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So, people want a lot of things out of life,

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but I think, more than anything else, they want happiness.

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Aristotle called happiness "the chief good," the end

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towards which all other things aim.

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According to this view, the reason we want a big house

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or a nice car

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or a good job

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isn't that these things are intrinsically valuable.

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It's that we expect them to bring us

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happiness.

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Now in the last 50 years, we Americans have gotten

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a lot of the things that we want. We're richer.

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We live longer. We have access to technology

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that would have seemed like science fiction

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just a few years ago.

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The paradox of happiness is that even though the

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objective conditions of our lives have improved dramatically,

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we haven't actually gotten any happier.

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Maybe because these conventional notions of progress

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haven't delivered big benefits in terms of happiness,

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there's been an increased interest in recent years

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in happiness itself.

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People have been debating the causes of happiness

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for a really long time, in fact for thousands of years,

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but it seems like many of those debates remain unresolved.

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Well, as with many other domains in life, I think

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the scientific method has the potential to answer this question.

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In fact, in the last few years, there's been an explosion

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in research on happiness. For example, we've learned a lot

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about its demographics, how things like income

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and education, gender and marriage relate to it.

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But one of the puzzles this has revealed is that

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factors like these don't seem to have a particularly strong effect.

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Yes, it's better to make more money rather than less,

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or to graduate from college instead of dropping out,

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but the differences in happiness tend to be small.

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Which leaves the question, what are the big causes of happiness?

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I think that's a question we haven't really answered yet,

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but I think something that has the potential to be an answer

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is that maybe happiness has an awful lot to do with

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the contents of our moment-to-moment experiences.

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It certainly seems that we're going about our lives,

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that what we're doing, who we're with, what we're thinking about,

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have a big influence on our happiness, and yet

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these are the very factors that have been very difficult,

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in fact almost impossible, for scientists to study.

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A few years ago, I came up with a way to study people's happiness

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moment to moment as they're going about their daily lives

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on a massive scale all over the world, something we'd never

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been able to do before. Called trackyourhappiness.org,

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it uses the iPhone to monitor people's happiness in real time.

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How does this work? Basically, I send people signals

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at random points throughout the day, and then I ask them

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a bunch of questions about their moment-to-moment experience

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at the instant just before the signal.

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The idea is that, if we can watch how people's happiness

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goes up and down over the course of the day,

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minute to minute in some cases,

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and try to understand how what people are doing,

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who they're with, what they're thinking about, and all

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the other factors that describe our day, how those might

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relate to those changes in happiness, we might be able

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to discover some of the things that really have

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a big influence on happiness.

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We've been fortunate with this project to collect

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quite a lot of data, a lot more data of this kind than I think

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has ever been collected before,

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over 650,000 real-time reports

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from over 15,000 people.

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And it's not just a lot of people, it's a really diverse group,

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people from a wide range of ages, from 18 to late 80s,

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a wide range of incomes, education levels,

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people who are married, divorced, widowed, etc.

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They collectively represent every one of

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86 occupational categories and hail from over 80 countries.

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What I'd like to do with the rest of my time with you today

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is talk a little bit about one of the areas that we've been

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investigating, and that's mind-wandering.

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As human beings, we have this unique ability

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to have our minds stray away from the present.

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This guy is sitting here working on his computer,

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and yet he could be thinking about

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the vacation he had last month,

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wondering what he's going to have for dinner.

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Maybe he's worried that he's going bald. (Laughter)

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This ability to focus our attention on something other

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than the present is really amazing. It allows us to learn

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and plan and reason in ways that no other species of animal can.

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And yet it's not clear what the relationship is

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between our use of this ability and our happiness.

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You've probably heard people suggest that you should

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stay focused on the present. "Be here now,"

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you've probably heard a hundred times.

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Maybe, to really be happy, we need to stay completely

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immersed and focused on our experience in the moment.

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Maybe these people are right. Maybe mind-wandering

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is a bad thing.

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On the other hand, when our minds wander,

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they're unconstrained. We can't change the physical reality

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in front of us, but we can go anywhere in our minds.

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Since we know people want to be happy, maybe

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when our minds wander, they're going to someplace happier than the place

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that they're leaving. It would make a lot of sense.

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In other words, maybe the pleasures of the mind

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allow us to increase our happiness with mind-wandering.

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Well, since I'm a scientist, I'd like to try to

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resolve this debate with some data, and in particular

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I'd like to present some data to you from three questions

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that I ask with Track Your Happiness. Remember, this is from

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sort of moment-to-moment experience in people's real lives.

