How to Make Your Own Happiness Equation

No actual math required

We’ve all heard the same anecdotes about happiness not being an end state, but an act of getting there.

And though these quotes we all throw around aren’t meant to provide much beyond a simple positive nudge in the right direction, we’re still left wanting more to lean on.

Insert simple anecdotes followed by their gaping-hole questions:

“Find joy in the journey”

What if this joy I find on my journey is actually a poison toad?

“It’s not about the journey, it’s about the destination”

I don’t even know where I’m going, and you assume to know? How dare you.

“If you want to be happy, be.”

So this is a real, highly-shared quote graphic thing floating around Pinterest.

I’ve found that happiness isn’t so much choosing to press some good feelings button on the way to taking out the trash, it’s more of an equation:

You can substitute ANYTHING for ANY of these parts of the equation, but let’s take a look at where to start and why.

Since this is math (I’ve really painted myself into a corner here) let’s see how this breaks down:

Purpose

What’s the north star that you’re working towards?

When you’ve clocked out of work for the day and are heading home, which hopes do your mind wander towards while you sit in traffic?

Let’s say you want to save up enough money to buy a house. You envision this future home on the daily.

We’ll pretend that this future home is in a polaroid picture pinned to your fridge behind a Disneyland magnet so that you can see it everyday.

Why did you pin that picture up in the first place?

“I believe purpose is something for which one is responsible; it’s not just divinely assigned” — Michael J. Fox

Perhaps you crave stability for you or your family. Financial stability, emotional stability, geographic stability (if you’re like me and have moved a lot in your life you don’t know what this kind of stability is), whatever it is, it’s at the center of why you want this house.

Identify it, write it down, give it life.

It will give that dream of getting that home even more life.

Getting into that house is the next step.

Work

Ah, everybody’s favorite ambiguous productivity metric.

But here’s the good news, because the internet has been around long enough to democratize information gathering, we’ve been able to make a crucial discovery about this “work”.

It’s much more about the quality of your work than the quantity of it.

The 80/20 rule discovered by the notable Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, aka the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts.

So we get it, quality over quantity to be effective, but I don’t want to waste that “quality time” once I get to it.

I can productively reorganize my office in a focused 30 minute burst instead of setting aside 3 hours just to be sure it got done.

But why am I reorganizing my office in the first place with that precious time?

Shouldn’t I be working on revamping my personal budget instead? (The answer to this hypothetical but also very real question is yes).

Impactful, focused work towards that polaroid picture pinned to your mind’s fridge will most assuredly output happiness or fulfillment in due time.

If we’re talking about the dream house again, the work is making a plan to download one of those auto-save apps like Albert or Digit and setting aside money on a monthly basis. Or it’s starting a side hustle.

It’s making a plan and just doing it.

And when that plan fails, reiterate and make a new a plan, and so on.

…Wait, do you we get to talk about the happiness part now????

Happiness

My dad once told me “what matters most is what lasts the longest”.

There are more than 190 tons of the leftover uranium chilling at the bottom of a hole in Chernobyl that has a half life of 430 years… so, THAT matters most.

What my father meant wasn’t about recognizing what lasts longest, but about utilizing our time wisely. Whatever is most impactful to our long-term happiness must be prioritized.

“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” ―Benjamin Disraeli”

Whether you’re thinking about a big picture goal like a house, or a small one like getting that old chair out of your apartment, get to the heart of why you want to do it and connect that to a purpose.

What are you doing about it today?

How will you plan it into your day tomorrow?

Therein lies happiness because math.