1. Subtleties in Tracking Happiness Jin Young Kim jink@microsoft.com / lifidea@gmail.com

2. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina moments moment Jin Young Kim, Autobiography But there are repeated patterns!

3. What if I can pull out the best from myself, every moment? LiFiDeA (Life+Idea) Project The key lies in understanding the nature of (un)happiness!

4. About Jin Applied Researcher at Microsoft Bing – Day Job: relevance (search quality) measurement – A lots of number crunching + stat/math fun! Passion for Self-tracking for 10+ years – Experimented with self-built S/W btw. 2002-2006 – Keep on experimenting ever since… Turns out two have much in common!

5. Parallels between Search Quality vs. Happiness Measurement Search Quality How good are the quality of results we serve for users? Happiness How happy do I feel for given time-frame? Search QualityHappiness PurposeMax. searcher satisfactionMax. happiness Ground TruthRelevance judgment (Judges)Happiness judgment (myself) Next StepsAlgo. ranking improvementLifestyle improvement Both aim at objective results from subjective human measurements!

6. MEASUREMENT METHOD

7. What to Measure Happiness – Self-reported 5-point Likert scale Perfect (LIFIDEA) to Nightmare Record 3 times a day Factors affecting Happiness – Sleep / wake-up time / events / states Anything I believe to be correlated with H.

8. Both sides of the H. coin How successful was it? Hard side of happiness – Goal achievement – Impact on myself/others Major factors – Preparation/planning – Task scope/breakdown How good did I feel? Soft side of happiness – Sense of well-being Major factors – Energy level – Focus/awareness How can we turn this into the rating?

9. Happiness Rating Matrix How good did I feel? AwesomePositiveSo Awful How successful was it? Very Successful Perfect [LIFIDEA] ExcellentGoodFair SuccessfulExcellentGoodFair So soGoodFair Bad UnsuccessfulFair BadNightmare Very unlikely

10. MEASUREMENT PIPELINE

11. Allows natural and easy entry of happiness rating and related factors Pipeline Overview Data Extraction in Ruby Statistics Calculation in R Journal Entry in Evernote Web Front-end in JQuery Allows real-time update of status anytime, anywhere

12. LESSONS LEARNED FROM 2012

13. Time-series of Happiness and Factors Per-day and per-week statistics of Wake-up time / Average score / Sleep time

14. Score > 4 Score = 3 Score < 2 Happy times vs. Unhappy times

15. Impact of Major Events Consistently more happy before/during major deadline/tasks Extended vacation is major source of unhappiness??? Vacation

16. How wake-up time & location affects my happiness Early start is critical for happy morning! Better stay away from home if you want to be happy!

17. Findings on my Happiness ‘Initial condition’ matters a lot – Discipline at early morning / work start is crucial – Need to put yourself in the zone at the beginning Some structure/external stimuli helps – Weekdays/Morning/Deadline induces happiness! – Hard to be ‘optimal’ in relaxed situations

18. Findings on my Happiness Cyclical pattern is unavoidable – Get loose after good times, vice versa – Real question: how can I stay in the zone AMAP? Your rating affects yourself – Beware of self-fulfilling prophecy – Try to rate myself after the fact

19. Conclusions & Next Steps Self-tracking has made tremendous impact – On how I see myself and prioritize stuffs Need to turn the insights into results – E.g., How can I achieve 3.5 average for this year? A lot of things to learn about myself & tracking – I can probably write a book in the end!