Living in the moment really does make people happier
Happiness is found by living in the now, particularly if the now involves having sex, .
But the study also found that people spend nearly half their time (46.7%) thinking about something other than what they are actually doing.
The benefits of living in the moment are extolled by many philosophical and religious traditions, but until now there has been scant scientific evidence to support the advice.
Psychologists at Harvard University collected information on the daily activities, thoughts and feelings of 2,250 volunteers to find out how often they were focused on what they were doing, and what made them most happy.
They found that people were happiest when having sex, exercising or in conversation, and least happy when working, resting or using a home computer. And although subjects' minds were wandering nearly half of the time, this consistently made them less happy.
The team conclude that reminiscing, thinking ahead or daydreaming tends to make people more miserable, even when they are thinking about something pleasant.
Even the most engaging tasks failed to hold people's full attention. Volunteers admitted to thinking about something else at least 30% of the time while performing these tasks, except when they were having sex, when people typically had their mind on the job around 90% of the time.
"Human beings have this unique ability to focus on things that aren't happening right now. That allows them to reflect on the past and learn from it; it allows them to anticipate and plan for the future; and it allows them to imagine things that might never occur," said Matthew Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology and lead author of the study.
"At the same time, it seems that human beings often use this ability in ways that are not productive and furthermore can be destructive to our happiness," he added.
For the study, Killingsworth and his supervisor, Daniel Gilbert, author of the 2006 book Stumbling on Happiness, developed a web application for the iPhone that contacted participants at random times during their waking hours. When they received a message, those taking part had to respond with information about what they were doing, by selecting from a list of 22 activities, such as doing housework, shopping, or watching TV. They went on to rate their happiness on a scale from zero to 100, and said whether they were focused, or daydreaming about something positive, negative or neutral.
The results showed that happiness was more affected by how often people drifted off, and where they went in their imagination, than by the activity they were doing at the time. The researchers say they're confident that being distracted was the cause of unhappiness, rather than the other way round.
The authors write in the journal Science: "A human mind is a wandering mind and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost."
Asked why people seemed to be particularly focused during sex, Killingsworth observed: "If you were messaged while you were having sex it probably wouldn't turn out so well if you whipped out your iPhone. Sex is one of the few broad categories of activity that requires and perhaps benefits from our full attention."
More than 5,000 people have signed up for the happiness study and the researchers hope to attract more so they can look at mental wellbeing in different geographical regions and between the sexes with greater accuracy.
"Hopefully we will get a lot of new participants from all over the world and be able to answer questions we've not really been able to ask before, because we've never had this kind of data on people's experiences," Killingsworth said.
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Researchers found that the majority of the subjects they studied were not able to identify anything they had done recently to try to increase their happiness or life satisfaction.
So you want to start? You want something insanely easy to do that research has demonstrated over and over again works?
Something that the happiest people in the world all do?
Here you go:
Next time something good happens, stop whatever you are doing, give it a second and appreciate that moment.
Old cliches like "stopping to smell the roses" and "it's the little things in life"? They're true
What Is Savoring?
We're busy. We're multitasking. And we think this makes things better because we get more done.
But the problem is that means you're paying less attention to any one thing — and therefore you enjoy all of those things less.
Do you watch TV while you eat? That means you'll enjoy your food less.
Savoring is all about attention. Focus on the bad, you'll feel bad. Focus on the good and… guess what happens?
Via Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth:
The key component to effective savoring is focused attention. By taking the time and spending the effort to appreciate the positive, people are able to experience more well-being.
"Stopping to smell the roses"? It's true. People who take time to appreciate beauty around them really are happier.
Via 100 Simple Secrets of the Best Half of Life:
Those who said they regularly took notice of something beautiful were 12 percent more likely to say they were satisfied with their lives.
Research shows that the happiest people take the time to appreciate the little things in life.
I know what you're thinking: correlation isn't causation. Maybe they're just wired that way.
Nope. Wrong answer. Research shows it can work for anybody.
Focusing on the positive and appreciating those things more leads to happiness increases in less than a week.
Via Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life:
One group was told to focus on all the upbeat things they could find— sunshine, flowers, smiling pedestrians. Another was to look for negative stuff— graffiti, litter, frowning faces. The third group was instructed to walk just for the exercise. At the end of the week, when the walkers' well-being was tested again, those who had deliberately targeted positive cues were happier than before the experiment. The negatively focused subjects were less happy, and the just plain exercisers scored in between. The point, says Bryant, is that "you see what you look for. And you can train yourself to attend to the joy out there waiting to be had, instead of passively waiting for it to come to you.".