| Weekday Wisdom |
on happiness |
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Happiness · Behavioural science
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Hello you, magnificent Sebastian,
Happy Tuesday. Since it's holiday season, I looked through our happiness and behavioural science courses to dig out some practical tips to help you get more out of your holiday, and stay happier long after you're home again.
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| 01 |
Booking it is the mood lifter.
In 2010, Dutch researchers tracked 1,530 adults through a holiday season. Those with a trip booked were happier than those without, and the gap showed up before anybody had packed. The dependable happiness isn't the fortnight away, it's the weeks of knowing it's coming. So if you can't get away this month, book something for later in the year and enjoy the feeling of it paying happiness dividends today.
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| 02 |
Two halves beat one long stretch.
If you are heading off, make sure you don't go to one place and do the same thing every day. Across seven studies in the Journal of Consumer Research, Jordan Etkin and Cassie Mogilner found that a day, a week or a month of more varied activities left people measurably happier looking back on it. So take one week here and one week there, or make the second half of your trip look nothing like the first, and you come home with two holidays in your head, not one blur. This is something we've been doing for our family holidays for the last few years and it really works. Just don't overdo it. Trying to re-create The Amazing Race on your holiday has negative effects.
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| 03 |
Whatever happens last, happens loudest.
This is the peak-end rule: we judge an experience by its best moment and its last one, barely at all by its length. So a holiday needs one thing you'll still be describing at Christmas, and an ending you've protected. One company that has clearly worked this out is Alaska Airlines. Since 2010 it has guaranteed that your bags reach the carousel within twenty minutes of landing, and pays out airmiles when they don't. The classic ruined ending is the itemised hotel bill at checkout. Which, as Dan Ariely says in our course, is much of the appeal of all-inclusive: you paid months ago, so the last morning costs nothing.
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One key takeaway
Book it early. Split it in two. Give it a happy ending.
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How to use this at work and in life
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Put the date in early. Book the gig or the weekend away months out. The extra happiness is free. |
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Split the offsite. Two half-days in two rooms beat one long day in one. |
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Change one variable a week. A different route home, a Tuesday unlike the others. Routine shrinks in memory, and this helps your creative thinking too. |
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Write the last two minutes first. Meetings and projects mostly end by running out of time. Decide the ending in advance, even if it's only naming what went well and who did it. |
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Now go and book something for November.
Big love,
Chris & the 42courses team x
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p.s. If you fancy twenty minutes very well spent, Daniel Kahneman's TED talk on the difference between the self that has the holiday and the self that remembers it is here. Still one of the best.
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| Weekday Wisdom is a Tuesday habit from 42courses, where 50,000+ people in 160+ countries learn from working practitioners. |
Bonus dad joke
Q: Why is nobody ever pleased to see a suitcase?
A: It always turns up with baggage. |
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