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There are three questions. The first one is a happiness question:

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How do you feel, on a scale ranging from very bad

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to very good? Second, an activity question:

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What are you doing, on a list of 22 different activities

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including things like eating and working and watching TV?

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And finally a mind-wandering question:

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Are you thinking about something other

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than what you're currently doing?

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People could say no -- in other words, I'm focused only on my task --

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or yes -- I am thinking about something else --

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and the topic of those thoughts are pleasant,

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neutral or unpleasant.

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Any of those yes responses are what we called mind-wandering.

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So what did we find?

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This graph shows happiness on the vertical axis,

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and you can see that bar there representing how happy

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people are when they're focused on the present,

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when they're not mind-wandering.

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As it turns out, people are substantially less happy

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when their minds are wandering than when they're not.

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Now you might look at this result and say, okay, sure,

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on average people are less happy when they're mind-wandering,

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but surely when their minds are straying away

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from something that wasn't very enjoyable to begin with,

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at least then mind-wandering should be doing something good for us.

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Nope. As it turns out,

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people are less happy when they're mind-wandering

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no matter what they're doing. For example,

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people don't really like commuting to work very much.

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It's one of their least enjoyable activities, and yet

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they are substantially happier when they're focused

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only on their commute than when their mind is going

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off to something else.

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It's amazing.

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So how could this be happening? I think part of the reason,

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a big part of the reason, is that when our minds wander,

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we often think about unpleasant things, and they are

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enormously less happy when they do that,

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our worries, our anxieties, our regrets,

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and yet even when people are thinking about something

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neutral, they're still considerably less happy

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than when they're not mind-wandering at all.

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Even when they're thinking about something they would describe as pleasant,

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they're actually just slightly less happy

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than when they aren't mind-wandering.

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If mind-wandering were a slot machine, it would be like

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having the chance to lose 50 dollars, 20 dollars

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or one dollar. Right? You'd never want to play. (Laughter)

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So I've been talking about this, suggesting, perhaps,

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that mind-wandering causes unhappiness, but all

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I've really shown you is that these two things are correlated.

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It's possible that's the case, but it might also be the case

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that when people are unhappy, then they mind-wander.

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Maybe that's what's really going on. How could we ever

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disentangle these two possibilites?

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Well, one fact that we can take advantage of, I think a fact

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you'll all agree is true, is that time goes forward, not

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backward. Right? The cause has to come before the effect.

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We're lucky in this data we have many responses from each person,

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and so we can look and see, does mind-wandering

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tend to precede unhappiness, or does unhappiness

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tend to precede mind-wandering, to get some insight

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into the causal direction.

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As it turns out, there is a strong relationship between

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mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later,

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consistent with the idea that mind-wandering is causing people to be unhappy.

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In contrast, there's no relationship between being unhappy

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now and mind-wandering a short time later.

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In other words, mind-wandering very likely seems to be

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an actual cause, and not merely a consequence, of unhappiness.

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A few minutes ago, I likened mind-wandering

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to a slot machine you'd never want to play.

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Well, how often do people's minds wander?

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Turns out, they wander a lot. In fact, really a lot.

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Forty-seven percent of the time, people are thinking

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about something other than what they're currently doing.

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How does that depend on what people are doing?

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This shows the rate of mind-wandering across 22 activities

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ranging from a high of 65 percent — (Laughter) —

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when people are taking a shower, brushing their teeth,

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to 50 percent when they're working,

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to 40 percent when they're exercising,

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all the way down to this one short bar on the right

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that I think some of you are probably laughing at.

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Ten percent of the time people's minds are wandering

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when they're having sex. (Laughter)

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But there's something I think that's quite interesting in this graph,

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and that is, basically with one exception,

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no matter what people are doing, they're mind-wandering

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at least 30 percent of the time, which suggests, I think,

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that mind-wandering isn't just frequent, it's ubiquitous.

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It pervades basically everything that we do.

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In my talk today, I've told you a little bit about mind-wandering,

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a variable that I think turns out to be fairly important

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in the equation for happiness.

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My hope is that over time, by tracking people's

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moment-to-moment happiness and their experiences

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in daily life, we'll be able to uncover a lot of important causes of happiness,

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and then in the end, a scientific understanding of happiness

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will help us create a future that's not only richer

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and healthier, but happier as well.

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Thank you. (Applause)

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(Applause)