So, people want a lot of things out of life, but I think, more than anything else, they want happiness. Aristotle called happiness "the chief good," the end towards which all other things aim. According to this view, the reason we want a big house or a nice car or a good job isn't that these things are intrinsically valuable. It's that we expect them to bring us happiness.
Ljudi žele mnogo stvari od života, ali mislim da najviše od svega žele sreću. Aristotel je sreću opisao kao "najveće dobro", cilj kojem sve stvari streme. Prema ovom gledištu, razlog zašto želimo veliku kuću ili lijep auto ili dobar posao nije zato što te stvari imaju intrinsičnu vrijednost. Stvar je u tome da mi očekujemo da nam one donesu sreću.
Now in the last 50 years, we Americans have gotten a lot of the things that we want. We're richer. We live longer. We have access to technology that would have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago. The paradox of happiness is that even though the objective conditions of our lives have improved dramatically, we haven't actually gotten any happier.
U posljednjih 50 godina, mi Amerikanci nabavili smo puno stvari koje želimo. Bogatiji smo. Živimo duže. Imamo pristup tehnologiji koja je izgledala kao znanstvena fantastika prije samo nekoliko godina. Paradoks sreće jest taj da, iako su se fizički uvjeti našeg života znatno poboljšali, mi zapravo nismo postali ništa sretniji.
Maybe because these conventional notions of progress haven't delivered big benefits in terms of happiness, there's been an increased interest in recent years in happiness itself. People have been debating the causes of happiness for a really long time, in fact for thousands of years, but it seems like many of those debates remain unresolved. Well, as with many other domains in life, I think the scientific method has the potential to answer this question. In fact, in the last few years, there's been an explosion in research on happiness. For example, we've learned a lot about its demographics, how things like income and education, gender and marriage relate to it. But one of the puzzles this has revealed is that factors like these don't seem to have a particularly strong effect. Yes, it's better to make more money rather than less, or to graduate from college instead of dropping out, but the differences in happiness tend to be small.
Možda upravo zato što ti uobičajeni pojmovi razvoja nisu donijeli više sreće posljednjih godina raste zanimanje za samu sreću. Ljudi raspravljaju o uzrocima sreće već dosta dugo, tisućama godina, ali čini se kako mnoge takve rasprave ostaju neriješene. Kao i u mnogim drugim područjima u životu, mislim da znanstvena metoda ima mogućnost odgovoriti na ovo pitanje. Zapravo, u posljednjih nekoliko godina, došlo je do eksplozije istraživanja o sreći. Primjerice, puno smo naučili o utjecaju demografije - kako stvari poput prihoda, obrazovanja, spola i bračnog statusa utječu na sreću. Ali jedna od zagonetki koje su se pojavile jest to da ti faktori nemaju posebno velik utjecaj. Naravno, bolje je zarađivati više nego manje, i bolje je diplomirati nego odustati od fakulteta, ali razlike u sreći obično su male.
Which leaves the question, what are the big causes of happiness? I think that's a question we haven't really answered yet, but I think something that has the potential to be an answer is that maybe happiness has an awful lot to do with the contents of our moment-to-moment experiences. It certainly seems that we're going about our lives, that what we're doing, who we're with, what we're thinking about, have a big influence on our happiness, and yet these are the very factors that have been very difficult, in fact almost impossible, for scientists to study.
Tako nam ostaje pitanje koji su veliki uzroci sreće? Mislim da na to pitanje još uvijek nismo odgovorili, ali odgovor bi mogao ležati u činjenici da je sreća možda duboko povezana s našim doživljajem svakodnevnog života. Svakako se čini da ono s čime se susrećemo u životu, ono što radimo, s kime smo i o čemu razmišljamo ima velik utjecaj na našu sreću, a opet to su sve faktori koje je znanstvenicima vrlo teško, zapravo gotovo nemoguće proučiti.
A few years ago, I came up with a way to study people's happiness moment to moment as they're going about their daily lives on a massive scale all over the world, something we'd never been able to do before. Called trackyourhappiness.org, it uses the iPhone to monitor people's happiness in real time. How does this work? Basically, I send people signals at random points throughout the day, and then I ask them a bunch of questions about their moment-to-moment experience at the instant just before the signal. The idea is that, if we can watch how people's happiness goes up and down over the course of the day, minute to minute in some cases, and try to understand how what people are doing, who they're with, what they're thinking about, and all the other factors that describe our day, how those might relate to those changes in happiness, we might be able to discover some of the things that really have a big influence on happiness. We've been fortunate with this project to collect quite a lot of data, a lot more data of this kind than I think has ever been collected before, over 650,000 real-time reports from over 15,000 people. And it's not just a lot of people, it's a really diverse group, people from a wide range of ages, from 18 to late 80s, a wide range of incomes, education levels, people who are married, divorced, widowed, etc. They collectively represent every one of 86 occupational categories and hail from over 80 countries.
