Screw the U
I'm starting my battle against the U-shaped curve of happiness…
Deterministic Misery
If you’re between the ages of 20 and 47, statistically you’re getting less happy.
Well, that’s not a huge surprise, the world is screwed. It’s on fire and getting hotter, nuclear disaster looms large, the money has gone & the people in power seem pretty set on squirrelling away a-fair-bit more than their fair share of cash to try and ride the inevitable apocalypse out.
Nothing new there, but why does it just feel a bit harder now? Why are grown adults, close friends, actually talking about how they’re feeling? The pressure they’re under? The drugs they’re on? The help they’re seeking? It’s all a bit weird.
I suppose it’s not surprising that as the carefree days of your 20s disappear into the “photos” section of your now-deactivated Facebook account, the stresses of adulting grow. Financial pressures, work, parenting, ageing parents & a complete absence of that rare commodity of “free time” all combine into a wonderful cacophony of cortisol that seems to grow as you head into and through middle age.
But wait. There’s more.
If that wasn’t enough, there’s now a pretty enormous global dataset that says that on top of all these stressors - i.e. even if you control for income, demographic, kids, caring, employment, home ownership and a load of other factors - happiness over your lifetime tends to take a u-shape. Happiness declines from your mid-20s and doesn’t bottom out until you hit 47, on average.
Finally! Some good news - those last 2 words are where the hope lies - “on average”
Whilst the u-shape is an indisputable macro trend, with clear downward pressures on the happiness of the population as you head into middle age, it’s not a set path for any given individual.
It’s not deterministic. It’s an average. So screw the U. I certainly have no desire to be average.
Screw the U
As of December ‘23, my age starts with a 4, which means I should be due 7 years of declining happiness. As with any good midlife crisis, I spent a good chunk of the last 6 months of my 30s diving into the world of “happiness science”.
It took (and continues to take) me through a forest of theory covering neuroscience, evolutionary biology, Buddhism & deep stats among others. My takeaway - it’s interesting, fascinating even, but it’s more often than not entirely intangible & ethereal. It’s not actionable & I’d like to change that.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The good news here is that my hammer, honed from years in big corporates & a love of trying new challenges in my real life, is to break down a complex problem, summarise it clear, try things out & learn from them quickly. So let’s do that.
Here’s the plan. To beat the analogy to death, I want take that U-shaped nail and hammer it in three ways:
Flatten it - we’ll find out what causes the dip, and see if we can make it dip less
Shorten it - seemingly something magic happens after 47, let’s bring that forward
Lift it - what’s better than a U? A “higher” U, where every bit of is it slightly higher up the happiness scale
Selfish Altruism
Why bother? What’s success here?
Quite simply - if I can be slightly happier over the next 7+ years, I’m winning. That’s enough. I learn best by writing it down as if I’m teaching, so I’m going to do that.
If writing this is simply me shouting into the void and keeping a record of what I’ve done, then I’m good with that.
But, if another person reads this, tries some things, get’s a bit happier or (even better) add’s their own tests & experiments into the mix then it get’s really interesting. As an individual, I’m committed to making my “U” look more like a “/“, but what if we could move the average? Even for a tiny chunk of the population.
So let’s make build a pocket of outliers. Screw the U