Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan and How We Are by Vincent Deary – review

Stuck in a rut? Imprisoned by habit? Two major books offer insights into how to be happy and when to make a major life changeA few years ago, in a survey conducted by an accident prevention charity, 80% of respondents admitted to going through life on autopilot: arriving at the end of a car journey with no memory of driving there, buying the same item twice without realising, even turning up at the office on a day off. The other 20% must have been lying or deluded. (Or just answering the survey on autopilot, perhaps?) To an unnerving extent – made clearer by ongoing research – we're all creatures of habit, spending our days acting out ingrained behaviours and responses over which we exert no control. This has many advantages: if our brains weren't built to convert as many actions as possible into automatic routines, we would seize up trying to breathe or walk, let alone drive a car. But it's also frightening. Treading the well-worn paths of habit, we easily get mired in jobs, relationships or ways of thinking that make us miserable, in lives we'd never have consciously chosen. "Here you are, here we all are, semi-automated creatures in our tram-track worlds, running through the paths of least resistance," as Vincent Deary puts it, in one of two new books on how we get stuck – and on finding the will to forge new paths when life demands it.Paul Dolan, an LSE economist and government well-being adviser – a man who knows his way around the Nudge Unit – h...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science and nature Psychology Books Culture Source Type: news