with Leo Babauta of the fantastically interesting and useful blog, Zen Habits. Along with Zen Habits, he recently finished the e-book, Zen to Done, is writing another book, and has a blog about writing, Write to Done. He’s married, has six kids, lives on Guam, and has done a lot of thinking about the nature of happiness and how to live a happy life.

Gretchen: What's a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Leo: Exercise, undoubtedly. It's one of my favorite things to do -- even if I don't feel like exercising at the moment, once I get started I invariably feel great. And it leaves me feeling amazing all day long.

Gretchen: What's something you know now about happiness that you didn't know when you were 18 years old?
Leo: For most people, happiness is a choice (unless you have clinical depression or something like that). This isn't immediately obvious to most of us, especially just starting out in life, because we think we need a good job or a good spouse or a good income or a nice house and car or world travel in order to be happy. But happiness isn't about any of that. It's about wanting to be happy, and living your life so that you're happy. It's about staying positive and seeing the good things in everything.

Gretchen: Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Leo: Probably just taking on too much. When I overload myself with projects, I get stressed out and life and work aren't as fun anymore. So when this happens, I take a time out, and I decide what's most important. Then I get out of all the other commitments or postpone them to when I have more time. Simplifying my life like this always makes me happier.

Gretchen: Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you've find very helpful?
Leo: There are many. "Stay positive" is one. But my all-time favorite is five words of life advice from Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh: "Smile, breathe and go slowly." I think of it almost daily. It's the wisest and most practical advice I've ever heard.

Gretchen: Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
Leo: I find that negativity detracts from many people's happiness. The worst part is, they don't realize they're doing it, and they don't want to hear it from you either. I try to make positive suggestions, or share what's worked for me, and sometimes that helps. People wallow in self-pity, complain, get discouraged from failure, get depressed by their jobs and their health ... all human emotions, of course, but if you allow this kind of negativity to stay in your life, you'll be dominated by it.

I see people go from unhappiness to happiness simply by taking positive steps in their lives. They might start exercising, or waking early, or simplifying their lives. Many people on my blog who try some of my suggestions along these lines report some amazing transformations from simple little steps like these.

Gretchen: Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn't – or vice versa?
Leo: When I was younger, I always wanted a promotion. I worked hard at getting it. Then I got the promotion, and I wasn't any happier. I made more money, but somehow my expenses expanded to meet my new income. I had a higher position of authority, but along with that position came more responsibilities, more hours worked, more stress. This happened a few times, and then I made the choice to step down to a position of lower responsibility, so I could shed all the stress and long hours and focus on doing something I loved. It turned out to be an amazing decision, and ever since then, I've focused more on doing what I love than on getting more money or more authority. Every step of the way in my journey in the last 10 years, I've chosen passion over power and money, and it's worked out very well.

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Speaking of websites that are a great resource for life hacks, productivity tips, and just generally how to live life in a more effective and serene way, check out Merlin Mann's 43 Folders. It's packed full of great stuff.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

Debate: do pets make us happier?

Growing up, my family had a much-beloved dog, Paddy-Wack (“Knick knack paddy wack, give your dog a bone…”), but we don’t have a pet now. I’m very thankful that our building doesn’t allow them, because the Big Girl would constantly be pestering me about it, if not. I definitely wouldn’t want the responsibility of having a pet – we’re taxed to the uttermost right now, with two children. We can’t even keep a houseplant alive.

Nevertheless, I know that for many people, pets are an enormous source of happiness. The other day, though, I had a fascinating conversation with a friend about the negative happiness consequence of having pets. There are pros and cons I hadn't considered.

The pros to having pets:
Pets (above the fish/turtle level) provide companionship and unconditional love, both of which are KEY to happiness.

Dog owners, at least, often get more exercise, and exercise is a source of happiness.

Research shows that while we think that receiving support is a key to happiness, actually, providing support is perhaps even more important. Pets require our constant attention and care.

