imagine that voice calls were invented after text messaging. “Do you really think,” he said, “that anyone would be sending texts? Of course they bloody wouldn’t—they would be bloody marveling at their ability to actually have a conversation.” I think he is bloody right.

Part 1 will “discover” happiness in a bit more detail.

Attention devoted to one stimulus is, by definition, attention that is not devoted to another.

If you are not as happy as you could be, then you must be misallocating your attention. You will be the happiest you can be when you allocate your attention as best as you can.

a life that is rich in activities that are both pleasurable and meaningful.

Your happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention.

in general, it is better for your happiness if you have modest expectations.

Uncertainty grabs your attention, just as noises that occur at random (car horns, say) will attract your attention more than noises that are predictable (a ticking clock).

To be truly happy, then, you need to feel both pleasure and purpose. You can be just as happy or sad as I am but with very different combinations of pleasure and purpose. And you may require each to different degrees at different times. But you do need to feel both. I call this the pleasure-purpose principle—the PPP.