I created a spreadsheet to measure how effectively I'm manifesting happiness in my life. You did realize this was a geeky blog, right? First, I created 7 interest areas which represent how I want to spend my time, including Physical Activity, Learning, Creativity, Socializing, Family Time, Income Generation, and Spirit. Yours may be different, but that seemed like a logical categorization for me. Next, I listed out each of the activities I do on a regular basis (once a month or more) and rated them in each of the seven areas, from 0 to 1. So an activity like going to a dance party is very physical as well as social, but not income-generating. Or a D&D night may be very creative and social, but not physical.
I then graphed all the activities together, rated by the seven interest areas.
This gives me a visual representation of how much I'm getting in each area, just measured by the number of activites I do. I can see that I do a lot of social activities, but not very many learning activities.
Next, I added a couple columns to my spreadsheet so I can record the number of days per week I do each activity (sometimes fractional like 0.25 if I only do it once a month), and the number of hours in each shift. This gives me an approximate time that I spend on each activity per week.
This graph shows how much time I'm spending in each of my interest areas each week.
This gives me a quick way to see which interest areas are really high (income generation), and which are low. In this case, my three lowest areas are Physical Activity, Family Time and Learning.
This is where one of my favorite Permaculture concepts comes in: Stacking Functions.
Effie (my wife) & I have decided to take a Trapeze class together at Sky Candy, an aerial dance school run by our friends. This class will help me raise the numbers in all three interest areas at the same time!
And that is happiness math.