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Happiness: A User's Manual

Illustrations by Knickerbocker.

Order from the same takeout menu every time.
Researchers found that subjects asked to choose their meals weeks in advance mistakenly predicted that variety would make them happier, while those who simply decided what to eat on the spot were completely satisfied with the same thing each week. (Although eating macaroni and cheese endlessly, like repeating any pleasant experience over and over, reduces its appeal—so switch it up with cheeseburgers.)

Take advantage of your exercise machine’s “cooldown period.”
One study found that men who underwent short, uniformly unpleasant colonoscopies found them more repulsive than men who had long procedures with a brief respite near the end. Adding a slightly less grueling epilogue to a grueling but valuable experience—like a workout—makes you more willing to repeat it in the future, even if it means an increase in the overall gruel endured.

Illustrations by Knickerbocker.

Patronize King Cole’s and other establishments that employ a “mixologist”; avoid any bar named after an Irish person.
Spending your alcohol allowance on a few finely crafted cocktails is probably better than guzzling giant troughs of beer, since the ability to limit one’s indulgence is one of the baseline characteristics of happy people. Researchers aren’t sure whether moderation is chicken or egg, but they do know that teetotaling doesn’t confer any particular advantage.

Ask the next person you meet on Match.com to marry you.
Studies show that married people are happier than unmarried people. Too much choice, whether over tonight’s dinner or your partner for the next 50 years, can create paralysis and anxiety. If you make a mistake, you have the capacity to rationalize the worst decisions. And if all of that doesn’t work, well, we’re able to find happiness in even the most hopeless situations.

Splurge on a restaurant after the Yankees playoff game.
College kids surveyed in the weeks before emotionally high-stakes athletic competitions tended to dramatically overestimate how happy they’d be after wins because they forgot victories don’t eliminate sources of irritation. Similarly, they overestimated how upset they’d be after their team lost because they failed to remember that they could be comforted by other sources of pleasure.