ACADEMIC ENGLISH (9) / MANAGING A PROJECT

Maintaining good health doesn’t happen by accident. It requires work, smart lifestyle choices, and the occasional checkup and test.

A healthy diet is rich in fiber, whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, „good“ or unsaturated fats, and omega-3 fatty acids. These dietary components turn down inflammation, which can damage tissue, joints, artery walls, and organs. Going easy on processed foods is another element of healthy eating. Sweets, foods made with highly refined grains, and sugar-sweetened beverages can cause spikes in blood sugar that can lead to early hunger. High blood sugar is linked to the development of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and even dementia.

The Mediterranean diet meets all of the criteria for good health, and there is convincing evidence that it is effective at warding off heart attack, stroke, and premature death. The diet is rich in olive oil, fruits, vegetables, nuts and fish; low in red meats or processed meats; and includes a moderate amount of cheese and wine.

Physical activity is also necessary for good health. It can greatly reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, breast and colon cancer, depression, and falls. Physical activity improves sleep, endurance (…). Aim for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every week, such as brisk walking. Strength training, important for balance, bone health, controlling blood sugar, and mobility, is recommended 2-3 times per week.

Finding ways to reduce stress is another strategy that can help you stay healthy, given the connection between stress and a variety of disorders. There are many ways to bust stress. Try, meditation, mindfulness (…), playing on weekends, and taking vacations.

Finally, establish a good relationship with a primary care physician. If something happens to your health, a physician you know —and who knows you — is in the best position to help. He or she will also recommend tests to check for hidden cancer or other conditions.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/staying-healthy

Excellence – or luck?
The popular idea that doing what great performers do will increase your odds of success conceals a number of biases around luck. In Search of Excellence, the most widely owned book in the U.S. between 1986 and 2006, presented a formula that many business bestsellers followed: Select a few firms that were exceptionally successful. Analyze their shared practices when they moved from “good to great.” Frame these practices as the principles for others that aspire to become great. But the performance of these exceptional successes typically did not last. Take the 50 firms featured in the three most popular business bestsellers: In Search of Excellence, Good to Great and Built to Last. My research shows that the significant improvements of these firms (good to great) before being featured were followed by systematic decline. Of the 50, 16 failed within five years after the books were published and 23 became mediocre as they underperformed the S&P 500 index. Only five out of the remaining 11 firms maintained a similar level of excellence. What happened after becoming great is clearly not enduring greatness but strong regression to mediocrity. The usual explanations for these declines include the CEOs’ complacency or hubris. A simpler explanation, however, is that the CEOs were never that special in the first place. It was luck that enabled their successes and unwarranted attention. And it was (bad) luck that made many of them attract unwarranted blame after failures. This means that you’re unlikely to benefit much from learning from these “role models” because even if you could replicate everything they did, you could not replicate their luck.

When Second Best is Best
If the most successful are not good role models, whom should managers look up to? My research shows that the second best may be a good alternative. Take the music industry. If a musician has a top 20 hit, should a music label immediately try to sign them? My analysis of 8,297 acts in the U.S. Billboard 100 from 1980 to 2008 would suggest not. Music label bosses should instead be looking to sign up those reaching positions between 22 and 30, the “second best” in the charts. A classic example is “Gangnam Style” by Korean artist Psy. The music video went viral beyond anyone’s foresight. Since such an outcome involved exceptional luck, Psy’s success is unsustainable. In fact, artists charting in the top 20 will likely see their next single achieve between 40 and 45 on average, regressing disproportionally more to the mean than their lower performing counterparts. Those charting between 22 and 30, meanwhile, have the highest predicted future rank for their next single. Their less exceptional performances suggest that their successes depend less on luck, making their performances a more reliable predictor of their merit and future performances. If you follow your gut feeling and pursue the stars and pay them more than they deserve, such luck bias creates opportunity for the shrewd contrarian like Beane to ruin your business and disrupt the industry.

