I've been trying to keep a "gratitude journal" for a while now. Bear with me, before things get too new-agey and pukey - there appears to be a scientific basis for the idea that writing down a couple of things that make you happy every day can significantly increase happiness levels.
This is the same technique James Altucher's been advocating for years in his Daily Practice as "Exercising the Gratitude Muscle". It's recently taken over your Instagram and Facebook feeds as the #100HappyDays project - which challenges folks to share a daily picture of something that makes them happy 100 days in a row, effectively combining research about mood and habit-forming in a social-media friendly hashtag package.
Pre-hashtag, I had already started keeping notes about things I was grateful for in a OneNote. I appreciate the concept behind #100HappyDays, but I put so much of myself online (and see myself skewed through the lens of sharing) that this was one thing I wanted to keep real, and keep private.
Performing happiness for an audience is pretty much the definition of everybody's Facebook page ever. And I knew sharing my "gratitude practice" would devolve into humblebragging, self-deprecation and omitting the most personal entries - the repetitive, the embarrassing, the confidential work triumphs. If I was going to honestly record what makes me happy, it would have to be warts and all.
So I did. And it did improve my mood, but it didn't stick. I love OneNote and will be quick to tell you it is the BEST APP but the format just wasn't right for journalling - dating the entries got unwieldy and the format wasn't enjoyable to review.
Then over Christmas an ex-colleague in Tokyo recommended Livre - an iOS-only app by Japanese developer nagisa-inc.jp, with very good localization (despite their frequent misspelling of "calendar"). It's gorgeous, simple and very private - although it does feature options to share posts to Line, Twitter or Facebook if desired.
I've been using it religiously since Jan 1st and am finding it a fantastic place to store those "reject" photos that don't make it to Instagram - bad quality shots that still make me happy, food pics that would annoy followers, multiple selfies with loved ones sporting different expressions. The app has a really nice compression algorithm to keep file sizes small so it can serve as a decent chronological photo album:
It's also possible to tag days with locations and little emoticons, which gives you an interesting monthly view. Say for example you want to record how often you travel, exercise, or overdrink:
And unlike OneNote, reviewing the past becomes a really pleasant, usable experience. Which is fascinating, because this is where the patterns start to emerge.
Reviewing your gratitude journal isn't part of any of the documented mood research, but for a data nerd like me this has been an unexpectedly critical feature. If you write down what makes you happy every day, over time, trends become obvious. And these trends are in many ways the most interesting part.
Say you spend a lot of time at work, and your career ranks high on your priorities stack-rank. Of course I'm not talking about myself here :)
But say the things that routinely seem to have the biggest impact on your happiness, that you're most grateful for, have nothing to do with career at all. Well, the PM in me can not ignore the empirical evidence that on the life satisfaction index, you may be better off recalibrating your priorities. Or at least investing time in other areas to get more happiness "bang for buck".
My own happiness trends over the past few months are surprisingly consistent:
- Gracie doing considerate things like cooking for me or cleaning up
- Good food/drink
- Being able to communicate or spend time with my friends, family & colleagues
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