Just knowing how happy you are could make you happier
For most people precisely answering the question of how happy they were six months ago would be a difficult task. You could probably give a ballpark estimate but given the passage of time the level of precision would likely be shaky. Or similarly, if you were asked to describe in detail the peaks and troughs of how happy you were across a year, and exactly what was driving these trends, you could probably pick out highlights or lowlights but I imagine the detail would be lacking. This is not just an assumption, there is good evidence to show that we find it hard to recall our emotions with a high degree of accuracy and that we tend to retrospectively over or under-estimate how we were feeling at the time (see Barnett, 1997 or Diener & Thomas, 1990).
Now of course the natural follow up question is, why does it matter if we aren't able to recall our emotions with a high degree of accuracy? It matters because the power of information drives how decisions are made. With perfect information individuals should take the correct decision 100% of the time. Perfect information means the decision maker knows all of the information necessary in order to make a decision. That is, based on all of the information you could possibly obtain at that given moment. Of course, with hindsight the decision may prove to be sub-optimal after all. We are less concerned with this though because it is beyond our control. Our goal is to optimise our decision making in the present moment. One way to do this is to improve the information that we have available to us. We look to do this because in most circumstances we don’t have perfect information when taking a decision. The world is murky and we often need to take educated judgements based on the balance of probabilities.
By tracking how happy you are over time, and even better, trying to discern what is driving this, you will increase the amount of information you have about yourself and as such should improve your decision making abilities. Our decisions determine how we choose to spend our time, who we choose to spend it with, how we choose to behave, where we choose to be and so on. We have greater autonomy over our lives than we often realise. In developed economies we often take this privilege of autonomy in life’s decisions for granted and in this aspect there certainly remains less autonomy in the developing world.
In addition, there is good evidence to suggest that we are sub-optimal decision makers, often choosing to take the less risky option when facing important decisions. An interesting NBER working paper from Steven Levitt in 2016 found that when people outsource their decisions to a simple coin flip, the individuals who are told by the coin toss to make a change are happier six months later than those who were told by the coin to maintain the status quo.
Between the 1st April 2019 and 28th January 2020 I tracked my own happiness each day in order to test what I could learn about myself from doing this and to broaden the information that I have available when making decisions. I did this using a very simple spreadsheet where I added a couple notes about how each day was and added in some information about what I did that day (i.e. yes/no questions about whether I exercised, socialised, drank alcohol and so on). The chart below shows an average and a seven day moving average across the 10 month period. The average is equal to 69.2 with scores on a scale of 0–100.
Briefly, what did I learn about myself from doing this exercise? Some of the findings were more obvious than others, for example scores on weekends (avg: 72.9) were consistently higher than scores on weekdays. And when I was on holiday I gave the highest scores (avg: 82.9). More interestingly, I enjoyed days where I socialised (avg: 72.8) a bit more than days where I exercised (avg: 71.8). But in both cases, days that included these activities I reported, on average, higher scores than days that didn’t include these activities. This project also confirmed that I am aversive to conflict, something that I already knew about myself. It was interesting to see nonetheless that days with the lowest scores were ones where I had a clash with another person. Lastly, on other days where I had lower scores I had referenced being bored completing monotonous tasks — I don’t tend to enjoy tasks that are repetitive or dull.
Now, at this point you might be thinking “it makes sense that more information improves decision making but this is a bit extreme, I am not going waste my time inputting numbers into a spreadsheet everyday”. That would be a fair criticism but fortunately you don’t need to use a spreadsheet anymore and you absolutely don’t have to do this everyday. I have created an index on my website that allows you to do this in a way that is personalised to you. When you create an account, you can choose which of the variables within the index are more important to you and the corresponding weights will shift to reflect your choices. In addition, depending on your current circumstances (i.e. if you are a student, or a parent or a retired person) the components that make up your index will be different, in order to be consistent with your circumstances. The frequency that you update your scores may be different for different people too. Our message is to try to avoid doing this too frequently. It is to get bogged down in the ups and downs of our daily lives. The example that I explained above is an extreme example, not something that we are recommending. Reflecting on a fortnight or monthly basis is healthy way to check-in with how things have been going, refresh some of your goals and evaluate what it is that you do that makes you feel good.
We believe that just using this index could make you happier. So what are you waiting for?!
