Jackson Kerchis

I’m a former startup exec, consultant, and Zen monk who made the 1st Happiness bachelor's. I share learnings as I build my own personal Happiness PhD.

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

I'm building a Happiness PhD.

It includes a publicly accessible digital database of research, Ideas, and notes ('happiness encyclopedia').

My mission is to advance humanity's understanding of happiness.

You'll get daily tweets from research into the art/science of happiness.

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Hate your job?

You have more power to change it than you think. It's called "job crafting."

Reshape your tasks, relationships, and mindset to find more joy and meaning in your work.

Learn how in my new article on StudyHappiness . blog! #jobcrafting #careeradvice #worklife

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Is "follow your passion" terrible career advice? The science of happiness at work suggests a better path: build skills, gain leverage, and create a job with more autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Find out why in my latest Substack post in my Happiness Encyclopedia... #work #happiness #career

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Job crafting is one of the most under-used opportunities to improve happiness at work.

Here's the UMich researchers definition: You can, with or without the direction of management, craft or tailor your job to better align with your interests and design your job to support your own flourishing.

Job crafting empowers you to proactively adjust your tasks, relationships, and perceptions of work to better align with your personal strengths, values, and interests.

Research shows this self-initiated customization leads to significant increases in engagement, job satisfaction, resilience, and overall well-being. Field experiments demonstrate that those who engage in job crafting are rated by peers and managers as notably happier and more effective.

An important caveat here – there are limits. If I’m working in data entry, I can’t suddenly say I’m going to stop taking orders and go try to figure something out in the warehouse. You certainly can have those conversations, but job crafting is more subtle.

There are three subcategories of job crafting:

1. Task crafting
2. Relational crafting
3. Cognitive crafting

Task crafting is about identifying certain tasks that you can do more of or less of – within reason – that support your skills and interests. For example, if you’re on a marketing team and part of your role includes both event planning and writing email campaigns, and you love writing, you might ask to do more of that and less of the event planning.

Relational crafting is about changing how you relate to people. If you enjoy mentorship, maybe you take on more of a mentor role. If you like educating people and you’re in customer service, maybe you shift how you interact with clients – moving from just providing service to actually teaching them how to get more value out of your product. You’re still meeting your responsibilities, but you’re framing them in a way that’s more meaningful to you.

Cognitive crafting is shifting how you mentally relate to your work. For example, my business partner had a client at a pulp and paper manufacturer. Their product was a gross, white, papery substance. But it turned out it was used in diapers and medical devices. So, they ran an internal campaign showing the end users – babies and patients – and helped the employees see the purpose behind their work. That’s cognitive crafting: reframing your mindset about what you do and why it matters.

By sitting down with (or without) your manager and starting to think about how you can craft your tasks, relationships, and cognitive perspective on work, you can try to cultivate more competence, relatedness, and autonomy in your working life.

This process is not like simply flipping a switch to get your dream job – but it makes a difference. Use it to tailor your job to increase your satisfaction. And pursue the circumstances that make for happier work.

Read my full happiness encyclopedia for more: Happiness PhD (.com)!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

“Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life.” – Hunter S. Thompson

When it comes to happiness at work this quote gets a lot right... It's not so much the what, but the how...

Likely the most established construct of job satisfaction is Self-Determination Theory (SDT).

SDT is about autonomy, competency, and relatedness. This means having flexibility and ownership over your work and success, the capacity to make an impact and experience growth, and feeling trust and connection to those you serve in your work.

So you don't necessarily have to "follow your passion," you can instead craft a work life that has these ideal circumstances: competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

Instead of thinking, “How much money can I make?” think, “What is the path with the most autonomy, competence, and relatedness that I can take to get the amount of money I need?”

One of my favorite career stories is a healthcare consultant who, every time he was due for a raise, asked for the same percent reduced hours. He now makes good coin working remotely 3–4 hours per day on specialized internal projects that he finds interesting.

See what he did there? He traded money for autonomy (more free time), competence (choosing his specialization of interest), and relatedness (working with an internal team instead of new clients every month).

Another example is a friend of a friend who loves to write poetry. He could have slogged along trying to become a full-time professional poet in 2025 (a feat that is, I assume, impossible). Or he could have sold out and given it up.

