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The paradox of happiness: Why are we not doing

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L. Parker Schiffer & Tomi-Ann Roberts

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The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2017.1279209

The paradox of happiness: Why are we not doing what we know makes us happy?
L. Parker Schiffera and Tomi-Ann Robertsb
a
Department of Behavioral Sciences, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, USA; bDepartment of Psychology, Colorado College,
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Achieving and maintaining happiness can be difficult, especially when people are not engaging in Received 10 June 2016
the activities they know facilitate it. ‘Flow’ activities require clear rules, challenge, a high investment Accepted 6 December 2016
of energy, and have been shown to promote long-term happiness better than low investment, KEYWORDS
passive activities. Do people know this? In two studies, we found that, despite recognizing that Happiness; flow; affective
flow activities are more likely to facilitate happiness, people nevertheless participated in passive forecasting; well-being;
leisure significantly more often in a typical week. Participants rated passive activities as being enjoyment
significantly more enjoyable, requiring less effort, and being less daunting to get started than flow
activities. Participants’ engagement in flow activities was significantly predicted by how enjoyable
the activities were perceived to be, whereas how daunting those activities were rated predicted
non-engagement. Passive activity engagement was only significantly predicted by enjoyment.
Suggestions for enabling people to rise above the barriers to flow activities are offered.

Any casual perusal of online news sources will yield count-
less lists and suggestions for how to be happy. It seems we
are always in pursuit of happiness, yet do not always know
where or how to find it. Western cultures often equate hap-
piness with income and the meeting of hedonic needs. As
a result, people have the tendency to invest their happi-
ness in the accumulation of wealth, status, or possessions.
However, research has shown that these attainments do
not, in fact, sustainably promote happiness because peo-
ple are susceptible to hedonic adaptation; they get used
to and take for granted good life circumstances (Brickman
& Campbell, 1971). Furthermore, because work is often
highly demanding, people feel their free time is too pre-
cious to risk losing to yet more challenging activities, so
they resign themselves to experiencing happiness through
easy ‘relaxing’ entertainment (Kurtz, 2011). Ironically, there
are numerous online popular media lists of alleged hap-
piness-inducing activities, all of which involve getting off
of the computer. These activities, however, tend to entail
overcoming a certain level of ‘activation energy’ (Achor,
2010). The term, borrowed from chemistry, refers to both
the physical and psychic energy that we must commit in
order to initiate an effortful activity. In the present studies,
we tested whether people realize that more effortful activ-
ities yield longer-term happiness, and whether and why
they nevertheless fail to engage in them as often as more
passive leisure in their pursuit of happiness.
Defining happiness
The many different and changing definitions of happiness
make it an elusive construct. Generally there are two prom-
inent modern definitions. The hedonic approach to hap-
piness focuses on pleasure vs. displeasure, arguing that in
order to maintain positive well-being, or overall happiness,
individuals should work to experience more gratification
than pain (Caunt, Franklin, Brodaty, & Brodaty, 2013). The
eudaimonic theory explains happiness relative to our abil-
ity to function in the world (Zevnik, 2014). In contrast to
the hedonic approach, eudaimonic theory suggests that
certain activities, like drugs or alcohol, can give immedi-
ate pleasure and happiness, but can also jeopardize our
overall well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2000). In the eudaimonic
approach, our happiness is dependent on our ability to
live in accordance with our authentic self as we strive for
perfection and the Aristotelian idea of human flourishing
(Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Seligman defined happiness with a simple equation:
the sum of genetic predisposition, life circumstances,
and factors under personal control (Seligman, 2002).
Heritable personality traits contribute to how introverted,
extraverted, narcissistic, or optimistic a person is; these
characteristics then determine that individual’s baseline
of happiness, or average well-being (Seligman, 2002).
Indeed, genetic predispositions can account for as much
as 50% of a person’s happiness (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, &

CONTACT  Tomi-Ann Roberts  troberts@coloradocollege.edu

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2   L. P. SCHIFFER AND T.-A. ROBERTS
Schkade, 2005). The other half is derived from life circum-
stances and personal control. Life circumstances include a
person’s geographical location, marital status, profession,
and wealth (Diener & Oishi, 2005). While influential, recent
research suggests that life circumstances typically account
for only 20% of our happiness (Caunt et al., 2013).
