Happiness Study

Data for last few days

2007-10-06T12:07:00.001-07:00

I've been busy so although I kept numbers, I have not been posting.

4 12:22:00 10/3/2007 Sleepy
3 12:48:00 10/3/2007 panicky
5 19:21:00 10/3/2007 home
3 22:23:00 10/3/2007 exhausted
3 11:43:00 10/4/2007 nauseated
5 15:44:00 10/4/2007 recovering
4 17:41:00 10/4/2007 lonely
5 11:22:00 10/5/2007 warm
5 16:13:00 10/5/2007 full
6 19:23:00 10/5/2007 tiara
5 22:34:00 10/5/2007 Dancing
6 10:46:00 10/5/2007 Anticipating

I was sick, I got better. I went out.

Kara and I picked up boys. We often do, and I never do without her - so I'm thinking really Kara picks up boys, chooses one and I get cast offs. This tends to work out, though and did last night. It occurred to me as I was driving back to Portland this morning that the things that make me happiest may not be things I want to publish. This is still abstract, but one can imagine that what one gushes about to ones girlfriends may be less than wholesome.

I believe I may journal less and simply add data more until I've worked my baseline and come up with goals.

Monday's Happiness

2007-10-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

3 - 9:47 - Frustrated
4 - 14:52 - Waiting
5 - 16:49 - Home
6 - 20:06 - Good Television

I think I've had bigger range of emotions before but I experienced the feeling of having things get better all day. That was nice. I'm trying to process everything with the car loss and the moving on and it's going ok - for today anyway.

The way things end strongly affect the way wet think of the whole. Maybe it's more important to have a good evening than a good morning. Besides, a good morning seems like an impossible goal.

You, too, can study your happiness.

2007-10-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

The talented and time-generous Ian Dees has posted the ruby script I use to remind myself at random intervals t o make a note of my happiness.

http://pastie.caboo.se/102684

You'll need a backpackit account - http://www.backpackit.com but those are free. You can choose to have it email you or message to your cell phone, if your service is supported.

When I start developing analysis tools, I'll share those, too.

"Happy" Birthday

2007-10-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

4 - Blah - 11:40
4 - Cold and Wet - 13:00
3 - Disappointed - 18:38
2 - Ill - 21:01

So, yes, I have had a hard few days. I feel slightly self-conscious declaring it like this. When I had to record my eating habits for the naturopath, the very fact that I knew I would have to admit it would steer me away from fast food and the like. But, unfortunately, I can't remain honest and say I feel any differently than I do. It seems to me that each year, my birthday is a disappointment.

This was a concern I had in the beginning of the study - what if it turns out I'm way more unhappy than I thought I was? How do I handle this information? I'll do my 14 days base before I have any kind of program of happiness increasing. I also think it's strange that I totally called this disappoitment and wonder if calling it caused it, at least a little.

I woke up Sunday morning feeling like, "Well, nothing else can happen." My expectations for the day were pretty mediocre - or so I thought. Dinner with my parents and my uncle - he'll probably bring me new books. My uncle forgot. My uncle forgot that he was invited for my birthday. I cried. I cry most years on my birthday. It seems like a good reason just to not have a birthday, if you know it's going to make you cry.

And then...as night fell...I developed symptoms of a urinary tract infection.

Happiness on the 29th.

2007-09-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

4- 10:03 - Tired
5 - 3:20 - Shopping
6 - 8:30 pm - out for birthday

I missed one time. I don't know when it was. It's getting harder and harder to take a minute to record my happiness, I'm generally doing things like driving or walking. And I'm worried the text messages are going to cost me an arm and a leg!

Birthday was, as expected, pretty disappointing. We'll see how the actual day is. I get my hopes up and the next day I'm just bummed out. Again. The secret to happiness is to never expect that which will not happen. But as we've discussed, prediction is a tricky, tricky thing.

Third Day's Happiness

2007-09-28T11:04:00.001-07:00

4 - Bored - 10:09 am
2 - Car Stolen - 1:01 pm
3- Car Still Stolen - 6:20 pm
3 - Insomnia - 10:40 pm

Well, I am certainly not happy. I'll muddle through, of course, as I always do. But damn. I have so much crap to deal with. Very interesting data, though.

Why can't we predict our happiness? Because life is unpredictable.

2007-09-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

My car was stolen.

Some time between 12:30 pm and 12:50 pm.

Efficient thieves, no? If you see a 1985 Honda Accord, call the police, would ya?

I'm pacing, on the phone with the police, when the reminder comes in "Record Your Happiness" - at that moment, an obvious 2. But it was pretty hilarious, so I laughed.

I'll keep you updated and if the car is return, record how that affects my happiness. Just in case you were wondering, car stolen makes me sad.

Second Day's Happiness

2007-09-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

5 - Tired - 10:54 am
7 - Tiara - 2:20 pm
5 - Bored - 5:09 pm
4 - Anxious - 8:47 pm

I suspect we'll see a general trend of the best mood in the afternoon. I've always said I'm neither a morning person or a night owl - I'm happiest at happy hour. Late afternoon is the perfect time to relax, have fun, and eat. Perhaps after the baseline is established, the first test should be an attempt to make that high energy level that is the afternoon expand earlier and later. I'll do research into metabolism to see if I can find a good strategy for that.