Instead, he works as a high-level freelance corporate lawyer part-time and spends about 15-20 hours per week writing poems on his own terms.

So, consider grounding your big career decisions using the SDT scorecard…

✔️ Will this work arrangement afford me freedom and flexibility? Will I get ownership over results as opposed to being micromanaged?

Give it a 1 to 10 for Autonomy.

✔️ Will this work arrangement align with what I’m good at and lead to tangible impact? Will I grow and develop in it?

Give it a 1 to 10 for Competence.

✔️ Will this work arrangement involve people who are trusting, caring, and social? Will I feel I am of service?

Give it a 1 to 10 for Relatedness.

✔️ Will this work arrangement give me the compensation and benefits I desire?

Give it a 1 to 10 for compensation.

(Add any other factors you want to score.)

Aim for jobs that are above a 28, and try to continuously make that number go up. Then, for example, once you get really high up on, say, two of the categories – you have great friends at work and they pay you a ton – you can start to focus on the other variables.

Read the full entry in my happiness encyclopedia: Happiness PhD . com!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Having worked with hundreds of professionals – from Marine Corps drill instructors to schoolteachers to financial services executives to truck drivers – I’ve come to find work–life balance (or lack thereof) is a universal challenge.

I know nobody who suffers from the problem of too much time and too little to do.

So here are my three steps to happier time management...

Focus: be intelligent and lazy.
Protect your most important time.
Run a personal operating system (pOS).

So here are some questions to help you think in intelligent laziness…

If I could only work 2 hours per day this week, what would I do?

(If employed) What are the specific measurables upon which my performance is assessed? What if I doubled the amount of time I spent on those areas and stepped back from everything else?

(If self-employed) What 20% of my customers, activities, or products lead to 80% of my sales, results, attention, etc.? What if I only served those customers, did those activities, or marketed in those ways?

If I only had one day off for the next month, what would I do to maximize happiness? What in my life (people, places, activities) brings the most joy?

Where do I want to be in 5 years? How could I get there in 5 months?

Next, identify pockets of your best focused work time and protect them for critical deep work. Then identify pockets of high ROI personal time: e.g. dinner with family, daily workout class, weekly date night, weekly family day, etc. Protect time for renewal.

Finally, get things out of your head and into your pOS. You should have a list of projects, actions, and waiting-for. Each day look at them and schedule 3 most important things as time blocks for your next day. This will help you shift from reactive to proactive.

Get started with these three things and it will help you right away! Full read in my Happiness Encyclopedia on substack!

#speaker #worklifebalance #timemanagement

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

A Google exec got promoted while working a 4-day week. It sounds impossible, but it’s not.

He used a simple framework to increase his impact while working 20% less.

Here’s how you can do it too:

Be Intelligently Lazy:
Stop trying to do everything. Overcome "productivity debt" and apply the 80/20 rule. Ask yourself: "What's the 20% of my work that creates 80% of the value?"
Focus ruthlessly on that.

Protect Your Time:
Not all time is equal. Claim "Sacred Hours" for your life (family, health, joy) and "Power Hours" for deep, focused work.

Put them on your calendar first and defend them.

Run a Personal Operating System (pOS):
Get tasks out of your head and into a system. Use simple lists (Projects, Tasks, Waiting For) and your calendar to manage your commitments.

This frees your mind from the stress of remembering everything.

Want to dive deeper? Get the full guide in my Happiness Encyclopedia on substack!

#WorkLifeBalance #Productivity #Focus #Happiness

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Who's wealthier?

A) A banker working 72 hrs/week for $200k
B) An electrician working 30 hrs/week for $100k

Research shows that valuing time over money is a key predictor of happiness. Becoming a "time millionaire"—rich in ownership over your calendar—is the new wealth.

Learn how to build work-life balance in my Happiness Encyclopedia's latest entry.

HappinessPhD . com

#WorkLifeBalance #Happiness #Productivity #TimeAffluence

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Three Steps to Work–Life Balance…

The problem with many time management systems is that they take too much time to manage.

If you spend an hour per day arranging tasks and lists in your productivity app, that’s not very productive. You’re working on planning what you’re going to work on for 5 hours per week. If you work a 40-hour week, that’s about 12.5% of your time spent not actually working on anything.