Life circumstances mainly establish what factors are
under our own control and how we can operate them.
Only if our life circumstances offer sufficient stability in
the form of the basic human needs (physiological and
physical safety, love/belonging, and esteem) can we then
increase our well-being via controllable factors (Sheldon
& Lyubomirsky, 2006). In other words, to a certain extent
happiness is constant across time, and is influenced by
factors beyond personal control. However, approximately
30% is determined by intentional activities. Indeed the
media seem to constantly promote intentional activities
like counting blessings, visualizing a bright future, per-
forming acts of kindness, and writing letters of gratitude as
methods of increasing subjective well-being (Lyubomirsky
et al., 2005). These activities are especially likely to bring
happiness when they promote ‘flow’.
Flow is a non-conscious all encompassing mental
state induced when skill and challenge meet during
our participation in activities that require an investment
of psychic or physical energy (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).
Because such high investment activities are largely auto-
telic experiences, and not necessarily pleasureable in the
moment, flow experiences are often only enjoyable ret-
rospectively (Dietrich, 2004; Kawabata & Mallett, 2011).
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) argued that we will be happier
overall to the extent that we involve ourselves in flow activ-
ities, and indeed research shows that optimal experiences
add up to a happy life (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). Why, then,
do we often mistake relaxation and improved financial life
circumstances for being the path to happiness?
Affective forecasting
Affective forecasting is the process by which people
attempt to predict the emotional impact of events in the
future (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). People are particularly
error-prone when forecasting future happiness (Gilbert,
Gill, & Wilson, 2002). One of the main reasons for these
errors is ‘impact bias’ (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005), which is the
overestimation of the duration and intensity of an emo-
tion in contrast to the person’s current emotional state
(Loewenstein, O’Donoghue, & Rabin, 2003). As a result
of impact bias, people will not only erroneously predict
the overall direction of their emotion (positive or nega-
tive), but also how long the emotion will last (minutes or
months; Mellers & McGraw, 2001). ‘Focalism’ also contrib-
utes to inaccurate affective forecasting (Wilson, Wheatley,
Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom, 2000). Focalism bias occurs
when people make immediate decisions falsely premised
on hypothetical future events and feelings (Schkade &
Kahneman, 1998).
Perhaps inaccurate affective forecasting plays a role in
our inability to engage in flow activities. When faced with
a choice between a leisure activity or a high-investment
flow activity, people may affectively forecast that passive
leisure will be more restful, restorative, and enjoyable than
a flow activity. But affective forecasting works in both the
long and short-term, and because flow activities are not
necessarily pleasurable in the moment, perhaps people
are correct to predict that low-investment activities will be
more immediately ‘fun’ and gratifying. Greater difficulties
arise when we must make longer-term forecasts. Long-
term happiness decisions often require sacrifice, likely
making them more susceptible to impact bias.
The present studies
Empirical research confirms that happiness is best facil-
itated through effortful activities that require some psy-
chic and physical investment on our part (Nakamura &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2002), and indeed popular media seems
to remind us of this fact daily. In two studies, we sought
to test a number of hypotheses. Our primary prediction
was that people know full well that flow activities best
facilitate long-term happiness, endorsing more effortful
activities as yielding greater happiness than more passive
ones. Our second prediction was that, despite this knowl-
edge, people would report not engaging in flow activities
as often as they engage in more passive activities on a
weekly basis. In other words, we predicted that people’s
short-term affective forecasts about flow activities would
be inaccurate, but that they would have correct long-term
affective forecasts. Our third prediction was that people
do not engage in flow activities because of the short-term
affective forecasts that more passive activities will be more
enjoyable, and that flow activities require too much acti-
vation energy: both require too much effort and seem
insurmountably daunting to initiate.