Grit is Overrated
Some managers were offended when I presented my research. They believe successes result from hard work, strong motivation or “grit” —not luck — so the most successful don’t deserve to receive lower reward and praise. Some have even suggested that there is a magic number for greatness, a 10,000-hour rule. Many professionals do indeed acquire their competence through persistent, deliberate practices. But detailed analyses of these experts often suggest that certain situational factors beyond their control also play important roles. Consider three national champions in table tennis who came from the same street in a small suburb of one town in England. This wasn’t a coincidence but that a famous table tennis coach, Peter Charters, happened to retire in this particular suburb. Many kids who lived on the same street as the retired coach were attracted to this sport because of him and three of them, after following the “10,000-hour rule,” performed well and became champions. Their efforts were surely necessary for their successes. But without their early chance encounter, simply practicing 10,000 hours without adequate feedback wouldn’t likely lead a randomly picked child to become a national champion. A similar situation could happen in which a talented child suffered from early bad luck and never have a chance to realize their potential. When it comes to moderate performance, our intuition about success is more likely correct. Conventional wisdom, such as “the harder I work the luckier I get” or “chance favors the prepared mind,” makes perfect sense when talking about someone moving from poor to good performance. Going from good-to-great is a different story: Being in the right place at the right time can be so important that it overwhelms merit and grit. The problem is that successful managers tend to extrapolate their prior experiences more than they should. The managers offended by my research were probably right: Hard work and grit is likely to play a more important role than luck in their decent successes. But the same factors are unlikely to enable them to move from good to great. Believing in otherwise is to engage illusion of control and overconfidence — two dangerous biases that have ruined countless business.

Debias the Role of Luck in Business
Education Management research and education often focus on prescriptive theories that address how to move from “good to great.” This is problematic because being “great” in business often cannot occur without luck. Business educators need to acknowledge that we can help business practitioners to make fewer mistakes — “move from incompetent to OK” —but there is little we can teach about how to become exceptionally successful. Part of the problem is that we are hardwired to imitate the most successful. But when the most successful in modern societies are no longer a reliable benchmark, overlooking such a mismatch sees us continuing to reward their luck, fuel unmeritocratic inequality and invite fraud. With this in mind, there’s a good case that we shouldn’t just imitate life’s winners and expect to have similar success. But there is a case that the winners should consider imitating those who have used their wealth and success to do good things. Winners who appreciate their luck and do not take it all are the people who really deserve our respect.

https://hbr.org/2021/06/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-luck-when-it-comes-to-success-in-business

(…) I would like to call your attention to a lecture given in 1958 at Oxford by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, later published as an essay entitled The Two Concepts of Liberty. In a negative sense, liberty is the absence of domination or interference which inhibit one’s freedom to do what he wills; but in a positive sense, liberty must be about the enablement of each person to reach his potential, not least that he can pursue happiness. One may therefore consider the pursuit of happiness as a form of positive liberty. In concept, this view is very much in line with Aristotle’s view of happiness.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the seminal systematic study of happiness. For Aristotle, happiness is only possible by living a virtuous life that entails the use of reason to attain excellence and human flourishing. While he does not negate sensory and other pleasures as necessary to happiness, Aristotle considers these as external goods, whereas happiness is a good for its own sake and alone can make life desirable and lacking in nothing. Happiness is the final good of the human life; it is also the goal of any political life.

Juxtaposed against Aristotle’s conception of happiness is the Epicurean conception, which stresses pleasure and tranquility, but not to the exclusion of virtue, at least not in its original form. By the eighteenth century, happiness as generally understood in intellectual circles had taken on a much more Epicurean flavor, to stand for well-being, pleasure, and what we may call today a better standard of living. In the ebullient optimism characteristic of that century, it was taken for granted that greater human happiness would ensue from scientific and social progress. It is in this light that we find the language of happiness pervasive in the writings of the Enlightenment thinkers of that period in Scotland, England and France—Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Priestley, Godwin, Diderot, Turgot, and Condorcet, among others. (…)

What to do when your sense of meaning slips away

Anything that makes you feel less safe — the death of a loved one, an illness, sudden financial burdens — can create a kind of anxiety that obscures all meaning. That’s when you may start to ask, “Why am I working so hard?” or “Why do I actually care about anything?” You may start to search for meaning frantically. While meaning is the “primary motivational force in man,” searching for meaning does not guarantee that you will find it. When you feel psychologically adrift and disconnected from meaning, how can you increase the chances that you will find it?