How to get an automatic 7

2007-09-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

This project is causing me to recalculate how I spend my money. $15 for an instant 7 on the happiness scale isn't bad. The question of value becomes how long it'd keep me at a 7. And hour and half later, I'm more like a 6.

The joy of a rhinestone tiara comes partially from the fact that I'm-a-princess-so-there, but the really great, joy-inducing part was walking through downtown Portland. People would look at the top of my head, then at my face, then at the top of my head, and then look away. They noticed the tiara, they'd question with their eyes, but they would not voice what they were thinking. Namely, "Who the hell are you that you have the gaul to wear a tiara?" I even interacted with people at Nordstrom. I asked the perfume lady for a sample of CK Truth (they didn't carry the fragrance). I asked the Laura Mercier consultant about new products. No one but no one mentioned that I was wearing a tiara until I did. But after I did, most people seemed generally in favor. It gaves me a feeling of not-entirely-supressed glee. I wanted to burst out laughing at every moment. It was pretty awesome.

This is exactly how I felt when I took my red wagon to Fred Meyer's for grocery shopping. I'd get all kinds of looks from people as I meandered through the aisles, picking out groceries. So, the question is, why don't I do that now? Isn't the extra half an hour or so it takes to walk to the store instead of drive worth a 7? Even if it's only a 7 for 20 minutes? I may have to re-evaluate my shopping habits.

First Day's Happiness

2007-09-25T23:02:00.000-07:00

4- "Nervous" 10:25 AM
5 - "Content" 3:02 PM
6 - "Dinner" 6:26 PM
4 - "Worried" 7:47 PM

The text reminders worked perfectly. I only missed one - the morning's first I didn't see until about 20 minutes later. I decided to record that time rather than the reminder time for accuracy's sake.

This does provoke a question, though - is happiness really just a sense that your mood is generally good? Can a person think of themselves as happy but spend a majority of the time below a 6? Is the memory, the story we tell ourselves about how happy we are more important than the experience of it? This question has made me want to add another bit of information - a daily reflection.

I had a really up and down day. The lowest part was not morning or evening, though, it was between the morning and afternoon recordings. I was lowest around noon and climbed up again until we had to take Moira to the vet. (She's ok, so I'm kind of back up to a 5, even though I'm feeling all bed-time anxious).

Week 1 predictions

2007-09-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

My birthday is a week from yesterday. My plans haven't really codified, so I suspect I'll be disappointed on my birthday.

Tomorrow, I'll be tested over the phone for my Arabic skills. I think in the morning, I'll be nervous and in the evening relieved.

I'd be curious to hear suggestions on what things might affect my happiness.

Things that might affect my happiness short term - I ate fast food today (KFC) and I'll be driving to Portland tonight.

Introduction to Allison's Happiness Study

2007-09-24T15:36:00.000-07:00

The Premise

Human memory is unreliable. It's powerfully affected by current emotional state, suggestion, and even personal bias. This is something that policemen and prosecutors are well aware of. It's not all that surprising and quite frankly few work argue that just because an eyewitness says there was a blue SUV at 10:03 pm a week ago doesn't mean there was one.

A little tougher to swallow is the fact that just as unreliable is a person's memory of their own opinions or feelings. If all the people today who claimed they voted against Nixon had, he would have lost the election. Are they lying? No. Their current feelings are effecting their memories. How they feel now changes their memory of how they felt then. We remember truncated versions of things - we remember not a whole face or a whole play, but the key elements necessary to bring up the details when we need to. However, when we bring up that memory and fill in the details, we change those details. Our past has holes. We fill those holes with the present.

If the past has holes, the future is nothing but holes. We fills those holes up with the present. We are very bad at making predictions as to what will make us happy - the future is so colored by the present that we can not have any perspective. This is why we buy too much groceries at the store when we're hungry. This is why we swear we'll never eat again after Thanksgiving, but find ourselves eating - and usually overeating just a few hours later.

Both memory and prediction are not effective ways to evaluate happiness. The only way if we know something makes us happy is if we're experiencing happiness right now.¹These ideas have led me to strongly question some of my experiences. I've spent a lot of my last few months lonely and unhappy. Or at least I think I have. It's possible that my memory of how I've felt is colored by how I feel. People consistently overestimate how happy or unhappy a particular thing will make them. If the only thing I can do is tell you how happy I am now, then I will record it and see if I can find trends over time.

The Methodology

Four times a day, I will record my "happiness" on a scale of 1 to 8 and a single word to describe mood. Ian Dees has graciously designed a bit of ruby code to send a text message at four random times to remind me when to write down my happiness. After 14 days, I'll begin analysis. From there, I will begin attempting to affect my happiness positively. I will record the random moment's happiness, but also maintain a journal so I can provide a context to why I might be happy or unhappy.

Happiness Scale
1. "My god. I would like to die"
2. "Life Sucks"
3. "Not good"
4. "I've been better."
5. "Can't complain"
6. "Good."
7. "Boy, I feel great!"
8. Squealing in glee

The Hypothesis
I suspect I'm happy more often than I give myself credit for, but I suspect even more significant is that I'll find that my happiness varies very widely during the day. Things that might affect my happiness: whether or not I'm dating, how work is going, my general stress level, whether or not the state department takes me, having fun, spending time with friends and family.