Don’t Indulge. Be Happy.
By ELIZABETH DUNN and MICHAEL NORTON
Published: July 7, 2012
THE NEW YORK TIMES
HOW much money do you need to be happy? Think about it. What’s your number?
Many of us aren’t satisfied with how much we have now. That’s why we’re constantly angling
for a raise at work, befriending aged relatives and springing, despite long odds, for lottery scratch
tickets.
Is it crazy to question how much money you need to be happy? The notion that money can’t buy
happiness has been around a long time — even before yoga came into vogue. But it turns out
there is a measurable connection between income and happiness; not surprisingly, people with a
comfortable living standard are happier than people living in poverty.
The catch is that additional income doesn’t buy us any additional happiness on a typical day once
we reach that comfortable standard. The magic number that defines this “comfortable standard”
varies across individuals and countries, but in the United States, it seems to fall somewhere
around $75,000. Using Gallup data collected from almost half a million Americans, researchers
at Princeton found that higher household incomes were associated with better moods on a daily
basis — but the beneficial effects of money tapered off entirely after the $75,000 mark.
Why, then, do so many of us bother to work so hard long after we have reached an income level
sufficient to make most of us happy? One reason is that our ideas about the relationship between
money and happiness are misguided. In research we conducted with a national sample of
Americans, people thought that their life satisfaction would double if they made $55,000 instead
of $25,000: more than twice as much money, twice as much happiness. But our data showed that
people who earned $55,000 were just 9 percent more satisfied than those making $25,000. Nine
percent beats zero percent, but it’s still kind of a letdown when you were expecting a 100 percent
return.
Interestingly, and usefully, it turns out that what we do with our money plays a far more
important role than how much money we make. Imagine three people each win $1 million in the
lottery. Suppose one person attempts to buy every single thing he has ever wanted; one puts it all
in the bank and uses the money only sparingly, for special occasions; and one gives it all to
charity. At the end of the year, they all would report an additional $1 million of income. Many of
us would follow the first person’s strategy, but the latter two winners are likely to get the bigger
happiness bang for their buck.
We usually think of having more money as allowing us to buy more and more of the stuff we
like for ourselves, from bigger houses to fancier cars to better wine to more finely pixilated
televisions. But these typical spending tendencies — buying more, and buying for ourselves —
are ineffective at turning money into happiness. A decade of research has demonstrated that if
you insist on spending money on yourself, you should shift from buying stuff (TVs and cars) to
experiences (trips and special evenings out). Our own recent research shows that in addition to
buying more experiences, you’re better served in many cases by simply buying less — and
buying for others.
Indulgence is often closely trailed by its chubby sidekick, overindulgence. While the concept of
overindulgence is probably all too familiar to anyone who’s ever attended a Thanksgiving
dinner, the word “underindulgence” doesn’t exist. (Type it into Dictionary.com, and you’ll be
asked, “Did you mean counter intelligence?”) But research shows that underindulgence —
indulging a little less than you usually do — holds one key to getting more happiness for your
money.
In a recent study conducted by our student Jordi Quoidbach, chocolate lovers ate a piece of this
confection — and then pledged to abstain from chocolate for one week. Another group pledged
to eat as much chocolate as they comfortably could and were even given a mammoth two-pound
bag of chocolate to help them meet this “goal.”
If you love chocolate, you might think that the students who absconded with the chocolaty loot
had it made. But they paid a price. When they returned the next week for another chocolate
tasting, they enjoyed that chocolate much less than they had the week before. The only people
who enjoyed the chocolate as much the second week as they had the first? Those who had given
it up in between. Underindulging — temporarily giving up chocolate, even when we have the
cash to buy all we want — can renew our enjoyment of the things we love.
The value of underindulgence casts a different light on the current debate over restricting sugary
sodas. Driven by the childhood-obesity crisis, many school districts around the country have
banished soda from their campuses. Leaving aside the potential health benefits of these
initiatives, banning soda for a large chunk of the day may actually improve its taste. Researchers
at Arizona State University demonstrated that people enjoy soda significantly more when they
can’t have it right away. (The effect doesn’t hold for prune juice, a beverage that rarely incites
overindulgence.)