Study 1
Method
Participants
Participants were recruited through the online market
place Amazon mechanical Turk (MTurk). The survey was
advertised as ‘Happiness Survey’, and opened to up to 100
MTurk employees. Ninety-five (41 male and 54 female)
participants successfully completed the survey. Their ages
ranged from 22 to 60  years or age, with a mean age of
 THE JOURNAL OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY   3

34  years of age. Seventy-six percent of the participants this knowledge, people do not engage in flow activities as
identified as white; 5% identified as Black, 8% as Asian, often as they engage in passive activities. Our final predic-
and 7% as Hispanic or Latino. Native American, Alaskan tion was that people do not engage because they affec-
Native, or Other collectively accounted for the other 2%. tively forecast in the short-term that these flow activities
Participants were paid $2 for taking the 20-min survey. are not as enjoyable, require too much energy to initiate,
and are insurmountably daunting. Results supported all
Procedure three hypotheses.
Participants were asked to rate 36 activities. Each activity A principle components factor analysis with Varimax
has been shown in previous research to either require high rotation, using the Effort rating variable, and forcing a
physical and high psychic involvement or to be more pas- two-factor solution, was run to confirm how participants
sive. Eighteen of the activities were high physical and/or distinguished between the two types of activities (High
high psychic (e.g. exercising, journaling, making art, cook- Flow and Passive). Eighteen items loaded on a factor
ing) and the other 18 were more passive (e.g. checking we named ‘High Flow’. Ten items loaded on a factor we
social media, watching T.V., surfing the internet, listening called ‘Passive’ (see Table 1). Eight items were eliminated
to music). For each activity, participants were asked: (a) because they loaded significantly, or not at all, on both
‘How enjoyable is the activity?’ (b) ‘How much effort does the ‘High Flow’ and ‘Passive’ factors. These were: Pursuing
it take to initiate this activity?’ (c) ‘How daunting is it to get Hobbies, Going Out, Reading, Catching Up With Family,
this activity started?’ and (d) ‘How often do you engage Playing Board Games, Drinking Tea/Coffee, Using Drugs
in this activity in a typical week?’ The 36 activities were and Consuming Alcohol.
given to participants in a randomized order. After rating Reliability analyses were run on the 18 ‘High Flow’ and
each activity individually, the participants were shown the 10 ‘Passive’ items and resulted in Cronbach’s alphas of
complete list of 36 activities again, and asked, first, to nom- .82 and .84, respectively. Thus the items comprising the
inate five activities which they believed best facilitated constructs of High Flow (high investment flow activities)
long lasting happiness and, next, looking at the list again, versus Passive (passive leisure) activities were deemed
to name five that they believed were least conducive to acceptably reliable (i.e. consistent with each other).
long-term happiness. A paired samples t-test, comparing the High Flow
and Passive items on participants’ Enjoyment ratings
Measures resulted in a significant effect, t(94) = −16.96, p  <  .001,
Each question was specifically formulated in order to with participants rating the High Flow (M = 3.86, SD = .87)
address a certain construct. The enjoyment rating was
included to measure short-term affective forecasting. Both Table 1. Factor loadings on effort ratings.
effort and daunting ratings were thought to operationalize Activity High flow Passive
different aspects of activation energy, with effort ratings Exercising .685*
used to measure the physical energy required to engage Part. in team sports .480 −.224
in each activity, and ratings of how daunting it is to get Part. in individual sports .595*
Professional work .490
each activity started designed to gague the psychologi- House work/yard work .682*
cal intimidation involved in initiating an activity. A Likert Creating art .654* .246
Practice/play instrument .599*
scale containing seven points and ranging from ‘Not at All’ Face to face socializing .472
to ‘Extremely’ was used for the enjoyment and daunting Helping others .609*
Cooking .513
ratings. A Likert scale containing seven points and ranging Meditation/yoga .658*
from ‘None’ to ‘A Great Deal’ was used for the effort rat- Studying .484
Organizing .564
ings. And a Likert scale ranging from ‘Never’ to ‘5–7 times Building .644*
a week’ containing four points was used to measure the Journaling .537 .283
frequency with which participants said they engaged in Shopping .495 .238
Writing letters .541
each activity. The goal of the final nomination questions Grooming .493
was to test participants’ long-term affective forecasting of Listening to music .817*
Watching movies .728*
the lasting-happiness potential of high flow (high invest- Surfing internet .698*
ment) versus more passive (low investment) activities. Daydreaming .683*
Watching TV .645*
Checking social media .616*
Resting .613*
Results and discussion Eating .252 .593
Alone time .593*
Our primary prediction was that people know that flow Sleeping .363
activities facilitate long-term happiness better than pas- Notes: Factor loadings >.3 were considered significant in Study 1.
sive activities. Our secondary prediction was that, despite *Indicates items used in Study 2 for confirmatory factor analysis.
