How to Be Happy: Make a List?
What would we do without lists? Right? It occurred to me at this moment that I have been struggling to understand (and pass on) the definitions of happiness provided by “great thinkers” and their guidelines for achieving it. Why am I going to all this trouble? There are so many others out there who have paved the way before me and, better yet, numbered their solutions. Here’s a short list (ha!) of what’s out there:
- How to Be Happy: 7 Steps to Becoming a Happier Person
- How to Be Happy (with Pictures) [and numbered steps]
- 10 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Incredibly Happy
- How to Be Happy: 23 Ways to be Happier
- 10 Ways to Be Happier
- How to Be Happy: 25 Science-Backed Ways
- 20 Hard Things You Need to Do to Be Happy
- 9 Ways on How to Be Happy (and Live) Alone
I’m a little disconcerted to see that no one seems to agree on how many steps are involved in attaining true bliss. But I’m even more curious at this moment as to what attracts us to lists as a way to solve problems and improve our lives. Fortunately, I don’t have to think up an answer here either, thanks to Maria Konnikova and her New Yorker article “A List of Reasons Why Our Brains Love Lists.” She notes first that there’s a moniker for the types of articles listed (double ha!) above: “listicles.” Such an article, she writes, “has several features that make it inherently captivating.” And here’s that list (enough with the ha-ing, already):
- The headline catches our eye
- It positions its subject in a preexisting category and classification system (“talented animals,” for example)
- It spatially organizes the information
- It promises a story that is finite
“Together,” she explains, “these create an easy reading experience, in which the heavy mental lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption — a bit like sipping green juice instead of munching on a bundle of kale.” I couldn’t have said it better. No, really. I couldn’t have.
According to Maria, we like lists because our brains naturally process information spatially and because we like to categorize things. The key to our “listraction,” however, is that lists help eliminate the “paradox of choice.” Simply put, we don’t like to make choices and we like it increasingly less as the number of choices increases. As the author notes, “[Two psychologists] concluded that we feel better when the amount of conscious work we have to do in order to process something is reduced; the faster we decide on something, whether it’s what we’re going to eat or what we’re going to read, the happier we become.” The appeal of a list, then, is that “we think we know what we’re in for, and that certainty is both alluring and reassuring.”
Well, there it is. Today’s lesson on how to be happy is “narrow your choices and/or make decisions quickly.” I just tried this, and it works really well. I said to myself, “Self, would you like salad or pizza for dinner?” If I let myself get mired in a long discussion about the health benefits of leafy greens versus the hedonistic pleasures of extra cheese, I would soon be deciding on breakfast, not dinner. I didn’t let that happen. Instead, I flipped a coin. Heads: salad. Tails: pizza. Tails. Wow, that was easy, and I feel great and guilt-free.
What’s that? No, I did not keep flipping the coin to get the “right” call. I did not. Nope. And I’m really hurt that you could even think such a thing.
P.S. Maria Konnikova has written a book titled Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. I’m tempted to buy it, but I just can’t decide. Thinking like Sherlock seems like soooo much work. If she’d only called it Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes in 10 Easy Steps.
(Published originally on RatBlurt™, January 26, 2019.)
