Grey skies are gonna clear up; put on a revised worldview that adjusts expectations to reflect realityyyy…

When it comes down to it, we’re all chasing happiness in our own way. So it makes sense that a class that teaches happiness would be the most popular elective at Yale.

There’s plenty to discuss in this profile about what makes us happy, whether happiness is an earned outcome or more of a practiced outlook, but this self-reflective little question came ready-made for sharing here:

Pop quiz: If you suddenly found you had an extra $100, what would you do with it?

Now: What would you do if you suddenly found you had an extra hour?

With the money, chances are you’d be inclined to use it on a treat — to buy something you did not budget for otherwise, rather than paying off an existing debt. With time, it’s the opposite: There’s a good chance you’d use that hour to catch up on work, rather than go for a walk or visit a museum you’d otherwise not have time to do.

I posed these to a friend, and our answers didn’t quite match what the article proposes; both of us would use the extra time for pleasurable if good-for-us pursuits. Does that mean we’re… mostly happy? Did we win?

How would you spend an extra $100? What about an extra hour of free time?

What do your answers say about your situation and your priorities?

I’ve been to the Google campus. They have mint flavored water.

The stories of tech company largesse and their endless perks are the stuff of legend. Free gourmet lunches, access to gyms, biking around campus, private shuttle busses with wifi and cushy seats. It all makes working in tech sound like paradise from the outside. But The Economist cites a survey that maybe all the free snacks and massages only go so far.

A survey last year of 5,000 such workers at both tech and non-tech firms, by TINYPulse, a specialist in monitoring employee satisfaction, found that many of them feel alienated, trapped, under-appreciated and otherwise discombobulated. Only 19% of tech employees said they were happy in their jobs and only 17% said they felt valued in their work. In many areas they were even more discontented than non-tech workers: 36% of techies felt they had a clear career path compared with 50% of workers in areas such as marketing and finance; 28% of techies said they understand their companies’ vision compared with 43% of non-techies; and 47% of techies said they had good relations with their work colleagues compared with 56% of non-techies.

If free candy can’t make a person happy with their job (to the point of being DISCOMBOBULATED, no less!), then I ask you: WHAT CAN?

Would the lavish perks of the tech sector make you like your job more?

Which perks actually improve life vs sounding good from the outside?

If not, what is the real key to being happy at a job?

Are unhappy tech workers right to be dissatisfied despite the perks, or are they being entitled and not appreciating their good fortune?

Also, which day of the week would you never want to work again?

Corporations dream of continuous growth. It shows prosperity, guarantees healthy stock prices. If GDP moves up, the country is healthy; if it remains flat, the country is “stagnating”. Our whole financial system is based on chasing more and more growth for greater and greater rewards.

Some economists suggest there may be another ideal, the steady state, at which productivity increases lead not to continuous growth, but a more equal distribution of limited resources, and for much of the currently employed, a reduction in work hours as employment hours and free time are essentially redistributed. I’m drastically oversimplifying the premise for a setup here, but if you’re into the economic argument, this fantastic Mother Jones article goes in depth.

Essentially, the proposal is that we all share the amount of employment needed to maintain a healthy steady state, then tax big corporations and the very rich to supplement the services a healthy society shouldn’t make its citizens go broke paying for itself (like health care and education) to make our remaining pay go farther. Interesting theory.

But at the end of the day, an immediate change would be you work less, but make less. We’d have to adjust to less money (and therefore less consumption), and more free time.

Would you be willing to go from a five day to a four day work week for four-fifths (20% less) income?

How would you adjust to having less money? What would you do with the extra time?

What other societal implications or changes might result from a shift like this? Would we be more or less informed and engaged? More or less relaxed and satisfied with our careers? More or less able to travel, or create or appreciate art and culture, or any other positive pursuits?

What could be better than smoking and chatting in a diner with a brilliant author?

Reading David Foster Wallace tends to be a transformative experience, the way a lot of his fans describe it. Myself included. As if someone more deeply thoughtful than yourself is reaching into your brain and rewiring it as you read, reconfiguring your thought process in order for you to be able keep up with his. You feel smarter while reading him, like you’re experiencing what it’s like to engage that intensely with big ideas. It’s a gift he has, not just writing cleverly or stylishly or densely (which he does), but doing all that in a way that is both incisive and powerful but generous to the reader. And it’s hard for anyone who’s ever written or tried to communicate their own big ideas not to be be jealous of that kind of talent and intellect.

The End of the Tour, the film that depicts journalist/writer David Lipsky’s days shadowing the man who could be this generation’s brightest new writer, tackles a lot of ‘big idea’-type subjects. Both directly, in the conversations the two characters have over their travels (and this film is almost exclusively two guys talking; about celebrity, ambition, authenticity, art, addiction, depression, junk food, etc), and indirectly, through the dynamic between them.

He’s a semi-established, aspiring-to-greatness talent still reaching for acclaim. Wallace has been crowned a genius in his own time, and is now left to deal with the weight of that. Wallace warns him that all that admiration “isn’t real”, admits that he isn’t capable of fully enjoying it. Being praised to such an extent doesn’t mean he’s arrived anywhere, or given him any sense of completion or satisfaction. Meanwhile Lipsky still feels awed in his presence, compelled to get inside his mind, to crack the code on what makes him such a singular talent. He wants to be near that brilliance. He can’t help but envy it.

After all the digressive conversations and empty calories, both are left seemingly unsatisfied. There’s a tangible sense of melancholy to the film, of no one having the answers, of a search without a solution. It’s beautiful, it’s energizing, but not without its harsh truths to face up to.

If achieving fame means being equally or possibly more miserable than you are now, is it worth the suffering to make your mark on the world, to be known and admired?

Is being happy and unknown the better goal, focusing on personal fulfillment instead of achieving greatness and renown?

If everyone chose happiness over greatness, what would we be giving up? Are tortured geniuses necessary for progress?