happiness
2026
Are You Taking Fun Seriously Enough?
Are You Taking Fun Seriously Enough?
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos pdrl.fm ↗
Are You Taking Fun Seriously Enough?
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…3: that's my job. And I just thought, oh my God, Speaker 3: I like to think of myself as a self-aware person Speaker 3: who lives fully and I can't think of anything to do. Speaker 3: And so I asked myself a question.
I asked when Speaker 3: I was writing How to Break Up With Your Phone Speaker 3: that I post to you all today now, which is Speaker 3: what's something you say you want to do, but you Speaker 3: supposedly don't have time for? ◈ 4:06 Hmm. Because what I realized Speaker 3: is I did have time.
In fact, I had this Speaker 3: reclaimed time, but I didn't know what I wanted to Speaker 3: do with it. So I said, well, I want to Speaker 3: learn how to play the guitar because I play piano. Speaker 3: I had a guitar that my grandmother had given me Speaker 3: money for in college.
So I started going to this Speaker 3: guitar class and I started being filled with this feeling, Speaker…
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos omny.fm ↗
Are You Taking Fun Seriously Enough?
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…exception there was time with friends. Time Speaker 4: with friends was almost like chocolate chips in a cookie. Speaker 4: You can just add more and it keeps being better. Speaker 4: So that was pretty interesting.
And We also found one Speaker 4: of the surprising findings in that data was that spending Speaker 4: time on relaxing and leisure was actually associated with a Speaker 4: lower probability of having an especially good day. ◈ 8:36 And we Speaker 4: were like, I thought my grad student analyzed the data wrong.
Speaker 4: I made him go back and look at it again. Speaker 4: But it turned out it was about 70% of the Speaker 4: time that people were engaged in leisure and relaxation. They Speaker 4: were actually like watching Netflix, watching TV. And again, going Speaker 4: to what you're saying about that sort of false flow Speaker 4: or whatever.
It wasn't actually…
My note
This entirely makes sense. I know what it's like to force myself to have quote-unquote leisure time where the whole time I cannot stop thinking about what I could be doing, even though really what I need to be doing is taking a break.
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos omny.fm ↗