BY: ALEX BROWN
Photo By: Rob Hoffman
Making love, dancing your ass off, watering a few plants—according to an invaluable study on the sources of happiness, you should be doing a lot more of these things. In fact, there are about 33 categories of activities that are shown to work like happiness-steroids. Follow them all, and you could be the Arnold Schwarzenegger of happy: a perspiring, greased up joy-machine overflowing with positivity to the point where it’s probably not even healthy anymore. Or (more likely) you’ll just be a happier person.
The University of Sussex and the London School of Economics just conducted a happiness study, gauging the activities in everyday life that give us the most, and least, amount of joy. To make the study cohesive with peoples’ everyday lives—and thus making it all the more accurate than lab-type research—an application was developed to allow for ongoing, objective, and detailed results.
Years ago, George MacKerron invented the application Mappiness, an ambitious information-collecting service that studies how your level of happiness, relaxation and alertness, relate to your current external life. The application might ask what you’re doing, or whom you’re with, supplying you with a number of carefully selected options to choose from. These mood-updates are collected twice a day, and everything is completely anonymous.
However, there are some fairly creepy functions of the app—it accesses your microphone and GPS to determine sound levels, and your location. I suppose this might be necessary given the nature of the app, which could persuade the best of us to submit a white lie now and again. After all, a machine that constantly reminds you of your happiness-levels and current trajectory in life is more or less a bi-daily alarm clock for depressing realizations about the treacherous mundaneness of adult life. No one deserves that kind of awareness. No one. Yet tens of thousands of participants got involved—all in the name of science I suppose—and the results are actually pretty uplifting. What are the implications of this type of study? As MacKerron tells The Guardian, “it’s enormous,” or “groundbreaking”.
According to the results, these are the 33 types of activities that elevate happiness most effectively, according to the percentage of increased happiness:
- Intimacy, making love 14.20%
- Theatre, dance, concert 9.29%
- Exhibition, museum, library 8.77%
- Sports, running, exercise 8.12%
- Gardening, allotment 7.83%
- Singing, performing 6.95%
- Talking, chatting, socialising 6.38%
- Birdwatching, nature watching 6.28%
- Walking, hiking 6.18%
- Hunting, fishing 5.82%
- Drinking alcohol 5.73%
- Hobbies, arts, crafts 5.53%
- Meditating, religious activities 4.95%
- Match, sporting event 4.39%
- Childcare, playing with children 4.10%
- Pet care, playing with pets 3.63%
- Listening to music 3.56%
- Other games, puzzles 3.07%
- Shopping, errands 2.74%
- Gambling, betting 2.62%
- Watching TV, film 2.55%
- Computer games, iPhone games 2.39%
- Eating, snacking 2.38%
- Cooking, preparing food 2.14%
- Drinking tea/coffee 1.83%
- Reading 1.47%
- Listening to speech/podcast 1.41%
- Washing, dressing, grooming 1.18%
- Sleeping, resting, relaxing 1.08%
- Smoking 0.69%
- Browsing the Internet 0.59%
- Texting, email, social media 0.56%
- Housework, chores, DIY 0.65%
Here are the seven types of activities that most decreased happiness:
- Travelling, commuting -1.47%
- In a meeting, seminar, class -1.50%
- Admin, finances, organising -2.45%
- Waiting, queueing -3.51%
- Care or help for adults -4.30%
- Working, studying -5.43%
- Sick in bed -20.4%
