The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

by Gretchen Rubin

I wanted to focus on a different subject each month, and twelve months in the year gave me twelve slots to fill. Research had taught me that the most important element to happiness is social bonds, so I resolved to tackle “Marriage,” “Parenthood,” and “Friends.” I’d also learned that that my happiness depended a great deal on my perspective, so I added “Eternity” and “Attitude” to my list. Work was crucial to my happiness, and also leisure, so I included the topics “Work,” “Play,” and “Passion.” What else did I want to cover? “Energy” seemed like a basic ingredient for the success of the entire project. “Money” was a subject I knew I wanted to address. To explore some of the insights I’d come across in my research, I added “Mindfulness.” December would be a month in which I would try to follow all my resolutions perfectly—so that gave me my twelve categories.

As I continued to think about happiness after the book came out, I realized that an idea at the heart of many of these themes is "home." There aren't many universals in happiness, but for most people, and certainly for me, "home" is at the heart of happiness. If I'm not happy at home, it's hard to be happy. This realization led me to my next book HAPPIER AT HOME. There, I did a happiness project that stretched from September (the other January) until May -- because for me, the school year is a "year," even though I'm not in school any more. I undertook various resolutions, for instance, related to time, possessions, neighborhood, body, family, and what I call "interior design" (meaning, inner work). It was exciting to take the ideas that I'd thought about for THE HAPPINESS PROJECT and push them even deeper, into one area.