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On being happy
What if you could engineer happiness? What if you could redesign your life so that you are happier? With professors in mind, Brian Martin wrote an essay entitled On being a happy academic with this very purpose. He outlines a few elements that you should take into account if you want to be happier.
Flow
This is the state of mind you reach when you apply your best skills. For example, when programming, I can literally forget about the rest of the world for a couple of hours. Programming makes me happy. I can also enter a state of flow while writing: I am never unhappy while blogging. Writing research papers is also enjoyable as long as the topic is neither routine nor beyond my grasp. I enjoy writing study notes, as long as I can challenge my students (and myself) a bit in the process.
Alas, part of my job also involves tasks which do not lead to the flow. They can make me unhappy. For example, a single administrative meeting can darken my mood for several days. But even good meetings fail to contribute to my happiness. In recent years, I have worked hard to avoid meetings, or to, at least, protect my mood from them. Politics is especially harmful to me: I work hard to stay out of it. It helps that I need very little from others, beside my salary. Even boring routine work such as grading assignments is better for me than internal politics. Everything I do is geared toward getting myself back in the flow as soon as possible.
Relationships
A lot of happiness is derived from our social network. In this respect, I am lucky to have a great family with two kids I love. I have also pursued, over the years, research collaborations: without those relationships, I would not have remained so active as a researcher. I have also found blogging to be a great way to meet people without disrupting too much my ability to remain in the flow. I have very satisfying online relationships with people I rarely meet in person.
Helping others
Feeling useful is important. Sometimes I help others by reviewing papers: I can spend 10% of my time reviewing research papers. I try to share as much as possible: I post my software and study notes online. As an academic, however, I have found that it is sometimes difficult to “feel useful”. Almost by definition, much of what we do appears useless. And it is!
Mindfulness
If you are constantly “in the moment”, you may lack perspective. I have found that a great way to be more mindful is to stop working all the time.
What is not included: Do big research grants, papers in prestigious journals and prestigious positions make you happier? I have had both more and less prestigious positions, and, to me, it made no difference. In fact, in going from a puny graduate student to tenured professor, I saw no improvement in my happiness. My happiness was at its lowest while I was running a research group in Canada’s largest research institution (NRC). While I enjoy doing the research and writing articles, I have had the surprising realization that having an article accepted in a good journal could sometimes put me in a bad mood. Mostly, what makes me happy is when people use my work: I derive little pleasure from an article that nobody reads, even if it appeared in a prestigious journal. Research grants are very prestigious but, in my experience, they contribute nothing to my happiness. And bigger grants are worse: they attract false collaborations and administrative work.
Note: Instead of blogging, I should be working on a grant application right now.