The Little Book of Lykke: Secrets of the World's Happiest People (The Happiness Institute Series)

by Meik Wiking

In Copenhagen, 45 percent of all commutes for work or education are by bike. If we look at the people working and living in Copenhagen, the number rises to 63 percent of commutes.

cycling to work is associated with a 41 percent lower risk of premature death, compared with a nonactive commute to work.

26 percent lower risk of developing heart disease, compared to the passive commuters.

Which goes to show that it’s never too late to take up healthy habits. Another Danish study found that the mortality rate is 30 percent lower for people who commute by bike, compared to passive commuters.

In addition, cycling has been shown to have a preventative effect on non-insulin-dependent diabetes, ...

“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport. It is where the rich walk and where they use bikes. We should create cities where rich and poor meet as equals: in parks, on the sidewalks, on public transport.”

His point is that great public spaces—like beautiful parks, bike paths, and walkable streets—function as social blenders; as equalizers in our cities and societies. We usually meet under the same conditions of social hierarchy. At work, you are the boss or the employee. At the restaurant, you are being served or serving others.

The reason why Danes exercise more than everybody in the EU is that they don’t see it as exercise. They see it as transportation. A small dose of fitness becomes part of your normal life instead of something you do in the gym.

build movement into your daily routine.

Part of the reason why we feel in a better mood when cycling rather than driving is that our senses are more engaged. We simply feel more alive—walking is a more sensual experience than driving. Especially if you engage in what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku.

Shinrin-yoku literally translates to “forest bathing,” or taking in the atmosphere of the forest, and refers to soaking up the sights, smells, and sounds of a natural setting to promote physiological and psychological health.

Fans of shinrin-yoku explain that it differs from hiking because it is about taking everything in and stimulating all our senses, and because it focuses on the therapeutic aspects.

What the researchers find is that, on average, participants are significantly and substantially happier outdoors in all green or natural habitats than they are in urban environments. This study provides new evidence on links between nature and well-being, strengthening existing evidence of a positive relationship between happiness and exposure to green or natural environments in our lives. To sum up, there is growing evidence that nature has a positive effect on our health and happiness. In addition, shinrin-yoku may help you get out of your head and experience the data coming through your senses. In fact, I see a lot of parallels between shinrin-yoku and the increasingly popular practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, where the belief is that the human pursuit of everlasting happiness leads to suffering. We feel pain because

nothing lasts. Mindfulness is about being present.

found that the GNH Curriculum significantly increased student well-being and improved academic performance.

South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the OECD, and a high incidence of depression. Depression is a disease, but it is treatable.

Out of the twenty-eight OECD countries, South Korea ranks twenty-seventh when it comes to the consumption of antidepressants; Denmark ranks seventh. Does this mean that Danes are more depressed than the Koreans? No, it just means they are getting some sort of treatment. Whether medication is the right sort of treatment is up for discussion, but it is a good thing to be a society in which treatment for mental illness is available and affordable (subsidized by the government) and in which the stigma around mental illness has been reduced sufficiently that people feel able to seek treatment.

“We were just tired: tired of the long working hours; tired of the long commute; tired of feeling a bit like strangers when we finally had time at the weekends. I go to bed early and Simon worked really long hours, so some days we wouldn’t see each other at all.”

If there is one thing all expats in Denmark mention, it is the work-life balance. “You have a fundamentally different approach to time here. You value that families have time to eat together, every day. We might have earned more in London, but we had far less time.”

For many expats, the greatest change is in fact the shift in work-life balance; they describe Danish offices as being like morgues after five p.m. If you work on the weekend, Danes suspe...

The average annual hours worked per worker is 1,457 in Denmark, compared to 1,674 in the UK, 1,790 in the US, and an OECD average of 1,766. Danes also enjoy a high level of flexibility at work—working from home and choosing what time to start their working day.

In addition, there is a minimum of five weeks’ paid vacation for all employees.

First of all, while children may have a negative impact on one dimension of happiness (such as overall life satisfaction), having them is found to have a positive effect on another dimension of happiness—the eudaemonic dimension, which focuses on the sense of purpose or meaning in life. Second, children have a different impact on the happiness of women than that of men, as women, traditionally, have taken on a greater share of the responsibility and burden of raising kids. According to Luca Stanca, professor and author of “The Geography of Parenthood and Well-Being,” the parenting penalty is 65 percent higher for women.

Third, kids come in different sizes and ages. While a one-year-old baby who denies you your sleep for months may make you miserable right now, fifty years from now that child may be a source of joy when you’re sitting in a retirement home. Studies also show that, among widows and widowers, having a child has a positive effect on life satisfaction.

