Happiness on Today Purpose

Ten steps to a happier life

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ten practical shifts from Pieter Hintjens — founder of the ZeroMQ project — for becoming happier and making the people around you happier too. No money or magic required, just a change in how you see the world, yourself, and others: “Happiness… comes from your own actions” (the 14th Dalai Lama).

1. Invest in your senses

Feed body and mind well — cook your own food and make it taste good. Notice beauty on purpose: photograph what strikes you, play music that moves you, wear clothes that feel good, walk the city at night in the rain. Texture, not just achievement, is part of a good life.

Hedonic adaptation

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hedonic adaptation is the brain’s tendency to return to a stable baseline of happiness after a change in circumstances. The upside of a raise, a purchase, or a win fades; so does the downside of many setbacks. It’s why “change the situation to be happy” mostly fails — see what makes us happy.

The evidence

Lottery winners return to roughly their prior happiness within about a year — the brain recognizes the new pattern and “regresses” to baseline (Scott Galloway, happiness notes).
The mirror image: the hedonic treadmill never ends for status. Get a little famous and you compare up to the more famous; the target always recedes (Justin Kan, happiness notes). This is the engine behind the intrinsic vs extrinsic trap.
Even great perks normalize: a four-day work week can feel life-changing, then become ordinary once it’s the baseline.

How to beat the treadmill

Shock the system deliberately. New experiences and new relationships “shock” the brain and lift happiness precisely because they break the pattern — the same logic as hormesis in the body: adaptation is defeated by novelty and stress, not by more of the same (Galloway).
Run practices, not purchases. Gratitude, savoring, exercise, and relationships resist adaptation better than possessions do (The How of Happiness).
Spend on experiences and people, which keep paying back in memory, rather than on goods you’ll re-baseline to (advice to my younger self).

What makes us happy · Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation · How much is enough · Hormesis

Citations

How much is enough?

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Money matters a lot up to a point, then sharply less. The hard part is naming the point — and then actually living as if you believe it.

The ceiling

Money-happiness tops out once you’re not worried about: healthcare, educating your kids, a decent home, and absorbing an economic shock. Past that, happiness stops rising with wealth (Scott Galloway, happiness notes). This is hedonic adaptation applied to money — you re-baseline to the Ferraris.

Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Extrinsic motivation is doing things for external rewards — money, status, fame, approval. Intrinsic motivation is doing things you’d do anyway, for their own sake. The through-line across the sources: extrinsic goals never sustainably satisfy, because of hedonic adaptation.

The warning, repeated

Justin Kan (after selling Twitch): chasing an extrinsic goal for years and then hitting it “felt like a let down.” The fix was building a daily practice (meditation, exercise, gratitude) and working only on things he was intrinsically motivated to do (happiness notes).
Scott Galloway: money-happiness tops out once your basics and shocks are covered; status is a treadmill (happiness notes). See how much is enough.
Graham Weaver: after 14 years of grinding, the payday he’d been working toward for 30 years arrived — and nothing happened. Six months later he was clinically lost. His line for it: “trying to find internal validation through external achievement is like drinking salt water to quench your thirst. It seems like it’s going to work, but it just makes you thirstier.” Full treatment: win without crushing your soul.

The test for what’s intrinsic

What would you do if no one was watching, if no one paid you, if you got no status or money for it? — Justin Kan

Life is a single-player game

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Naval’s framing that life is played entirely inside your own head. What you believe shapes your reality twice over: it sets which risks you take and actions you perform, and it colours your everyday, moment-to-moment experience.

The mechanism

Judgment separates you. Walking down the street judging everyone — their looks, their worth, their being in your way — buys a flash of “I’m better than that,” then leaves you lonely and seeing negativity everywhere.
Reality is neutral. It has no judgments of its own; the world reflects your own feelings back at you. The negativity you find is largely the negativity you bring.
It’s genuinely single-player. No two points in the universe are the same; no one else will ever have your exact thoughts, emotions, and experience. You are, in that sense, trapped inside your own head and simply aware of things going on.

Why it matters

If the game is single-player, then improving your experience is mostly inner work — dropping judgment — rather than rearranging the world. This is the practical root of the other ideas in the same conversation: the paradox that you are simultaneously separate and connected (see the meaning of life), and meditation as self-therapy as the method for clearing the judgments that pile up.

What makes us happy

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The recurring finding across everything I’ve read: lasting happiness comes far more from what you do repeatedly and who you’re close to than from your circumstances. Trying to become happy by changing your life situation mostly fails — the situation gets normalized (see hedonic adaptation).

Relationships are the strongest predictor

Deep relationships plus forgiveness are the best predictor of happiness. The happiest people don’t keep score and are “irrationally” invested in other people’s well-being (happiness notes, via Scott Galloway).
Marriage/partnership and kids correlate with happiness, but they require sacrifice and forgiveness — and honest conversations about expectations that most couples avoid (happiness notes).
Isolation is costly: living alone is associated with a large drop in male life expectancy; caring for others (even parents moving in) is associated with longer life. The brain seems to reward “adding value to your species.”

The practices of the happiest people

Sonja Lyubomirsky’s list of what chronically happy people actually do (The How of Happiness):

Happiness on Today Purpose

Ten steps to a happier life

1. Invest in your senses

Hedonic adaptation

The evidence

How to beat the treadmill

Related

Citations

How much is enough?

The ceiling

Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

The warning, repeated

The test for what’s intrinsic

Life is a single-player game

The mechanism

Why it matters

What makes us happy

Relationships are the strongest predictor

The practices of the happiest people