Tracking happiness

The wandering mind is the unhappy mind? Well maybe, unless your head's in the clouds. Wandering and movement have their value too.

But yes, the ability to focus your attention on the task at hand is crucial. It's an indispensable happiness tool. You just have to know when it's the right tool, and the right task.

So, people want a lot of things out of life, but I think, more than anything else, they want happiness. Aristotle called happiness "the chief good," the end towards which all other things aim. According to this view, the reason we want a big house or a nice car or a good job isn't that these things are intrinsically valuable. It's that we expect them to bring us happiness... Matt Killingsworth [& more happiness at TED]

Tracking happiness moment-to-moment, leading to a scientific understanding of eudaimonia? Well ok, but our greatest joy is still going to be spontaneous and absorbed. I've tried my own version of "tracking," with a scorecard. It's fun and useful, but just until it isn't.