4   L. P. SCHIFFER AND T.-A. ROBERTS
activities as significantly less enjoyable than the Passive
ones (M = 5.70, SD = .84), as predicted. A paired samples
t-test was also run on Effort ratings, comparing the High
Flow and Passive activities, and again resulted in a signif-
icant effect: t(94) = 23.201, p < .001. High Flow activities
(M = 4.60, SD = .98) were rated as requiring significantly
more effort to initiate than the Passive activities (M = 1.84,
SD = .83), again as predicted. A third paired samples t-test
on the Daunting variable revealed that participants, as pre-
dicted, rated the High Flow activities (M = 4.15, SD = 1.12)
as significantly more daunting than the Passive activities
(M = 1.56, SD = .75), t(94) = 22.45, p < .001. A final paired
samples t-test was run on the Frequency ratings, and
resulted in a significant effect: t(94) = −31.98, p < .001. As
predicted, participants reported that they engaged in
High Flow activities (M = 2.08, SD = .308) significantly fewer
times in a typical week than they engaged in Passive ones
(M = 3.35, SD = .33).
Frequencies were run on all 28 activities in order to
explore whether participants know that the High Flow
activities are more likely to facilitate long-term happi-
ness. The top three activities nominated to facilitate long-
term happiness were two High Flow activities: exercising
(N  =  43), and face-to-face socializing (N  =  38), and one
Passive activity: sleeping (N = 41). Even though sleeping
was in the top three, a paired samples t-test indicated that
High Flow activities (M = 2.02, SD = 1.10) were significantly
more likely to be nominated overall than Passive activities
(M  =  1.53, SD = 1.29), t(94) = 2.157, p = .034. Frequencies
were also run on the nominations of activities least likely
to facilitate long-term happiness. The top three activities
nominated here were, as predicted, all ‘Passive’: watching
T.V. (N = 36), checking social media (N = 29), and surfing
the Internet (N = 29). However, no significant difference
was found when comparing High Flow activities (M = 1.50,
SD = 1.26) to Passive leisure (M = 1.48, SD = 1.17) when par-
ticipants nominated activities that are least likely to facili-
tate long-term happiness, t(94) = .092, p = .927.
A regression analysis was run on the Frequency var-
iable for High Flow activities, using rated enjoyment,
effort and intimidation (‘daunting-ness’) as predictors,
and yielded a significant solution (F = 15.66, df = 3, 91,
p < .001) R2 = .340. The factors of enjoyment, effort, and
daunting predicted 34% of the variability in participants’
reports of how often they engaged in High Flow activ-
ities in a typical week. A second regression was run on
Frequency for Passive activities, again with the enjoy-
ment, effort and daunting variables as predictors, and
also yielded a significant solution (F = 22.16, df = 3, 91,
p < .001) R2 = .422. As illustrated in Table 2, enjoyment
significantly accounted for engagement, while perceived
intimidation (i.e. daunting) significantly accounted for
Table 2. Predictors of frequency of engagement in activities on a
weekly basis in Studies 1 and 2.
Study 1 Study 2
High flow Passive High flow Passive
frequency frequency frequency frequency
Variable B B B B
Enjoyment .414* .266* .193* .153*
Effort .049 .017 −.029 −.056
Daunting −.298* .022 −.142* −.028
R2 .340 .422 .572 .541
F 15.66 22.16 30.53 25.58
*p < .05.
participants’ non-engagement in High Flow activities. In
contrast, only the enjoyment factor significantly predicted
engagement in Passive activities.
