time and how to spend it

src: Time and How to Spend It: Seven Ways to Better Days by James Wallman | Goodreads

Abstract

Experience Quotient

There is correlation between IQ and EQ to be happy. However, the author explains there is a third criteria that influences the happiness: Experience Quotient, or ExQ.

If Experiences -> happiness
And Happiness / Resilience -> Success
Then Experiences -> Success

Experiences -> Happiness / Resilience -> Success
  |                                         ^
  |_________________________________________|

STORIES guide

Each letter represents the essentials you should look for when you decide how to spend your time:

• Story
  • Experiences give us a sens of identity that’s both inward and outward facing.
  • When you have a story, you set in motion a domino line of positivity that almost inevitably leads to happiness.
  • Experience give us stories, stories give us conversation, conversation creates connection, connection leads to relationships, and relationships lead to happinness
• Transformation
  • Growth, purpose and becoming the person you want to be are all key for happiness
• Outside & Offline
  • Spending time in nature is good for you: lowering heart rate and blood pressure, reducing stress and improving happiness.
  • It’s more important than ever that we turn off our digital devices, drop out of the never-ending social media whirl and tune in to real life instead.
• Relationship
  • Friends, family, neighbors and community are key to well-being.
• Intensity
  • Experiences that engage and challenge us give us a chance to be good at something and get us into what psychologists call a state of ‘flow’ - they make us happy.
  • Flow is available to all of us, whatever our passions or age or income, because it isn’t what you do, but how you do it that matters most.
• Extraordinary
  • Get to look forward to experiences and remember them afterwards.
• Status & Significance
  • The key to make status meaningful is to learn from the lives of others, and the psychological studies that show the exceptional satisfaction that comes from giving.

Relationships

Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.

Simplest advice: do something, anything. Do things you like a lot and things you like a little. Just engage, in some way, like you mean it, with life. Take an interest. Get out of there.

Intensity

Flow: neuroscience and the hero’s journey

call to adventure → cross the threshold → road of trials (strugggle) → supreme ordeal (release) → the reward (flow) → the return (recovery) → call to adventure → …

Extraordinary - the new peak-end

Essential ingredients

The recipe has 3 main ingredients:

• the beginning

  • trying out new things is key for happiness for all sorts of reasons.
  • variety is the ‘spice of happiness’

• the peak

• the end

It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it that really matters.

Intensity

Should you choose ordinary or extraordinary experiences? The answer is you should have both.

How to use the new peak-end rules

beginning
- search
- explore
- cross threshold
         |
         +--------+ new
                  |
offline  +--------+
         |
         +--------+ awe
                  |
outside  +--------+
         |
         +--------+ flow
                  |
ordinary +--------+
         |
         +--------+ unusual
                  |
         +--------+
         |
        end
        - savour
        - exloit
        - re-integrate into old world

We do not have perfect memories, we remember through ‘snapshots’.