The Happiness Project: An Incomplete List Of Things To Do Daily, To Be Happy and Healthy.

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.”

Every Wednesday is List Day or Tip Day.

I've just started trying to come up with a list of the bare minimum of things we should do every day to be happy and healthy.

This list doesn't include major challenges, like "Quit smoking." Obviously, quitting smoking is very important for health, but it's not easy to add to a to-do list. This list doesn't include items like "Spend less time on the internet" or "Read more" because they aren't universal enough. This list also doesn't include items related to attitude: gratitude, cheerfulness, and the like. These are very concrete, very essential things to do as part of the everyday routine.

Here's what I've come up with so far...
Wear your seat belt
Take prescriptions medications properly
Go for a ten-minute walk (preferably outside)
Put your keys and wallet away in the same place
Take something with you (for instance, drop your dirty socks in the hamper on your way from your bedroom to the kitchen)
Charge your phone
Connect with someone close to you
Go to bed in time to get a good night’s sleep

As less crucial, but also highly advisable...
Make your bed
Kiss every member of your family
Sign the organ donor registry or tell your family you’d want to be a donor

What else would you add? I know I'm missing many items.

* I love looking at the beautiful images on House of Brinson.

* Keep your fingers crossed for me: The Happiness Project has been on Canada's bestseller list for 51 weeks. One more week, and it will be an entire year! I love Canada! The paperback came out later in the United States, so for that list, the book needs to hang on until March 1. But wherever you are in the world, if you're curious about the book, you can...
Order your copy.
Read sample chapters.
Watch the one-minute book video.
Listen to a sample of the audiobook.