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s recent proposal to ban giant-size soda in New York City offers
another intriguing route to underindulgence. Happiness research shows that, as the food writer
Michael Pollan put it, “The banquet is in the first bite.” That first sip of soda really is delicious,
catching our tongues by surprise with its bubbly sweetness. But our tongues and our minds
quickly get used to repeated pleasures, and so the 39th sip is not as delightful as the first.
Because limiting the size of sodas curtails these less pleasurable sips, Mayor Bloomberg’s
proposal may improve our pleasure-to-calorie (and pleasure-to-coin) ratio, an overlooked benefit
in the heated debate about the consequences of such initiatives for our freedom and our health.
USING your money to promote underindulgence requires a shift in behavior, for sure. But
another scientifically validated means of increasing the happiness you get from your money is
even more radical: not using it on yourself at all.
Imagine walking down the street to work and being approached by our student Lara Aknin, who
hands you an envelope. You open the envelope and find $20 and a slip of paper, which tells you
to spend the cash on something for yourself by the end of the day. Sounds like a pretty sweet
deal. Now imagine instead that the slip of paper told you to spend the cash on someone else.
Being generous is nice, sure, but would using the money to benefit someone else actually make
you happier than buying yourself the belt, DVD or apps you’ve been dying to get?
Yes, and it’s not even close. When we follow up with people who receive cash from us, those
whom we told to spend on others report greater happiness than those told to spend on
themselves. And in countries from Canada to India to South Africa, we find that people are
happier when they spend money on others rather than on themselves.
But what about individuals who are notorious for their struggles with sharing? Surely the
emotional benefits of giving couldn’t possibly apply to very young children, who cling to their
possessions as though their lives depended on it. To find out, we teamed up with the
developmental psychologist Kiley Hamlin and gave toddlers the baby-equivalent of gold:
goldfish crackers. Judging from their beaming faces, they were pretty happy about this windfall.
But something made them even happier. They were happiest of all when giving some of their
treats away to their new friend, a puppet named Monkey. Monkey puppets aside, the lesson is
clear: maximizing our happiness is not about maximizing our goldfish. To be clear, having more
goldfish (or more gold) doesn’t decrease our happiness — those first few crackers may provide a
genuine burst of delight. But rather than focusing on how much we’ve got in our bowl, we
should think more carefully about what we do with what we’ve got — which might mean
indulging less, and may even mean giving others the opportunity to indulge instead.
Elizabeth Dunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, and
Michael Norton, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School,
are authors of the forthcoming book “Happy Money: The Science of Spending.”
The Things They Googled: What Was There
Before Google?
November/December 2012
By Marion Winik, from The Sun
If they were young, they googled the things they didn’t know. Some were things they were
supposed to know, like the habits of the hammerhead shark. The perfect squares under a
hundred, the phrase “rite of passage.” When they got bored, they googled images of peace signs,
photographs of rainbows, a video of a girl singing about Friday, and another of a baby laughing
and laughing. They googled Anne Hathaway. If they were boys, they googled how to build a
bomb. If they could get on the computer when their parents weren’t home they googled things
they weren’t supposed to know, things like “sodomy” and “lesbian.” Then they cleared the
search history and googled “hammerhead shark.”
If they were old, they googled the things they had forgotten: names of actors and movies and
hurricanes, old sports scores, the vice president under Carter, the ingredients in a Manhattan, the
hours of the liquor store, “liquor stores open Sunday,” directions. They googled things that had
escaped them: the definition of feckless, a synonym for regime, most of the answers to the
Sunday crossword puzzle. They googled remedies for burns and bee stings.
If they were lonely, they googled “sex.” They googled “sex xxx.” They googled long-lost lab
partners, old boyfriends, their ex-husband’s new girlfriend. They googled cute pictures of baby
koalas. They googled the word lonely. They googled “distended stomach” “nosebleed that won’t
stop” “numbness” “insomnia” and “cancer symptoms.”
The things they googled were determined by forgetfulness, by need, by desire, by curiosity, and
by the endless availability of information. In fact, there was no point in remembering anything
except how to google. They didn’t even have to remember what they were googling: As soon as
they’d typed “When does g—,” just that much, Google already knew the question was when
Glee Season Three would begin. When they googled “pleonism,” Google quietly looked up
pleonasm. Google never made them feel bad about not knowing.