You might be surprised to learn that reconnecting with meaning may not involve a set of techniques, but a set of spontaneous actions removed from the humdrum of life’s everyday routines. As helpful as “psychological techniques” such as reframing or positive thinking can be, they often miss the mark in the search for meaning. Stanford psychiatrist Irvin Yalom explained that it is the intangibles and “off the beaten track” thoughts and activities that can make the greatest difference, much like the cook who spontaneously throws in a handful of spices into a dish without thinking much. When we examine the psychological elements that underlie the cook’s instinctive “throw-ins,” we find clues as to how we can jump-start meaning in our lives. Here are three ways to open yourself to rediscovering meaning.

Be curious

Seasoned cooks are capable of these precise “throw-ins” without much thinking because they are willing to be curious and follow their instincts. As much as the cook may follow a recipe, it is curiosity that drives the exceptional touch and activates the intangible taste that results from it. As Samuel Johnson said, “The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction.” Curiosity, defined as the desire to know, see, or experience new things, can activate a sense of purpose and meaning. Adding this vital ingredient to your life by literally walking a safe path you’ve never walked before or tasting a brand-new dish may get you back to the road of meaning. It is this “unfocus” from learned daily habits that is necessary to activate meaning.

Understand that we want to be independent and connected all at the same time

Underlying the cook’s “dare” are two well-known psychological attributes that shape how we relate to the world: agency (a feeling of independence) as well as communion (a feeling of connection to others). These are contrasting, yet important aspects of who we are, and having enough of both in our lives can also help to activate meaning. By doing so, we acknowledge our two-sided selves. Too much independence can lead to isolation. Too much communion can lead to loss of a sense of self. Living life fully requires switching between the two and organizing your day so that you have enough of both. In the cook’s dare, she is independent, but she is motivated by feeding and tantalizing the palates of others too. Learning to accept your contradictions is central to experiencing a sense of meaning and more rewarding that choosing to be “one” or “the other” thing.

Notice when “meaning” appears

When you feel that sense of meaning, it is like a taste that “hits the spot” with the first mouthful. What you are tasting is not just a carefully crafted combination of ingredients, though you can be sure that that is part of the picture. In addition, you are the beneficiary of the cook’s spontaneous insight — an important factor in meaning-making. When you make time for spontaneous insights in your day, you can jump-start the flow of experience, which is characteristic of meaning-driven activities. You can’t have such insights if your day is run like clockwork or if it is jam-packed or if your calendar dictates your meaning (unless, of course, your calendar leaves room for spontaneous whims and fancies — these moments can require space too). Setting aside time for doing something with no particular goal in mind adds a vital ingredient to your life that can bring back the very meaning for which you were searching.

In essence then, when you are psychologically adrift, you may be tempted to try to ground yourself with rational approaches to life. In fact, what you may need is to also find your “psychological wings” so that you may catch the breeze of life and enjoy gliding into it before you land.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-rediscover-meaning-in-your-life-2017030811265

A duck walks into a bar. . . . It’s a joke! Hearing just the first few words, your brain springs into action. The path of neuronal activity is a complex one that enlists various brain regions: the frontal lobe, to process the information; the supplementary motor area, to tap learned experience to direct motor activities such as the movements associated with laughter; and the nucleus accumbens, to assess the pleasure of the story and the reward that the “aha!” brings. When the punch line hits home, your heart rate rises, you jiggle with mirth, and your brain releases “feel good” neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and an array of endorphins.

Jokes work because they defy expectations. The surprise aspect of these tales kicks in the frontal lobe’s search for pattern recognition. The punchline moment shifts one’s orientation away from information processing toward an emotional response arising deep within the nucleus accumbens. This response is then tagged for an overall relevance check. If the prefrontal cortex, which is part of the frontal lobe, deems the information attention worthy, it dedicates more processing power to it, along with conscious awareness. If the information remains relevant through the punch line, the brain shifts its response to its pleasure-and-reward center, which in turn triggers a guffaw.

“It’s important to make a distinction between humor and laughter,” says Carl Marci, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the director of social neuroscience in the Psychotherapy Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Humor is an evoked response to storytelling and shifting expectations. Laughter is a social signal among humans. It’s like a punctuation mark.”

To Titter Is Human

Humans experience the humor of a joke in three phases. First, the listener encounters some type of incongruity: a punch line that seems out of place compared with the joke’s set-up. Then, following a cognitive construct called surprise and coherence, the listener tries to resolve this incongruity. Finally, the listener’s brain determines the joke’s sense—or lack thereof—and decides whether or not the joke is funny.

“The body sends a signal to the brain that says, ‘Hey, that’s clever, that’s worth it,’ and we laugh,” says Marci.

