Everything You Really Need to Know About Happiness: Meet Paul Dolan

When I was researching the relationship between success and happiness for The Career Playbook, I hit pay dirt when I happened upon a renowned British professor and author named Paul Dolan. A 47-year-old professor in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics, Paul is one of the world’s experts in behavioral science.

It turns out that not only has he taught the surprisingly complex — but unsurprisingly important — topic of how to understand and achieve happiness, he has advised the UK government on the topic for public policy reasons and has been a sought after speaker around the world.  Most exciting for all of us, Paul has written the single best book on the topic, Happiness By Design, which if you’re at all interested in fundamentally improving your life, you must read. 

I had the pleasure of conducting an in-depth interview with Paul on everything to do with understanding what makes us happy, strategies to increase our happiness, how success helps us in this goal, and more importantly the role of happiness in attaining success. Finally, I think we are all on a never-ending quest to find ways to cope with being overwhelmed in today’s world -when we just don’t have enough time to do the things we feel are important and get paralyzed and overwhelmed as a result.  Paul was able to help with this, too. 

Our conversation:

Just what is "happiness", anyways?

Great question. In order to become happier, we require a definition of what exactly it is that we’re aiming at. Research shows that when most people hear the word ‘happiness’, they think of feelings related to pleasure, such as joy and contentment. This is what wellbeing researchers call ‘hedonic’ wellbeing. Others consider ‘happiness’ to be a more general reflection on overall wellbeing and of whether or not life is going well. This is why many researchers will refer to their measures of happiness as measures of ‘subjective wellbeing’, which is about more than just pleasure.

There are two main components of happiness, or subjective wellbeing, that most researchers agree upon. One is our evaluations, which are how we think about life overall. Another is our experiences, which are how we feel on a moment-to-moment basis. Evaluations and experiences are related but not perfectly so. Someone might say — evaluatively — that they’re happy with their job overall, but then complain about it all the time in their experiences.  In Happiness by Design, I argue we should focus on the sum of our experiences: what makes us feel good, rather than what we think makes us feel good.

Happiness isn’t just about pleasure, though. It’s also about feeling purpose - whether what we do feels purposeful, worthwhile, or meaningful in the moment. Researchers call this ‘eudemonic’ wellbeing. Even though people will frequently discuss feeling that what they are doing is meaningful or worthwhile, almost no researchers study purpose like this. Instead, they will only - at best - ask people about their feelings of whether their lives have a sense of purpose. Even if life feels meaningless, it is still possible to do something that feels worthwhile.

In short, happiness is about experiences of pleasure and purpose over time.

How can we tell the difference between what makes us happy and what doesn't?

Defining happiness as experiences means that there are just a few key things that affect your happiness: the activities you do and who you are with, and also what you’re thinking about or paying attention to. The big aspects of life, such as money and marriage, affect your experiences of happiness only inasmuch as they affect what you do, who you’re with, and what you think about. So understanding what makes you happy in the moment is pretty straightforward — it’s probably down to one of those three things, or the circumstances of our lives that affect those three things.

Unfortunately, however, our memories of what made us happy are not perfect. For example, we tend to remember the peak and end of an emotional experience and forget how long it lasted. We are not perfect predictors of our future happiness, either. We tend to think a change, such as a breakup, will affect our happiness for much longer in the future than it typically does. This is where feedback is critical. Remind yourself of what has made you happy or unhappy in the past, and for how long, and feed this information forward into your future decisions. You could self-track using apps, keep a diary, or tell close friend to help you remember.

What role do success and achievement play in our happiness?

Most of what we know about the effects of success and achievement on individual happiness comes from household surveys, which means that we’re studying people who are already somewhat successful. These surveys don’t usually capture the homeless, for example, or those living in institutions. What we’ve learned is that the less you have, the more that getting ahead matters to your happiness. If you don’t have very much money, for example, then money matters a lot.

But the more money you have, the less getting more money affects how you feel. In addition, achieving more economically is more closely related to your evaluative happiness than your experiential happiness — so, to whether you think life is going well, rather than whether your experiences actually are going well. Achievement can be great but it can also have costs, such a change in one’s identity, different friends, and less free time. Whether or not achievement makes people happy depends upon how the costs of achievement are balanced with the benefits in their experiences.

It’s also worth saying that the relationship goes in the opposite direction, too —happiness brings about success and achievement. Many studies show that happy people are more productive at work and successful in their careers.

What are some strategies for improving happiness?

There’s so much out there. But I’m a big fan of the behavioural approach to becoming happier. Change what you do, not how you think. This is because our thoughts have less control over our lives than we like to think they do. In a great experiment illustrating this point, researchers played French and German music to shoppers as they passed a display of French and German wine. When the French music was playing, they were more likely to buy French wine - same in the German condition. But when asked, these shoppers weren’t aware the music influenced their choice - they thought it was the price, the bottle, etc. So the key here is to design our lives to make it easier to automatically do what makes us happiest - and then we don’t have to think too hard about it.

There are four principles of automatic influence that I discuss in Happiness by Design. One is priming: small cues influence us a lot, like in the wine study. If reading makes you happy then put books all over the house. This sounds like obvious advice, but it’s really overlooked. Another is defaults: automatically opt in to whatever makes you happy so it’s hard not to do it.

