Happiness and Focus

At The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin interviews author Dan Ariely:

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?

These days, I get a lot of joy from getting better at what I do (mostly research and writing), even when the rate of progress is slow.  When I was young, I only enjoyed the sense of progress when it was fast – when I was getting much better every day.  I think that this is why I used to switch from activity to activity rather quickly (in order to get the sense of large improvements), whereas now I focus on fewer things to a higher degree.