Ten Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

> 4. Be part of bigger things

> Being part of bigger things makes us feel valued. Find communities and projects to be part of. Start your own. It could be online or in the real world.

Make sure the groups don't get politically active one way or the other. Today's social landscape is made significantly worse by political polarization dragged to the extreme - fuelled by short form content silos and bubbles. (Tiktok, Instagram, etc.)

Ban politics strictly in the spaces you create, and don't be part of the ones that lean one way or the other - unless you are actively looking to take part in politics.

This was not the case even ten years ago. But now, is.

Admittedly I don't have much life wisdom, but my strong intuition is happiness is a measure, not a target, and you shouldn't optimize for it. All this "science of happiness" talk feels, I don't know, spiritually offputting.

I cant' believe it's almost 10 years since he died. My favorite quote of his is "Who needs a bucket list when you have love?”

I wish more people would take his ideas seriously, especially his "Collective Code Construction Contract".

"explore the world without desire"

I don't know how I feel about this. I know when I can manage to accept things I feel better overall, but there is real joy in getting what you wanted - in doing something you enjoy, and realising that you're enjoying it while you're doing it, and rejoicing in that

Detachment is all very well, but attachment brings higher highs as well as lower lows

The one thing I'd put in context is "don't waste time on commuting".

In Europe for sure and possibly many parts of Asia like Japan or bigger metropolises in China etc. most people will commute by public transport.

You can read. Whenever I had a job where I commuted at least an hour a day, the number of books I read, per month, went from 2–3 to 10 or more.

Came in not expecting much, but those are all good points, expressed concisely.

> 7. Ground Your Emotions

Yup. But also - no shame and guilt for experiencing them.

And, your expectations of happiness. Something I’m recently internalizing more than I did in the past: happiness is not a constant state. There are happy moments and unhappy moments in life.

I think the search for a constant happiness is what drives feeling unhappy. It’s this blob-like goal.

For me, working on recognizing and being ok with the ups and downs has produced the happiest state of my life.

> Do things you are bad at

I think this should be coupled with: know when to quit. I've persisted with some things I'm bad at out of stubbornness but have never improved and it's just burned me out.

I upped the font size on my Pixel recently and this is one of those sites where (in Firefox) the sidebar takes up more than 50% of the width of the screen and retains tiny text while the article itself wraps on a couple words per line.

Related, earlier today:

The Price of Happiness (62 points, 32 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996364

Shortly before he passed during his AMA he offered some advice I try to follow.

Me

This doesn't really relate to psychopaths but I just wanted to say I've been a follower of yours for years since I discovered your state machine language, multi-threaded kernel and web server back in the 90's. The AMQP / ZMQ work you've done is inspiring. How do you do it?

Pieterh

Well, thank you! :)

I don't know how my brain works, but it likes to take huge, complex situations, learn them inside and out, and then and find simple paths through them. I've always done this since I was young. In software, that means writing simple things that solve large problems, well. In writing, this means explaining mind-boggling things in simple words.

It does take time.

The one part I struggle with is -accept everything-. Acceptance helps with what cannot be changed, but I have also become happier by refusing to accept certain jobs, habits, relationships...

I was just reminiscing about an old Pieter Hintjens post with my kids yesterday. They still hold up. RIP

(Needs a 2016 in the title)

I have been trying to square such suggestions for happiness with G.B. Shaw's quote:

> "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

The steps towards happiness basically require accepting the world as is and appreciating it as is. Does that mean happy people are reasonable? And if they are, does that mean that happy people do not drive progress? Are there happy AND unreasonable people?

wozniak simple formula i quite like : H = S − F: your Happiness on any given day is your count of Smiles minus your count of Frowns

>Don't take it all too seriously, we all die.

Wise wisdoms overall, to have this particular advise from someone who has passed away just hit a different notes.

There's an old Chinese proverbs on being happy:

"If you want to be happy for an hour, take a nap. If you want to be happy for a day, go fishing. If you want to be happy for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, help someone else".

> Your body and mind need a good diet. Make your own food

Stopped reading here. I know plenty of people who would not be made happy by that. They'd be made ill.

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