Prije nekoliko godina otkrio sam način kako proučavati ljudsku sreću od trenutka do trenutka svakog dana na vrlo velikom području, širom svijeta. To nikad prije nismo mogli. Zove se trackyourhappiness.org i koristi iPhone za praćenje ljudske sreće u stvarnom vremenu. Kako to funkcionira? Jedostavno rečeno, šaljem ljudima poruke u nasumičnim trenucima tijekom dana i pitam ih puno pitanja o njihovim svakodnevnim iskustvima koja su doživjeli točno prije poruke. Ideja je da, ako možemo vidjeti kako ljudska sreća raste i pada tijekom dana, u nekim slučajevima iz minute u minutu, i ako pokušamo razumjeti kako ono što ljudi rade, s kime su, o čemu razmišljaju, i svi drugi faktori koji čine naš dan -- kako to može utjecati na promjene u sreći, onda možda možemo otkriti koje stvari imaju zaista velik utjecaj na sreću. Imali smo sreće s ovim projektom, prikupili smo puno podataka ove vrste, puno više nego je prikupljeno ikad prije -- više od 650.000 izvještaja od više od 15.000 ljudi. I to nije samo puno ljudi, to je heterogena skupina ljudi u dobi od 18 do gotovo 90 godina, širokih raspona prihoda, razine obrazovanja, ljudi koji si u braku, rastavljeni, udovci i slično. Oni zajedo predstavljaju svaku od 86 kategorija djelatnosti i dolaze iz više od 80 zemalja.
What I'd like to do with the rest of my time with you today is talk a little bit about one of the areas that we've been investigating, and that's mind-wandering. As human beings, we have this unique ability to have our minds stray away from the present. This guy is sitting here working on his computer, and yet he could be thinking about the vacation he had last month, wondering what he's going to have for dinner. Maybe he's worried that he's going bald. (Laughter) This ability to focus our attention on something other than the present is really amazing. It allows us to learn and plan and reason in ways that no other species of animal can. And yet it's not clear what the relationship is between our use of this ability and our happiness. You've probably heard people suggest that you should stay focused on the present. "Be here now," you've probably heard a hundred times. Maybe, to really be happy, we need to stay completely immersed and focused on our experience in the moment. Maybe these people are right. Maybe mind-wandering is a bad thing. On the other hand, when our minds wander, they're unconstrained. We can't change the physical reality in front of us, but we can go anywhere in our minds. Since we know people want to be happy, maybe when our minds wander, they're going to someplace happier than the place that they're leaving. It would make a lot of sense. In other words, maybe the pleasures of the mind allow us to increase our happiness with mind-wandering.
U preostalom vremenu koje imam s vama danas htio bih malo govoriti o jednom od područja koja smo istraživali, a to je lutanje uma. Kao ljudska bića, imamo jedinstvenu sposobnost da se mislima udaljimo od sadašnjosti. Ovaj čovjek sjedi i radi na kompjutoru, a možda razmišlja o odmoru na kojem je bio prošli mjesec, možda se pita što će večerati. Možda se brine zbog činjenice da ćelavi. (Smijeh) Ta sposobnost da se usredotočimo na nešto osim sadašnjosti stvarno je fantastična. Omogućuje nam da učimo, planiramo i prosuđujemo kako nijedna druga vrsta ili životinja to ne može. A ipak, nije jasno kakva je veza između korištenja te sposobnosti i naše sreće. Vjerojatno ste čuli preporuke da trebate ostati usredotočeni na sadašnjost. ''Budi ovdje sada.'' Vjerojatno ste to čuli stotine puta. Možda, da bismo zaista bili sretni, moramo biti potpuno uronjeni i usredotočeni na svoje iskustvo u trenutku. Možda su ti ljudi u pravu. Možda je lutanje umom loša stvar. S druge strane, kad naš um luta, on je nesputan. Ne možemo promijeniti fizičku stvarnost koja je pred nama, ali u svojm mislima možemo otići bilo kamo. Budući da znamo da ljudi žele biti sretni, možda, kad naš um luta, odlazi na neko mjesto sretnije od onoga koje napušta. To bi imalo smisla. Drugim riječima, možda nam užitci uma omogućuju da pomoću lutanja uma povećamo svoju sreću.
