I'm studying at Yale

This week I'm starting a short-course from Yale University. The topic is The Science of Well-being.

A big reason this blog started is for my own discovery about what does (and doesn't) bring meaning and joy to our lives. So I'm joining 338,000 other students to learn more from Yale's Professor Laurie Santos.

The professor will reveal "misconceptions about happiness, annoying features of the mind that lead us to think the way we do, and the research that can help us change". The course also promises we will "engage in a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits".

Does it cost?

I'll be doing the free version of the course. I'm not interested in the certificate, just in learning. It's 100% online with videos and readings each week for 10 weeks.

The course includes misconceptions about happiness, what really makes us happy, and strategies we can use to improve our actions and happiness.

Want to know more?

If you want to join in, see the full course outline.

Update

I've finished the course and have written some follow-up articles:

Comments

Will robots take your job?

The future could be very different. It's one reason I started this blog. What will technology mean for jobs? For incomes? For society? So I was excited to find Will Robots Take Your Job? at my local library. What does the book say? There's always been technological change and we've always found jobs. As the more laborious jobs were taken by machines, we took on higher skilled jobs, moving further up the "skill ladder". The main question is whether this time is different. Will the "skill ladder" continue to have higher rungs for humans to move on to? Will these rungs appear as quickly as the current rungs disappear? Either way we're headed for significant disruption. Either large-scale re-training of our workforce or massive unemployment. The author despairs that our leaders seem not to talk about this - and worse still, not have a plan for it. Farmers or horses? In 1870 about 75% of Americans worked in agriculture and used 25 million hors

Shop less. Live more.

October is Buy Nothing New Month , and that's their slogan: Shop Less. Live More. This quote about consumption is doubly true. There's the hours we spend to earn the money to spend. Then there's the hours bustling around shopping centres and malls searching out the thing we want (or that advertising has told us we want). Of course there's also the issue of where we put all this stuff we buy. Do we just buy a bigger house (with a bigger mortgage) or do we put it in storage? "The Japanese may have tidiness but in America we have storage lockers - our only growth industry." - Marge Simpson . I found these stats about the US storage industry . I find it such a waste that after spending so much to buy all this stuff we then spend another $22 billion to store it. Shocking. Clearly we need to be less addicted to purchasing. Buy Nothing New Month is a great way to start. Are you with me?

Inheriting Clutter

This book stood out on the library shelf. Massive clutter can create anxiety at any time, let alone when it has to be dealt with during one of the toughest points of life. Author Julie Hall deals with estates for a living. Her book covers the nitty-gritty of dealing with all that stuff. It also covers caring for parents while they are here and what to do to make life easier for them, your siblings and you. Parent Logic We may wonder why parents keep so much stuff. Julie explains that our parents (having grown up in a different time) have their reasons. Often they had to 'go without' as kids and so don't want to 'go without' again. Sometimes they think items will become valuable with age. Also there's the thought "the more I leave the kids the more they will have" . This is obviously mathematically true - but whether that's a good thing is questionable. Ironically, this admirable quality of aversion to waste often ends up causing waste. Items get s

But wait... there's less!

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