Another equation for happiness

The equation for human happiness is actually quite simple, the psychologist Arthur Brooks maintains. It’s What you have divided by what you want. So there are two ways to get happier: increase the numerator or decrease the denominator. The first way — acquiring more haves — gives you a sugary buzz that quickly fades. The second way is the real jam. We can become happy, permanently and securely, by wanting less.

Shockingly, even Charlie Munger recently came to almost the same conclusion. Just months before his death in November at age 99, Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man and one of the main faces in the shop window of American capitalism, said something at the Berkshire Hathaway AGM that must have hit the arena full of shareholders like a gut punch: “I think the best road ahead to human happiness is to expect less.” “Expect less” and “want less” aren’t quite the same thing, but in this company it’s staggeringly heretical; and in any context it’s a start, because expecting less can put pressure on you to want less, if only to resolve the little war in your own id.

Harry Flood