--- title: How to Find Happiness in Today’s Hectic World description: “Good enough is almost always good enough” canonical: https://time.com/3722457/find-happiness-hectic-world/ author: Eric Barker article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-28T05:01:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:49:36.591Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How to Find Happiness in Today’s Hectic World og:description: “Good enough is almost always good enough” og:url: https://time.com/3722457/find-happiness-hectic-world/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03e3f033195b9e66/698780f406f2c1cbc2334283/gettyimages_72004362-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3350 og:image:height: 1884 og:image:alt: man-playing-trumpet-park-bench og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How to Find Happiness in Today’s Hectic World twitter:description: “Good enough is almost always good enough” twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03e3f033195b9e66/698780f406f2c1cbc2334283/gettyimages_72004362-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How to Find Happiness in Today’s Hectic World > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success [Watch (HLS stream): The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/HSYDj99Q.m3u8) (17:44)  _Published 2015-02-17. The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success_ by [Eric Barker](https://time.com/author/eric-barker/) ## Eric Barker Feb 28, 2015 5:01 AM UTC  Senior African man playing trumpet on bench in park Senior African man playing trumpet on bench in park Getty Images by [Eric Barker](https://time.com/author/eric-barker/) ## Eric Barker Feb 28, 2015 5:01 AM UTC Trying to find happiness in a world so [busy and complicated](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/04/busy/) can seem impossible. What’s weird is that in so many ways our lives are objectively better than our grandparents’ lives were. We have more… yet we often feel worse. Don’t you wonder if life was happier when it was simpler? I do. Who has the explanation for this? And more importantly, who has answers on how to fix it? I don’t. But I know someone who does. So I gave Barry Schwartz a call. He’s a professor at Swarthmore College and the author of the bestseller, [The Paradox of Choice](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TDGGVU/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TDGGVU&linkCode=as2&tag=spacforrent-20&linkId=KDXCIXG5YPV4P5TX). Barry’s work explains why more choice can actually make us miserable and what we can do to simplify our lives and become happier. His fantastic [TED talk](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry%5Fschwartz%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fparadox%5Fof%5Fchoice?language=en) on the subject has been viewed over 7 million times. Here’s what you’ll learn in the post below: * Why a world of so many choices can make us unhappy. * Why always wanting the best can be a path to clinical depression. * How gratitude and relationships can be the key to fixing these dilemmas. * The one sentence you need to remember to start on a path to a simpler, happier life. Less really is more. Here’s why. ## The Paradox of Choice Economics tells us that more choice is better. And for most of human existence that has been true. But [research](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/10/is-having-more-choices-always-a-good-thing/) is showing that more choice is not always better. Overflowing email inboxes, 500 television channels and 175 different kinds of salad dressing at the grocery store don’t make life drastically better — it’s paralyzing. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- What happens when your employer gives you more choices for your 401K? I’ll tell you what: for every 10 options given the likelihood that you pick any of them goes down by 2%. And if your employer matches your contribution, not picking can mean giving up as much as $5000\. More choices can make people poorer. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- More options in the dating market should mean you’re more likely to meet the perfect person, right? Wrong. In a study of speed dating people were more likely to find a match when they had only 6 choices instead of 12\. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- New York has more single people than any city but research shows this makes it [harder to find a spouse there](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/02/why-is-it-so-hard-to-find-a-spouse-in-nyc/). And the scary thing is that choice doesn’t just paralyze us — it also makes us unhappy. Seeing more options makes you more likely to second guess yourself and experience regret. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- (For new Harvard research on how to be happier and more successful, click [here](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/09/be-more-successful/).) Okay, fancy studies on 401k’s and dating are nice but maybe that doesn’t seem relevant to you day to day. The problem goes deeper than that. A lot deeper. ## How Choices Are Making Your Life Unhappy [Work-life balance](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/03/work-life-balance/) is a huge issue these days. But it’s hard to put your finger on exactly why. Our lives are far more flexible. Shouldn’t that promote happiness? But years ago, when you left work, you were done. Now with technology, we can work anywhere at any time. Every minute you spend with friends or playing with your kids is a minute you could be working. So you need to decide. That decision didn’t exist in the past. But having it in the back of your head all the time is enormously stressful. