Dan Morrell: About a decade ago, Neil Pasricha (MBA 2007) was in a pretty dark place. His marriage was falling apart, he just lost his best friend to suicide. So he started a blog as a way to document the small things that brightened his day. Free refills, finding $5 in a coat pocket, that sort of thing. The blog, called 1000 Awesome Things started garnering a huge following and turned into a series of successful books. Last year, Neil released The Happiness Equation, which began as a nine-month research project designed to inform his unborn child about how to live a happy life. In this special live Skydeck episode, recorded during spring reunions, Neil talks about his book with the Bulletin's associate editor, April White. And takes questions from the audience.

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April White: Welcome, everybody. And we're so glad to have you here for Skydeck Live. Thank you for being here with us, Neil. So you're going to talk to us today about happy and awesome. I know these are concepts you've been thinking about for a long time since you started your first blog on the subject, but they're sort of squishy concepts. How do you think about what happiness is?

Neil Pasricha: You know, happiness is a really big, gigantic word. It is-- it's funny, if you go to Google and you type in "how to be" the first dropdown in the suggestions is "happy." People are typing that in more than anything else. In fact, number two, three, and four are rich, pretty, and a real estate agent.

[LAUGHTER]

Which is true and hilarious. So we'd rather be happy than anything else. The sad part is that if you look at Professor David Meyers' work at the University of Michigan, we are no happier now than we have been since 1955. That is the longest longitudinal study on happiness ever done. And although our wealth has tripled, although our safety has increased, murder rates at an all-time low, people can go further and faster, more educated, happiness has been flat. It's about 20% of the population. It has been about 20% of the population since 1955. We haven't budged.

So, then I think about, look, we want it more than anything else, we don't got it yet, so what do we do? And then, we look at a lot of the emerging positive psychology research, in particular, there's a piece of work I'm really a big fan of by Sonja Lyubomirsky from Stanford and now University of California. And she has shown and posited a model for happiness that I believe in. This is going to answer the question.

And she says that, first of all, happiness is the joy you feel while striving towards your potential. That's an important definition because you can feel joy even while you're doing something painful, like training for a marathon or lifting weights, or whatever it is, working on a big project. And she said that 50% of our happiness is genetic, 10% is your circumstances, or in particular, what is happening to you in the world, who's winning the election, what's in the news, what your mom just said to you on the phone, whatever. And the remaining 40% are your intentional activities.

And this is where the new body of research is really coming in handy. That 40% is the part we can control. It is the biggest part we can control, it is the only part we can control, and it's four times as important to our happiness as our circumstances.

So just to summarize, we want happiness more than anything else. Remember Google. We don't got it yet, Professor David Meyers of Michigan, biggest study ever done on happiness. And we know how to get it. And that's the interesting part. It is those intentional activities. What can we do to influence our actions and thoughts every single day when we get out of bed to flip our brain into a positive mindset? And that's what I've been trying to figure out.

White: Of those tools that you provide for people in your book or that you've been thinking about since, what do you struggle with most?

Pasricha: I mean, I have a huge thing about time management and decision making. Right now, the average person around the world makes 295 decisions a day, which, if you've studied evolutionary biology and that type of stuff, you know that that's like the hardest thing for our brain to do. And what your life can you automate? The one I struggle with and the one I think about a lot is, I try to put all the decisions I make on a little two by two called time and importance. OK? Time and importance.

Low time, low importance decisions, they need to be automated. Automated. How do I get to work now? I have no idea, I trust Waze. What do I wear when I'm doing a media interview on stage? The same exact thing. Low time, high importance. And those ones you just have to effectuate them, you just have to do them, execute. Saying hi to your team in the morning, picking up your kids from day care. Just do it.

On things that...take a lot of time and aren't very important, you have to regulate those. That's the 147 average emails we get a day. That's the model I think about all the time when I think about trying to simplify my life. What does that model do? Well, if you regulate automate, and effectuate your low time, low importance decisions, you actually create brain space to debate the high time, high importance decisions that we don't think about enough. Where do I want to go to school? Where do I want to live? Who do I want to be with? What I want to do with my life and my job?

Those things that we need to actually chew on get perpetually disregarded for the dings and pains that hit us all day. So that's the model I think about all the time when I think about trying to simplify my life.

White: So you write in that book that you consider yourself to be happy about 80% of the time, which I feel like its pretty high on a happiness scale. But as someone who's, quote unquote, "brand" is happiness, how do you sell happy when you're not happy 100% percent of the time?

Pasricha: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Here's the thing. Nobody's happy 100% of the time. That's impossible. And if you are, we don't go too close to those people, do we? The ones that are 100% happy all the time.

