Hobbies

Often seen as a particularly British thing, especially when they are eccentric or obsessive, the hobby is one of the fastest routes to happiness.

A hobby is just finding time for doing what you want to do, whether it be reading, collecting coins or building scale models of the fleets of Wellington's battles and then staging the battles.

By their nature, you enjoy them, so you are simply finding time to spend on something you find engrossing and losing yourself in it.

Some academics in the relatively unploughed field of happiness find this sense of involvement and engrossment to be the most achievable route to happiness.