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- Do you feel like you’re [procrastinating](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/01/how-to-stop-procrastinating/) more? You probably are. It’s not because we’ve all gotten lazier. More decisions at every turn makes it harder to choose. And so we put things off because it’s just too much. The proliferation of choices is even giving you an identity crisis. In the modern era we have more freedom to be who we want to be. And in many ways that’s great. But it also means more decisions. When there weren’t many choices, what you picked didn’t say much about you. But now everything, including the clothes you wear, can and does say something about you. So it has stakes attached. And that’s stressful too. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- And all these high stakes decisions at every turn are making us unhappy. Yes, we’re richer. Yes, we have more options. And depression is exploding in the developed world. Via [The Paradox of Choice](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TDGGVU/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TDGGVU&linkCode=as2&tag=spacforrent-20&linkId=KDXCIXG5YPV4P5TX): --- > “” --- (To learn how to stop being lazy and get more done, click [here](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/08/how-to-stop-being-lazy/).) What underlies all this? We love choices but they can make us miserable. If we understand the psychology better can we address the problem? Yes. ## “It’s All Your Fault.” In his book, [The Paradox of Choice](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TDGGVU/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TDGGVU&linkCode=as2&tag=spacforrent-20&linkId=KDXCIXG5YPV4P5TX), Barry discusses a number of reasons why so many choices can hurt well-being but let’s focus on one here: **“It’s all your fault.”** When the world doesn’t give you much choice and things don’t work out the way you want, it’s the world’s fault. What else could you have done? But when you have 100 options and you don’t choose well the burden shifts because you could have picked better. If you’re unhappy with your choice now it’syour fault. And whether you’re cognizant of it or not, that can make you sad. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- Who suffers the most in a world of so much choice? Ironically, it’s the people who strive to get the best. “Satisficers” (those who settle for “good enough”) [are happier](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/08/is-it-better-to-settle/). “Maximizers” (people who explore every option to make the best decision) end up doing better — but feeling worse. Students who were maximizers in trying to get the best job after graduation ended up better off — they got salaries that were 20% higher. But they ended up more unhappy with their jobs than satisficers did. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- We’re constantly told to never settle. But in a world of limitless choice, that presents a nearly insurmountable hurdle to being happy. (For more on how Navy SEALs, astronauts and samurai make great decisions under pressure, click [here](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/05/decision-making/).) So more choices can make us miserable. But is there anything we can do about it? Yes, there is. ## 3 Things That Will Make You Happier Barry offers a number of solutions in [his book](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TDGGVU/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TDGGVU&linkCode=as2&tag=spacforrent-20&linkId=KDXCIXG5YPV4P5TX). Here are three to get you started: **1) Keep an “attitude of gratitude”** There’s [tons of research](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/09/how-to-live-a-happy-life/) on the power of gratitude to make us happier. We have a natural tendency to see the negative. But by making an effort to note the good things that happen in life we can fight the regret that so many choices often creates. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- (The best way to build that attitude of gratitude is [here](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/05/the-most-proven-technique-for-increasing-long/).) **2) Be a satisficer — with maximizer friends** In some areas, being a “maximizer” and not settling for less can certainly be valuable. But most decisions are in trivial areas, and the downside of choosing wrong isn’t worth feeling overwhelmed and making yourself unhappy. So be a “satisficer” and choose the “pretty good” option quickly. I can already hear some people complaining: “But then I’ll miss out! I won’t get the best.” But there’s a way to have both. Be a satisficer and rely on your maximizer friends to choose for you. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- **3) Be a chooser, not a picker** Picking from 100 options is a nightmare. So don’t look at all the options. First, ask what’s important to you. Then choose the first one you see that has all those elements. Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- You need constraints. Limitations. We think we always want freedom but that’s just not true. What does the research say makes us happier than anything else? [Strong relationships](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/03/lifelong-studies-agree-living-long-happy-life/). But relationships constrain us. You don’t move to another city because your spouse doesn’t want to go there. You don’t take that fancy job because the hours would mean you wouldn’t have time to see your friends or your kids. Barry says what we often fail to realize is that those constraints are welcome. They make decisions easier. They make life simpler. They make it “not your fault.” And so they make us happier. (To learn a shortcut to bonding with a romantic partner on a deeper level, click [here](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/08/is-there-a-shortcut-to-bonding-with-a-romanti/).) We need to satisfice more and maximize less. So what’s one sentence you can keep in mind to simplify your life and remind you of how to find happiness in a world of overwhelming choice? ## The Most Important Thing To Remember **“Good enough is almost always good enough.”** Here’s Barry: --- > “” --- You’ll be happier if you stop trying to make all your choices perfect and you just focus on what’s really important. That’s good enough. **_This piece originally appeared on_** [**_Barking Up the Wrong Tree_**](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/02/how-to-find-happiness/)**_._** **Join over 161,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email** [**here**](http://eepurl.com/o6uAD)**.** Related posts: [New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/09/be-more-successful/) [The 8 Things The Happiest People Do Every Day](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/06/happiest-people/) [How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done – 5 Expert Tips](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/08/how-to-stop-being-lazy/) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] The Nantucket Project. Every year, The Nantucket Project invites leaders from business, sports, academia, government and the arts to give The Talk of Their Lives. Before the weekend ends, our audience singles out one talk from the dozens they're heard as the highest impact. I'm a total junkie for story. I read and write and live by them and every couple of years, I write some down and then I go city to city and read from my books. And over all these years trafficking in story, I've noticed a little problem which is the standard pieces of good story, at least judging by what we teach and also by what we reward most handsomely, can get in the way of reaching of what I consider to be the Mount Everest of human emotions which is to say the very hardest place to get to. But also where the views are sort of life- changing, choose acceptance. And by accept, I mean, when we acknowledge the nature of the beast, and the beast's nature. So, another way to get at it is to look at the antonyms for accept, which are reject, spurn, deny. Another way to get at it is to talk about Temple Grandin, the famous gifted artistic woman who knew early on as did everyone whoever met her that her mind work differently and rather than deny or reject that or try to fix it, she said this is how my mind works and I'm going to work with what I have got. And, as you probably know, she totally revolutionized the way we treat cattle in this country. So I posted, to get sort of real world on this, I posted on my Facebook page what have you had to accept over your lifetime and what happened after you accepted it. And then about ten minutes I got a master's degree in higher order processing. My friends have had to accept multiple sclerosis, brain damage, stage IV ovarian cancer, four types of addiction, losing a father to murder, a mother to suicide. Everything to a fire, a son who has Rett syndrome, a daughter with diabetes, a son who wants to become a daughter. And all manner of ****. [ LAUGH ] Boss, stepfather, ex. Here's a short list of things that we are all invited to accept, over a lifetime. Our childhoods, which include the flaws of our mothers and fathers. And the cruelties of the neighborhood kid, and the prom date. And the coach we thought had our back. Our children and their mysterious insecurities and tattoos and scars and lost potential. And choice in mates. Our spouses and the many thing they do different from us. Ourselves. The deadly sins, all seven of them. The weather, inconvenient or ruthless. And the irreversible trajectory of all human bodies. So clearly acceptance, arduous though it is, is going to be required of us. Thankfully acceptance gives back. In every single response on Facebook the person said that once they actually crossed over. They set loose an internal freedom what they've never known and that created a possibility for a qualitatively different kind of happiness and productivity. I got going on this whole acceptance thing about four or five years ago when I started working on this book, Glitter and Glue, which I thought was going to be about being a nanny but it turned out to be about my mother. Who like to say your father's the glitter but I'm the glue. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] My mother and I have virtually nothing in common. I am a dance on the table until midnight extrovert. effusive, affectionate, second- guessing, self- doubting woman who like nothing better than a long hug and a good cry. And my mother, do you watch Downtown Abbey? [ LAUGH ] My mother's Maggie Smith. She is an old school opinionated woman who like nothing better than what she calls a party for one. [ INAUDIBLE ] [ LAUGH ] Which sounds a lot more interesting than it is, I assure you. [ LAUGH ] It's when you pour a nice glad of chardonnay over ice. And you take off your bra, and you grab your library book, and go somewhere no one can find. Now, I have a lot of stories about my mom, and I've been telling them my whole life. Like, for instance, she's a chronic regifter. And by regifting, she takes it to a whole new level. Which is to say, if you were to give her anything, like the bag of goodies I got upon arrival, she would open them very gingerly. And then she would write in pencil on the bottom what it was. And then she would take it home and put it in her closet, her gift closet. And then right before Christmas, she sets up what she calls the store. [ LAUGH ] Which is in the upstairs bedroom that's empty. She lays out all the things she's been given over the course of the year. The lotions and the candles and the strange scarves. And, then puts a little price tag on them and she sells them to her children. [ LAUGH ]. [ LAUGH ] So that we can give them to our aunts and uncles and godparents who we've forgotten to buy a gift for. [ LAUGH ] And I asked her if she minded me telling you that and she said, Betty Moran told me re- gifting is green. [ LAUGH ]. But strangely, in the process of thinking her through it takes years to write a book. There's so many rewrites and conversations. I finally stopped trying to change her. To make her more liberal or spendy or outgoing or even to just to get her switch from Folger's coffee crystals to brewed coffee. [ LAUGH ] I understood for the first time that her way of being in the world is the right way for her. And sometimes, when I'm accepting her, it spills over into my ability to embrace the reality of my own children. And even occassionally, my husband. Though not when he packs the dishwasher because in that case, he does it wrong. [ LAUGH ] Life Mount Everest, acceptance is a really hard place to stay. The air is thin. And I find that I keep falling back into the fight for things to conform to how they should and should not be. And I think those expectations are established. by the conscious and subconscious and sometimes totally unconscious pull to narrative. It's glorious arcs and it's promising, reassuring internal logics that, like it or not, life refuses to replicate. So if you think about it, we learn in elementary school and then again in middle school and again in high school, to look for the five part dramatic structure that's underneath all the stories we're consuming. Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, best of all, denouement, which is a French word that means untie. But my daughter's teacher defined it as the catharsis following, a return to normality. Doesn't that sound fabulous? [ LAUGH ] Then we graduate into the world and we consume and, and produce all kinds of content, literary and cinematic and lyrical. And the world says, you want a winning story. Give me a character I can root for, take him on a journey, and give me a resolution. This goes way back, of course, to Homer and Shakespeare, where certain appetites were created, or maybe just reinforced. For instance, the heroes we love to love are the reluctant nominees like Odysseus. The villains we love to hate are the unseemly power grabbers like Lady Macbeth, which is fine for fiction. The problem is when we start wanting and even expecting real regular people to behave like the archetypal characters we know from our favorite stories. So for a tiny example of narratives influence, in politics the reluctant hero thing goes, if you really want me to run, I will. Nobody ever says I've wanted to be president since I was in kindergarten. In my world, the world of writing, it goes, I didn't hunt down an agent or corner the editor at the party. I was discovered. [ LAUGH ] We lean towards stories of destiny. An organic rise confers authenticity. And that is established or reinforced, or some unholy cycle of the two ,. By story and that might be making it harder to set partners and candidates and colleagues who are staying in this tiny case, a complex mix of ambition and good luck. Speaking of spurning complect, complexity, I was watching cable news in the airport and there were stories about Hillary Clinton and their doctor who performed Joan Rivers' last procedure. And, of course, Roger Goodell. Depending on what channel you watch, they're idiots or prodigies, schemers or innocents. Nobody, it seems, can resist the pull to narrative and that's making for a whole lot of anger and intolerance this isn't much different of course, than the leaders of startups who continually edit their narrative until it seems like one predestined step after another. It's all totally understandable. But these sorts of legendary rises can be fatally dangerous to fledgling inventors and entrepreneurs, who were planning to get to the Holy Land by surface streets instead of rocket ships. Speaking of fatally discouraging, every high school kid I know has bought into this powerful myth. Hero works hard. Hero goes to Yale. Hero has great life, which leaves the community college kids and the kids who worked very hard but got rejected anyway agonizing over the unthinkable fate that awaits them. And God help the heroes who went to Yale and are not having a great life. Most dangerously, though, spontaneous narrative structuring happens, and it happens all the time, between friends. Journalists talk about this thing. It's a tension between truth- telling and something they refer broadly, refer to broadly as civic uplift. Which is sort of shaping the story to give the public what the public needs, especially during times of crisis. I think