Flow

In the relatively new academic study of happiness, one of the most feted writers is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (which glories in the happy pronunciation of Me-high Chick-sent-me-high) who finds the greatest source of happiness in what he calls flow.

MC doesn't take his happiness lightly. For years he has had people carrying mood diaries around. They are prompted by pager at regular intervals to fill it in, so they don't remember only at times of extreme emotion.

He finds some unusual facts. While billionaires score a smidgen above the mean and the very poor slightly more than a smidgen below, for the most part, wealth makes little difference to your happiness. What makes a big difference is how often and how intensely you experience flow.

Flow, he says, is the engrossed and enveloping sense you get when you are entirely involved in an activity.

Rock climbing for example, given the number of people who are injured or die doing it, should be just plain scary, and only done by those unlucky enough to find, on being bitten by a poisonous spider, that by an even unluckier chance, the serum is on that rock ledge. Yes, the one right the way up there. But rock climbing is more popular than ever. Why? Because of the intensity of the flow experience.

You can get engrossed in baking bread, but few things are quite as good at focussing the attention and discarding mental clutter as the prospect of falling three hundred feet onto unforgiving rocks, only slowing to brush your partner off the rock face with you.

Mihaly's guide to happiness would thus direct you to find activity which is as demanding of your attention and focus as possible. If it is something you can do while keeping half an eye on the TV, think again. Concentration and engagement are the goals and they will give you more than gazing at the TV.

Another expert on happiness, Scottish academic Michael Argyle, whose hobby, until his recent death (sadly, even happiness gurus die) is Scottish country dancing, is a firm believer that a person will always be happier at the end of a session of - go on, have a guess - no, what a dirty mind, I meant Scottish country dancing.