Category: Media

Martin Seligman’s 3 types of happy lives

I’m not a fan of the lazy belief that happiness is a worthwhile pursuit; it scares me that some people go so far as to organize their lives around it.

Dr. Drew sums it up for me:

I don’t buy into this happiness stuff…if you want to know happiness, look at a heroin addict. Now THEY’RE happy.

Or as Don so pithily sums up in Mad Men:

Happiness…is the moment before you need more happiness

Yet I found this Martin Seligman talk about happiness to be very interesting. Its insights are overlooked, or forgotten, in our happiness dialogue.

Seligman is a UPenn professor, psychology eminence grise and a key proponent of positive psychology (the academic label for happiness). His TED talk was recorded back in 2004, just as the happiness movement was finding its legs. Those legs are pretty tired, now, but you never know…

In the talk, Seligman says there are 3 types of happy lives:

1. The Pleasant Life – what most people mean when they talk about happiness; think George Clooney or that bubbly, cheerful office receptionist; it’s about creating and maintaining as much positive emotion as possible; about 50% of your baseline is inherited, and it habituates over time (you get used to it and need more)

Ok, got it. But there’s gotta be more…

2. The Good Life – think Elon Musk, Serena Williams; a life of engagement and flow, when time stops because you’re absorbed in the moment, in what you’re doing; “during flow, you can’t feel anything”; it’s about developing strengths and then applying them to every area of your life

We’re not done, yet!

3. The Meaningful Life – think Mother Teresa; using your strengths to serve something larger than you, typically a positive institution or moral issue. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt:

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

Ahhh, much better.

In your perfect world, you probably want a combination of all 3. Probably more of 2 and 3 than of 1, although to each their own. Just don’t ask me if I’m happy…I still can’t figure it out.

Watch the talk here.

Podcast recommendation: Planet Money!!

Planet Money podcastIf you like podcasts, check out Planet Money.

I started a few weeks ago and was immediately hooked. It’s fast (around 15-25 minutes), fun (the reporters enjoy their work, I love Zoe Chace’s voice), and you learn interesting things about the big, hairy, sometimes secretive world of money.

I’ve been working my way through the archives. Some favorites:

  • The One-Page Plan To Fix Global Warming [link]
  • Top Of The Charts [link]
  • Will A Computer Decide Whether You Get Your Next Job? [link]

Thanks to Lily and Haomiao for the recommendation.

Here’s more on podcasts.

What is a book worth?

George Packer writes a New Yorker-quality piece on Amazon’s changing, always-provocative role in book publishing.

It’s long but worth a thorough read and two.

The usual themes are there – that Amazon’s DNA is influenced by its online bookstore origins…that Bezos’s relentless customer focus creates some friends, many enemies and even many-er customers…that its forays in content (from literary magazines to trade publishing to the Kindle device), while ambitious, have seen mixed results. And finally, that the publishing establishment feels about Amazon what an alcoholic feels about a bottle of Johnny Walker black.

Jane Friedman, the former Random House and HarperCollins executive, who now runs a digital publisher called Open Road Integrated Media, told me, “If there wasn’t an Amazon today, there probably wouldn’t be a book business.” The senior editor who met Grandinetti said, “They’re our biggest customer, we want them to succeed. As I recover from being punched in the face by Amazon, I also worry: What if they are a bubble? What if the stock market suddenly says, ‘We want a profit’? You don’t want your father who abuses you physically to lose his job.”

Packer’s argument is that, while Amazon’s role in book publishing has been largely positive for customers (by making it better, faster and cheaper to buy books), it is what might be called a Pyrrhic victory. That Amazon won the book retail battle, but it may lose the publishing war and pull everyone down with it, especially those hard-working authors.

“Amazon has successfully fostered the idea that a book is a thing of minimal value,” Johnson said. “It’s a widget.”

It’s still early, but some new data shows that self-publishing is doing well for readers and authors. You can’t hold back the tides of change: of technology, of transparency, of individual empowerment. However, this sort of debate has been – and will continue to be – around for decades.

As for me? I’ve got a growing backlog of ebooks, blog posts, tweets and Quora threads to get to! :)

A thorough and entertaining piece. Read it here.

Disclaimer: I run Hyperink, an ebook publisher.

Recent interesting articles

1. Sarah Lacy on Kleiner Perkins [link] – high-performance is difficult to maintain in a hits-driven business…

2. French cafe charges more if you’re rude [link]

French Cafe

3. Desiderata by Max Ehrmann [link] – “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”

4. GQ profile on Avicii [link] – article makes him look a tad douche-y, but it’s hard to blame a 23 year-old who suddenly starts making $250K a night…

5. An entrepreneur’s observations on Brazil [link] – I loved, and miss, Rio’s beaches, fun-and-carefree attitude, the farofa…

6. Korean couple starves baby to death while playing online game…raising a virtual child [link] – this says something…I’m still figuring out what

7. pmarca on bitcoin [link] – I love when he wades into a controversial topic and lays the smack down…whether long-term right or wrong, always entertaining

8. Charles Stross on his first visit to Japan [link] – beautiful writing; it’s the closest someone’s come to articulating my stream of consciousness while visiting japan

9. Japanese man refuses to believe WWII is over, defends outpost on Philippines Island for 29 years [link] – a good reminder, and framework, to face life’s challenges

Here’s a full list of interesting reads and highlights (thanks to Postach.io!). Or you can view the original Ever-notebook.

“Doubt is our product” – fascinating memo on the tobacco industry’s PR strategy

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this document but its contents were illuminating.

The document is a memo from Brown & Williamson, a then-subsidiary of British American Tobacco, reviewing the current state of the tobacco industry’s public relations and proposing next steps.

The Tobacco Institute has probably done a good job for us in the area of politics and as an industry we also seem to have done very well in turning out scientific information to counter the anti-smoking claims.

Yet, trends were moving against the industry:

We are restricted in terms of ability to sell — in colleges and in vending machines. Our products are branded with a warning label. Our ability to advertise has been attacked on all fronts and has consistently deteriorated.

But people want to smoke — and doubt gives them an easy excuse:

Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the “body of fact” that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.

Even then — 40+ years ago — it was clear that “pro-cigarette science” was pseudo-science:

Unfortunately, we cannot take a position directly opposing the anti-cigarette forces and say that cigarettes are a contributor to good health. No information that we have supports such a claim.

So let’s focus on the arena of public opinion!

Finally, a series of studies are proposed to understand exactly which messages most effectively create anti-smoking sentiment, and then to find the best means “of anticipating and countering the release of misinformation.

Fascinating stuff. Here’s the original document, courtesy of UCSF.