Well, since I'm a scientist, I'd like to try to resolve this debate with some data, and in particular I'd like to present some data to you from three questions that I ask with Track Your Happiness. Remember, this is from sort of moment-to-moment experience in people's real lives. There are three questions. The first one is a happiness question: How do you feel, on a scale ranging from very bad to very good? Second, an activity question: What are you doing, on a list of 22 different activities including things like eating and working and watching TV? And finally a mind-wandering question: Are you thinking about something other than what you're currently doing? People could say no -- in other words, I'm focused only on my task -- or yes -- I am thinking about something else -- and the topic of those thoughts are pleasant, neutral or unpleasant. Any of those yes responses are what we called mind-wandering.
Budući da sam znanstvenik, pokušao bih riješiti ovu debatu određenim podacima, a posebno bih vam htio predstaviti podatke dobivene iz tri pitanja koja postavljam kroz "Track Your Happiness". Zapamtite, odgovori dolaze iz iskustva svakodnevnih trenutaka u stvarnim životima. Tri su pitanja. Prvo je pitanje o sreći: Kako se osjećate, u rasponu od "vrlo loše" do "vrlo dobro"? Drugo je pitanje o aktivnosti: Što sada radite, na popisu od 22 različite aktivnosti, uključujući aktivnosti poput jedenja, rada i gledanja televizije? Naposljetku, pitanje o lutanju uma: Razmišljate li o nečemu drugome, osim o onome što trenutno radite? Ljudi mogu odogovoriti s "ne" - drugim riječima, usredotočen sam samo na svoj zadatak - ili s "da" - razmišljam o nečemu drugome -- a teme tih misli su ugodne, neutralne ili neugodne. Bilo koji od tih potvrdnih odgovora smatra se lutanjem uma.
So what did we find? This graph shows happiness on the vertical axis, and you can see that bar there representing how happy people are when they're focused on the present, when they're not mind-wandering. As it turns out, people are substantially less happy when their minds are wandering than when they're not. Now you might look at this result and say, okay, sure, on average people are less happy when they're mind-wandering, but surely when their minds are straying away from something that wasn't very enjoyable to begin with, at least then mind-wandering should be doing something good for us. Nope. As it turns out, people are less happy when they're mind-wandering no matter what they're doing. For example, people don't really like commuting to work very much. It's one of their least enjoyable activities, and yet they are substantially happier when they're focused only on their commute than when their mind is going off to something else. It's amazing.
I, što smo otkrili? Ovaj graf pokazuje sreću na okomitoj osi i možete vidjeti ove stupce koji pokazuju koliko su ljudi sretni kad su usredotočeni na sadašnjost, kad ne sanjare. Ispalo da je su ljudi znatno manje sretni kad sanjare nego kad ne sanjare. Možete pogledati ove rezultate i reći, u redu, da, u prosjeku su ljudi manje sretni kad sanjare, ali kad se njihovi umovi udaljavaju od nečega što nije ugodno, bar bi tada sanjarenje trebalo biti dobro. Ne. Pokazalo se da su ljudi manje sretni kad sanjare, bez obzira što radili. Na primjer, ljudi baš i ne vole putovati na posao. To je jedna od najmanje ugodnih aktivnosti, a ipak znatno su sretniji kad su usredotočeni samo na to putovanje nego kad njihov um ode nekamo drugamo. To je nevjerojatno.
So how could this be happening? I think part of the reason, a big part of the reason, is that when our minds wander, we often think about unpleasant things, and they are enormously less happy when they do that, our worries, our anxieties, our regrets, and yet even when people are thinking about something neutral, they're still considerably less happy than when they're not mind-wandering at all. Even when they're thinking about something they would describe as pleasant, they're actually just slightly less happy than when they aren't mind-wandering. If mind-wandering were a slot machine, it would be like having the chance to lose 50 dollars, 20 dollars or one dollar. Right? You'd never want to play. (Laughter)
Zašto se to događa? Mislim da je to djelomično, velikim dijelom, zbog činjenice da, kad naš um luta, često mislimo o neugodnim stvarima, i te su misli mnogo manje sretne kad lutaju, naše brige, tjeskobe, žaljenja... A kad ljudi razmišljaju o nečemu neutralnom, opet su znatno manje sretni nego kad uopće ne sanjare. Čak i kad razmišljaju o nečemu što bi opisali kao ugodno, manje su sretni nego kad ne sanjare. Da je sanjarenje poput automata za kockanje, imali biste šansu da izgubite 50 dolara, 20 dolara ili jedan dolar. Nikad ne biste htjeli igrati. (Smijeh)
So I've been talking about this, suggesting, perhaps, that mind-wandering causes unhappiness, but all I've really shown you is that these two things are correlated. It's possible that's the case, but it might also be the case that when people are unhappy, then they mind-wander. Maybe that's what's really going on. How could we ever disentangle these two possibilites? Well, one fact that we can take advantage of, I think a fact you'll all agree is true, is that time goes forward, not backward. Right? The cause has to come before the effect. We're lucky in this data we have many responses from each person, and so we can look and see, does mind-wandering tend to precede unhappiness, or does unhappiness tend to precede mind-wandering, to get some insight into the causal direction. As it turns out, there is a strong relationship between mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later, consistent with the idea that mind-wandering is causing people to be unhappy. In contrast, there's no relationship between being unhappy now and mind-wandering a short time later. In other words, mind-wandering very likely seems to be an actual cause, and not merely a consequence, of unhappiness.
