Subtleties in Tracking Happiness

1. Subtleties in Tracking Happiness
Jin Young Kim
jink@microsoft.com / lifidea@gmail.com

2. Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
moments
moment
Jin Young Kim, Autobiography
But there are repeated patterns!

3. What if I can pull out the best
from myself, every moment?
LiFiDeA (Life+Idea) Project
The key lies in understanding the nature of
(un)happiness!

4. About Jin
• Applied Researcher at Microsoft Bing
– Day Job: relevance (search quality) measurement
– A lots of number crunching + stat/math fun!
• Passion for Self-tracking for 10+ years
– Experimented with self-built S/W btw. 2002-2006
– Keep on experimenting ever since…
Turns out two have much in common!

5. Parallels between Search Quality vs.
Happiness Measurement
Search Quality
• How good are the quality of
results we serve for users?
Happiness
• How happy do I feel for
given time-frame?
Search Quality Happiness
Purpose Max. searcher satisfaction Max. happiness
Ground Truth Relevance judgment (Judges) Happiness judgment (myself)
Next Steps Algo. ranking improvement Lifestyle improvement
Both aim at objective results from subjective human
measurements!

6. MEASUREMENT METHOD

7. What to Measure
• Happiness
– Self-reported 5-point Likert scale
• Perfect (LIFIDEA) to Nightmare
• Record 3 times a day
• Factors affecting Happiness
– Sleep / wake-up time / events / states
• Anything I believe to be correlated with H.

8. Both sides of the H. coin
How successful was it?
• Hard side of happiness
– Goal achievement
– Impact on myself/others
• Major factors
– Preparation/planning
– Task scope/breakdown
How good did I feel?
• Soft side of happiness
– Sense of well-being
• Major factors
– Energy level
– Focus/awareness
How can we turn this into the rating?

9. Happiness Rating Matrix
How good did I feel?
Awesome Positive So So Awful
Howsuccessfulwasit?
Very
Successful
Perfect
[LIFIDEA]
Excellent Good Fair
Successful Excellent Good Fair Fair
So so Good Fair Fair Bad
Unsuccessful Fair Fair Bad Nightmare
Very unlikely
Very unlikely

10. MEASUREMENT PIPELINE

11. Allows natural and easy
entry of happiness rating
and related factors
Pipeline Overview
Data Extraction
in Ruby
Statistics
Calculation in R
Journal Entry in
Evernote
Web Front-end
in JQuery
Allows real-time update of
status anytime, anywhere

12. LESSONS LEARNED FROM 2012

13. Time-series of Happiness and Factors
• Per-day and per-week statistics of
Wake-up time / Average score / Sleep time

14. Score > 4
Score = 3
Score < 2
Happy times vs. Unhappy times

15. Impact of Major Events
• Consistently more
happy before/during
major deadline/tasks
• Extended vacation is
major source of
unhappiness???
Vacation
Vacation

16. How wake-up time & location affects
my happiness
• Early start is critical for
happy morning!
• Better stay away from home
if you want to be happy!

17. Findings on my Happiness
• ‘Initial condition’ matters a lot
– Discipline at early morning / work start is crucial
– Need to put yourself in the zone at the beginning
• Some structure/external stimuli helps
– Weekdays/Morning/Deadline induces happiness!
– Hard to be ‘optimal’ in relaxed situations

18. Findings on my Happiness
• Cyclical pattern is unavoidable
– Get loose after good times, vice versa
– Real question: how can I stay in the zone AMAP?
• Your rating affects yourself
– Beware of self-fulfilling prophecy
– Try to rate myself after the fact

19. Conclusions & Next Steps
• Self-tracking has made tremendous impact
– On how I see myself and prioritize stuffs
• Need to turn the insights into results
– E.g., How can I achieve 3.5 average for this year?
• A lot of things to learn about myself & tracking
– I can probably write a book in the end!

21. OPTIONAL

22. Other Findings
• Tracking improves planning / awareness
– Initial ‘shininess’ effect in January
• Timely (weekly) review / feedback is critical
– Otherwise, the motivation for tracking is soon lost
• Implementing changes is still challenging
– May work better in a (support) group

23. LOOKING ONWARD

24. Architecture of Happiness