The Happiness Project

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin Is happiness really worth pursuing? Rubin decides that yes, it is. Her happiness affects her whole family’s happiness, and she doesn’t want the best years of her life to slip by without her being able to enjoy them. Happiness is quite a deep topic, but fortunately, Rubin puts in the heavy lifting on the philosophy reading end of things to produce a book that’s easy to read while covering a wide spectrum of ideas about happiness. She picks an overarching happiness-increasing goal and a handful of smaller goals for each month, and talks about what ideas are most effective and easiest to accomplish – two quite independent variables. A sampling of her ideas: declutter, exercise, be kind to her husband and children, spend money well, find and do what she really likes to do, find a spiritual guide, start a blog (after which the text includes comments from blog readers). This was both entertaining and thought-provoking.