Hello Dr Pychyl,

I finally submitted my M.S. thesis yesterday ending a long saga of topic-switching and procrastination. Your exhortations to "just get started" were instrumental in getting me back on track whenever I fell off the wagon. In particular I came to see, through your writings, how I was making excuses for myself and giving in to feeling good in the short term, and paying for it in the long term. So thank you very much and please keep up the good work!

My excuses (which would fall under the strategies you described for coping with the ensuing dissonance) included even convincing myself that life was meant to be led with zero mental discomfort, even in the short term, and that all this unease I feel is just the result of an outdated, guilt-based work ethic imparted by my parents. It took deep introspection and the ideas in your writings to show me the errors in this kind of thinking.

Your latest blog entry on the negative consequences of synthesizing our own happiness---as opposed to 'truly' obtaining it by taking on our essential tasks knowing fully well that they will cause discomfort initially---was quite thought provoking. Even better was the discussion you have with an anonymous commenter who disagrees with this blog entry. Distorting reality and 'faking' happiness in order to cope with the failings of our will-power probably will lead to long-term psychological problems; I have personally experienced depression and anguish when flashes of insights (usually trigerred by reading your entries and by reflection) would reveal my manufactured positive state as an illusion. This anguish finally proved to be the motivator for me to better myself. Hopefully this positive momentum will continue in my life.

Of course there are still lingering doubts in my mind. Words like 'positive' and 'truly happy' are indeed subjective, and sometimes I think that perhaps ambition may be the root of all stress. If we humans did less as a species would we all just be more happier? Would it be better for the planet? I don't know and don't think anybody really knows. Speaking for myself, I suspect that these doubts originated as excuses for my avoiding the tasks of life.

Thanks,
Name omitted to provide anonymity

Next Reader reply:
Below is the longer reply to my entry about "manufacturing happiness." It is followed with my comments in an attempt to clarify what I mean by a "downside" to manufacturing our own happiness.

Respectfully disagree
Submitted by Anonymous on December 2, 2009 - 10:10pm.

Hi Dr. Pychyl,
A while back I viewed the same TED video of Dr. Gilbert that you viewed, where he talked about synthetic happiness, of the photography class experiment, and of prisoners and the disabled. (And anterograde amnesia and numbered paintings.)

"Dan and his audience all laughed at how outrageously silly this seems. This must be manufactured happiness. We recognize the incongruency in others, why not in our own lives?"
I thought this statement was odd, because Gilbert was advocating this sort of happiness. He argued that this synthetic happiness "is every bit as real and enduring" as "real" happiness that arises from obtaining things or achieving goals (i.e. getting what you want). Some, perhaps Buddhists, may even say that this contentedness is even deeper and stable than natural happiness.

And this is why I disagree with the title of your article. If one indeed does manufacture happiness instead of pursuing some goal, why is that bad? I'm a bright young professional with a decently paying job. My friends say (and I agree) I should attend graduate school to better utilize my intelligence and to be happier. Taking the GRE and filling out applications is on my to-do list, but is there really something inherently wrong with manufacturing happiness and becoming content with my job? You obviously don't think highly of this, calling it "a bias," but I'm not sure I should see it that way.

The second reason I disagree with you is because, as you've said, "procrastination is related to negative emotions such as guilt; it undermines our happiness." I think that if a goal is important enough to me that procrastinating on it produces guilt, then there's no room for me to manufacture happiness. If I somehow am able to manufacture happiness, then it would mean the goal wasn't very important to me to begin with, or it would make it less important for me. Happiness would hinder my progress toward that goal not by encouraging procrastination but rather by decreasing my valuation of that goal. (For example, one may ponder, "Are gold medals really that important in life?") In other words, it would be intention-update, not intention-failure.

Finally, you say that this requires further research. I would actually hypothesize that manufacturing happiness and procrastination are uncorrelated, because the former tends to occur in situations that one cannot change, whereas the latter occurs on things that one can change. I'm not even sure how you would set up an experiment where both could occur. But if they were somehow correlated, I would think that happier people procrastinate less. When I read this blog post by Steven Stosny:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/......
it reminded me of procrastination. I don't have an eating problem, but he describes it similarly to how I feel about procrastinating; that guilt and shame lead to intention-failure. Similar to how smoking warnings may backfire:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/200911/when-......

Anyway, now I'm getting off topic. But those are the sources of my intuition that more happiness means less procrastinating. (Of course, happiness is not the same as core-value or self-concept, but it's just a hypothesis anyway.)
I enjoy reading your blog,* and appreciate the good work and research, and look forward to future posts.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
*I especially liked it when you bolded certain sentences because that made me pay extra attention and read it twice.

Seeking to clarify
Submitted by Timothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D. on December 3, 2009 - 10:27am.
Thanks so much for your very thoughtful (and respectful) reply here. I want to address each of your points, because I think it will be important to clarify what I'm trying to say, even to myself, as my writing is not based on an empirical study, but thinking about this phenomenon and what it means.

Ok, I'll start from the beginning of your post, and I'll number my comments just to keep me organized.
I'm not convinced that Dan is advocating this kind of happiness in any and all situations. He's certainly not diminishing its importance, but as I noted in my blog, he ends his TED talk by saying, "Yes some things are better than others. We should have preferences that lead us into one future over another."