[LAUGHTER]

There's something they're hiding. So, you know? For me, I think of happiness a lot like yoga, it's a practice. The goal isn't to be perfect, the goal is to be better than before. And having that mantra enables me to relieve myself of the obligation that I need to be happy all the time and rather reinforces the things I'm trying to tell people, which are here are the specific practices, tactics, tools, models, frameworks, whatever. The suite of things we can use in our bat belts to think about how we want to improve our mindset. So, no, I'm not happy all the time, but I do think it's a process and a practice, and something we can train our minds to be more often.

White: Excellent. And now I'm going to open the floor up to all of you. Right over here.

Hi. Hunt Duran, section E, 2002. Just a simple question, how much does humor play into being happy? You seem like you're a pretty funny guy. I haven't met too many people who don't use humor to some extent that I would say strike me as really happy. So have you thought about that?

Pasricha: You know? At the end of our classes in RC year-- I think most people will be the same-- our professors closed the class on the final class of the year with somewhat of an inspirational lecture. And for those that were in my section, you'll remember that our finance professor in first year was Andre Perald, who had been teaching at the school since the 1970s, so I'm sure many of you had him.

And he was like a real figurehead and a really wise, profound professor. He was able to teach me finance, which was no small feat.

[LAUGHTER]

And so I remember his class and I remember the closing wisdom, and I remember the very last thing he said. And the very last thing of all he said was, if I can give you one last piece of advice in life, if you're going to get married just do me one favor and find someone that laughs at your jokes and whose jokes you laugh at. And if you can do that, I guarantee you'll have a great life.

Hi, my name is Joseph Meyer. Section E, 2007. My wife and I have four kids. One of things that I've thought about a lot when it comes to happiness is the relationships and the people that surround us. And a lot of what you've been discussing has been very personal or individual, whether it be the people you work with, whether the people in your family, that you choose, you don't choose, how do you think about managing relationships in the context of creating your own happiness?

Pasricha: Yeah. Thanks for the question. You're right. The thesis of The Happiness Equation is actually, it is in you, and all of secrets in the book deal with yourself. I did that on purpose because I didn't feel confident enough in my knowledge of relationships or my research in relationships to talk about relationships in a book yet. However, that's what I'm working on. I call it trust. You know I said I was working on trust? To me, it's all about relationships.

And we do know for sure that if you're 80% optimistic, like I said I was, 80% optimistic-- I said I'm happy 80% of the time-- and my wife is 80% optimistic, she's 80% of the time she's happy. Then, together, we are happy 64% percent of the time because 80% times 80% is 64%, which means 2/3 of the time we're happy together. Life is awesome, we're feeling great, we're making a nice dinner together, playing with our kids, 2/3 of the time.

You know what else happens, though? 20% of the time I'm not happy. And 20% of the time she's not. When you do the math on those, that's 4% where we're both unhappy. Fireworks, fighting, a disagreement, an argument, things I'm not proud of saying where she's not proud of saying. It's 4% of the time we're both not in a good spot.

But the interesting thing about the model, if you compare your happiness with the person you're closest with, is that a middle third for us is actually one of us is happy and one of us isn't. And in those moments, which is a very large percentage for the majority of couples, you can either pull the other person up or be dragged down by the other person. You're familiar with this feeling. You're like, your bad mood is making me upset, or just shake it off, let's just go to the park, I don't want to worry about this dinner, we'll just worry about it later. Like, these are the moments of truth in relationships where can you pull someone up or will you be pulled down, or vice versa.

Hi my name is Megan Pasricha, potentially long lost cousin. We'll see. And I'm Section I, 2012. My question is that, for your kids, what are some of the daily rituals that you have been implemented with them or will implement as they grow up?

Pasricha: OK. Thank you for the question. This is amazing because Megan said her name was Megan Pasricha, and I am a Pasricha, Neil Pasricha, and you are the first Pasricha that I'm not related to that I've ever met.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

In my whole life. Because literally in the Toronto phone book there's eight of them, and, like, my uncle, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin. So, thank you. The thing-- I'm learning to be a dad, so it's far from a done deal where I've gotten, like, here you go, this is what you do, I don't have that. But what I do have are two words, I do have two words. They are my motto for raising children to be happy, and those two words are under-program and over-invest.

Under-program one is kind of obvious. The less-- like, I didn't grow up going to swimming, then skating, then karate, then painting. I didn't grow up that way, we got hurt on the old dangerous playground equipment, fell off the rusty slide, and kids actually had casts.

[LAUGHTER]

You used to sign them. Now, no one's got a cast. It's a problem. So under-programming means literally what it sounds like, the one weekend day per weekend is an example of that, where we may just run around, go to the zoo, or just pick a park on the map and go drive to or whatever.

Over-invest is about time. And here's how I think about my relationship with my children. I lived at home for 18 years with my parents, right? Now, I see my parents every two weeks for about one day, which I know is high and very lucky because we're in the same approximate area. But if I add up that one day every two weeks I see my parents, that's 26 days a year. Actually, takes 13 years to see them for what used to be a year of living with them. I'm lucky if I get two more of those before they die.

