Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. —Carl Sandburg

Henry Ford is said to have remarked, “Business must be run at a profit, else it will die. But when anyone tries to run a business solely for profit… the business must die as well, for it no longer has a reason to exist.

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. —Jon Kabat-Zinn

For younger people, extraordinary experiences produced greater happiness than ordinary ones. However, for older people, ordinary experiences produced as much happiness as extraordinary experiences.

people with too little time are significantly less happy and less satisfied in life.

All of it" needed to involve some exercise and a decent amount of sleep, because I'm not nice without either. "All of it" needed to factor in whether I'd still have enough energy to enjoy the moments I shared with Leo

the real determinant of success and satisfaction in life isn’t so much about the money earned, but the time spent. Was there a purpose? Was it worth the investment… of time?

The extraordinary experiences tended to represent one of three buckets: life milestone—graduation, landing a great job, getting married, having a baby, having grandchildren once-in-a-lifetime vacation—climbing Machu Picchu, traveling to Paris, diving the Great Blue Hole in Belize cultural event—going to a concert, attending a professional sporting event, eating at a world-renowned restaurant

#1: Treat Your Weekend Like a Vacation When was the last time you woke up in the morning without rushing out of bed to get ready for something? When did you last linger cuddling under the covers, or chatting over breakfast, or with a cup of coffee and the morning paper splayed out on the table in front of you?

It turns out that Americans are particularly bad at taking vacations. The United States is the only industrialized nation without vacation legally mandated.

Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book The How of Happiness.