A weekly newsletter with science-based insights on creativity, mindful productivity, better thinking and lifelong learning.
Ness Labs: The Psychology of Happiness 🔺
Edition #186 – April 13th, 2023
The Psychology of Happiness
Most people want to be happy. In other words, the majority of human beings are engaged – consciously or unconsciously – in actions designed to improve their levels of happiness.
Despite our best efforts, these actions can sometimes have the opposite effect. For example, chasing a promotion at work only to realize we have become burned out in the process.
Other times, our actions can make us happy in the short term but unhappy in the long term. For example, earning a large sum of money only to recognize later that we have over-indexed on financial success at the expanse of our relationships.
These complexities are partly why there are many definitions of happiness, and why the concept has evolved so much over the centuries.
This week, you'll learn about some of the most recent psychological theories of happiness, and how you can measure your own levels of happiness using a validated scale.
I also had the privilege to interview the founder of Scite, an award-winning platform for discovering and evaluating scientific articles. This is genuinely one of the most interesting interviews we've ever published at Ness Labs.
If you're interested in the problems of trustworthiness and reproducibility in science, what new AI tools mean for research, and how we can conduct better science in general, I think you'll like this interview.
Enjoy your weekly dose of mindful productivity!
Anne-Laure.
P.S. I had a bit of a random idea, what do you think?
🧠 Brain Food
The psychology of happiness (10 min)
Written by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Measuring happiness is hard. First, is happiness objective or subjective? Is it about how you feel right now, or in general? Is it rational, or emotional? Psychologists are still debating these questions, but there are three main theories towards which many researchers are gravitating.
Better discover and understand scientific articles with Scite (14 min)
Interview with Josh Nicholson
Scite allows users to see how a publication has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim. We talked about why you shouldn't blindly trust ChatGPT, how to navigate retractions, the importance of discoverability, and much more.
🤝 Brain Trust
We have an exciting webinar tomorrow: Rediscovering Deep Learning in an Age of Distraction hosted by Dominic Zijlstra. It will be at 10am SF, 1pm NYC, 6pm London, and 10:30pm Mumbai time, and you will learn about the science behind how our brains learn and what we can do to optimize each step of the learning process.
On Monday, we have a workshop hosted by Monica Smith: Paying Attention to Emotional Intelligence, where she will discuss why we get hired for IQ and fired for EQ and how to better understand and manage our emotions our work.
You can also join a co-working session later today at 3pm UTC hosted by LukasRosenstock or next Thursday at 6pm UTC hosted by Javier Luis Gomez. With Pomodoro timers, short breaks, and a review discussion at the end, it's the perfect way to make progress on your work :)
🍬 Brain Candy
Little nuggets from my Twitter bookmarks this week. Click on the card to see the full tweet including any links or media.
🌊 Brain Waves
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Until next week, take care!
Ness Labs by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
A weekly newsletter with science-based insights on creativity, mindful productivity, better thinking and lifelong learning.
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