Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life

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Penguin UK, Aug 28, 2014 - Social Science - 256 pages

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Few books change one's life; in 48 hours this has improved mine' Jenni Russell, Sunday Times

How can we make it easier to be happy? Using the latest cutting-edge research, Professor Paul Dolan reveals that wellbeing isn't about how we think - it's about what we do. By making deliberate choices that bring us both pleasure and meaning, we can redesign our lives for maximum happiness - without thinking too hard about it.

'Outstanding, cutting-edge, and profound. If you're going to read one book on happiness, this is the one' Nassim Nicholas Taleb

'Bold and original ... what I wish for my grandchildren: a life that is rich in activities both pleasurable and meaningful' Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow

 

Contents

Foreword
stuttering into happiness
DEVELOPING HAPPINESS
What do we know about happiness?
What causes happiness?
Why arent we happier?
DELIVERING HAPPINESS
Designing happiness
Doing happiness
Decide design and
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Copyright

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About the author (2014)

Paul Dolan is Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE. During his time as a visiting scholar at Princeton, he worked closely with Daniel Kahneman who calls him 'a star'. Dolan focuses on developing measures of happiness and subjective wellbeing that can be used by policymakers and by individuals looking to be happier.

Among various other roles, he is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences Panel on measuring national well-being, a member of the National Wellbeing Advisory Forum for the Office for National Statistics in the UK, and is Chief Academic Advisor to the UK Government on how policymakers should value the impact of goods that are hard to measure, like health and education. His debut, Happiness by Design, was a Sunday Times bestseller and Waterstones non-fiction book of the month.

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