This project is my public attempt to figure out how to lead a less miserable life (or a happier life). More specifically, I will try to figure out how happiness works and what that means in practical terms. I have a nagging suspicion I will get stuck in the “how happiness works” part, but let’s be ambitious.
Why do I do this and why should you care? It seems important in a very rock bottom kind of way and it’s not systematically taught anywhere (which is bizarre). When trying to learn more, I got increasingly frustrated with existing resources for reasons which will become apparent over the next few weeks. So I set out to really understand happiness, originally solely for my own benefit. But publishing my struggle for everybody to see has a few benefits: (1) it motivates me to continue this endeavor; (2) I might get useful feedback; (3) it forces me to be explicit, accessible, and at least somewhat rigorous to avoid embarrassment; and (4) you might actually also find it useful.
My goal is to publish a post every week. I will try to follow a coherent structure, both for my own and your benefit. Hopefully we will all learn something in the process.
I will just leave the quote from the blog template:
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Less Miserable 
@ “it’s not systematically taught anywhere” – really? There are a lot of people who would claim to systemically teach happiness, for instance abbots. So how do you define “not systematically taught” in a way that would exclude these attempts?
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“it’s not systematically taught anywhere” – is that? I think, there are a lot of people out there who would claim they are teaching happiness systematically, for instance some abbots. What would you tell them and how do yo define either “teach systematically” or “happiness” so these attempts are excluded?
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Maybe I should have clarified: I did not mean “taught systematically” but “systematically taught”, i.e. it is not part of a school or university curriculum or some other public institution.
You’re right that many people attempt to teach this subject systematically. I still found them lacking, but this is not my main claim in the sentence you picked up.
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FWIW, Yale has a course called “The Science of Well-Being”, and it’s their most popular course ever. They’ve also made it available through coursera (see https://news.yale.edu/2018/02/20/yales-most-popular-class-ever-be-available-coursera and https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being).
The Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley offers a similar course called “The Science of Happiness”, which more than 450’000 students have signed up for since it launched in 2014 (see https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/event/the_science_of_happiness and https://www.edx.org/course/the-science-of-happiness).
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wow!! 7Giving something a name is not an explanation
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