The 3 levels of happiness
As mapped by psychologist Daniel Nettle, via John Kay’s ‘Obliquity’…
1) Short-term: Momentary physical responses - e.g laughter, sex, etc
2) Intermediate: ’State of mind’ happiness - a sense of satisfaction or well-being. This typically arises from an internal judgment on our feelings, rather than the feelings themselves… e.g ‘I feel content at the moment’ may be the upshot of lots of momentary physical responses
3) Long-term: ‘Eudaimonia’… A concept originally propounded by Aristotle, translated as ‘flourishing’ (though I think it literally means something like ‘good guardian spirits’). This is more about contentment in a long-term sense: fulfiling potential, achieving life goals, etc.
Of course, Eckhart Tolle would say you can only find happiness in the short-term because the future doesn’t exist. But there you go.
Find out which countries are producing the businesses of the future
If (like me) you think that many of our extant business models are a busted flush, and that we have really only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of how technology will change the way we do commerce, then you should probably be interested in where the top new tech companies actually come from.
This looks at the geographical homes of the top 50 new tech start-ups as ranked by Business Week and though I may question some of the inclusions/omissions in that top 50, the overall pattern is interesting to see.
The main conclusion is that it’s probably worth moving to California. Which shouldn’t be too much of a hardship. Oh and 10 of those 28 Californian businesses are in San Francisco.
As if Twitter weren’t enough of a time-sink, Jonah Peretti of Buzzfeed and Huffington Post fame created a choose your own adventure game using only Twitter (and lots…
