Number of words: 331 It’s this ‘more faster’ aspect of ‘more happy me’ that particularly disturbs Elliott, the author of The New Individualism: the Emotional Costs of Globalization. “Our quick-fix society is very different from the days of Freudianism. People used to commit to a lengthy process of self-reconstruction involving an hour’s psychoanalysis, four to … Read more

Number of words: 329 Perhaps Abe Maslow missed this possibility because he was such an idealistic intellectual. He was born in the early twentieth century, the first of seven children of illiterate but ambitious Russian Jewish parents who pushed him into being an academic success. He turned out, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be a lonely, bookish … Read more

Number of words: 768 When you come down to the dull facts, happiness is an evolutionary adaptation that exists to make us engage in certain behaviours at certain times when they might optimise our chances of surviving and reproducing. Happiness makes us tend to pursue some things and avoid others. But it’s the same story … Read more

Number of words: 210 The Mao suit plan might sound like a blatant affront to our freedom-of-choice culture, but according to investigators at Cornell University, many of the modern options we’re offered are in fact no more meaningful than swapping the buttons on a tunic. The Cornell psychologists report that free choice is useful when … Read more

Number of words: 165 How on earth can we shore up our more rational, balanced, enoughist wishes against this rampaging mob of lower-brain drives? To explore this question, I thought I would badger the original source of my enough-work inspiration, Charles Handy, not simply because I fancied meeting one of my old gurus (often it’s … Read more

Number of words: 166 We might look to the Netherlands for inspiration. Dutch employees spend the fewest hours less at work in Northern Europe – nearly four hours a week less than we do. One reason is that their idea of what’s industrially cool and clever is markedly different from ours. A pan-European study found … Read more

Number of words: 789 So, if it’s not for the money or the fun, why do people work too hard? These patients’ real thing is about avoidance of the rest of their lives, about avoiding control over those lives, Brener argues. ‘Many of them are avoiding relationships or their own feelings. These patients tend to … Read more

Number of words: 609 But if you can’t re-gift, what are your other options? The obvious response is to stick the stuff someplace. But where? Our lofts, closets and garages are already chocker. The answer, increasingly, is to pay for more space to stash it all. Last year, the wife and I found ourselves in … Read more

Number of words: 413 His claims run smack in the face of evidence that the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim gathered while living on Israeli kibbutzes, which themselves are the fruit of old socialist sharing ideals. Bettelheim found that the kibbutz kids were anything but born communists. They started life with a strong instinct for owning … Read more

Number of words: 142 Is your kitchen too cosy? Low lighting encourages us to overeat, because it makes us too relaxed. Making the kitchen the hub of the house can also cause problems because one of the main stimulants to overeating is the sight and smell of food. The more time you spend in the … Read more