Do sweat the small stuff

Do things that make you feel good each and every time you do them

I devoted the last couple of posts to some of the “big stuff” of life, like money and marriage. But if I was asked to bet on what would make you happier, I would put my money on the “small stuff” – on those things that would not change your life very much rather than on factors that would be relatively life-changing.

I bet that you would be happier if you listened to more music you enjoy. I couldn’t make the same guarantee if you earned more money (you might not use it well so far as your happiness is concerned). I bet you would be happier if you spent more time with people that you like being with. I couldn’t make the same guarantee about you getting or staying married (you might marry, or be married to, someone who makes you miserable).

I bet you would be happier from spending more time outdoors. I couldn’t make the same guarantee about buying somewhere in the countryside (you might spend more time commuting which makes you miserable). I bet you would be happier from helping other people a bit more e.g., buying a homeless person a cup of tea. I couldn’t make the same guarantee about you changing your job to something more socially useful (your new boss might be a right pain in the arse).

If you listened to music, spent time with a friend, went outdoors or helped someone for only half an hour or so each day, I can pretty much guarantee that you would be happier, and sustainably so. To some great extent, the evidence shows that you won’t adapt to these happiness hits too much over time. Listening to a new song I like has felt joyous throughout my life. Friends can even be like fine wines: they mature with age, perhaps bringing us increasing happiness as time passes.

Money, marriage, a new house, or a new job may make you happier in the short term, but evidence shows that you might well adapt to these big things in life, such that the happiness hit might even dwindle to zero over time. We adapt to most of what life throws at us, which is great news so far as getting over adverse events, like divorce or bereavement, is concerned but it’s less good news so far as the good stuff is concerned. I’m sure you have experience of how quickly the happiness hit of a pay rise wears off, for example.

One of the keys to being happier for longer is to do things that make you feel good each and every time you do them. Listening to music, spending time with friends, going outdoors, and helping other people are all good examples. They are all relatively small things. There was a book in the 1990s called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. This sentiment is wrong. The key to happiness is to sweat the small stuff. Think about how you can use your time – your scarcest resource of all – in ways that make you just that little bit happier each day.

Well, you shouldn’t sweat too much. Being happier shouldn’t be hard work. But it does take a bit of planning. It’s probably obvious to you that listening to music makes you feel good, not just in the moment but in your elevated mood for a while thereafter. Well, if it’s so obvious, why aren’t you doing it more? One basic lesson from Happiness by Designis that, if you want to do something, make it easier to do by designing it into your life.

You can prime yourself to listen to more music by having a screensaver of your favourite band or song. You could put 15 minutes or so a couple of times a day into your diary to listen to music. Set your alarm to wake you up with music. You could commit to listening to music with your housemates or family for a few minutes here and there. My family and I listen to music most evenings between 7pm and 7.30pm before dinner. It’s not something we stick to religiously because a house with two teenagers can be quite unpredictable, but we do it enough times that it’s become a loose habit.

We’re all creatures of habit and so doing the things that make us happier needs to become routine in our lives. We need to plan our routines until in the end we’re listening to music or whatever it is without having to think too hard about it. Changing anything in life is all about design power and making things easy. It has much less to do with willpower, which is limited and hard work.

First and foremost, being happier is about reminding ourselves that happiness is found in the small things that we do day to day, Sure, we can all be motivated by the big, life-changing stuff. But don’t let your ambition for more money, for example, get in the way of dancing around to some cheesy tunes with your mates. In the words of John Miles, music was my first love, and it will be my last. That fact has made me happy all my life. So go and play some music. Loudly.