Time and How to Spend It: The 7 Rules for Richer, Happier Days

Here’s the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s take on it: ‘The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life unless one knows how to

He started giving group therapy sessions called ‘How Change Really Happens’. It was based on the hero’s journey, but he never mentioned the hero, the dragon or the need to make enemies – instead he talked about the ‘mud map’ of your life. This is a rough version of the hero’s journey. Because, of course, a person’s life doesn’t follow its perfect s

Think about a few of the larger experiences you had in the past, like a long-term project you took on, or a trip that covered a long distance, or perhaps just a time you had an adventure. Compare this with a simpler experience, maybe just a normal holiday. Then, ask yourself these questions about each of the experiences, giving an answer on a scale

his 2003 book The Breakout Principle. In it, Benson mapped out the four stages of any flow experience. Stage 1, Benson discovered, is struggle. It could be physical or mental, like running a marathon or climbing a hill, playing chess, solving a complex problem, or creating a presentation. Stage 2 is release from that struggle. This happens at the t

Life used to be simple, but today, with its myriad options, it has become too much plane for one person to fly. We all need a checklist.

If you think of all the items on the STORIES checklist, it’s clear that each is far less about painting a personality to show to others, and far more about developing your own, internal character. You can’t show character unless you’re tested. You need tension to push against. You need hurdles to overcome. Without those, there is no opportunity to

So, there’s another ingredient that also strikes me as essential. It’s this: the story should have a positive ending. To borrow from Vonnegut, ‘because why get a depressing person’ at the end? If you’re going to sell someone on the idea that they should follow your lead, you’d want to tell them that, yes, things are hard now, but they’ll get better

A branch called ‘narrative psychology’ has emerged that looks at how we use stories to make sense of our lives: rather than think of the events that happen in our lives as unconnected dots, we join the dots into stories that not only reflect who we are, but also show how we’d like to think of ourselves.

When you look for a ‘rich environment’, so Kotler says, you need to look for one that offers novelty, unpredictability and complexity.