More on the happiness stuff….

So I just finished the Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. The book is sort of an introductory course in positive psychology surveying the research in the form of a travelogue.

I’m not sure which is more important in this case, the journey or the destination, but I’m leaning toward it being the journey. Because of this, I don’t feel that the quote below from near then end of the book is too much of a spoiler, but if you lean the other way, then consider self warned – SPOILER BELOW.

Not the most profound advice, admittedly. But Happy is wise, for only a fool or a philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.

The book was a delight, one of the best that I’ve read in a long time. I would happily recommend it. Besides making me literally laugh out loud at least once each chapter, because of it, I’ve suggested to Kim that we just need to visit Bhutan.

Update 3/3 – Because adding a link to a video from The Colbert Report to a blog post is like adding bacon to any food…Eric Weiner appeared on The Colbert Report on January 21, 2008 to talk about the Geography of Bliss. The description of the segment reads “Eric Weiner found out that the happiest places in the world are cold, dark and drunk.” Here’s a link to the video.

Kim and I spent a couple of hours last night surfing the web and watching videos. Here are the ones we liked the best plus some others that I’ve watched and really like over the past couple of days.

A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything – Exactly what the title says in 3 minutes and 12 seconds (via @mwesch).

Best of Chatroulette – If you turn your head, I win…love this…might be my favorite because it is a game within a game (via laughingsquid.com).

Bobby McFerrin Hacks Your Brain with Music – This is just plain old cool…again, it feels like there is a game going on here (via TED.com).

Logorama – I think this is a nominee for the Oscars in the short film category. Without giving anything away, I love the choice of the villain. (via Kottke.org)

DICE 2010: Design Outside the Box – Jesse Schell talks about game design beyond what we are currently seeing. I think this is pretty much required viewing for folks working in the design business. (again via Kottke.org)

Last but not least, my buddy Mick filmed, the Bandistas performing I’ll be Your Mirror at the Church on February 28th. I really like their version.

I’m reading The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner (twitter). It’s essentially a travelogue mashed up with an introductory guide on positive psychology. I’m about three-quarters of the way through and I would already recommend the book as both highly enjoyable and informative.

One of the chapters of the book is about the Kingdom of Bhutan in southeast asia where His Majesty the Fifth King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck has made Gross National Happiness (GNH) one of the ways that it measures its success as a nation.

Using Gross National Happiness as a measure of national success is in complete alignment with the Happiness Idea.

To support, share  and explain the measurement of GNH for Bhutan, the Centre of Bhutan studies has created a web site.

From the Centre of Bhutan Studies Gross National Happiness Web Site:

Across the world, indicators focus largely on market transactions, covering trade, monetary exchange rates, stockmarket, growth, etc.  These dominant, conventional indicators, generally related to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reflect quantity of physical output of a society. GDP, along with a host of supporting indicators, is the most widely used indicator. Yet GDP is heavily biased towards increased production and consumption, regardless of the necessity or desirability of such outputs, at the expense of other more holistic criterion. It is biased against conservation since it does not register conservation or stocks.

Indicators determine policies. The almost universal use of GDP-based indicators to measure progress has helped justify policies around the world that are based on rapid material progress at the expense of environmental preservation, cultures, and community cohesion.

You might remember that recently Sarkozy proposed that France adopt a similar approach, but Insee, the agency charged with exploring the creation of a measure found it too hard to pin down.

The best of the things that I found, saw, watched on the web this week (only 4 days late).

Gore’s Choice – A tale of typography, choice and change – starring Al Gore, a mysterious character named Nikola and the number 1. (via John Gruber)

Letters of Note – In the words of my friend Marvin, this is one of the things that the “Internet was made for.” (via Reddit)

A New Approach to China – Google rethinks its approach to business in China because of attacks on gmail and the theft of some of its intellectual property that originated from there. Also, probably the best and most interesting analysis I read about the decision elsewhere.

Lil baby boi arriving in June sez oh hai!

The best of the things that I found, saw, watched on the web this week…

TED Talk – Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity. – “I would like the record to reflect that I showed up for my part of the job.” (via @missrogue)

A Diabetic Chick & A Crohn’s Guy Walk into a Bar – My friend @jodiiiii launches a blog for the New Year.

Move Your Money – Change starts with us. I’m kind of tired of my current (and soon to be former) bank neither earning my business and taking fees a bunch of new fees from our accounts. (another one via @missrogue)

So in my desire to restart the blog, I started to write a post about The Whuffie Factor, an excellent book by Tara Hunt about social media, social capital and marketing. If you are interested in these things, then I definitely would recommend the book.

If you don’t know her, Tara is one my favorite thinkers in the whole marketing and social computing space. I originally came to know of her through Jane McGonigal who gave one of the keynotes (audio / slides) at SXSWi in 2008.

Jane is also one of my favorite thinkers. If you haven’t seen the linked slides or listened to the keynote and you are interested in design or business or marketing or games, then you really should. You can thank me later for sharing it with you.

Tara’s book is indeed very wonderful, and I will probably finish and post the blog entry about it later, but as I was writing it, I decided that there was a related but different topic that I wanted the first post on my restarted blog to be about.

Jane and Tara share an idea (in fact Jane credits Tara in one of her presentations) that I think is the single most important, intriguing and interesting idea that I’ve been exposed to over the past two years. Essentially, what it boils down to is the application of positive psychology (i.e. the science of happiness) to design.

Each has their own approach to the idea; Jane proposes that we can make life as a whole better by incorporating those things that make us happy into the design of reality.

The most interesting elements of her keynote (and her ongoing work) were that the “Economics of Engagement” or those things compel us to actively participate in experiences align directly with the those things that create real happiness for us as individuals.

Specifically, they are:

1. Satisfying work to do.
2. Experience of being good at something.
3. Time spent with people we like.
4. The chance to be a part of something bigger.

Based on her work, if you want to create lasting and meaningful engagement with customers, users or any other audience; then a design that incorporates one or a combination of the above characteristics is required. Additionally, these elements are maybe best demonstrated in the design of multiplayer games, which she describes as the “the ultimate happiness engine,” so incorporating some aspects of game design into your experiences may be the best way to accomplish creating engagement.

Aside: Jane’s idea above is one of the most important elements of the Framework for Social Media Engagement (created by my colleague Gorham Palmer and myself) that has been driving my social computing strategy work over the past 18 months. Look for more about the framework in a later blog entry.

Related, but a little bit different, Tara proposes that actually making the creation of happiness your business model is one of the ways to accrue Whuffie (or social capital) which in turn leads to the accrual of success in the marketplace. Based on her research, this is achieved by organizations who help create autonomy, competence and relatedness for their customers and stakeholders. This is another wonderful idea which I am actively working to incorporate into my strategy definition work for my clients.

It’s a pretty cool thing to be thinking about how one’s work can make the world a happier place…and the fact that the research and evidence also suggests that it is a sound business idea is really (as my father would put it) kind of a kick in the head.