For example, if you enjoy veggies but never buy them, get them delivered regularly. Automaticity has happiness value. Next is commitments — we are more likely to do something if we publicly promise to do it. We don’t like seeming inconsistent to other people. So if you know running on your lunch break will make you happier, tell all your colleagues about your intentions. You may be too embarrassed not to go on a run.

Finally, there are norms. We all like to think we are unique but in reality, we are likely to do what other people like us are doing. Evidence suggests that behaviors from smoking to divorce are contagious. You don’t have to get a whole new set of friends if you want to take up gardening, though. Just prioritize a few social gatherings with the gardeners in your life.

What are some common mistakes people make about their happiness?

I think the biggest one is prioritizing evaluations over experiences, which essentially means listening to stories about what ‘should’ make you happy instead of focusing directly on the experience of what does. People will stay in jobs, relationships, and places that have a good story surrounding them about why they should be conducive to happiness - such as prestige, e.g. “I should be happy because I work at such a prestigious company.” But if these things negatively affect your experiences, it might be time to make a change, irrespective of any story about why they should make you happy.

 Another one is that many people don’t have a good balance between experiences of pleasure and purpose. Some people naturally experience more pleasure: ‘pleasure machines’. Others naturally experience more purpose" ‘purpose engines’. Many of the academics I know, for example, are purpose engines, rarely having fun. They could do with seeking out a bit more pleasure. Some of my friends are pleasure machines, rarely doing anything that feels purposeful. And I think they could be happier if they sought out more purpose. This idea is based on the principle of ‘diminishing marginal returns’ — the last bit of pleasure will not be as great as the first, and the same goes for purpose. So switch things up if you’re getting too much of one or the other.

 Why is happiness important?

 Happiness is important because it is the feedback we get from the choices we make, which can help to inform us about whether they were good choices or not. This way we can learn. If something never brings happiness, I can’t see a good reason why it would be worth doing. Of course, a little bit of pain now might bring a lot of pleasure or purpose later, and that’s okay. But if, on balance, something doesn’t net happiness, it’s not worth doing. Happiness is also important because it is the cause of a lot of other good outcomes. As I mentioned, happier people are more productive and successful. They are more likely to get a job and take less time off work. They’re also healthier, live longer, more creative, and better at resolving conflicts.

Is it really enough just to change what we do to be happier? What about the role of biology, cognition, and social structures?

Of course, all of these things do matter. I've spent a considerable part of my academic life in policy making looking at structure. This is a book focused on agency in so far as cognition is concerned, and the book and the evidence more generally suggests quite clearly that changing minds is difficult. Therefore, changing the environments in which our decisions are set is a more effective way to change behavior.

What is the difference between evaluations that are helpful and those that are not? When are stories good for happiness and when are they bad?

Although many people mistakenly follow stories about what ‘should’ make them happy — rather than focusing on their own experiences of pleasure and purpose — stories can also be helpful because they help us get over things. Making sense of a situation helps us to adapt.

If we don’t have an explanation for why something happened, then we keep on thinking about it, and can’t get over it. And so for situations where there is some uncertainty about why something happened — a breakup, a failed test, etc. — telling ourselves a story to explain why it occurred really helps us to move on. These stories can come from our own take on the situation, but they are also often developed through conversations with other people. I think this sense-making process can feel quite worthwhile.

Finally, Paul, what strategies do you suggest for coping with being overwhelmed in today’s world -when you have more important things to do than you have time to do it and get paralyzed and overwhelmed as a result?

 I hear this question all the time and see it increasing as a challenge for people trying to be happy and successful.  I think it’s all about priorities. Many people will say they don’t have time to do something — like look for a new job — but what is really meant by this is that people don’t prioritize using their time in that way. Track how you use your time and see whether you are spending it in accordance with your priorities: ideally, what will make you happy in both the long and short-term. There are many apps to help with this if you wish.

 It’s also important to have sensible expectations about how much you can accomplish. If your commute is two hours long perhaps it isn’t sensible to expect that you will have time in the evening to go to the gym, meet up with a neighbor, cook dinner, watch TV, and also get enough sleep to show up rested for work the next day. Something will have to go, or else it will cost you in happiness because you will feel overwhelmed. I rely on great colleagues to get a lot done - it would simply not be sensible for me to expect that I can do it all myself. So organizing time in accordance with priorities is essential, as is having sensible expectations about what you can do in the amount of time you are awake each day.

In addition, when working towards a goal, it’s easier to focus on the work when it is broken down into bite-sized chunks. Constantly thinking about the finish line can make the whole process of getting there seem overwhelming. Finally, it’s important to give our attentional energy a rest from time to time. Attention is the glue that holds our lives together: it converts ‘inputs’ like time with friends into the ‘output’ of happiness. Something will affect your happiness inasmuch as you attend to it. But distraction drains our attentional energy and prevents this process from working well. Spending some time each day away from distractions like tablets and smartphones can help us to recharge and refocus, preparing our attentional energy to better react to the challenges we encounter in daily life.

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Thanks to Paul we can all strive to lead happier and more fulfilling and therefore more successful lives.