Can You Organize Your Way To Happiness (And Health Too)?

Happiness for some may mean a bike ride at dawn, or spending time kicking a soccer ball with the kids. But for a part of humanity -- maybe even you -- happiness is checking items off a to-do list or contemplating an empty email inbox.

Odd? Certainly to some. But what they would consider borderline obsessive-compulsive behavior may also make the productivity-obsessed happier and healthier.

Optimizing time is especially important at midlife, when more-responsible jobs, the ever-changing pressures of raising a family, and the failing health of one's parents seem to pile stress upon stress (although research seems to indicate that young adults are just as stressed as the middle aged ... just about different things).

Can You Organize Your Way to Happiness?

In his book "Happier," Harvard's Tal Ben-Shahar talks about Tim Kasser's notion of time affluence. That's the too-rare feeling that you have enough time to engage in activities that you want to do. Its opposite, time poverty, is the tense feeling that you don't have enough time to even do what you have to do, much less what you want to do. Kasser's research shows that material wealth doesn't predict happiness -- but time affluence does.

That person using their to-do list to create more personal time may be making themselves happier at the same time.

Not Just Happier, But Healthier Too

If being organized serves as a way to control stress, then it provides health benefits as well. Lower stress helps people stay mentally sharp and avoid serious disease.

A 2006 study showed that stress hormones in mice lead to significantly increased levels of two proteins implicated in the formation of the brain lesions implicated in Alzheimer's disease. In humans, one survey showed that highly stressed individuals had twice the risk of developing Alzheimer's five years later than their mellow counterparts.

Stress also increases blood pressure, which in turn elevates stroke risk. A 2003 study showed that highly stressed people had twice the stroke risk of unstressed individuals (although untangling cause is difficult --stress is also linked to other unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, excess alcohol consumption, and physical inactivity). Stress and its associated unhealthy behaviors are also risk factors for serious health problems such as heart attack and diabetes.

Simple Efficiency, or Efficient Simplicity

There are two major fronts in the fight to take control of one's time: simplifying, and efficiency. While the voluntary simplicity trend of the last decade or so has roots going all the way back to the 1960's back-to-the-earth movement (visible here), it seems to have grown tremendously as a reaction to the ever faster pace of life since the 1990s. It now has a glossy magazine (Real Simple) and PBS show (Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska). The focus is on getting rid of unimportant stuff and living an uncluttered life. There is significant crossover with ideas from positive psychology.

The other facet of seizing control of your life is the even more recent explosion of interest in personal productivity and "life hacks." While practitioners generally buy into the notion of simplification and can be ruthless in pruning away the unnecessary, they also focus on dealing with the tasks that remain in the most effective matter possible. Some recent posts on productivity sites included "Five Tools to Capture Your Thoughts," "How I made my presentations a little better," and "Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?"

Could A Few Minutes At These Sites Make You More Productive, Happier, and Healthier?

If you want to sacrifice some current productivity to learn more, there are three key sites to look at:

• LifeHacker is an entertaining mix of semi-geeky ("Useful Command Line Tricks for Mac Users") and everyday ("Keep A Scratch Pad Of The Day") tips. (If you prefer book form, editor Gina Trapani has a new book. See bottom of this article for Amazon link.)
• 43 Folders is run by the omnitalented Merlin Mann, whose interests include using binder clips and index cards to organize your life, software that eliminates distractions, and implementing David Allen's GTD (getting things done) methodology.
• LifeHack.org has less of a technology focus than the other two sites. The approach is frequently big-picture and there are frequent connections between personal productivity and happiness.

Outside those three, blogger Ben Yaskovitz launched an interesting initiative: "The Ultimate Guide to Productivity Group Writing Project," which seeks the best personal productivity ideas from across the blogosphere. You can look at over 1,700 posts that are part of the project at blog search engine Technorati. For instance, consultant / coach Rebecca Morgan writes that one of her best tactics is rigorously managing interruptions.

Tools That Make Time

Killing time-wasting activities, prioritizing, and using other tools of personal productivity should make you less stressed, which may not make you happier, but should make you less unhappy. But the bigger payoff is when you get some time back -- time you can use to deliberately make yourself happier.

Put that on your to-do list!

---

Amazon link to LifeHacker editor Gina Trapani's highly-regarded compilation of the best and most relevant life hack tips: Lifehacker: "88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day".

---
Want a law to help you de-stress? October 24th is "Take Back Your Time day," an effort to, among other things, mandate three weeks vacation for anyone who's worked full time at a job for a year.