by Paul Dolan
Bring me the most purpose
Difficulty in achieving (0–10)
1
More money
2
New experiences
3
Children
4
More time with the kids
5
The kids leaving home
6
A new partner
7
More sleep
8
More sex
9
A shorter commute
10
More time with friends
11
A new house
12
A new job
13
A new boss
14
New work colleagues
15
More exercise
16
To be healthier
17
To be slimmer
18
To stop smoking
19
More holidays
20
A pet
Now, for each of the two items you chose for pleasure, please rate how difficult it would be to achieve it on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 represents “not at all difficult” and 10 means “very difficult indeed.” For each of the two items you chose for purpose, please rate how difficult it would be to achieve it, using the same scale. I’m really hoping that you now think that it is easier to achieve those things that will bring you the most pleasure or purpose. Either that or you have been more ambitious in your choice of items.
We really are done now. Writing this book has made me, Professor Happy, very happy, and finishing it even more so. I hope that reading it has made a sentimental hedonist out of you and brought you a good dose of pleasure and purpose, and that you have many, many more happy experiences in your life. I have thought long and hard about how to finish this book, especially because, as we know, it might end up being your abiding memory of all that I have written. So let me just restate that future happiness cannot compensate for current misery; lost happiness is lost forever. Powered by your own supercharged attention production process, there is no better time than now to crack on with finding pleasure and purpose in everyday life.
Acknowledgments
This is the bit where I say how I couldn’t have done it on my own. That’s actually not true because I could have written this book on my own—it just wouldn’t have been very good. There are many people who have helped to make Happiness by Design a book that I am very proud of, and I hope they are proud to be associated with it. Here they are:
Main personal support: My wife, Les, who took the kids out many times so that I could get on with writing. Among her many qualities, she keeps my feet firmly on the ground and she makes me laugh.
Main intellectual inspiration: Danny Kahneman, who is simply the smartest and nicest man I have ever met.
Researcher extraordinaire: Laura Kudrna, who was always on the other end of the phone or e-mail to listen to my ramblings, to help make them more coherent, and then find research evidence that supported (and often disproved) them. She was also responsible for all the analysis of new data on pleasure and purpose reported in chapter 2. Her ability to work (almost) as intensely and thoroughly as me in the final stages was remarkable.
Invaluable research support: Liz Plank, who was with me from the beginning and who found so many interesting studies that acted as a catalyst for many of my ideas, and Kate Laffan, who turned around the analysis of the ONS data in record time.
Additional research support: Daniel Davis and Merata Snedden in the early days of this project.
Main academic collaborators, whose joint work with me informs much of what is in the book, and who also provided detailed comments: Rob Metcalfe, who has felt like my intellectual child since doing his PhD with me a few years ago, but who may well end up as more successful than his academic father (when I will no longer like him, of course); David Bradford, who is a brilliant economist and who reminds me that there is an economist still lurking in me somewhere; George Kavetsos and Matteo Galizzi, two very smart postdocs who are also two of the kindest people I have ever met; Grace Lordan and Caroline Rudisill, two of LSE’s finest and most helpful lecturers; and Ivo Vlaev, who is sometimes on a different planet but has some great ideas when he is on this one.
Main comment providers: Miguel Llabres Hargreaves, my best friend; Dixie Deane, my best training partner; Paula Skidmore, who came up with some great ideas about the exercises; Daniel Fujiwara, who is a great PhD student and a wizard with happiness data; Dom King and Henry Lee, two surgeons whose PhDs I have had the honor to supervise; Lisa Witter, whose comments on an earlier draft led to significant improvements; Oliver Harrison, who provided some really insightful comments; Chloe Foy, who inspired some last-minute improvements; Steve Martin, who helped with the initial pitch; and Helen Coyle, who pointed me in the right direction to begin with.
Special agent: That’ll be Max Brockman, who helped me write the initial book proposal and get the deals, and who also remained calm every step of the way.
Editors with faith (in me): Christina Rodriguez and Alexis Kirschbaum, for supporting this project and for helping me present the material in a way that has a much better chance of resonating with you than if I had been left to my own devices.
Thank you all so very much. If you judge someone by the company they keep, then I am a truly wonderful person—or very lucky (lucky it is, then). You have all helped with happiness by design but, much more than that, you continue to bring me considerable pleasure and purpose in everyday life.
Notes
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