The frenzied, overstuffed marketplace of happiness optimization will never be able to fix the fundamentals of the human condition or bring a lasting kind of purpose to a new generation. There will never be easy or straightforward answers to our most profound questions of existence, and ranking emotions feels like a diminution of their awesome power.
This goes with #4.
“The biggest thing that I learned throughout all of my happiness range tracking,” Mr. Sandler said, “is that happiness isn’t the end-all goal that I was looking for.”
This line right here goes with #5. I think tracking my happiness would affect me in a sense that I would get annoyed on how much I would have to keep inputting on a daily just to get a measurement on how I am feeling.
But feelings aren’t the same as other kinds of health metrics, like steps and heart rate and liver function. There is a great deal of disagreement on how even to measure happiness and fairly weak evidence that doing so makes us significantly happier. Less considered is the question: Could tracking happiness make us feel worse?
I think this make his argument stronger because he's challenging that can these apps that measure health off a metrics can make you feel happier.
one year spent living in a van and visiting all 50 states. (He flew to Alaska and Hawaii.)
I think that was great sarcasm. Lol.
My biggest takeaway, though, is that much of my life consists of things that I don’t particularly want to do, like folding laundry and struggling with the wording of a paragraph. Being reminded that most of my life is obligatory does not exactly spark joy.
This stood out to me the most cause it has so many levels of truth behind it.