Chapter 3 – Positive Psychology Questionnaires Happiness = Pleasure + flow + meaning 3.1 How to calculate it? Martin Seligman, leading positive psychologists, offer a wealth of questionnaires in their books and websites, more information are provided in 3.3. Considering such questionnaires are self-calculated using their online version, here we just provide extremely simplified versions: Happiness (Seligman) = Pleasure + flow + meaning Simplified version = [(Hours spent doing pleasant activities) + (Hours spent in total immersion) + (Hours spent doing meaningful activities)] / Number of days considered Pleasant activities
Total immersion
Meaningful activties
Total hours
Number of days
Happy hours per day
For simplicity, you can calculate this by adding the average amount of hours you spend in one day doing what brings you pleasure, what starts a flow and what really gives a meaning to your life. For example: 30 minutes spent eating + 120 minutes spent speaking on the phone with clients + 60 minutes spent volunteering Or you can have a more detailed view, for example by keeping a diary for one month where you write the way you allocate your time daily, and then divide it by the number of days in that month.
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