So incongruity and dashed expectations form the foundation of what’s funny. But, as any comic will tell you, timing is everything. Most successful jokes are funny because the incongruity occurs within the few beats that exist between the set-up and the punch line. The following joke provides an example:

Gymnast: Can you teach me to do the splits?
Gymnastics instructor: How flexible are you?
Gymnast: Well, I can’t come in on Thursdays.

We suss out the humor of this joke using the concept behind what scientists call the incongruity-resolution theory. The set-up gets us thinking in one direction, then the punch line comes along and jars us into realizing there is a completely different way to interpret the situation. By resolving the incongruity—in this case, the double meaning of ”flexible”—we are suddenly surprised. Our proverbial funny bone gets tickled, and we snicker.

Studies have shown that the prefrontal cortex plays a vital role in the flexible thinking required to “get” a joke. This region of the frontal lobe, located forward of the brain’s motor regions, processes sensory information gathered by our eyes, ears, and other senses, then combines this information in a manner that helps us form useful, behavior-guiding judgments. The region also oversees the processing needed for planning complex cognitive behaviors, showing personality characteristics, and moderating social behavior. And it is the prefrontal cortex that helps us make sense of a joke’s punch line by sending signals along connections to both the supplementary motor area and the nucleus accumbens, producing a strong sense of surprise and eliciting laughter. In short, our prefrontal cortex is on the case as soon as we hear the first mention of that gymnast and that trainer.

Why We Laugh

“Laughter was a safe, early social signal to form human bonds,” says Marci. “Before we could speak, laughter told early humans that ‘Everything’s okay, you can come over to my side.’” Laughter is thought to have predated human speech, perhaps by millions of years, and may have helped our early ancestors clarify intentions during social interactions. But as language began to evolve, laughter may also have provided an emotional context for conversations—a signal of acceptance.

Scientists have described laughter’s evolution as one that preserved shared expressions of relief marking the passing of danger. Certain contemporary researchers think that jokes link with this: We laugh out of relief when we recognize the surprise element of the joke.

Humans, however, are not the only species to laugh; when tickled, some primates, including apes, gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees, will giggle, hoot, and scrunch their faces in a laugh-like manner. Yet scientists have no evidence that these other primates have a sense of humor. In fact, many researchers doubt they do. Unlike the brains of humans, the brains of primates are not thought to have evolved in a manner that would allow them to process the incongruities introduced in a joke.

A Powerful Contagion

Although the neural mechanisms of depression, anger, and fear have been tracked by scientists for years, only recently have investigators begun to look at how the brain processes humor.

The brains of depression sufferers, for example, show decreased activity in the regions that are engaged during the processing of something humorous. Researchers are studying whether this decrease in activity somehow impairs the brain’s ability to process humor. If indeed researchers find processing abnormalities in parts of the brain that handle humor, then some speculate it might be possible to boost activity in these key regions to lessen the symptoms of depression.

“The core deficit in depression is an imbalance between the frontal lobe and reward centers of the brain,” says Marci. “If those areas are important for laughter, then someone who is depressed will laugh less.”

Marci has in fact investigated humor’s role in mood disorders. In 2004, he published a study in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease on the effects of laughter during psychotherapy. Among the study’s participants, Marci found that for patients being treated for depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders, laughter was less about humor and more about communicating emotions. On average, these patients laughed about fifteen times in each fifty-minute psychotherapy session. To determine whether laughter had an effect on the patients, Marci measured the skin conductance, basically a measure of sweat, of both patients and psychiatrists. Skin conductance increases with the nervous system activity that controls blood pressure and heart rate, which together signal an aroused state. When clinicians did not laugh with patients, conductance measures still indicated both parties were aroused. But when patients and psychiatrists laughed together, the arousal measures for each group doubled.

The contagion of laughter, Marci says, suggests patients felt that the emotions they expressed were being validated. It also supports the notion that empathy is a shared experience. That laughter is catching is a reason television sitcoms use laugh tracks: taped laughter invites audience participation.

The findings, Marci adds, also suggest that mirror neurons, which are linked to empathic behavior, are often involved in laughter. Mirror neurons are a subset of neurons that fire both when we perform an action and when we observe that same action performed by others.

