The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

wasn’t enough. A happy atmosphere isn’t created merely by the absence of nagging and yelling but also by jokes, games, and tomfoolery.
    One day while I was trying to prod everyone to put the groceries away as efficiently as possible, Jamie started showing off his juggling prowess with three oranges. Eliza and Eleanor were thrilled. I was annoyed.
    “Come on, team!” I scolded. “Let’s get this done. Jamie, put thoseoranges away and get the other bag.” But we weren’t in any hurry—only later did it occur to me that I should have enjoyed the moment and allowed the chore to be fun. Had I really become such a killjoy? The next time we were all unpacking groceries, I used two clementines to make goggle eyes at Eleanor and Eliza. They screamed with delight, Jamie laughed, and the groceries eventually got put away.
    Studies show that in a phenomenon called “emotional contagion,” we unconsciously catch emotions from other people—whether good moods or bad ones. Taking the time to be silly means that we’re infecting one another with good cheer, and people who enjoy silliness are one third more likely to be happy.
    As I went through my day, I looked for opportunities to see the ridiculous side of things, to enter into the spirit of Eliza and Eleanor’s play, and to goof around. Instead of getting impatient when Eleanor wants to play the game “Where’s Eleanor?” for the millionth time, I should try to have as much fun as she’s having.
    GO OFF THE PATH.
    Diana Vreeland said, “The eye must travel.” One of the things I admire most about my mother is her adventurousness—she’s always eager to go new places and have new experiences; she’s not intimidated by new situations; she’s constantly developing new areas of mini-expertise just because she’s interested in something. I wanted to be more like that, and my resolution to “Go off the path” was meant to push me to encounter the unexpected thoughts, unfamiliar scenes, new people, and unconventional juxtapositions that are key sources of creative energy—and happiness. Instead of always worrying about being efficient, I wanted to spend time on exploration, experimentation, digression, and failed attempts that didn’t always look productive. But how should I do this?
    In addition to the major interests that became the subjects of mybooks, I had lesser interests that I often shoved aside to concentrate on my “official” subjects. So, for instance, because I was working on my happiness project, I allowed myself to read anything related to happiness, but I ignored my extraneous interests. Now I wanted to goad myself into exploring these neglected byways. I discovered, however, that I’d been so diligent about ignoring these interests that I couldn’t call any to mind when I tried to pursue them. I started keeping an “Interest Log” to get a better sense of what naturally caught my attention. When I read a newspaper article with special curiosity, stopped to look at a book in the bookstore, or became particularly engaged in a conversation, I noted the subject in my log.
    A hodgepodge emerged: Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, obesity, cognitive bias, Francis Galton, organ donation, winter counts, Joseph Cornell, biography, people’s relationships with objects, child development, photography, Zen koans, any kind of character analysis, methods of presentation of information, book design, and artists from the Golden Age of Illustration. I soon lost interest in my Interest Log, but I did push myself to pursue anything that caught my attention, to read at whim. I read Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, the complete essays of George Orwell, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics , the letters of Flannery O’Connor, biographies of Tolstoy, and every single book written by L. M. Montgomery.
    Matthew Arnold wrote, “All knowledge is interesting to a wise man,” and I often thought that if I took some time to learn more about the political situation in the Middle East, the architecture of Louis Sullivan, or the legacy of John Marshall, I would find these subjects very interesting. And probably I would. But then I think—well, I’d like to like Bach’s music more than I do, and I could probably make myself like it better if I tried, but I don’t like having to try to make myself like things. I want to spend more time on the things that I already like.
    Along with