Knowledge@Wharton: Or being very accessible sometimes makes it harder to connect with people.
Rubin: Yes.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you talk a little bit about how you came to one or two of these paradoxes?
Rubin: I love aphorisms. I love the great essayists of the past where everybody could say something very concisely. The unpredictability of paradoxes helps people think and makes them more fun to try to puzzle through. One of my favourite ones – and this is something that I can get away with because I’m not a scientist; a scientist could never use this paradox – is “happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.”
Of course, a scientist couldn’t say that because how could happiness not make you feel happy? How can subjective wellbeing not make you feel subjectively wellbeing? But for someone like me, I can say that because I think we’ve all had the experience where we do something that we know makes us happy but at the same time doesn’t make us happy.
For instance, I am a person who’s very afraid to drive. I grew up driving because I grew up in Kansas City, and I’ve driven many times in my life. But now I live in New York City, and I could basically quit driving. For many years, I didn’t drive. It eventually started to weigh on my mind, and I started feeling like I’m really becoming very afraid to drive. It was making me feel bad and feel constrained. I took driving lessons to make myself feel more confident. Now I drive once a week, and I do not like driving. I’m fine once I’m driving, but I really do not look forward to it. In a way, driving doesn’t make me happy. But on the other hand, driving does make me happy.
Knowledge@Wharton: In writing about what takes away from our happiness, you identify three happiness leeches. Tell us about those.
Rubin: The three happiness leeches are the grouches, the slackers and the jerks. The grouches are the people who are persistently negative, who always see the dark side, who are pessimistic. I think that’s the most common kind of happiness leech. Then there are the slackers. The slackers are the people who just don’t pull their weight. They make people unhappy because people feel it’s not fair or they can’t get their own work done because somebody else is asking: can you give me a hand? Can I have just a minute? Can you answer just one more question? Those are the slackers.
I think more destructive to happiness is the jerk. The jerks are the people who are undermining, who take credit for other people’s work, who are backstabbing, who are cruel, who gossip in an unkind way, who tease in a mean way. These are the people who really spread intense unhappiness. It’s kind of helpful to have these categories in mind because you can say, well, when I’m around somebody, I seem to feel unhappy. Sometimes you don’t even really understand why. When you [can identify a] grouch, slacker or jerk, then it kind of clarifies the situation.
Knowledge@Wharton: How would you recommend that others start their own Happiness Projects?
Rubin: There’s no wrong way to do a Happiness Project. I think the thing to do if people want to start their own Happiness Project is to pick a few things. But they need to be concrete and manageable –and by concrete, [I mean] something that you can actually measure and that you know whether you’ve done it or not. Sometimes people will make a resolution such as, “I want to get more fun out of life”, or “I want to have more quality time with my family” or “I want to be more optimistic.” Those are very abstract. It’s hard to know if you’re getting more fun out of life. It’s hard to know if you’re having more quality time with your family. What does that mean day to day? How do you measure it?
Think to yourself: what would it mean if I got more fun out of life? If I got more fun out of life, I would go to the park once a week with my dog and throw a Frisbee. Or I would sign up for a painting class, or I would read for fun for an hour every day after work. Think what would give you more fun out of life. Then, in a measurable way that you can see on your schedule, check off whether you did it or not. Same thing with quality time with your family. One thing we just started doing in our family, which is so fun, is we have game time. Every Saturday afternoon, we play games for an hour and drink cocoa. It’s a very simple thing. My seven-year-old is the complete enforcer and marches around the house until we all have game time. But it’s really nice. I know that I’m going to have an hour sitting and playing a board game with my family. For me, that’s quality time.
When it’s very measurable like that, it’s easier to stick to it. I especially think it’s helpful to start with your body. That may sound very basic, but so many people are chronically sleep deprived. So many people just don’t get any exercise. When you don’t get any exercise, you don’t get enough sleep and it’s hard to just have the energy to get through life. If you feel irritable, you feel exhausted, you feel indecisive, you get sick more easily. If you’re thinking, where should I start, I don’t know where to start, going to sleep on time and getting a 15- or 20-minute walk – even if you can’t do anything more – is a great place to start. Beyond that, whatever it is you want to work on in your life, make it concrete and manageable.
