Happiness & the four quadrants of life activities
Very rough thoughts on how to be happier.
Full disclosure: I've rewritten this article in July 2025. The old article, originally published in April 2023, was 1600 words long and full of unnecessary stuff. The rewritten article still discusses the same content though.
I've been thinking a lot about this graph recently:
I'm 18. Am I doomed to perpetually become less and less happy for the next ~40 years? That doesn't sound great. I'm pretty pleased with my life right now.
I have two goals regarding this graph:
- Keep my current life happiness level up, by doing simple proven things:
- exercise
- get 7+ hours of sleep
- practice gratitude
- hang out with friends
- go outside
- Extend my lifetime (i.e. extend the horizontal length of my happiness graph):
- exercise
- get 7+ hours of sleep
- hang out with friends
- eat healthy
Therefore, I should exercise, get enough sleep, and hang out with friends. Obviously. But what about all the other things that I could do with my life? Like:
- partying
- saving money
- studying for exams
- YouTube rabbit holes
- overeating
- learning to code
- gambling
- doing drugs
I categorize all[1] life activities into four categories:
- Q1: good for your happiness, both short-term & long-term
- exercise
- get 7+ hours of sleep
- hang out with friends
- Q2: good for your happiness in the long-term, but not in the short-term
- studying for exams
- saving money
- learning to code
- Q3: good for your happiness in the short-term, but not in the long-term
- overeating
- partying[2]
- Q4: not good for your happiness, both short-term & long-term
- gambling
- doing drugs
Therefore, you should obviously do stuff that falls in Q1, and obviously never do stuff that falls in Q4. But what about the items in Q2 and Q3? It's a grey area.
My personal stance is to do a 2:1 ratio of Q2/Q3 activities. That is, for every 1 hour you spend doing a Q3 activity, spend about 2 hours doing a Q2 activity. My other personal stance is that I need to be less angsty and philosophical about how I'm spending my time and live my life without worrying too much about all this stuff.