Parents in the US are 12 percent less satisfied with their life than their nonparent peers; in Britain, the gap is 8 percent; in Denmark, it is 3 percent. There is a small happiness gap in Sweden and Norway of around 2 percent—but in Sweden and Norway parents are happier than people without kids. The Scandinavian countries consistently come out on top in family-friendly rankings; however, Sweden outperforms Denmark for balancing family and work. For instance, Swedish parents are entitled to spend sixty days a year at home caring for a sick child under the age of twelve.

In countries with the best packages, the parental happiness penalty was eliminated. However, the happiest parents seem to be found in Portugal.

the US and Papua New Guinea are the only two countries in the world that do not have a policy in place to give mothers paid time off after having a baby, and added that, if America really loved its mothers, then it would go beyond celebrating them once a year and implement a policy that would help them in their daily lives.

“Some of the best decisions we make come from that inner voice that says, ‘Why not?’ That says, ‘Andiamo.’ So much disappointment arises from what is desired but not chosen.”

Louise and Tom brought their five-month-old daughter with them when they moved, and they soon discovered that the attitude about how you raise children is different in Italy too. Their daughter’s feet are tickled by strangers, and they will also tell the parents that eight p.m. is way too early to put a toddler to bed. But it was also having their daughter that made them look for positions overseas.

I remember my dad telling me at a very early age that you should not focus on potential earnings when it comes to a job but on the satisfaction you would get from doing it. “You are going to spend a huge part of your life working—it should be something you enjoy.”

According to the World Happiness Report, the self-employed are worse off in many ways, including income, hours of work, and job security, but even so, they often report higher levels of overall job satisfaction than do the employed, at least in OECD countries.

Why are entrepreneurs in OECD countries happier than employees, but not in all poorer countries? The answer lies in the reason behind the decision to become an entrepreneur. Did we start our own business because we wanted to—or did we start a business because there were no opportunities in the regular labor market?

Entrepreneurs have a greater sense of purpose, of direction in life, but studies also confirm the widely held notion that greater freedom and the opportunity to be your own boss are sources of happiness both at work and outside work.

However, while many desire the freedom that entrepreneurs enjoy, fewer want the risk that comes with it. So, it is worth looking for ways to enjoy greater autonomy and freedom at work as a regular employee.

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” To come at this from a different angle, schedule when you have to start a task—and when you have to finish it.

of Remote: Office Not Required, meetings and managers undermine our productivity. In short, meetings are employees talking about work that they have done or work that they are going to do, and managers are people whose job it is to interrupt people. Both are killing our productivity.

the first or last of every month—and make it the rule that nobody in the office can talk to one another that day.

The aim was to ensure four hours of “thinking time”—and to measure the effect this had. The pilot lasted seven months, and 71 percent of the participants recommended extending it to other departments and Intel found that the trial had been “successful in improving employee effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of life for numerous employees in diverse job roles.”

58 percent of Danes (according to YouGov) say they would continue to work even if they no longer had to for financial reasons—say,

one part of this proper design is to provide people with an element of freedom: free time without interruptions.

The idea that the car is the ultimate symbol of freedom is quintessentially American, but car advertisements the world over promise that you will be driving on meandering roads by the coast, surrounded by nature, with no other car in sight. In reality, we are more likely to be surrounded by traffic congestion and inching our way through rush hour while horns play a symphony of anger and frustration. That feels a long way from freedom. The car has become a ball and chain—it seems only to take us further away from happiness.

In it, 909 American women rated their morning commute as the worst time of the day. Then came work—and then came the commute home.

According to a study by the OECD, people in South Africa and South Korea spend roughly twice as much time commuting per day as people in Ireland and Denmark. However, the longest commute is said to be in Bangkok, where people spend an average of two hours each day on their way to and from work.

There is also a lot of variation within countries. In the UK, people working in London endure the longest average commute (seventy-four minutes),

and it has also been reported that almost 2 million Britons are traveling three hour...

Using people who travel between one and fifteen minutes to get to work as the benchmark or reference group, it becomes clear that everyone else—those who need longer than that to get to work—feels less happy, while people who work from home (or live very close to their workplace) are happier.

However, it is interesting to notice that people traveling more than three hours for work are no more anxious than people who have a one- to fifteen-minute commute. We do not fully understand why the negative effects of the commute seem to vanish once you hit three hours. Perhaps this group can make better use of their commute by reading or working—and perhaps they have made a conscious choice to work in London but live in the countryside and the benefits of their living environment counteract the negative effect of the commute.

the worst effects of commuting are associated with journeys lasting between an hour and an hour and a half.

In 2017, a two-year social experiment was launched in which two thousand citizens were given a guaranteed income of 560 euros ($670) a month, regardless of income, wealth, or employment status. The Finns hope it will cut red tape, reduce poverty, and boost employment.