Read this if you want to be happy in 2014 - The Washington PostAs far as I can tell, people usually ...

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Washington Post)
Read this if you want to be happy in 2014 - The Washington Post
As far as I can tell, people usually experience the sensation of happiness whenever they have both
health and freedom. It's a simple formula:
Happiness = Health + Freedom
I'm talking about the everyday freedom of being able to do what you want when you want to do it, at
work and elsewhere. For happiness, timing is as important as the thing you're doing. For example,
your favorite food is useless to you if the only time you can eat it is when your stomach is already
full. But if I offer you bland food when you're starving, you'll feel as if you won the lottery. The
timing of things matters.
The same principle is true for exercise. If you exercise when you're in the mood for it, you can enjoy
the workout. But if you can only exercise after a long day on the job and a grueling commute, you
might hate it. There's a right time and a wrong time for nearly every activity, from sleep to sex to
paying bills. Matching your mood to your activity is a baseline requirement for happiness. The good
news is that timing is relatively controllable, especially in the long run.
If you're just starting out in your career, it won't be easy to find a job that gives you a flexible
schedule. The best approach is a strategy of moving toward more flexibility over the course of your
life. That quest could take the form of badgering your pointy-haired boss into letting you work from
home one day per week, or it might mean going back to school to learn a skill so you can run your
own business. In my case, it means waking up several hours before the rest of the family. There isn't
one formula for finding schedule flexibility. Just make sure all of your important decisions are
consistent with an end game of a more flexible schedule. Otherwise you are shutting yourself off
from the most accessible lever for happiness -- timing.
We can't ignore the role of money in all of this. Money can't directly buy happiness, but it can give
you more options, and that's an important part of freedom. So don't give up too much income
potential just to get a flexible schedule. There's no point in having a flexible schedule if you can't
afford to do anything.
Knowledge, not willpower
The second part of the happiness formula is health. It's never a good idea to take health tips from
cartoonists, so check with your doctor if anything here sounds iffy to you. I don't know how many
people have died after reading health tips from cartoonists, but it probably isn't zero. Don't say you
weren't warned.
The most important thing to know about staying fit is this: If it takes willpower, you're doing it
wrong. Anything that requires willpower is unsustainable in the long run. And studies show that

2. using willpower in one area diminishes how much willpower you have in reserve for other areas. You
need to get willpower out of the system. I'll show you some tricks for doing that.
My observation is that you can usually replace willpower with knowledge. That isn't an obvious
point, so I'll give some examples.
Imagine you are hungry and I offer you a delicious but unhealthy dessert. It would take a lot of
willpower to resist. Now imagine the same scenario, but I simultaneously offer a healthier food
option that is also delicious. Suddenly it is easy to pick the healthy alternative over the dessert. The
dessert was only irresistible when the alternative was starving. So the trick for avoiding unhealthy
foods is to make sure you always have access to healthy options that you enjoy eating. Your
knowledge of this trick, assuming you use it, makes willpower far less necessary.
Now imagine I offer you a choice of pasta or a white potato. And let's say you enjoy bothto a similar
degree. Which do you choose? If you have only a basic understanding of nutrition -- similar to what
most people have -- you might say it's a toss-up. You've heard carbs are bad for you and that's where
your knowledge ends. But if you knew that pasta is far lower on the glycemic index than a white
potato, you would make a far healthier choice that requires no willpower at all. All it took was
knowledge.
And while you're eating your pasta, feel free to pile on the parmesan cheese. Cheese adds calories,
but the fat content will help suppress your appetite, so you probably come out ahead. If you didn't
already know that, you might end up using willpower to avoid cheese at dinner and willpower again
later that night to resist snacking. A little knowledge replaces a lot of willpower. Is there anything
else you should know about diet? Let me give you a quick quiz.
Did you know that sleepiness causes you to feel hungry?
Did you know that eating peanuts is a great way to suppress appetite?
Did you know that eating mostly protein instead of simple carbs for lunch will help you avoid the
afternoon energy slump?
Did you know that eating simple carbs can make you hungrier?
Did you know that exercise has only a small impact on your weight?
If this is the first you have heard any of those facts, and you are sporting some extra pounds, you
probably have a knowledge gap that feels to you like a shortage of willpower.
Learning to loathe french fries
Speaking of knowledge, I've recently discovered that my cravings for certain foods can be
manipulated. That surprised me because I thought my food preferences were baked into my DNA. I
once loved french fries with an almost insane passion. But after I started noticing how drained and
useless I felt after eating simple carbs, french fries became easy to resist. Knowledge weaned me off
french fries when willpower could not.
I also learned that I can remove problem foods from my diet if I target them for extinction one at a
time. It was easy to stop eating three large Snickers every day (which I was doing) when I realized I
could eat anything else I wanted whenever I wanted. I can give myself that kind of permission

