Because a previous act of seeking happiness tends to reduce happiness, people must try to fill the enlarging gap again and again, which may constantly require devoting their time toward activities pursued in the hope of reducing the gap between sought-for future happiness and current happiness. Because time is often a necessary cost in the undertaking of happiness-seeking activities (a dinner with friends might bring happiness, but it will also take an hour or more), and because such undertakings are made at the expense of pursuing other goals (attending the dinner rather than spending that time exercising; Riediger & Freund, 2004), the continuous pursuit of happiness will keep people in a resource-limited state (a never-ending series of happiness-seeking demands on their time), which may well lead to a sense of not having enough of that very resource (i.e., time). Therefore, we suggest that seeking happiness engenders an anticipation of an endless, time-demanding pursuit of happiness that compromises felt time availability.
To test whether seeking happiness causally changes time scarcity, Study 2 manipulates happiness seeking. Furthermore, Study 2 tests the moderating role of goal achievement. Because time-demanding goal pursuit ceases to be a necessity when the goal is achieved, the effect of happiness seeking on perceived time scarcity should be weakened when the goal seems to be achieved.
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Time seems to vanish amid the pursuit of happiness, but only when seen as goal requiring continued pursuit. This finding adds depth to the growing body of work suggesting that the pursuit of happiness can ironically undermine well-being. Additionally, we identify boundary conditions for the detrimental effects of seeking happiness on time scarcity: the sense that this goal has been achieved and that its future pursuit will take relatively little time.
This suggests two broad implications. First, while happiness can undermine well-being, it need not necessarily do so. Instead, when happiness seems to have been achieved, its detrimental effects are dampened, providing support for lay prescriptions to appreciate the positive (found in stopping to smell the roses or keeping a gratitude journal). Beyond facilitating a sense that happiness has been achieved, changing how people conceptualize happiness can also shift their sense of time scarcity. Different people conceptualize happiness in different ways (e.g., Oishi, Graham, & Kesebir, 2013), and our research underscores the fact that how they think about happiness may well color how they think about time amid its pursuit. Second, though happiness provided a salient inroad to consideration of goals whose pursuit often backfires, our effect should extend to any worked-toward goal that pulls the pursuer away from a desired end state. Thus, the particularly unsuccessful would-be exerciser whose gym membership tends to pull him toward the couch should similarly feel pressed for time, at least insofar as he does not take the failure as cause to abandon the weight-loss goal altogether (Carver & Scheier, 1999) but instead anticipates the need for further, future pursuit. This alludes to the possibility that while happiness may be the most prominent goal associated with backward progress (and negative consequences thereof), other goals might operate similarly under the right circumstances and that interventions might successfully mitigate the sense that backward progress has been made.
Given that time availability can impact decision-making and well-being (Menzies, 2005; Mogilner, Chance, & Norton, 2012; Roxburgh, 2004), it remains essential to understanding when, why, and how people perceive and use their time differently. We suggest that the pursuit of happiness shifts time availability and subsequent behavior, connecting the literature on happiness, goal pursuit, time, and decision-making. While we focused on perceptions of time availability itself, we look forward to future research to further examine behavioral consequences of shifting time availability driven by seeking happiness. For example, felt time scarcity changes how people make intertemporal trade-offs (Zauberman & Lynch, 2005) and leads people away from time-consuming activities and toward time-saving activities, such as consuming fast food rather than eating meals with family at home (House, DeVoe, & Zhong, 2014; Neumark-Sztainer, Hannan, Story, Croll, & Perry, 2003). Because engaging in experiences and savoring the associated feelings requires more time compared with merely buying material goods (Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides, & Mikolajczak, 2010), feeling a lack of time also leads people to prefer material possessions rather than enjoying leisure experiences (Mannell & Zuzanek, 1991; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003). Separately, when people feel pressed for time, they are less willing to spend time helping others or volunteering (Darley & Batson, 1973). By encouraging people to worry less about pursuing happiness as a never-ending goal, successful interventions might just end up giving them more time and, in turn, more happiness.
The Algebra of Happiness is the success, self-help and happiness book which teaches people how to live a happier life. Scott Galloway is the guy behind this incredible book. He is the bestselling author in the New York Times and he has written various business books. Scott usually teaches the brand strategy to the organizations and multinational companies but this time he came up with life strategy. He often talks about life, success, and happiness in his lectures but now he has written a complete book.
The Pursuit of Happyness takes its misspelled title from the line in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. As Chris Gardner explains, what Thomas Jefferson wrote says happiness is not guaranteed; it is something you have to pursue. The cast features Thandie Newton as Linda Gardner and the screenplay by Steve Conrad is adapted from Chris Gardner's best-selling book, The Pursuit of Happyness. 2ff7e9595c