So they googled how to lose weight and pictures of psoriasis and checklists for diagnosing
attention-deficit disorder. If they were pregnant, there was no end to their googling. Others
googled when it would rain and how much it would rain and when to plant their gardens. They
googled the tides and the seasons. They googled the times of sunrise and sunset. They googled
births and deaths. They googled themselves, which was sometimes unsettling, turning up Boston
Marathon times and class reunions and even obituaries not their own.
How did they live before Google, they wondered. How did anyone know anything? How did
anyone remember, while driving through Mohntown, Pennsylvania, the name of the young blond
actress in the movie Witness who was from that town?
When they were hungry, they googled “recipe chard cannellini beans,” “recipe apple
gingersnap,” or “recipe rice noodle salad.” How to freeze tomatoes. How to peel and seed
tomatoes. Whether you can add grated zucchini to cornbread mix. How to tell if an egg is rotten,
and if one egg is rotten, are all the others rotten too? “Best no-egg cornbread.” “Best no-egg
omelette.” “Best restaurant brunch.”
Plagued by the familiarity of an essay they had read, they googled “The Things They Googled,”
and again Google was there before they finished typing. It was the short story “The Things They
Carried” they were thinking of, the beautiful Vietnam War story by Tim O’Brien. Google
showed them where to read it online, and some dove in right away, while others ordered the
book used for $.99 plus shipping, and still others reserved a copy at their local libraries.
But after all that searching and finding, all the slapped foreheads and the ahas, after all of it,
there was still something missing. It was the size of a gingersnap, a two-week-old koala, a liquor
store. It looked a bit like Kelly McGillis or Walter Mondale. It was excellent for soothing burns
and heartaches. It was not in their computer or their phone or on any file server anywhere. Older
search engines would be required.
Marion Winik is the author of First Comes Love, a memoir about her marriage to a man who
died of AIDS in 1994. She lives in Baltimore. Reprinted from The Sun (August 2012), a monthly
magazine that uses words and photographs to invoke the splendor and heartache of being
human.
I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor
Grammar. Here's Why.
If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If
you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter
commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer
before we politely escort you from the building.
Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss's more cuddly
phraseology: I am a grammar "stickler." And, like Truss — author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves — I
have a "zero tolerance approach" to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.
Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance." She thinks that people who
mix up their itses "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an
unmarked grave," while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are
otherwise qualified for the position.
Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a
mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners,
etc.), if job hopefuls can't distinguish between "to" and "too," their applications go into the bin.
Of course, we write for a living. iFixit.com is the world's largest online repair manual, and
Dozuki helps companies write their own technical documentation, like paperless work
instructions and step-by-step user manuals. So, it makes sense that we've made a preemptive
strike against groan-worthy grammar errors.
But grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn't
make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog
posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have.
They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you
if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're.
Good grammar makes good business sense — and not just when it comes to hiring writers.
Writing isn't in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our
grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our
programmers.
On the face of it, my zero tolerance approach to grammar errors might seem a little unfair. After
all, grammar has nothing to do with job performance, or creativity, or intelligence, right?
Wrong. If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not
a learning curve I'm comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a
great programmer who cannot write.
Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found
that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are
doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts.
In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also
tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code. You see, at its core, code is prose. Great
programmers are more than just code monkeys; according to Stanford programming legend
Donald Knuth they are "essayists who work with traditional aesthetic and literary forms." The
point: programming should be easily understood by real human beings — not just computers.
And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil's in the
details. In fact, when it comes to my whole business, details are everything.
I hire people who care about those details. Applicants who don't think writing is important are
likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren't important. And I guarantee that even if
other companies aren't issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés.
After all, sloppy is as sloppy does.
That's why I grammar test people who walk in the door looking for a job. Grammar is my litmus
test. All applicants say they're detail-oriented; I just make my employees prove it.
Kyle Wiens is CEO of iFixit, the largest online repair community, as well as founder of Dozuki,
a software company dedicated to helping manufacturers publish amazing documentation.