We may finally know what constitutes a good day 鈥� and it can involve working and even commuting.
at the University of British Columbia in Canada and his colleagues wanted to identify the building blocks of a happy life by distinguishing what separates a good day from an average one.
To get a grasp on this, they used machine learning to analyse data from the 2013 and 2021 , which measured the time that thousands of people spend doing more than 100 activities.
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The team then corresponded the activity times with whether the participants reported their day as being better than typical, which the survey also measured.
General socialising for more than 30 minutes was one of the most important activities for a good day, but had little additional benefit beyond 2 hours. Yet spending time with friends specifically had 鈥渁n almost boundlessly positive effect鈥�, the researchers write.
The effects of working were also time dependent: doing so for up to 6 hours had no impact on whether a day was good or not, but any longer and things rapidly turned negative. Perhaps surprisingly, commutes that lasted no more than 15 minutes were associated with having a good day in 2021, but not 2013, 鈥減otentially because there may have been emotional benefits from getting out of the house during the covid-19 pandemic鈥�, Folk and his colleagues write.
They hope their results will help us get the most out of our time. 鈥淏y understanding the optimal doses of common activities, we now know more about the recipe for a good day, and by extension, the recipe for a good life,鈥� they write.
But at the University of California, Riverside, says there could be other factors that the surveys didn鈥檛 measure that explain the relationship between, say, working for a given amount of time and the type of day you鈥檝e had.
鈥淗aving said that, these findings are totally aligned with the experimental data that show when you ask people to socialise more [with loved ones], they report greater happiness and improved mood and improved connection,鈥� she says.
PsyArXiv