Once Daily, with Gusto

Laughter may also confer health benefits. For the past forty years, studies have shown that good, hearty laughter can relieve tension and stress; boost the immune system, by reducing stress hormones and increasing activity among immune cells and antibodies; and help reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, by improving blood flow and blood vessel function.

Laughter and humor can be a tonic for the brain, as well. Triggering the brain’s emotional and reward centers spurs the release of dopamine, helping the brain to process emotional responses and enhancing our experience of pleasure; of serotonin, to buoy our mood; and of endorphins, to regulate our pain and stress and to induce euphoria.

The next time you hear a joke, whether you get it or not, let yourself go and enjoy a good, hearty laugh. It’s good for you!

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/humor-laughter-those-aha-moments

“I declare this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists.”  The beauty of nature can have a profound effect upon our senses, those gateways from the outer world to the inner, whether it results in disbelief in its very existence as Emerson notes, or feelings such as awe, wonder, or amazement.  But what is it about nature and the entities that make it up that cause us, oftentimes unwillingly, to feel or declare that they are beautiful?

One answer that Emerson offers is that “the simple perception of natural forms is a delight.”  When we think of beauty in nature, we might most immediately think of things that dazzle the senses – the prominence of a mountain, the expanse of the sea, the unfolding of the life of a flower.  Often it is merely the perception of these things itself which gives us pleasure, and this emotional or affective response on our part seems to be crucial to our experience of beauty.  So in a way there is a correlate here to the intrinsic value of nature; Emerson says:

Most often, it seems to me, we find these things to be beautiful not because of something else they might bring us – a piece of furniture, say, or a ‘delicacy’ to be consumed – but because of the way that the forms of these things immediately strike us upon observation. In fact, one might even think that this experience of beauty is one of the bases for valuing nature – nature is valuable because it is beautiful.

Emerson seems to think that beauty in the natural world is not limited to certain parts of nature to the exclusion of others. He writes that every landscape lies under “the necessity of being beautiful”, and that “beauty breaks in everywhere.”  As we slowly creep out of a long winter in the Northeast, I think Emerson would find the lamentations about what we have ‘endured’ to be misguided:

The close observer of nature sees a river in constant flux, even when the river’s water is frozen and everything appears to be static and unchanging for a time. Nature can reveal its beauty in all places and at all times to the eye that knows how to look for it. We can hear Emerson wrangle with himself on this very point in the words of this journal entry:

So if we’re sympathetic to the idea that nature, or aspects of it, are beautiful, we might ask ourselves why we experience nature in this way.  Emerson says that nature is beautiful because it is alive, moving, reproductive.  In nature we observe growth and development in living things, contrasted with the static or deteriorating state of the vast majority of that which is man-made.  More generally, he writes:  “We ascribe beauty to that which…has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things”.  He cites natural structures as lacking superfluities, an observation that in general has been confirmed by the advancement of biology.  Furthermore, he says that whether talking about a human artifact or a natural organism, any increase of ability to achieve its end or goal is an increase in beauty.  So in Emerson we might find the resources for seeing evolution and the drive to survive as a beautiful rather than an ugly process, governed by laws that tend to increase reproductive fitness and that we can understand through observation and inquiry.  And lastly, Emerson points to the relation between what we take to be an individual and the rest of nature as a quality of the beautiful.  This consists in the “power to suggest relation to the whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality.”  In nature one doesn’t come across individuals that are robustly independent from their environment; rather things are intimately interconnected with their surroundings in ways that we don’t fully understand.

All of these qualities of beauty seem to go beyond the mere impression of sensible forms that we started with, and what they require is what also served as the basis of truth and goodness in nature.

In addition to the immediate experience of beauty based in perception, Emerson suggests that the beauty of the world may also be viewed as an object of the intellect.  He writes that “the question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to thinking of the foundations of things.”  In other words, we can also experience the world as beautiful because of its rational structure and our ability to grasp that structure through thought.  Think for instance of the geometric structure of a crystal, or snowflake, or nautilus shell.  Or consider the complexity of the fact that the reintroduction of the wolf in Yellowstone National Park changed the course of the rivers due to a chain reaction of cause and effect through the food web, a process called a trophic cascade.  This reinforces Emerson’s emphasis on the interconnection between all members of the natural world; as observers of nature we are confronted with one giant, complex process that isn’t of our own making, but that we can also understand, and get a mental grasp on, even if only partially, and be awe-struck in that process of understanding.