So I’m going to give you the simplest possible system, which you can expand upon if you wish.

Focus: be intelligent and lazy.
Protect your most important time.
Run a personal operating system (pOS).

Oliver Burkeman has coined a term for what many of us experience: “productivity debt.” Here’s an explanation in his words –

"Apparently I struck a chord on Twitter the other day when I observed that many people (by which I meant me) seem to feel as if they start off each morning in a kind of “productivity debt”, which they must struggle to pay off through the day, in hopes of reaching a zero balance by the time evening comes. Few things feel more basic to my experience of adulthood than this vague sense that I’m falling behind, and need to claw my way back up to some minimum standard of output. It’s as if I need to justify my existence, by staying “on top of things”, in order to stave off some ill-defined catastrophe that might otherwise come crashing down upon my head."

Relatable? The first step to work–life balance is to overcome productivity-debt-driven anxiety, which leads to frenetic and inefficient commotion. This neurotic anxiety is the doom of strategic focus.

The antidote to this way of operating is first psychological and second tactical.

So, starting with your psychology, I suggest you adopt a new perspective: intelligent laziness. Rather than starting your day with a feeling of anxiety and dread about digging your way out of a hole of commitments and tasks, consider starting at a zero balance, aiming lower and slower, and asking yourself, “What would this look like if it were easy?”

The most helpful framing for this perspective is the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule). It means that in many contexts 20 percent of the inputs, causes, activities will lead to 80 percent of the outputs, consequences, and results. It is not always 80 and 20, but some similar distribution.

This pattern is everywhere. If you work in a company, you can probably see that 10% of employees lead to 90% of the problems, and a different 10% of employees lead to 90% of the productive work. Similarly, it may be that one or two people in your life lead to the vast majority of annoyance and a different one or two to the vast majority of joy. If you look closely at your activity, this is often the case as well (for both happiness and productivity).

I should add: this may be simple, but it’s not easy.

Charlie Munger probably didn’t think he was giving great productivity advice when he said this, but he did. In the final line of a commencement address he said, “may each of you rise high by spending each day of a long life aiming low.”

Once you have this perspective, it takes us to step two: protect your time with “sacred hours” and “power hours.”

Read the rest of this happiness encyclopedia entry at Happiness PhD (.com)!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Science says how you spend matters more than how much you earn.

The 3 highest-ROI ways to spend money:

→ On other people (giving boosts happiness for days)
→ On experiences, not things (they become part of who you are)
→ To buy back your time (outsource what you dread)

Read the Happiness Encyclopedia at https://t.co/qNJdq53A2k
#happiness #money #lifelessons

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

The $75,000 myth — what the research actually says

We've all heard the saying: money can't buy happiness. But what if that framing is too simple — and quietly misleading?

The relationship between money and happiness is one of the most studied questions in behavioral science, and the findings are far more nuanced than the popular wisdom suggests. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert put it well: "Money doesn't buy happiness, but it buys an opportunity for happiness." The difference is significant.

For years, a 2010 study by Kahneman and Deaton was cited to claim that happiness stops rising after an income of $75,000. But that conclusion misses a crucial distinction. There are two fundamentally different ways to be "happy": life satisfaction — your overall evaluation of your life when you step back and reflect — and emotional well-being — the actual texture of your day-to-day feelings.

These two types of happiness respond to income very differently. Emotional well-being does tend to plateau. Once your household income reaches roughly $93,000 to $117,000 (in 2026 dollars), additional money produces diminishing returns on how you feel each day. Financial stress fades, basic needs are met, and the relief that comes with security levels off. Life satisfaction, however, continues to inch upward with income — because we unconsciously use earnings as a scoreboard for how well we're doing in life.

A more recent study by Matt Killingsworth, using real-time happiness data from over 33,000 working Americans, found no hard satiation point at all. But there's a catch: the relationship is logarithmic. To get the same small bump in happiness, you have to keep doublingyour income. Yale's Laurie Santos translated this into plain terms: going from $100,000 to $600,000 per year moves your happiness score from roughly a 64 to a 65.

The practical implication is important. If you're earning above the $93,000–$117,000 range, the marginal return on additional income is quite low. A few extra hours of sleep, consistent exercise, or deeper social connection will almost certainly do more for your daily happiness than a 15% raise with a lot more headaches attached.