Dakle, do sad sam vam govorio, možda čak i tvrdio da se ljudi zbog sanjarenja osjećaju nesretnima, ali zapravo sam vam pokazao samo da su te dvije stvari povezane. Moguće je da je tako, ali također je moguće i da ljudi sanjare kad su nesretni. Možda je to istina. Kako možemo razlučiti te dvije mogućnosti? Jedna od činjenica koje možemo iskoristiti, a za koju ćete se svi složiti da je istinita, jest da vrijeme ide naprijed, ne unutrag. Uzrok mora doći prije posljedice. Imamo sreće što u ovim podacima imamo mnogo odgovora od svake osobe pa možemo vidjeti prethodi li sanjarenje osjećaju nezadovoljstva, ili nezadovoljstvo prethodi sanjarenju. Tako bismo dobili uvid u uzročno-posljedični tijek. Pokazalo se da postoji snažna veza između sanjarenja sada i osjećaja nezadovoljstva nekoliko trenutaka kasnije, što je u skladu s idejom da se ljudi zbog sanjarenja osjećaju nesretnima. S druge strane, ne postoji veza između nezadovoljstva sada i sanjarenja nekoliko trenutaka kasnije. Drugim riječima, čini se da je sanjarenje stvarni uzrok, a nikako posljedica osjećaja nezadovoljstva.
A few minutes ago, I likened mind-wandering to a slot machine you'd never want to play. Well, how often do people's minds wander? Turns out, they wander a lot. In fact, really a lot. Forty-seven percent of the time, people are thinking about something other than what they're currently doing. How does that depend on what people are doing? This shows the rate of mind-wandering across 22 activities ranging from a high of 65 percent — (Laughter) — when people are taking a shower, brushing their teeth, to 50 percent when they're working, to 40 percent when they're exercising, all the way down to this one short bar on the right that I think some of you are probably laughing at. Ten percent of the time people's minds are wandering when they're having sex. (Laughter) But there's something I think that's quite interesting in this graph, and that is, basically with one exception, no matter what people are doing, they're mind-wandering at least 30 percent of the time, which suggests, I think, that mind-wandering isn't just frequent, it's ubiquitous. It pervades basically everything that we do.
Prije par minuta usporedio sam lutanje uma s automatom za kockanje na kojem nikad ne želite igrati. Koliko često ljudski um zapravo luta? Pokazalo se da luta često. Zapravo jako često. 47% vremena ljudi razmišljaju o nečemu drugome, a ne o onome što trenutno rade. Kako to ovisi o tome što ljudi rade? Ovdje je prikazan stupanj sanjarenja u 22 aktivnosti u razmjeru od visokih 65% - (Smijeh) - kad se ljudi tuširaju, peru zube, do 50% kad su na poslu, do 40% kad vježbaju i sve do ovog kratkog stupca s desne strane kojem mislim da neki od vas smiju. Deset posto vremena ljudima um luta dok vode ljubav. (Smijeh) Ali mislim da na ovom grafu postoji nešto vrlo zanimljivo, a to je da ljudi, samo s jednom iznimkom, bez obzira što radili, sanjare barem 30% vremena, što po mom mišljenju pokazuje da sanjarenje nije samo često, već sveprisutno. Prožima više-manje sve što radimo.
In my talk today, I've told you a little bit about mind-wandering, a variable that I think turns out to be fairly important in the equation for happiness. My hope is that over time, by tracking people's moment-to-moment happiness and their experiences in daily life, we'll be able to uncover a lot of important causes of happiness, and then in the end, a scientific understanding of happiness will help us create a future that's not only richer and healthier, but happier as well. Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)
Danas sam vam u svojem govoru rekao ponešto o lutanju uma, varijabli za koju ja mislim da je vrlo važna u jednadžbi za sreću. Nadam se da ćemo tijekom vremena, prateći sreću ljudi iz trenutka u trenutak i njihova iskustva u svakodnevnom životu, moći mnogo otkriti o važnim uzrocima sreće. Na kraju, znanstveno razumijevanje sreće pomoći će nam da stvorimo budućnost koja neće biti samo bogatija i zdravija, nego i sretnija. Hvala. (Pljesak) (Pljesak)