There is thus an emotional or affective component in the beauty of the intellect just as there is in the immediate beauty of perception.  If we destroy the natural world, we take away the things that we can marvel at and experience awe towards in these two ways.  And this experience of the beautiful through the intellect may reinforce our attributing value to nature here as well, but a deeper kind of value, the intrinsic value I talked about in the last essay.  Here it is not only that nature is valuable because it is beautiful, but nature is beautiful because it possesses intrinsic value, grounded in its intelligible structure.  Thus we see a close parallel between goodness and beauty in nature.  We can find an objective basis for goodness and beauty in nature, namely its intelligible structure, but also see that nature is valuable and beautiful for us, with the particular apparatus that nature has given us for navigating our way through the world.

So that which is the basis of truth in nature and provides it with intrinsic value is also that which makes it beautiful.  Emerson himself ties these three aspects of nature into one package himself:

This is the unified philosophy of nature that I set out to explicate in the first essay – nature is the source of truth, goodness, and beauty, because of its intelligible structure, and because of its production of organisms that can recognize that structure, us.  And this view of nature includes an inherent call to protect that which is true, good, and beautiful.  These are the things that we as human beings are searching for, are striving after, and yet they’re right in front of us if only we would listen with our ear to the earth.

Although I’ve been advocating an approach to nature based on its intelligibility, we are far from tying down the giant that is nature with our minds. Emerson writes that “the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.”  Although we shall continue to try to uncover nature’s secrets, let us also continue to take pleasure in our immediate encounter with her. Let us continue to be awe-struck, like the child on the seashore, or clambering up a tree. Let us hold onto that experience, and fight for the environment that makes it possible, both for the child in each of us, and for those that come after us.

THIS STORY IS PART OF : 

https://green.harvard.edu/news/beauty-nature

Artists and scientists throughout history have remarked on the bliss that accompanies a sudden creative insight. Einstein described his realization of the general theory of relativity as the happiest moment of his life. More poetically, Virginia Woolf once observed, “Odd how the creative power brings the whole universe at once to order.”

https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-emotions-that-make-us-more-creative

Why is art magical? How can it make us happy? How Art Can Make You Happy offers the keys to unlocking a rich and rewarding source of joy in life.

https://www.harvard.com/book/how_art_can_make_you_happy/

How often have you willingly sacrificed your free time to make more money? You’re not alone. But new research suggests that prioritizing money over time may actually undermine our happiness.

In a recent study, more than 1,000 students graduating from the University of British Columbia completed an assessment measuring whether they tend to value time over money or money over time. The majority of students reported prioritizing time — but not by much. Nearly 40% reported prioritizing money.

To find out how this choice correlated with their cognitive and emotional well-being, the students’ level of happiness was measured both prior to graduation and a year down the line. Among other measures, they were asked to report on their life satisfaction by answering the question, “Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?” on a scale from 0-10, with 0 = not at all and 10 = extremely.

The researchers found that the students who prioritized money ended up less happy a year after graduation, compared to their classmates who chose to prioritize time. The results remained the same even after controlling for their happiness before graduation and accounting for their various socioeconomic backgrounds.

Of course that doesn’t mean that you should turn down the next raise you’re offered. A mountain of evidence shows that, on average, wealthier people are happier. But making lots of money will not inevitably boost your happiness. How you spend, save, and think about money shapes how much joy you get from it.

To the point, another recent study that surveyed more than 500 people in the U.K. shows that the amount of money we see in our checking and savings accounts impacts our happiness more than our incomes. Those of us who see a depressingly low number every time we go to the bank tend to feel worse than those who don’t, incomes aside.

The good news is that building up just a small reserve of cash can make a difference, and this is true for people who are still trying to escape debt as well. When we surveyed more than 12,000 people who had previously applied for loans to eliminate their credit card debt, we found that those who had at least $500 cash on hand showed 15% higher life satisfaction.

Still, the idea of saving cash, even a small amount, can be intimidating. You may have anxieties about cutting back on expenses, creating a budgeting plan, or making sacrifices. That’s why we propose a different approach. Begin by answering these two questions:

• What do I buy that isn’t essential for my survival?
• Is the expense genuinely contributing to my happiness?

If the answer to the second question is no, try taking a break from those expenses, even just for a few weeks. But if the expense does make you happy, go ahead and enjoy it, without beating yourself up. Let’s look at ways you can choose to spend your money right now that are most likely to bring you happiness.