What I mean is, 90% of my time with my parents was spent up to age 18. The remainder, from age 18 to, like, age 50 if they pass away-- I don't know-- that remainder only equals like two more extra years with my parents. All of the time I spent with my parents is 0 to 18 pretty much, 90% of it. So until my parents are-- until my children are 18, I will under-program and I will over-invest. And nothing will be worth more.

Hi, there. My name is Jennifer Malloy. Section F, 2002. And I'm curious, a lot of us are in a middle swath of life where it's very busy career-wise, very busy family-wise, and it just seems like there's a lot going on in kind of this part of our life. Any advice in all your research that you've really gleaned from managing this moment in time for those of us who feel like we're at the peak busyness both of family life and career life?

Pasricha: Yeah. The two-word summary I would give you is create space. And--

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah. Yeah. Bringing your face-painted children to class is a good example.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

You know? It's like, I talked about my untouchable day, how one day a week I have this day where nothing can get to me. I have two small kids, it's really hard. The other thing I have is, I have a contract with my wife. And we wrote it out on a piece of paper and we both signed it. Because of the way I think about it is, we all have a contract with our employers, right? You have a piece of paper you sign, there's a whole bunch of stuff in there. I get fired, this is what happens if-- there's so many hours they want me to work, blah, blah, blah.

But we don't have a similar contract at home. So we come home and we're in a contract-less world, which means that the contract of the first place can often-- like, now I'm making trade-offs all the time on what I've got at home. And so I wrote a contract for home. And my contract has four bullet points.

I'll tell you exactly what they are. And this is a way that we create space. Number one is, every single weekend, which is two days long, we have one day where we are just our family of four. No cell phones at all, we don't have them on us, or if we do, they're on fully airplane mode. No family, no siblings, no birthday parties for the kids, nothing. Just the four of us. And if I'm away traveling all weekend, we make that the Monday or the Friday. We always have one per week. That's number one, having one family day per week. Just our family, nothing else can touch us.

Number two is, every week, I have an NNO, Neil's Night Out. And every week, my wife Leslie has an LNO, Leslie's Night Out. Because we each have one, there's no guilt. I'm taking care of both kids when she goes out to yoga, a massage, a dinner with a friend, whatever. And she's watching both kids while I go out for something similar. Honestly, I'm an awesome dad the day before I have my NNO and the day after because I'm like energized by just even going to a movie by myself or whatever it is I want to do.

But having those LNO and NNOs creates space, OK? And the third thing is, we've contracted the number of nights away that I will be for work per month and per year. So it's a number that we have ticking down, that if I hit it in October, I don't travel for the rest of the year.

And then, the number four thing is the thing I talked about earlier about the summer, how we try to incubate over the summer. And I switch from producing-- sorry, I switch from-- yeah, from producing to consuming. I try just to read a lot and be with the kids a lot.

Member of the audience: What you just said struck me as requiring enormous confidence to say that you're going to limit the amount you travel or limit the amount that you work.

Pasricha: Yeah.

Member of the audience: Say something about the confidence it takes to even write that contract.

Pasricha: Right. Confidence is a really good point. Many of you will remember me as classmates from 10 years ago. I don't think I had that much confidence when I was here. Actually, I know I didn't. You know how I knew that? Because I came to Admit students weekend. You know Admit students weekend? Where you're admitted to HBS but haven't necessarily accepted yet. In my case, I come to this pleasant ville of Oz and I'm like, what the-- this is incredible. And I sat in a biggie class about Russia as a visitor.

And the conversation was like 10,000 leagues over my head. Like, I couldn't even-- I was like, oh, my gosh. So the whole summer I was, like, nervous about coming to HBS. I couldn't sleep. I was like, this place is going to chew me up spit me out. And then, over the years since graduating, I started thinking about conference a different way, which is that it's a two by two. It's your opinion-- no surprise. It's your opinion of yourself, OK? And your opinion of others.

And when you have a low opinion of yourself and others in that bottom left, you're cynical. We have moments where we're all like this. There are bad days. I'm like, I'm no good, this is no good, my job sucks. You're cynical. If you have a low opinion of yourself but a high opinion of others, you're insecure. Which I was a lot, I think I was a lot when I was at HBS.

If you have a high opinion of yourself but a low opinion of others, you're arrogant. And if you have a high opinion of yourself and a high opinion of others, you're confident. And I think about that arrow from the lower left to the upper right all the time. And I know it's like the gauge in your car when you're like-- I think about that. So I notice moments where I'm arrogant and I try to think better of others. I notice moments are insecure and I try to think better of myself. And I try to navigate that towards a place of confidence. As always, it's a work in progress.

White: Thank you, Neil. Thank you all for being here.

[APPLAUSE]

Skydeck is produced by the External Relations department at Harvard Business School and edited by Craig McDonald. It is available at iTunes or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. For more information or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.

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