You're Expecting the Wrong Things to Make You Happy

Do you spend enough time recalling and treasuring the everyday details of your life?

One final word of caution for the selfie and social media mad: don’t take this as a license to pull out your phone even more frequently. Excessive self recording isn’t good either, and Zhang points out that trying to capture a moment oftens interferes with enjoying it. Choose your moments carefully and savor them; don’t obsessively document.

Another study in the series looked at how much happiness we lose by not taking the time to recall and savor the seemingly boring details of our day-to-day lives. It found that volunteers significantly underestimated how much joy they’d get out of a recollection of an average day with their partner (and how interested they’d be in recalling the deta... See more