Having a pet contributes to the “atmosphere of growth” because you learn about your pet, learn to take care of it, watch it grow, etc.

Having a pet often contributes to stronger relationships with other people, by giving you something in common and similar concerns. I know many people who have made good friends at the dog-walkers park.

But my friend pointed out some cons:
Pets make it much harder to travel. When I asked him why he couldn’t leave his dogs in a kennel for a week, he said, “How often do you leave your two daughters for a week?” Point taken.

For people who have difficulty expressing affection to people, pets can be an outlet. In some cases, this is a bonus, but it can also mean that such folks are less inclined to direct their outward affection toward other people, who need it. Along the same lines, people who aren’t terribly social feel less need to be sociable, so they end up spending less time with other people.

Pets generate a huge amount of chores, which can be a source of tension and resentment.

Pets are sometimes used to justify decisions that people don’t want to take responsibility for. Instead of saying, “I don’t want to go to Thailand” or “I don’t want to go to your family’s house for Thanksgiving,” they say, “We can’t leave the dogs.”

Obviously, pets are an expense.

Trying to decide whether to get a pet?

In his fascinating book Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert argues that people aren’t very good at predicting what will make them happier in the future. He suggests a remedy: To predict what’s likely to make you happy in the future, ask someone who is having that experience at the moment. The more similar such surrogates are to you, the more helpful their information is likely to be.

So if you love to travel, or if you spend most of your time at home, or if you have a lot of kids or no kids, ask similiarly-situated people how they like having a pet.

Gilbert maintains that although we all feel very idiosyncratic, we’re much more alike in our preferences than we imagine—so the experience of other people is the best guide to follow.

Lists of pros and cons aside, from my own experience, pet ownership seems a lot like parenthood: As much as people might explain the disadvantages, and as much of a pain as it might be for long stretches, you’re never sorry you made the decision. There’s a satisfaction there that seems beyond the reach of conventional measure or rational explanation. Why? I think the secret is LOVE. We gladly pay a high, high price for love.

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The folks at AOL Canada very kindly asked me to do an interview, which was a lot of fun. Also, a thoughtful reader posted the link to a very interesting site, arloandjanis.com, a blog that incorporates cartoons. Ever since I read Scott McCloud's entire brilliant oeuvre, and Dan Pink's fantastic The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, I've been thinking a lot about the tremendous potential of comics.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Andy Warhol.

"Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.” --Andy Warhol

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I just discovered the Half Full blog, about the science of raising happy kids. If this is a topic that interests you, it's really worth a visit.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

It’s Friday: time to think about YOUR Happiness Project. This week: Stop talking.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you should have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

One of my happiness-project resolutions is “Stop talking.” I have a tendency to want to talk too much – a tendency that was much exacerbated when I switched careers to being a writer. Because I spend a lot of time working silently, by myself, I’m so exhilarated by the chance to talk to other people that I end up talking too much, interrupting, etc.

But I’ve realized recently that there’s an even more important context in which to remember to “Stop talking”: when I’m trying to convey a mood of sympathy and understanding.

The other day, Big Girl was upset about something that had happened at school, so I pulled her into my lap in a rocking chair. I was desperately trying to think of comforting words, but then I realized that she was feeling better, just rocking in my arms. I decided that it was nicer not to say anything at all.

Sometimes, it’s important to talk things through, but in this case, after she told me what was bothering her, I think that anything that I might have said would have been less effective than my silent sympathy.

Then I noticed the same thing with the Big Man. He seemed preoccupied, and I was about to try to start a “What’s on your mind?” “Is everything okay?” “You seem preoccupied” kind of conversation. Then I thought – “You know, the Big Man really doesn’t enjoy that kind of talk,” and instead, I sat right next to him on the sofa, put my head on his shoulder, and reached over to hold his hand. That seemed to chirk him up.