There's also the matter of relative income. Research by Clark, Oswald, and Luttmer shows that how your income compares to those around you matters more than the absolute number. You are likely to feel better earning $80,000 in a neighborhood where most people earn $40,000 than earning $100,000 where most people earn $150,000. This is not a character flaw — it is a deeply human cognitive pattern rooted in social comparison and anchoring.

The takeaway is not that money is unimportant. Financial security is genuinely meaningful, and the difference between poverty and comfort is enormous. But beyond a comfortable threshold, the relentless pursuit of higher income is a poor strategy for a happier life. The more interesting question is not how muchyou earn — but what you do with it.

Read the Happiness Encyclopedia at Happiness PhD (.com)!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Money doesn't buy happiness. It buys an opportunity for happiness...

To generate happiness from money, it is best to spend on others, spend on experiences, and spend to save time and reduce suffering.

🤝 Spend on others.

Harvard’s Michael Norton is an expert on happiness–money research.

In his most well-known study, he and his team asked students if they would be part of an experiment. Their self-reported happiness was measured. Then they were given an envelope with $5 or $20. They were instructed to either spend it on themselves or on someone else.

You might think that the spend-on-others group would see about the same change in happiness as the other group, or perhaps they would be frustrated that they were forced to spend on someone else. In reality, the spend-on-others group reported higher levels of happiness that persisted for days.

The researchers wondered if this pattern would persist for higher-dollar-value exchanges. So they replicated the study in Ethiopia, where $20 equates to several hundred dollars. They found the same pattern.

“Prosocial spending,” or spending to benefit others, makes you happier. (There are even biomarkers that indicate this.)

🎆 Spend on experiences.

Van Boven and Gilovich’s 2003 paper shows that spending on experiences translates to more happiness.

Here are a few lines from the abstract that report the survey and experimental findings:

“Do experiences make people happier than material possessions? In two surveys, respondents from various demographic groups indicated that experiential purchases – those made with the primary intention of acquiring a life experience – made them happier than material purchases. In a follow-up laboratory experiment, participants experienced more positive feelings after pondering an experiential purchase than after pondering a material purchase.”

They go on to explore why it is that experiences yield more happiness. They suggest that experiences allow for positive reinterpretations (savoring the memory), are more meaningful parts of one’s identity, and support better social interactions.

🙂‍↕️ Spend to save time and avoid pain (rather than get pleasure).

If you analyze your spending, there is usually one of two motives behind it. You want to avoid something (suffering, stress, hassle) or get something (pleasure, joy, status).

If you pay for a cleaning service or financial management app, it’s likely the first category – to avoid things you do not want to do. If you buy a snack or a luxury car, it is likely to pursue pleasure.

Research finds that you are usually happier if you spend money to save time on unpleasant activities as opposed to seeking pleasure. In their book Happy Money, Dunn and Norton use the example of outsourcing things you hate doing, such as hiring a cleaning service. Such investments generate more happiness than similar-sized investments in the pursuit of pleasure.

According to Whillans, Dunn, Smeets, Bekkers, and Norton’s 2007 paper:

“Surveys of large, diverse samples from four countries reveal that spending money on time-saving services is linked to greater life satisfaction. To establish causality, we show that working adults report greater happiness after spending money on a time-saving purchase than on a material purchase.”

For greater returns to happiness, it is best to spend on others, spend on experiences, and spend to save time and reduce unpleasantries.

Read the full article in my Happiness Encyclopedia on Substack!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Money can't buy happiness.

"This sentiment is lovely, popular, and almost certainly wrong." – Dan Gilbert.

Likely the most famous study on happiness and income is Kahneman and Deaton's 2010 paper, often cited to say that beyond $75,000 per year income does not increase happiness. The research is more nuanced than that.

There are different ways to understand happiness. The relationship between income and happiness differs based on the type considered. The authors break up emotional, experienced happiness into positive affect (feeling good), "not blue" (absence of feeling bad), and "stress free." They use a Cantril Ladder ("Ladder") to assess life satisfaction.

IMAGE: Kahneman & Deaton 2010

As income increases, its effects on happiness generally diminish. The more you have of any resource, the less valuable it becomes. The more money you make, the less useful each dollar is. $10,000 is a big deal to the average person but not to Jeff Bezos.