The Right Way to Spend Money (If You Want to Be Happier)

Spend on experiences, not things. In our survey of loan applicants mentioned above, we found that more than 80% of people under 30 reported deriving more happiness from buying experiences — like trips, concerts, or special meals —than from buying material things, such as gadgets or clothes. (Sixty-two percent of respondents were Gen Z or Millennials.)

Nonetheless, it’s easy to get sucked into buying material things, partly because they’re so easy to compare. One of us (Elizabeth) was perfectly content with her iPhone 8, until she received a text message offering her a shiny new iPhone 11. (No money down!) She caught herself increasingly leaving the rapidly aging iPhone 8 on the edge of tables, nightstands, and sinks, unconsciously waiting for its demise. This behavior is not uncommon. Research shows that when a desirable upgrade becomes available, people often become careless with their existing products.

The fact that material things are so easy to compare helps explain why they are often unsatisfying. After all, even the iPhone 11 might not look so great next to the iPhone 11 Max Pro. In contrast, experiences aren’t so easy to compare.

Buy time. It can be hard to find time to enjoy special experiences, especially for those of us juggling lots of responsibilities. But the gig economy has made it easier and more affordable for many of us to buy free time. Beyond well-known time-saving services like DoorDash, Dunzo, and TaskRabbit, consumers are turning to creative companies like Hello Alfred, a kind of modern butler service that claims to have saved its members a combined total of more than 50 years through its array of services.

Spending money on time-saving services might seem indulgent given the current economic climate. But when we surveyed 15,000 Americans in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, people who reported buying time (like saving travel time by purchasing more expensive groceries from a closer grocery store),exhibited 10% higher life satisfaction compared to those who didn’t. Remarkably, this relationship held up even for people making under $40,000 per year.

Indeed, buying time appears to cause happiness levels to rise. As part of a study published in 2017, 60 working adults received $40 to spend on a time-saving purchase one weekend. On another weekend, those same individuals got another $40 to spend on a material thing. Compared to buying a material thing, buying time led people to experience more positive moods and reduced their feelings of time pressure. Yet, when other working adults were asked how they would spend a $40 windfall, only 2% planned to make a time-saving purchase.

Invest in others. Try this experiment on yourself: Grab a $10 or a $20 bill and use it to benefit someone else today. You could send a small gift to a friend, help out a stranger who’s short on cash at the grocery store, or make a donation to a charity that’s important to you. Although it might be tempting to spend this money on yourself, a decade of research shows that you’re more likely to derive happiness from spending it on someone else. In fact, even people who are struggling to meet their own basic needs exhibit this “warm glow” from giving to others.

But that doesn’t mean that giving always makes everyone happy. Instead, it matters how and why you give. It’s important that you feel like your decision to give is made freely — that it is something you choose to do, not something you feel forced to do by a pushy co-worker asking for yet another donation to their pet cause. Look for giving opportunities that will enable you to see how your generosity is making a difference for a person or cause you genuinely care about. And you can start small. Research shows that giving even a few dollars can boost your mood.

It’s important to note that some of this research has its limitations, as spending choices that promote happiness can also be dependent on our unique personalities. (For instance, in one experiment, 79 participants received a voucher to make a purchase at either a bar or a bookstore. Although both types of purchases provided extroverts with a small boost in happiness, introverts felt much happier after hitting the bookstore rather than the bar.) But this small study is just the beginning of the next chapter of research on spending and happiness. Utilizing advances in big data and machine learning, we are beginning to move beyond population-level spending recommendations, providing more individualized advice to help people get the most happiness from every precious dollar they spend.

https://hbr.org/2020/09/does-more-money-really-makes-us-more-happy

What are new-luxury compared to old-luxury-goods? Does the trend to upgrade the levels of quality and taste apply only to the US?

Formulate the idea of a „Good Life“ in each of the 13 videos (I KEY?). Which is your favourite?

Listen to the speeches in part II (JEFF BEZOS), summarise them and describe the personality of Jeff Bezos. Does he have a „recipe“ for wealth and success? How does he define both?

Go through RESEARCH and present its findings.

What do you think makes a good life?

Paraphrase the tale and the short story in parts IV and V. What is their moral in philosophical terms? Do they both relate to real life?

What is the enigma of luxury?