Philosophers and scientists agree: the KEY to happiness is close relationships with other people, and we need to have a person in whom we can confide our intimate thoughts. Silence isn’t golden in every situation, because sometimes conversation is what a person needs. But now I think that silent communion can be better, in some situations.

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According to a new study, older people are happier than younger people: 33 percent of all 88-year-olds proclaimed themselves to be "very happy," as opposed to 24 percent of people under 25. Interesting material.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

This Wednesday: 9 tips to make TV-watching a source of happiness.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Nine tips to make TV-watching a source of happiness.

In terms of hours, watching TV is probably the world’s most popular pastime. Among Americans, it’s the most common free-time activity – for an average of about five hours a day. It’s a source of relaxing fun.

But while television is a good servant, it’s a bad master. It can swallow up huge quantities of people’s lives, without much happiness bang for the buck.

Here are nine tips for keeping TV-watching a source of happiness:

1. Watch TV with someone else. We enjoy all activities more when we’re with other people, and we tend to find things funnier when we’re with other people. Use TV as an excuse to get together. Sports TV, awards TV (the Oscars), and competition TV (American Idol, Survivor), in particular, are a lot more fun to watch with other people. In fact, you can even…

2. Use TV as a bridge. If you’re having trouble connecting with someone – your sweetheart or your teenager, say -- try joining that person when he or she is watching TV (even if football or Project Runway isn’t necessarily your favorite). Watching TV is companionable, you share an experience, you can comment on the action here and there for a bit of conversation…it’s a way of showing someone that you want his or her company and engaging in a low-key, pleasant, undemanding way.

3. Use TiVo. Recording shows allows you to use your time more efficiently. You can skip the commercials and watch a particular show according to your own schedule and mood. Also, interaction with actual real live people is the most important element to happiness, so you don’t want to leave your friend’s house early because you need to get home to catch a show.

4. Don’t use TiVo. Anticipation is an important aspect of happiness. Looking forward to a certain day and time so will heighten the pleasure you’ll take in your favorite show. And it’s fun to think that you’re sitting down at the same time with people across the country to see what’s next for the folks on Lost. Also, you’ll be able to enjoy reading about it right away (see #5), without worrying about spoilers.

5. Enjoy the commercials. This is particularly easy if you rarely watch TV. An enormous amount of ingenuity and creativity goes into commercials, and they can be fascinating if you pay attention.

6. Learn about TV. The more you know about anything, the more interesting it becomes. Read some TV criticism, read some interviews with the creative people involved in the show, become more knowledgeable.

7. Don’t surf. Especially if you’re feeling frazzled and overwhelmed with multi-tasking, sit down, start watching, sink into the experience, and stay on one channel. Let the show unfold in its time slot, don’t keep switching around to catch bits and pieces of other shows. Be a satisficer, not a maximizer.

8. Do surf. One of the joys of watching cable TV is the cornucopia of shows on display. As is oft remarked, “So many channels, yet so little to watch” -- but nevertheless I love seeing the variety of sports, music, pop culture, dance, movies of all sorts, old TV shows, religious programs, history…it’s fascinating. (Btw, surfing is so addictive because of the phenomenon of “intermittent reinforcement”: activities that sometimes, unpredictably, do yield a big, juicy reward – “Look, Tootsie is on! -- and sometimes don’t – “Is Antiques Roadshow really the best thing on TV right now?” -- tend to have an addictive quality.)

9. Choose to watch TV. This sounds obvious, but often, we don’t really choose TV, it’s just the easy default activity. Make the effort to ask yourself, “What would I like to do for the next hour?” before you plop down with the remote control.

Bottom line: if you watch TV mindfully and purposefully, it can be a source of happiness, especially if you use it to connect with other people. If you watch it passively, automatically, and for want of anything better to do, it can be a drain on happiness.

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Lifehacker never fails to instruct and entertain. I used to feel intimidated by the number of hacks that were utter gibberish to me, because I'm just not tech-savvy enough to understand them, but now I just glide over those and read the posts that resonate with me.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

The happiness of handing in the first draft of my book: strangely muted.