Living paycheck to paycheck is stressful. Once you know your needs are met, you can relax. The other measures of emotional well-being level out around ~$117,000 in 2026 dollars. Note that these are averages and actual satiation points vary based on cost of living, family size, etc.

Life evaluation, on the other hand, seems to keep rising with income – albeit barely. This implies that we use income as a shortcut to determine how we are doing in life.

There has been debate over this finding. The most well-known example is Matt Killingsworth's aptly named "Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year."

IMAGE: Killingsworth 2021

Killingsworth's research is rigorous and sound. But notice the numbers on the bottom are not going up by the same amount every time. They are doubling. In other words, if you keep doubling your income, you will see a small increase in your reported well-being.

Yale Professor Laurie Santos explains that if you plot this out, it implies that changing your income from $100,000 to $600,000 moves happiness from "like a 64 to a 65."

The logarithmic scale can obscure the real effect of diminishing returns. It also does not capture relative tradeoffs. Most people are not in a position to continually double their income. The decisions around income are usually something like: Should I take this promotion for a 15% increase and a lot more stress? Or work an extra 10 hours of OT?

In these non-logarithmic cases, linear increases in income are likely not as efficient in increasing happiness as investing a few hours toward additional sleep, exercise, or social interaction.

It seems absolute income (not logarithmic) is the more practical treatment here.

Research suggests you should continue to pursue earnings until you reach roughly $117,000 in annual income. Then focus on prioritizing other components of your life quality to optimize happiness.

Read the full entry in my Happiness Encyclopedia on substack!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

You bring the weather. In every interaction, you have the power to set the emotional tone. Smile, and the world smiles with you. Frown, and you'll likely get it back. Want to improve your social life? Start by bringing the sunshine.

For the full read check out the 3 Habits of Highly Social people in my latest Happiness Encyclopedia entry at Happiness PhD (.com)!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Think about it. Have you ever really won an argument?

Odds are, you may have gotten a feeling of superiority or self-righteousness – sure. Maybe you even got the other person to feel dumb or give up. But is that really winning?

I sometimes say, would you rather be right or be happy?

And there’s an old poem that goes something like this:

Here lies the body of John O’Day,
Who died defending his right of way.
He was right, dead right, as he rode along,
But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.

Get it?

Striving to be right often undermines our quality of life ( and leadership) and our ability to actually move forward and get an optimal result for everyone (see our current political situation, for example).

So, if you want to have better relationships, focus on understanding and moving forward – not on right, wrong, or winning.

The only way to win an argument is to avoid it: it's better to be happy than to be "right".

This is from "the 3 Habits of Highly Social People" in my latest Happiness Encyclopedia entry. Read and follow along at Happiness PhD (.com)!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

You know the expression “monkey see, monkey do”?

There’s truth to it... In an Italian laboratory in the 1990s, researchers noticed the monkeys would often mirror the things the researchers did. They studied their brains and found that primates (that’s us) have highly developed mirror neurons that take on the expressions and gestures of others.

In humans, this social-emotional contagion is well documented.

Emotional states are transmitted in a matter of milliseconds and can often spread through groups. Think of how yawning and laughter are contagious.

In Peter Kaufman’s lecture on multidisciplinary thinking, he explains how to make use of this:

"You’re standing in front of an elevator. The doors open. And inside the elevator is one solitary stranger.

You’ve never met this person before in your whole life. You walk into the elevator; you have three choices for how you’re going to behave as you walk into this elevator.

Choice number one: you can smile and say good morning. And I say, at least in California, if you do that, 98 percent of the time the person will smile and say good morning back. You can test it. Okay. My guess is you’re going to find that 98 percent of the time, people say good morning.

Choice number two: you can walk in and you can scowl and hiss at this stranger in the elevator. And they have no idea why you’re scowling and hissing at them. And I say 98 percent of the time, they may not hiss back at you, but they will scowl back at you.

And option number three. This is where the wisdom comes. You can walk into the elevator and you can do nothing. And what do you get 98 percent of the time if you walk into an elevator and you do nothing from that stranger in the elevator? Nothing.

