The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning

by Scott Galloway

Potter The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is the best product on the market, full stop. Creative attractions, great personnel, visually stunning, inspiring. The crush of humanity waiting to ride on a bookcase through Hogwarts is easy to be cynical about when you’re a glass-half-empty type of guy like I am. The first day was fine. The Wizarding World was wonderful: Butterbeer and rides that are both well done and like a blast of chemo—sure to make you nauseous. The Wizarding World has also mastered segmentation and offers Harry Potter’s wand—eleven inches long, made of holly with a phoenix feather core—for $49. But wait, there’s more. The wand can make crazy-cool shit happen, as wands are supposed to, when you wave one at a window in Diagon Alley. A book page turns on its own (I know, amazing, a page that turns on its own). However, if you want the page-turning wand, you need to purchase the stick with “interactive powers” for $59. We capped the day at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium & Savory Feast Kitchen, which is a parent’s way of saying, “I love you so much, I’ll let you eat chocolate and marshmallows for dinner.” The second day was a real test: Volcano Bay. A water park designed by Neil Armstrong and Jason from Friday the 13th. Your TapuTapu wearable can be preloaded with your caste status. Or maybe not—we have to go to the park concierge to get another wearable in case we want to cut the line. My son and his best friend, Charlie, a wonderful boy who is happy, polite...

Tomorrow vs. Today Stanford professor Walter Mischel studied delayed gratification, offering children a small reward: one marshmallow—or two marshmallows, if they didn’t eat the first one after being left alone with it. The study tracked the kids, and those with the discipline to leave the first marshmallow alone were more successful later in life. Our education system and culture focus on getting kids to be little gratification delayers. Few parents scream at their kids, “I need you to be more in the moment!” But as we get older, and encounter more x factor, we start wondering, “Why am I so fucking stressed today, trying to build a better tomorrow, when I’m equally stressed the next day? When does tomorrow, the reward, become today?”