Yesterday afternoon, I emailed my agent the first complete draft of my book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT. And, I reflected, my research on the nature of happiness told me a lot about my emotions at that moment.

For months, I’d been fantasizing about the moment when I’d be finished with a beginning, middle, and an end. How fabulous I’d feel! How relieved I’d be to hit that milestone! What a relief to know that at least I had a decent framework on which to improve!

But I didn’t get much of a boost of happiness, at all. Why?

The “arrival fallacy” makes us think, “As soon as I finish my draft/get that promotion/buy a house, then I’ll be happy.” Usually, however, hitting that target doesn’t provide that much happiness. Why not?

One reason it doesn’t give a huge happiness boost is that by the time the event occurs, you’ve incorporated it into your life and expectations. In my case, it wasn’t as if I woke up one day and jumped from being one-tenth finished to being completely finished. I closed in on the finish line day by day.

Also, arrival often brings its own worries and responsibilities. Now that I’ve finished my draft, I’ve become a lot more worried about whether it’s any good. Up until yesterday, I was just worried about getting it done.

However, my happiness research has taught me some coping techniques. I’m trying to celebrate this milestone, instead of just brushing it aside. I want to savor the moment and mark it in some way. My mother-in-law gave me a gift certificate for a massage for my birthday, so I’m going to schedule that massage.

Also, because I know I have a duty to be happy, and I know that the people around me are made happy by my happiness, I’m not going to explain to them how handing in my draft actually doesn’t make me very happy. Blah, blah, blah.

Instead, I’m going to underscore the happy feelings it has brought me. “Yes, so great to cross that hurdle, very excited to hear what my agent thinks, so pleased to have tons of time to make it as good as possible,” etc.

So...I'm thrilled I've handed in my first draft! It feels so good to cross that milestone! Onward and upward.

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Erin at Unclutterer and I come from the same part of the country, and she sent me the link yesterday to Kansas City is in Missouri. All of us who hail from Kansas City, Missouri, fight the unceasing battle to establish the Missouri location of Kansas City. I laughed out loud. My favorite section was the Testimonials -- I couldn't tell if they were fake or real.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

Happiness, equity theory, and why we tend to think that we should get what we deserve -- and deserve what we get.

One of the most interesting and complicated issues within the study of happiness is the relationship between money and happiness. Although some folks seem content to say, “Money can’t buy happiness,” I think that relationship is a bit more complicated.

Because of my interest in this topic, I read Shira Boss’s fascinating book, Green With Envy. It was interesting in many ways – for example, she seeks to explode the taboo against talking about money, and provides several detailed accouts of people’s money problems, including her own. If you like the blog My Open Wallet, you’ll like this book.

I was most intrigued, however, by Boss’s brief discussion of equity theory – a phenomenon I’d observed in the world, without knowing the name for it.

Equity theory, according to Boss, is the psychological term for our tendency to feel uneasy when we have much more or much less than someone else, without knowing why. People generally have a belief that we get what we deserve – and deserve what we get.

Now, this is obvious when something bad and undeserved happens. People ask “Why me?” when cancer strikes or a hurricane hits.

But people also feel discomfort when something good and undeserved happens. People who inherit a lot of money (as opposed to people who earn a lot of money), for example, or people who are strikingly attractive, see that without any effort on their parts, they’re very fortunate, and that can cause discomfort. (I know, you’re thinking, throw some of that discomfort my way! But while “it’s a good problem to have,” as they say, it does mess with people’s heads.)

The more I think about it, the more interesting equity theory becomes.

It explains, for example, the attraction of the idea of karma, even to people who don’t hold karma as a religious belief. There’s a sense that karma is a force in the world – not just that if you’re nice to people, they’ll be nice to you, etc., but that there’s some force in the universe, like gravity, that operates to bring about just desserts.

