Track Your Happiness is awesome
Track Your Happiness is a project begun as part of Matt Killingsworth’s doctoral research at Harvard University. He’s working in Daniel Gilbert’s lab… Daniel Gilbert is famous for his book Stumbling Towards Happiness and his work on positive psychology, or the study of happiness.
Basically, Track Your Happiness works by text messaging you 3-5 times a day at random times and asking you a series of questions. Things like, “How happy are you right now?”, “Do you want to do what you’re doing?”, “Do you have to do what you’re doing?”, “Where are you?”, “Are you alone?”, “Are you talking or interacting with anyone?” etc. Some of the questions are smart too. If you say you’re interacting with someone, it’ll ask you how many people you’re interacting with.
The questionnaires are formatted for use on an iPhone, and you are asked to fill out the survey as soon as possible when you get the text message. An interesting secondary metric that they keep track of is how often you fill out the survey (my current response rate is a pretty sad 54%), and how long it takes you to respond to the survey (my median response time is 20 minutes). By showing me these statistics, I feel competitive in a weird way to try and get the best score possible (with, as you can see, only mild success).
The real payoff of the project is getting results back from the survey. Here’s my current report:
Some of the graphs show correlations, and others don’t. Both results are interesting to me… knowing that my sleep quality so far doesn’t seem to be very correlated to my happiness, for example, is surprising. On the other hand, feeling productive and focused seems to be much more directly correlated to my feelings of happiness. Also, I seem to be happiest when I’m somewhere other than home or at work, which is surprising. And, the optimal number of people to interact with seems to be 2.
The project is set up to give “conclusive” results after 50 samples. I’ve currently 48% done, having submitted 24 surveys.
I think this project is both insightful and flexible enough to grow and adapt over time. I’m definitely going to complete the 50 surveys and see if anything further emerges from the data. And then what? What will I learn about myself and what will I do with that new knowledge?
The Track Your Happiness project also has a Twitter account (@trackhappiness) that doesn’t seem to have much activity yet.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:53 am
[...] posted here: Enjoymentland » Track Your Happiness is awesome This entry is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS [...]
July 27th, 2009 at 2:55 am
[...] that in mind I was super fascinated to learn about Track Your Happiness (via Enjoymentland). The site is part of some doctoral research coming out of Daniel Gilbert’s lab (Gilbert [...]
July 31st, 2009 at 7:59 pm
If you’re interested in a new approach to boost your happiness based on the latest positive psychology research, check out our iPhone app: Live Happy (there’s also a Free Trial version); it’s based on the work of Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of “The How of Happiness” and provides a unique method to create a personalized program to increase your happiness.
You can also learn more about the iPhone app on our Facebook page.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
[...] research, you also receive personal “happiness reports” like these from blogger Buster Benson (below). It goes without saying that the information could be used to improve your overall [...]
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
[...] research, you also receive personal “happiness reports” like these from blogger Buster Benson (below). It goes without saying that the information could be used to improve your overall [...]
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
[...] research, you also receive personal “happiness reports” like these from blogger Buster Benson (below). It goes without saying that the information could be used to improve your overall [...]
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:20 pm
[...] research, you also receive personal “happiness reports” like these from blogger Buster Benson (below). It goes without saying that the information could be used to improve your overall [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 12:03 am
[...] research, you also receive personal “happiness reports” like these from blogger Buster Benson (below). It goes without saying that the information could be used to improve your overall [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 9:30 am
[...] research, you also receive personal “happiness reports” like these from blogger Buster Benson (below). It goes without saying that the information could be used to improve your overall [...]
August 9th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
[...] in Killingsworth’s research, you also receive personal “happiness reports” like these from blogger Buster Benson (below). It goes without saying that the information could be used to improve your overall [...]
January 1st, 2011 at 8:55 pm
Just finished a 50 set result myself and was searching around to see what other’s thought of the site. Here are some of my thoughts: http://www.rickandsusanna.com/2011/01/happiness-results.html
November 7th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
fifa 12 for wii…
[...]Enjoymentland » Track Your Happiness is awesome[...]…
December 6th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Hyper City Mega Station…
[...]Enjoymentland » Track Your Happiness is awesome[...]…