The Happiness Project: The Happiness Project By Gretchen Rubin

Simple in concept but comprehensively broad, happiness is often the sole indicator of how people perceive their lives. Therefore, happiness needs to be worked towards; and one way to gain happiness is with a Happiness Project. The Happiness Project was created by Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project. Rubin realized that although her life was successful and she did not feel unhappy, she constantly felt like she needed something more, and decided to evaluate her life to gain more happiness. For the next year of her life, she spent every month with a new goal, along with smaller resolutions within each month. The goal of her book is not to have the reader read a book about her life, but for the reader to learn and create their own Happiness …show more content…
That happened to me this year; I woke up, went to school, went to basketball practice, did homework, and then went to sleep. Before starting the Happiness Project, I realized that although I was not unhappy with this schedule, I could also be happier if I had more time to myself. This is why my goal was to create leisure time; which for me means time outside of school and sports to do things I enjoy, such as being with friends or playing a video game. Although my Happiness Project is based off Rubin’s, mine was only a month, but within that month I had five resolutions. My first resolution, and most important, was to give up procrastination. To keep myself accountable for this resolution, I created the One-and Done Rule, which was a variation of Rubin’s One-Minute Rule. My One-and-Done Rule is if there is an assignment I can finish in one sitting, I won’t split it up between more days. I find myself splitting simple task apart rather than just doing it altogether, which will give me more time overall. I expected this resolution to work towards the overall goal of creating extra time, because I would have more time throughout the week if I didn’t split …show more content…
The goal of this resolution was to use my time more wisely, which involved a homework curfew to balance my work with sleep. I saw the homework curfew as a positive to my overall demeanor because I will work all night if I have too much work. My homework curfew was set at 10 O’Clock, which forced me to schedule my homework for the week to be finished before then. On a side note, I was lenient on deciding whether I passed for the day, because going an extra half-an-hour wasn’t a big deal as long as I understood I was using my time wisely. My expectation for why this resolution would make me happy was it gave me more time to sleep, which would keep me less stressed and give me more leisure time before bed. For my third resolution, I planned to use class time more wisely. Similar to the first resolution but at school, I made myself finish homework that could be done at school on free time. This was the most valuable in my view, because getting homework done at school meant I had free time when I got home. My fourth resolution was I had to spend at least one hour over the weekend to something I enjoyed doing, such as practicing coding or playing