It’s mirrored reciprocation, isn’t it? But what did you have to do? You have to go first. And you’re going to get back whatever you put out there."

That’s the practice. Remember that when it comes to emotions, you bring the weather. In most instances, you control the emotional weather and dynamic of the interaction. If you go for a hug, a handshake, or a smile, you get it back. If you frown, scowl, or say nothing, you get that back too.

So, bring the weather of genuine interest in the other person and a context of positive emotion and positive outlook. Try to make them feel important and appreciated.

Try to bring happiness – and in doing so, you’re liable to get more of it yourself.

As Oscar Wilde said, “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

So the first principle of happiness and relationships: bring the weather. Be intentional about creating genuine interest, appreciation, and positive emotion (assuming that’s the appropriate context).

For my other research-based principles check out the 3 Habits of Highly Social people in my latest Happiness Encyclopedia entry on substack!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

Your brain on love looks identical to a drug addict's brain.

That "rush" is real—and temporary (2-3 years max).

Here's what 100 years of research reveals about lasting happiness:

Psychologist John Gottman studied thousands of couples and found "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" predict relationship failure:

❌ Contempt
❌ Criticism
❌ Stonewalling
❌ Defensiveness

Instead, focus on:

✅ Humor
✅ Gratitude
✅ Forgiveness
✅ Vulnerability

This extends beyond romance. The Aarons' "fast friends protocol" shows 36 increasingly intimate questions can create lifelong friendships.

Even "weak ties" matter. Research shows:

• Chatting with strangers on your commute boosts happiness
• Spending money on others (vs yourself) increases wellbeing for days
• Prosocial behavior improves health & longevity

The foundation for happiness: love for others, friends & family, and a partner.

Full science breakdown → Happiness PhD (.com)

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

If relationships are the key to happiness (they are), then let's consider the different types of relationships...

I argue that they're all grounded in love. But modern English does a poor job of capturing this. The Greeks had some 10 different words for love. I suggest 3 are most important:

Romantic / Partner type love
Friend / Family type love
Altruism / "Agape"

Research suggests each has its place.

Let's start with romantic / partnership love drawing on Arthur Brooks' work. The best romantic partnerships are about complementarity. Think of "he or she completes me." It's like two puzzle pieces that fit together, as opposed to carbon copies.

There are two processes at work when falling in love. You have a passion component that lasts up to a few years and a companionship component that should continue growing over time.

Interestingly, brain scans of people in this passion state resemble those of drug addicts. So yes, you want attraction and compatibility in the beginning. But this is where complementarity comes in. You intentionally build a lasting partnership based on shared commitment, understanding, and stable affection. This, not the "rush" of passion, is the optimal dynamic.

Family and friendship exist on a spectrum from acquaintances to best friends and siblings.

The most relevant research here comes from two psychologists: the Aarons. They brought people into the lab and created a scenario that rapidly brought people together. It is sometimes called the "fast friends protocol." They had people answer 36 questions that gradually became more deep and intimate. They found that participants often left as lifelong friends. The mechanism at work there was "escalating mutual disclosure."

Think of what that term means: I'm going to push you to open up and share something vulnerable, then I reciprocate with something personal, and then you reciprocate with something deeper.

This creates a dynamic where the level of intimacy escalates until you become quite close. So, to deepen friendships and family relationships, focus on intentional time together, give your full attention and curiosity, and go deeper with vulnerability.

Finally, we have altruistic or prosocial (agape) relationships. This represents social connection with a broader network.

Harvard researcher Dr. Michael Norton did a study where they gave people $5 or $20 to spend on themselves or a stranger. The group that spent it on others showed a sizable increase in happiness persisting for days, whereas the group who spent it on themselves showed no change.

We see prosocial interaction even with a stranger can go a long way. Studies have linked compassion and this prosocial orientation to improved health and happiness.

As the Beatles sang, "love is all you need." Focus on love for others (altruism), friends and family, and a partner and you'll have the foundation for lasting happiness.

Read the entry at Happiness PhD (.com) to follow my happiness encyclopedia!

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

The Harvard Study tracked people for 100 years to find the secret to happiness.

Not wealth. Not success. Not fitness.

The answer: Relationships.

The quality of your relationships = the quality of your life.

