Hacking Happiness Read Online Free PDF Page B

work ourselves to death. The economic measure of gross domestic product has influenced our lives to the deepest level of our global identity. Sadly, the existing data economy reinforces the fundamental tenetsof GDP’s focus on increased productivity at all costs (pun intended). When our lives are measured primarily as a marketing algorithm, we stop valuing actions that don’t add up to a fiscal bottom line. We can’t give ourselves permission to deeply reflect on what brings our lives meaning, or put others first when they need help.
    But here’s some great news—this primary measure of value the world has agreed on for more than fifty years is beginning to crumble. While the GDP, on one hand, is simply a metric to gauge the health of a country, it has so influenced our collective lives that most of us gauge our work not by its value but by its volume. We’re not encouraged to take the time to see all the areas of our lives that can bring ourselves and others joy. We’re not leveraging our full resources as humans and suffering due to the deficit.
    But around the world countries are beginning to measure their citizens’ lives and governmental actions via a wider lens. Multiple factors beyond financial metrics are being evaluated to see how people can live balanced lives beyond solely monetary measures. And when people gain perspective on all the ways their lives bring value beyond money, they’ll also justify taking time to optimize their own lives or help others. They’ll be motivated to take actions to increase their well-being in ways they haven’t considered since the invention of the GDP.
    My Background in Measurement
    Bullies made it easy for me, a fat kid growing up in a suburb of Boston, to begin a life of self-examination. Early on, I became part of a playground hierarchy that had a set of sacred measures. Being overweight meant you were bullied. Fat equaled bad. Pretty simple. I wasn’t happy about the situation, but I couldn’t control it. So I studied it.
    I learned that words don’t often mirror action or character. For instance, the bullies who threatened were typically the last ones toact. I also became intimately aware of the concept of morals—I felt it was wrong that I was bullied. It wasn’t fair. Nobody asked my permission but I still got cast in a John Hughes movie where roles were defined by somebody else before I even entered the picture.
    I bring this up in regard to my experience with Klout to demonstrate how often we find ourselves in situations where someone has developed rules for a game we didn’t know we were playing. And a typical human response is to try and win at a game without even asking whether it makes sense. That’s what I mean by the challenge of measurement. We tend to look at the world through the lens we’re given, never asking how the glass is focused. Questions of comparison are only applied to an existing perception of the world, versus one that may not be seen.
    I was exposed to other ideas about examining life at a young age because of my family. My dad was a psychiatrist in the 1970s, when the term “shrink” was still applied in a pejorative sense. People tend to forget psychoanalysis is a relatively new field, having gotten its start from Freud in the early 1900s. When I moved to Needham, Massachusetts, as a boy, no neighbors brought us pies until they saw my dad gently spank me on the butt and realized he was mortal.
    While he wasn’t allowed to talk about his work with me, I knew my dad’s job was to listen to people and help them hurt less. His private practice ran for about forty years in which he spent at least fifty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, helping patients—and that’s a low estimate. Do the math and that’s over one hundred thousand hours helping others examine their lives to find happiness.
    Heroes come in all sizes. I come from good stock.
    I went to college thinking I was going to be a minister, having examined a number of