we might all be participating in casual civic uplifting. It's hyper apparent now, as we all become micro medio, media outlets on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Presenting thin- sliced versions of our lives, mastering the art of the interpersonal headline. It's harmless, or maybe this is why teen depression and anxiety are at record levels. Because their lives are publicly and quantitatively less populated and eventful than @ jennygogo's. And Ryan and his 764 Instagram friends who follow him everywhere. Where long form nuanced interaction is concerned. We're so out of practice, we almost don't know how. I was recently in a room of adults. And a kid was behind us on the floor, making this crazy collage that made no sense. And while some of us are sorta awkwardly struggling to get a conversation going with her, her basketball playing brother came home and everyone spun around and said, did you win? What was the score? The team lost it turns out, because the refs were blind. And voila, we had a villain. Here was a plot we all knew how to discuss. All the while, the already kid noodled on the floor behind us with her amorphous project that nobody knew how to talk about. Speaking of things people don't know how to talk about, I had cancer in my 30s, and it was kind of stunning how many conversations that year included. Was it in your family? You're so brave and what a wake up call. I totally appreciate that it is unbearable for bad things to just happen unbidden. I feel the same way all the time. But the truth is, that after every one of those conversations I felt a little heavy hearted. Like I couldn't give them the civic uplift they were asking for. I don't have the genetic predisposition which would have been a nice first chapter of my story. There's not one heroic thing about me, and though it would have been nice to claim that cancer reprioritized my life, I didn't need a wake up call. I already knew that I was lucky. We do this for a lot of reasons besides the biggie which is our kind of old as time caveman craving for order and reason. One reason is to establish consistency. So we want to feel integrated across the stages and compartments of our lives. I call it the interview effect or the first date effect, which is when you're. Job as Class Secretary in tenth grade led to your Organizational Development Degree at Stanford which led to consulting for the Fortune 500 which led to the creation of your firm. And then you know, look at the pain that's caused by perceived inconsistencies, like gay christians or libertarian artists or philanthropic dopers. Another reason we do it is to suspend reality. I mean who really wants to face an impending financial reckoning? Or deal with a souring marriage? Who wants to say their candidate blew it? Or that some problems cannot be straightened out just by cleaning house? And sometimes we artificially flavor as a means to invention, so we articulate this vision using all the heartening beats of narrative. And it's an essential step in creating something new. We tell our investors and our job candidates and our early adopters the story of how our essential whatever. Emerged organically from a latent need only we could see. But the simplified narratives that we're creating and projecting and consuming, tempt us into forgetting that family, more than the milestone birthdays, is a dicey damn business. And marriage has hardly a thing to do with anniversary dinners. Products often fail and policies usually come up short one way or another. All the Photoshopping, literally and metaphorically, is leaving us feeling ripped off when our heroes have colossal blind spots. When our most important relationships go in circles. And when catharsis, followed by a return to normalcy, is nowhere to be found. I do know a few people who seem to live with a kind of radical honesty, who rarely negate or reject that which makes them uncomfortable. One is my cousin Kathy who lost her 19 year old, the great, but not perfect Aaron Zentgraf in a car accident. She told me once that for many years she asked herself why did this happen and she finally figured it out. It happened because it can. Cars can flip, glass can break, metal can pierce. Seeing that clearly, accepting the unadulterated reality, set her free. So here's a few things that we can do. Check in daily with complex content. Long- form journalist, journalism. I still love The New Yorker but I'm also reading everyday on medium. com. Literary fiction. HBO. Have you seen The Leftovers? [ APPLAUSE ] Yeah! My one person. But that's really com, that is really complex storytelling. To be on guard for the cognitive moment. When people become characters, when a series of events becomes a plot, when endings become tidy. I know that I'm tacking on a [ UNKNOWN ] when I hear myself invoke destiny with lines like, I could have told you from day one, and absolutisms like always, only, everyone. Catharsis is created, not found. Which means, all resolutions, and this is such great news, is of our making. And maybe our best defense against narrative creep, and the unnecessary, and sometimes, even crippling dissatisfaction it can generate. Is to keep at least one confidant on all matters. A real friend, with whom we trade the unadorned truth of our lives. Non- conforming, inconsistent, notably deficient in many areas. That's the shared reality we're being asked to accept and that's the mountain I hope to summit before it's all over. Maybe I'll see you there. 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