3 types of love matter most:

1 Romantic love – Build complementarity (puzzle pieces that fit), not carbon copies. Brain scans show early passion resembles drug addiction. Focus on shared commitment & stable affection instead.

2 Friend/family love – The "fast friends protocol" proves escalating mutual disclosure creates deep bonds. Be intentional, give full attention, embrace vulnerability.

3 Altruistic love – Spending just $5 on a stranger boosts happiness for days. Even brief chats with strangers increase wellbeing.

As the Beatles sang: "Love is all you need."

Dive deeper into the science → Happiness PhD (.com)

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

The year is 1938.

You have a group of mostly 18-year-old guys from the poorest neighborhoods and toughest backgrounds in Boston. You have another group the same age from Harvard. You and your team are going to meet with them and review their lives every single year for the rest of their lives.

As it turns out, it wouldn’t stop there. The study continues to this day, nearly 100 years running, across multiple generations.

What do you think made the difference in the quality of people’s lives?

Was it which of these two groups they were in – privileged or poor? No. Was it what they studied or their grades? No. Was it their fitness or diet? No. Was it how successful they were? No.

The real significant predictor of living “the good life” was relationships.

The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. Across not only that group but across multiple generations, they found that relationships and social connection predict not only how happy you are but how long you live.

Given the work I do, people often ask, what’s the secret to happiness or the key to happiness?

And the truth is, there is no one thing. But I do believe the top priority should be relationships. This isn’t a popularity contest either, or saying you have to find your soulmate. It’s more like this: for those who do have a partner, it’s about having a healthy relationship, and beyond that, having a “tribe” of close friends and connection to community.

Relationships are the foundation for happiness...

Read the full entry in my Happiness Encyclopedia: HappinessPhD . com

NOTE: We look so sad in the because the Steelers lost...

[Jackson Kerchis @jacksonkerchis]

It's not about fame or fortune, it's about the ripple you create.

As a young man, I struggled.

In a lot of ways I was not on the best trajectory. I dealt with insecurity and anxiety. This paired with a huge ego: I always thought I was right, had to win arguments, and thought I knew it all. I had anger issues: I broke my hand punching a wall, dislocated my shoulder in a fight, and had many tantrums and moments where I lost control. This led me towards substance abuse, dabbling in drugs and drinking, and battling disordered eating.

So when it came to Happiness, I was not quite on track...

I had worked through some of these things, but now I’m in college, and I struggled with this question of what should I do with my life? I was obsessing over it. And I felt lost.

One evening after our business consulting group, I talked to my mentor, Quoc. He would always stay late and listen to me and go on and on with me about things that had nothing to do with business.

He didn’t have to do that. But he always showed he cared. And that night I remember him laughing as he said, "Jackson I don’t think you’re ever gonna have a 'real job'" - and he meant it in the best way possible. He encouraged me to think about what I really wanted out of life.

And that night, as I lay in bed, I thought about the struggles I had had, and in some ways still had, and I thought about what really makes for a successful life. What do I really want?

Then I thought, why do I want that? and why that? and finally, I realized that it all came back to Happiness. I wanted to be successful because I wanted pride and joy. I wanted to make money so that I'd have freedom and security. Now, if you have joy, pride, freedom, and security, then you’re gonna feel good. And if you feel good, you have what? Happiness.

There it is! I really wanted Happiness. That's behind everything we do. We don’t want the things we want, we want the feelings we think they’ll bring.

I woke up the next morning - boom! It hit me: I'm going to major in Happiness. If that's what life is all about, why not study it? First thing I emailed Quoc telling him my plan.

And as the morning went on I was sitting at my laptop checking my email inbox over and over again. And finally I got an email back from him, two words: DO IT.

This led me to create the world‘s first major in Happiness, teach the first course on Happiness at The Univ. of Alabama, live as a Zen monk, and start the companies I run today taking Happiness and flourishing research into businesses, nonprofits, and military/law-enforcement. It also inspired Happiness PhD (.com).

I think back to that young man and the trajectory he was on as he now coaches, writes, and speaks all over the world about Happiness. And I think back to a talk that night with Quoc. And I realize it’s not how much you know, or how much you accomplish, or how many people know your name...

It's about the ripple you create. Be that ripple.

Follow along with my work in the comments!