3. because I've trained myself to enjoy relatively healthy food and to always have it nearby.
If you're on a diet, you're probably trying to avoid certain types of food, but you're also trying to limit
your portions. Instead of waging war on two fronts, try allowing yourself to eat as much as you want
of anything that is healthy. I think you'll find that healthier food is almost self-regulating in the sense
that you don't have an insatiable desire to keep eating it the way you might with junk food. With
healthy food, you tend to stop when you feel full. That has been my experience anyway. In my 20s I
could snarf my way through an entire box of donuts. But not once have I eaten an apple -- which I
also enjoy -- and started in on a second apple.
One of the biggest obstacles to healthy eating is the impression that healthy food generally tastes
like cardboard. So consider making it a lifelong system to learn how to season and prepare healthy
foods. If you know how to make your veggies taste great, it isn't so hard to avoid junk food. Here
again, knowledge replaces willpower.
It's easy to spot the people who are trying to use willpower instead of knowledge to get healthier.
They tend to say things like this:
My goal is to lose 10 pounds.
In my experience, the fittest people have systems, not goals, unless they are training for something
specific. A sensible system is to continuously learn more about the science of diet and the methods
for making healthy food taste great. With that system, weight management will feel automatic. Goals
aren't needed.
I'm limiting my portion size.
You only need to do that if you are eating the wrong foods. Eating half of your cake still keeps you
addicted to cake. And portion control takes a lot of willpower. You'll find that healthy food satisfies
you sooner, so you don't crave large portions.
I'm increasing my workout to lose a few pounds.
No one can exercise enough to overcome a bad diet. Diet is the right button to push for losing
weight, so long as you are active. People who eat right and stay active usually have no problems with
weight.
I'm doing the (whatever) diet or cleanse.
Following a diet is hard. A cleanse is even harder. It takes effort and willpower. You're better off
learning to eat right and letting that knowledge nudge you in the right direction over your lifetime.
Hop to it
Once you get your diet right, the next topic to tackle is exercise. I'm about to share with you the
simplest and potentially most effective exercise plan in the world. Here it is:
Be active every day.
Under this system, anything that gets you up and moving counts. It doesn't matter if you're
swimming, running or cleaning the garage. When you're active, and you don't overdo it, you'll find

4. yourself in a good mood afterward. That reward becomes addictive over time. You'll be like Pavlov's
dogs, but conditioned to be active. After a few months of being moderately active every day, you'll
discover that it is harder to sit and do nothing than it is to get up and do something. That's the frame
of mind you want. You want exercise to become a habit with a reward so it evolves into a useful
addiction. When that happens, you no longer need willpower to exercise.
It's important to remember that the intensity of your workout has a surprisingly small impact on
your weight unless you're running half-marathons every week. If your diet is right, moderate
exercise is all you need. Your natural impulse to seek variety and challenge will cause you to learn
more about the best practices of exercise over your lifetime. The only thing you absolutely need to
get right is the part about being active every day.
When I was in my 20s I enjoyed playing pick-up games of soccer on Sunday mornings. It was terrific
exercise, but it left me so sore I couldn't exercise for several days afterward. Whoever came up with
the saying "No pain, no gain" hadn't thought it through. For me, the pain kept me from gain. These
days I simply stay active every day, without pain and without the need for willpower, and I'm in the
best shape of my life at age 56.
You will be tempted to quibble with some of the things I said about diet and exercise. Don't get hung
up on the details, because science keeps changing what we think we know anyway. The important
point is that there are simple ways to substitute knowledge for willpower so you can ease into
healthier eating and an active lifestyle. When your body is feeling good, and you have some
flexibility in your schedule, you'll find that the petty annoyances that plague your life become
nothing but background noise. And that's a great launch pad for happiness.
As you find yourself getting healthier and happier, the people in your life will view you differently
too. Healthy-looking people generally earn more money, get more offers and enjoy a better social
life. All of that will help your happiness.
Keep in mind that happiness is a directional phenomenon. We feel happy when things are moving in
the right direction no matter where we are at the moment. The homeless guy who finds a promising
dumpster is happier in the moment than the billionaire who just lost $100 million on a bad
investment. It's the direction of your life -- progress if you will -- that influences happiness. When you
are learning more about diet and exercise it will give you the sensation of progress and control over
you destiny. And that feels good compared to losing ten pounds and gaining it back.
I'll reiterate that you shouldn't get your health information from cartoonists. I'm a simplifier, not a
doctor. All I'm offering is the idea that happiness is more accessible if you replace willpower with
knowledge and you replace short-term goals with lifelong systems.
Adams's new book is "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My
Life."
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