it's not a fish that you can catch

i found this article from new york magazine both entertaining and thematically relevant. in an attempt to let you glance inside my head, i’ll share my thoughts on some of these happiness-increasing strategies.

Decide where to go to college by picking two decent schools and flipping a coin. The relatively unexamined life is worth living. Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice documents numerous studies in which thinking too hard about multiple choices leads people to preemptively regret the options they’re going to miss out on. This triggers a stress reaction that tends to focus narrowly on random variables—producing unwise decisions, paralysis, and superfluous law degrees. Those who seize the first option that meets their standards (which don’t have to be low, just defined) are happier

i used average temperature, but you get the idea.

Don’t go to law school.
Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than members of other professions…

enough said.

Fire your therapist if he so much as mentions your childhood. Contra Freud and pro common sense, much of Authentic Happiness author Martin Seligman’s research suggests that rehashing events that enraged you long ago tends to produce depression rather than sweet closure and relief.

this is just common sense. don’t think about things that make you angry or sad unless you have a compelling reason.

On a day-to-day basis, caring for children creates roughly the same level of satisfaction as washing the dishes. In fact, surveys of parents invariably find a clear dip in happiness after the Blessed Miracle of Childbirth, which continues unabated for twenty years—bottoming out during adolescence—and only returns to pre-birth levels when the child finally leaves home

i like washing the dishes, but something tells me that is where this analogy ends.

avoid any bar named after an Irish person

now that’s just silly.