The Happiness Project: Beware of Fake-Work and Make-Work.

The Happiness Project

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

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.”

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could 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 remind myself that all work isn’t created equally. Just because I’m busy doesn’t mean that I’m being productive.

I imagine that every kind of work has its fake-work and make-work. For example, as a writer, I remind myself:

create, don’t fiddle around with italics and formatting
typing isn’t the same as writing
cruising around the internet isn’t the same as “research”
answering emails, checking Twitter and Facebook, and similar tasks, while important, must not be allowed to get in the way of writing and thinking
if I’m finding it very hard to write, I should stop trying to write and instead, start thinking harder
if I’m finding it very easy to write, I’m probably falling into cliché and should start thinking harder

Of course, one of my Secrets of Adulthood is that the opposite of a great truth is also true, and I have several resolutions aimed at helping me not to worry constantly about being efficient, but instead, to Force myself to wander and Schedule time for play. Sometimes, I work best by doing things that don't look like "work."

In your job, do you have to fight the urge to do fake-work and make-work? What form does yours take?

* I can't resist time-lapse photography, and this video shows the sky above San Francisco's Exploratorium every ten seconds for 146 days. Beautiful.

* The book The Happiness Project has been bouncing around the New York Times bestseller list for FOUR MONTHS now! – including hitting #1! Yay! You can...
NEW! Watch the TV ad (crazy)!
Order your copy!
Read sample chapters!
Watch the one-minute book trailer!
Join the discussion on the Facebook Page!
If you're inspired to start your own happiness project, join the 2010 Happiness Challenge, to make 2010 a happier year.