Happy Hour

We search for happiness in eager anticipation and joyful memories, but it may be life's simple and everyday gifts that sustain our contentment.

By Carlin Flora, published on January 01, 2005 - last reviewed on April 17, 2008

"The point is that we shouldn't measure our lives on the quality of our memories alone," says Kahneman. He doesn't simply mean we should be more spontaneous—in fact, he points out that since time is our most valuable resource, we should pay careful attention to how we spend it. We need to vigilantly protect our time from the biases of our evaluating self by not relying on memory alone. Otherwise, we risk wasting it in ways that contradict our values and don't bring us happiness.

Well-being is also a product of "focal time," or how we direct our attention. This is the key idea behind the different roles that pleasures and comforts have in creating happiness, a distinction originally posited by the late Stanford economist Tibor Scitovsky. Comforts are objects or experiences we tend to take for granted: a computer that doesn't crash, boots that don't leak or even a spouse who is supportive and warm. Pleasures, on the other hand, are stimuli that you focus your attention on: a good meal, a silky shirt, a boisterous evening with friends. The difference isn't intrinsic to the thing itself but rather lies in our attitude toward it: whether it captures our attention or recedes into the background.

Our evaluating self misleads us by giving more weight to comforts, those things that make life easier, but that we become accustomed to. Our experiencing self, meanwhile, prefers pleasures—absorbing events or interactions that hold us captive. If you ask someone with a Lexus if she likes it, she'll probably say yes, since its high quality really does bring happiness. But that's only while she's thinking about it—and she probably doesn't think about it very often. "Suppose you are driving in your car with your spouse and you are quarreling," Kahneman posits. "Are you better off if you're driving an Escort or a Lexus?" You're much too busy arguing to pay attention to the Lexus' smooth ride, so at that moment the quality of the car hardly matters. At the same time, something trivial that grabs your focus and interest, like getting flowers, will bring you happiness. If you got flowers every day, though, it would become routine, and neither garner your attention nor bring you much pleasure. Kahneman's point: Nothing is as important as it is when you're thinking about it.

As he's explored the role of attention and moment-by-moment experiences in happiness, Kahneman has identified factors that have a powerful effect in determining immediate mood. When asked how they feel "in the moment," he's found that people report being happier when they are with friends than when they're with a spouse or child. It sounds counterintuitive, but it makes sense: When we're with friends, we're intensely engaged, whereas we don't pay as much focused attention to family—they recede into the background, since we see them all the time. Similarly, getting enough sleep is crucial, probably because it is difficult to be engaged with the things you enjoy when you are tired. And people under time pressure at work don't report much happiness, as they are unable to pay attention to anything other than their impending deadlines.

Kahneman acknowledges the power of the well-being "setpoint," but he still thinks that we can influence our own happiness in small ways—by attending to the moment, and by choosing activities that engage rather than numb our minds. If we heed what does give us immediate pleasure, and if we are skeptical of our error-riddled memories and predictions, we can learn to spend our money, time and attention in ways that make us happier. If it's simply our nature to root for a cursed team or to chase a dream that, when realized, will never be as sweet as it is in our mind's eye, then we can try to appreciate the joy that comes in the striving.