It explains the fact that certain professions breed arrogance. If you earn a wildly huge amount of money – say, with a hedge fund – equity theory would mean that you’d want to believe that if you’ve made that much money, you must deserve that much money. You wouldn’t say to yourself, “Right place, right time,” or feel lucky. You’d feel brilliant.

It explains people’s strange reactions to lottery winnings. Think of Hurley on Lost -- his lottery winnings made him happy, then made things very strange for him (well, I suppose in his case, it was a bit more than the lottery at work!). But lottery weirdness happens in real life. Consider one woman who, after she won $2.8 million, was sued by her son’s teenage friend, whom she’d asked to pray for her. Equity theory helps explains the lawsuit. It didn't seem possible that this woman could just win for no reason; she must have earned it in some way – according to the lawsuit, by virtue of the teenager’s prayers.

Have you seen any examples of equity theory at work in the world?

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Chris at The Art of Non-Conformity blog did an interesting set of interviews on the question of the financial payoff to following your passion. He was nice enough to include me in the discussion.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Tennyson.

“We needs must love the highest when we see it.” --Tennyson

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

It’s Friday: time to think about YOUR Happiness Project. This week: Examine your heuristics.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you should have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

I spent a month of my Happiness Project testing possible psychological short-cuts to happiness, and this led me to the concept of heuristics.

Heuristics are “rules of thumb,” the quick, common-sense principles people apply to solve a problem or make a decision. They aren’t “rules for living” that you consciously try to apply; rather, they are deeply imbedded, often unconscious, rules that you use to come to a decision to answer a question or decide a course of action.

Usually heuristics are useful, though sometimes they lead to cognitive bias. Take the availability heuristic: people predict the likelihood of an event based on how easily they can come up with an example. This is often helpful (is a tornado likely to hit Manhattan?), but sometimes people’s judgment is skewed because the vividness of examples makes an event seem more likely than it actually is. People become very worried about child abduction, say, when in fact, it’s a very rare occurrence.
I realized that I have my own idiosyncratic collection of “heuristics” for making decisions and setting priorities. Well, maybe these don’t fit the precise definition of “heuristics”—but they are rules of thumb that I applied when deciding what to think or how to act, mostly without quite realizing that I was using them. They flickered through my brain so quickly that I had to make a real effort to detect them, but I identified a handful:

My children are my most important priority.
Try to exercise every day.
People don’t notice my mistakes and flaws as much as I think.
The Big Man is my top priority.
“Yes” comes right away; “no” never comes.
Get some work done every day.
Whenever possible, choose vegetables.
I know as much as most people.
Try to attend any party or event to which I’m invited.
My parents are almost always right.
Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.
If I’m not sure whether to include some text in my writing, cut it out.
When making a choice about what to do, choose work.

Looking at these rules showed me something. Several of them were difficult to balance. How could my kids, the Big Man, and work all be top priorities? Also, I was pretty sure that the Big Man operated under the heuristic of “Try to skip practically any event to which I’m invited.” That explained certain ongoing marital debates.

Some of my heuristics were unhelpful. “I don’t have time” ran through my head dozens of times each day. I worked to change that heuristic to “I have plenty of time for the things that are important to me.”

I asked my friends if they had any personal heuristics, and I collected quite a few:
There’s no wrong decision.
Always say hello.
People in business, small or large, will take advantage of you if they can.
What would my mother do?
Actually, this is good news.
Say yes.
This is the fun part.
Do nothing, go nowhere.
Do everything all at once.

What heuristics are shaping your behavior? Though I may be mis-using the term. I mean – what are the rules of thumb that you apply to figure out what to think or do? Not what you WISH you thought (“Always take a moment to appreciate the sunshine”) but what you actually think (“Any parent who misses a school function has bad values”).

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On Friday afternoons I usually find myself spending a little time reading all the fun articles that during the week I'm too disciplined to pursue, and I got a kick out of reading this story about the invention of the flying car.

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