Martin Seligman helped launch positive psychology. In Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, he redefines it. The book is important, and strongly recommended for anyone interested in deeply understanding positive psychology. That said, it is not a self-help book, and may not be terribly useful to the average person who wants to be flourishing more in life! read more…
Writing is like driving at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.–E. L. Doctorow It turns out that writing a game is also like driving at night (E. L. Doctorow’s analogy I like so much). You don’t know how it’s going to turn read more…
Scientific data clearly shows that happiness is contagious – and so are negative attitudes. In graphics showing the distribution of happier and less happy people, you will find obvious clusters of happiness and unhappiness–not a random distribution. But in what direction do positive and negative attitudes spread – and can we influence it? An audience read more…
As a former programmer, I’m very familiar with “hacks”: short-cuts or tricks to get something working better. You may be familiar with “life hacking“, using a similar approach to finding novel ways to improve life. I want to extend that concept to create “happiness hacks”. Happiness hacks are simply new ways of boosting happiness at read more…
A recent study showed only one in five of us is taking a real lunch break. Several studies suggest the productivity benefits of actually taking a lunch break. According to the science of happiness, the best possible lunch break is to exercise outdoors with a friend. This gives us three happiness and brain-function boosts: 1. read more…
With millions of us working from home at least some of the time, it’s important to do it well. Telecommuting can be awesome or awful, depending on how we manage it. From a science of happiness perspective, I offer you these three brief productivity tips. For geeks like myself, I have included links to in-depth read more…
If you are a geek–as I am–then you love learning more about the latest science. I love it so much I decided to make a career out of learning and teaching the science of happiness and the mind! Despite my passion for new knowledge on this subject, I find it challenging to find the time read more…