Hey… hey you!
I’m always interested in simple but powerful ways to asses the elusive feeling of “happiness”. I’m a sucker for exercises and assessments that quantify happiness and well-being.
Today’s exercise and assessment comes from Mark Manson, the guy who wrote “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”.
His latest video called “3 Questions That Determine 99% of Your Happiness” acts as a nice little exercise one can do to assess where they are in 3 key areas of life. You basically answer these questions:
How am I treating my body, and why?
Who am I spending my time with, and why?
What have I been working on, and why?
You answer these 3 questions and then give yourself a rating out of 10 for each one. You should watch the video first for it all to make sense.
Looking at my life today, using this measurement system, here would be my results, btw i’m doing this just as much so I can look back on it as it is for your benefit… jesus that sentence is bad. Anyway:
How am I treating my body, and why?
My rating: 8/10
In the last 4-6 weeks i’ve been taking a lot better care of my body than the 4-6 months before it. I’m doing a weekly yoga class, making sure I’m either cycling or walking each day, not drinking alcohol at all and hitting my sleep goals about 80% of the time.
Also… like… also as someone who usually has pretty bad digestion problems… they’re really good right now (maybe for another article….)
Overall, much happier about how I’m treating my body this year VS this time last year which would have been more of a 6/10
Who am I spending my time with, and why?
My rating: 8/10
If you’ve been following along with my podcast, you’ll know i’ve been reassessing how I want to spend time with people, and my extreme reduction in alcohol consumption has also accelerated this.
I’ve realised that a lot of the things I thought I was supposed to enjoy: like dinner parties, going to bars or even restaurants with a group… I kinda don’t like them! So I’ve been experimenting with things I do like, like hosting an informal brunch at my place, going for walks with friends, playing videogames or just hanging out at the sauna (it’s a german thing).
On the “romantic partner” side of things i’m at a 10/10, so that’s great (she’s also a personal development goblin and we do these experiments together).
I see a lot of room to grow here on the social front, a lot more experiments to try, but overall I feel it’s going in the right direction.
What have I been working on, and why?
My rating: 6/10
This is a tricky one for me because the very reason i’m struggling with the topic of “what I work on” is also the reason my life is so amazing: I basically built a company that can function completely without me.
That doesn’t mean I still don’t get called in when shit hits the fan (which it did majorly at the end of 2023) but most of the time things work just fine with only 2-3 hours of input and steering from me per week.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, or listening to the podcast you’ll know that this “Unscheduled” life is both a blessing and a curse for me. I have a lot of time to think and learn, but I don’t always find a good way to make that time feel fulfilling. I’ve got a lot of experiments up my sleeve to improve this number in the coming months, so I’ll keep you updated!
That’s it, have a lovely weekend! And if you have time time give me your results!
Cheers,
Jonathan
P.S. Want a much deeper happiness, well-being assessment? I found this one verrrry interesting too!