Paul Dolan is Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE. During
his time as a visiting scholar at Princeton, he worked closely with
Daniel Kahneman who calls him 'a star'. Dolan focuses on developing
measures of happiness and subjective wellbeing that can be used by
policymakers and by individuals looking to be happier.
Among various other roles, he is a member of the US National
Academy of Sciences Panel on measuring national well-being, a
member of the National Wellbeing Advisory Forum for the Office for
National Statistics in the UK, and is Chief Academic Advisor to the
UK Government on how policymakers should value the impact of goods
that are hard to measure, like health and education. His debut,
Happiness by Design, was a Sunday Times bestseller and Waterstones
non-fiction book of the month.
For Dolan, purpose and pleasure are both basic constituents of
happiness. This is a bold and original move ... Among the imperfect
definitions of happiness, the pleasure-purpose concept that Dolan
offers is, I believe, a strong contender. It is a good description
of what I wish for my grandchildren: a life that is rich in
activities that are both pleasurable and meaningful.
Paul Dolan is an inveterate optimist who has overcome many
obstacles on his way to becoming an internationally recognized
expert on well-being. The optimism shows on every page of this
book. In particular, Paul is optimistic about you, his reader. He
believes that you can make your life both pleasurable and
meaningful with deliberate choices, about the environment you
create for yourself and about the aspects of life that deserve your
attention. He offers a great deal of sound advice on how to make
these choices and how to follow through with them
*Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Laureate*
It tells us what matters to us. Few books change one's life; in 48
hours this has improved mine . . . Anyone who wonders if they are
living their lives as fully as they might will find ideas worth
thinking about in this engaging, persuasive book
*Sunday Times*
Dolan is especially illuminating when it comes to bigger
life-choices . . . Dolan makes a persuasive case that happiness
might really be simple. His book is a powerful reminder not to get
caught up in overthinking things, but to focus instead on
maximising what actually delivers joy . . . and most of us would
benefit from listening to him
*Guardian*
[Dolan's] discoveries at once confound your expectations and
provide an appreciable way of acting on that knowledge . . . full
of facts that make you go: "Huh."
*Evening Standard*
Dolan's book is aimed at the lay reader who wants to be more
cheerful without recourse to airy-fairy notions of spirituality or
philosophy
*Telegraph*
Outstanding, cutting-edge, and profound. If you're going to read
one book on happiness, this is the one
*Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan and
Antifragile*
Happiness by Design is the best kind of psychology book: the ideas
are fascinating, understanding them will make your life happier and
more meaningful, and Dolan expresses them beautifully. Whether
you're a novice or a voracious consumer of happiness research,
Happiness by Design hits all the right notes
*Adam Alter, bestselling author of Drunk Tank Pink*
Dolan gives a comprehensive overview of the science of happiness
and useful tips to achieve it. In his quest to explain what makes
us happy, Dolan touches on a powerful idea: happiness need not be
pursued, simply rediscovered. In other words, sources of pleasure
and purpose are all around us, if only one knows where to look
*Scientific American*
Dolan wants...to make us think about life in terms of a balance of
pleasure and purpose. Some of us are 'pleasure machines', seeking
out short-term gratification without paying close enough attention
to our lifelong goals; some of us are 'purpose engines', so
determined to get to the destination that we miss the view along
the way. Whichever we are, we need to find a bit more of the
other.
*The Independent*
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