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Page history last edited by Jan 14 years, 9 months ago

Happiness = :)

 

Scott Adams' Happiness Formula. Taken from this blog post:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/happiness_formu.html

 

 

:) = Health + Money + Social Life + Meaning

!

(Please don't edit this formula)

 

 

The Happiness Formula is a simple formula for troubleshooting your life and improving your happiness. As stated by Scott Adams in his blog, the Happiness Formula "describes a way to get you to your own best happiness potential." Originally, Scott envisioned publishing this formula as a book, but thought it would be too short; he suggested a wiki instead, and here we are.

 

The highest priorities appear first (leftmost) in the formula. For example, in the Formula shown above, Health is a higher priority than Money, which is a higher priority than Social Life, etc.

 

Each component of the "main" happiness formula links to nested formulas, that further explain each component of happiness. This continues until we reach a point where we can give practical advice about a specific component. Each page of this wiki contains a formula that describes a component of happiness, or practical advice related to one of the many, many components.

 

The happiness formula is not a tool to actually calculate, measure, or compare your happiness to anyone elses; instead, you can use it to explore your own cirumstances, and potentially find ways to increase the amount of happiness in your life.

 

 

"I think it’s fair to say that the Happiness Formula describes a way to get you to your own best happiness potential"

- Scott Adams

 


 

 

Alternative Formulae

 

All of the various alternatives previously specified here have been moved to the new Alternatives page. Let us keep this page relatively "pure" with what Scott Adams originally stated, and above all, don't edit or extend the above formula.

 

about this Wiki

 

 

Comments (15)

Anonymous said

at 12:38 pm on Mar 31, 2007

Someone has vandalized the site again, this time deleting the four pages Health, Money, Meaning. I wish to thank that person for being so considerate and thinking of others.

Jan said

at 5:05 pm on Mar 31, 2007

Anybody who has a copy of the removed pages, please restore them. I pity the poor soul who had nothing more interesting to do than destroy the toys of others. Upgrading the wiki seems a good idea, because then deleting pages can be reserved to moderators.

Scott Tietjen said

at 12:28 am on Apr 1, 2007

It's a pain to do, but it may be possible to recreate a lot of the four missing pages by carefully going through the history and expanding the changes made over time. It might not get everything, but at least some parts won't have been lost. I wonder if the original creator has any sort of copies, even of their original content -- better to start them from scratch than from nothing.

Anonymous said

at 7:39 am on Apr 1, 2007

Found my most meaningful contributions via Google's cache...

"Meaning" and "Purpose" are found...

Anonymous said

at 11:30 am on Apr 1, 2007

I grabbed a backup from 3/27 and have restored some pages from there. I can't afford the 10 a month at the moment to upgrade. What are the thoughts on changing the password and giving it out on request?

Scott Tietjen said

at 2:48 pm on Apr 1, 2007

Erik, thanks for reloading those pages. I just used the Backup feature to create a Zip of the current site, and then uploaded it to the Files page -- we should do this every so often just in case we get vandalism. It's not perfect, but it's better than doing nothing. May I also suggest the MyPBWiki feature, that keeps your identity alive, and allows you to directly access wikis here easier than having to log in with the password all the time.

Jan said

at 5:16 pm on Apr 1, 2007

Whew, this looks better. Great work everybody! :-)

Jan said

at 2:56 pm on Apr 8, 2007

I'm wondering whether an item is missing in the formula, between Health and Money: a word that expresses the possibility to take control of ones own life and take decisions to improve it. Freedom? Or maybe its already implied in the formula itself.

Anonymous said

at 5:36 pm on Apr 20, 2007

Reverted Frontpage to the previous version, after some funny guy changed the formula like this:
http://happinessformula.pbwiki.com/FrontPage.2007-04-20-18-22-31

Scott Tietjen said

at 4:07 am on Jul 6, 2007

josebellamy_21@hotmail.com (jequerty) just committed major vandalism on this site -- trying to locate all of his trash and reverting it.

Anonymous said

at 6:49 am on Jul 7, 2007

Restored several deleted pages.
For $99/year we could upgrade this wiki to premium which would allow to restrict "delete"-permission to admins.

Anonymous said

at 10:29 am on Feb 22, 2009

Removed alternate formula from front page (there's a separate page for alternate formulae.
The poster proposed to add "Family" as contributing to happiness, but this is already included in "Social life", subpart "Meaningful Personal Connections". http://happinessformula.pbwiki.com/Meaningful+Personal+Connection.
Sassy, thanks for your contribution anyway.

Scott Tietjen said

at 9:29 pm on Mar 5, 2009

converted the wiki to their 2.0 layout -- a bit better control over it that way.

Maciek said

at 7:06 pm on Nov 27, 2010

Noob question: is there a hierarchical/tree view of the formula, where all the expressions in the equations have been "expanded out"? Considering the brevity of the "main point/formula" of each page, I think this would be a useful (and cool) representation and visualization...

Scott Tietjen said

at 7:49 am on Jul 7, 2011

user ramonturner(tillmanbrewer6l@hotmail.com) vandalized a couple pages by adding links to some schlock essay writing service (probably to get hit counts). The edits have been reverted and the user removed from wiki access.

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