Arthur Brooks: commitment

Transcript context

…Say your books. What does your new book sell for, on the meaning of life? It’s a good question. Who knows? That’s actually a good question. Somewhere between $16 and $30, depending on where you’re buying it, I suppose. The real question, and this is something I’m really interested in, is the extent to which habits can actually change your well-being. There’s a reason, by the way. There have been a million books on happiness, and happiness still tends to be elusive. I take your point. It’s very well taken, and I try to approach it without a lot of hubris. Here’s the problem as I’ve seen it. You and I, we’re not just economists. What we really are—we try to be experts in how to learn stuff. That’s one of the great things about your work. You’re interested, and you’re curious, and you’re interested in how people are interested, in point of fact. Here’s actually how you learn something and make it permanently part of your repertoire. Number one, you understand it. Number two, you practice it. Then number three, you share it. It’s an interesting thing. My father used to say this. My father was a PhD biostatistician, a lifelong mathematics and statistics professor. One time I saw him giving a graduate seminar in advanced calculus, a 90-minute lecture with no notes. It was like watching Jascha Heifetz playing the violin. It was like a virtuoso performance. I was of the age. I was already in my 20s. I admired my dad by that point. I said afterward, I said, “Dad, how did you do it? How do you know that so well? How is that part of your very being?” He was joyful while he was doing it, too, by the way, because he was in a state of flow. He said, “Simple. I learned it. I’ve taught it 100 times. In other words, I’m practicing it in my research, and I’m sharing it constantly because I’m a teacher. ” That’s the same way to be a great golfer. That’s the same way, actually, if you want happiness to not be an impermanent well-being woo-woo internet phenomenon. You need to understand, actually, what’s going on, that the psychology is biology. You need to change certain ways that you live, and then you need to share it with other people. I’ve found that that’s what actually makes the idea sticky. What do you think of the view that books on happiness or the meaning of life, they’re a kind of placebo? They don’t help directly, but you feel you’ve done something to become happier, and the placebo is somewhat effective.…

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