Study 1 clearly supported all of our predictions. Indeed
we found that participants knew that flow activities facil-
itate long-term happiness better than passive activities,
and yet despite this knowledge, they indicated that they
do not engage in flow activities as often as they engaged
in passive activities. Participants affectively forecasted in
the short-term that flow activities are significantly less
enjoyable, require significantly more energy to initiate, and
are significantly more daunting or intimidating. When we
used the variables of enjoyment, effort and intimidation
(‘daunting-ness’) to predict people’s weekly engagement
with flow and more passive activities, we were somewhat
surprised to find that the effort variable did not predict
engagement in either. Rather, enjoyment alone predicted
the frequency with which people engaged in passive lei-
sure in a typical week. With respect to flow activities, enjoy-
ment predicted engagement, and the daunting factor was
a significant barrier to engagement.
However, one problem with our method of asking par-
ticipants to indicate which activities were most or least
conducive to happiness involved a constraint that may
have biased our findings. That is, participants were lim-
ited to nominating five activities in each case. Given this
constraint, some participants may have opted to nomi-
nate what they perceived to be the more representative
activities (e.g. nominated ‘Exercise’ and therefore did not
also nominate ‘Individual Sports’ or nominated ‘Surf the
Internet’ and therefore did not also nominate ‘Check Social
Media’), and failed to consider all activities equally.
Therefore, the purpose of Study 2 was twofold. Our
first goal was to replicate Study 1 in a second sample, and
provide a confirmation that the highest-loading16 of the
original 36 items would confirm our High Flow and Passive
factors. The second was to correct for the difficulties in
interpreting our ranked data garnered from the question
in which we had asked participants to nominate activities

that are conducive to long term happiness by using a rat-
ing scale for each item.
Study 2
Method
Participants
Participants for Study 2 were also recruited through MTurk,
and the survey was again advertised as ‘Happiness Survey’.
Tags were assigned to participants who had taken our first
survey, and if any of these individuals took the second sur-
vey, they were excluded from analysis. 202 (111 male and
91 female) participants completed the survey. Their ages
ranged from 19 to 68  years of age, with a mean age of
33 years of age. Seventy-nine percent of these identified
as white; 6% as Black, 4% as Asian, 9% Hispanic/Latino, 1%
as Native American, and 1% ‘Other’.
Procedure
Participants rated the 16 activities (in a randomized order)
that loaded the highest onto the two factors of High Flow
(8 items) and Passive (8 items) in Study 1 (see Table 1 for
these 16 items). Again participants rated each activity in
terms of Enjoyment, Effort, Daunting, and Frequency of
engagement per week. After these ratings participants
were again shown the same list of 16 activities and this
time they were asked to rate how conducive each activity
was to facilitating long-term happiness (rated on a Likert
scale from 1 ‘not at all’ to 7 ‘extremely’).
Results
A confirmatory factor analysis using principal components
extraction with Varimax rotation was conducted on partic-
ipants’ ratings of Effort for the 16 items, forcing a two-fac-
tor solution. Each item loaded clearly on one factor with
loadings above .50 for that factor and less than .30 for the
other, except for Yoga, which loaded .34 on the Passive
factor, and .53 on the High Flow factor. This served as a
confirmation of our two factors. Reliability analyses were
run on these two factors (8 High Flow and 8 Passive items)
and resulted in a Cronbach’s alpha of .77 for the High Flow
items, and .81 for the Passive items.
Paired samples t-tests were run, comparing the High
Flow and Passive activities on participants’ ratings of
Enjoyment, Effort, Daunting, and Frequency. As in Study 1,
significant differences were found between activity types
on all variables in the predicted direction. Participants rated
Passive (M = 5.62) activities as significantly more enjoya-
ble than High Flow activities (M = 4.23), t(193) = −17.10,
p  <  .001. Participants rated High Flow (M  =  4.68) activi-
ties as requiring significantly more effort than Passive
THE JOURNAL OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY   5
(M  =  1.90) ones, t(194) = 32.63, p  <  .001; and High Flow
(M = 4.27) activities as being significantly more daunting
to undertake than Passive (M = 1.67) ones, t(192) = 26.90,
p  <  .001. Participants indicated that they engaged in
Passive activities significantly more often in a typical
week than in High Flow activities (M = 3.17 vs. M = 1.78,
t(196) = −34.18, p < .001).
As predicted and clarifying our finding from Study
1, after rating all activities in terms of enjoyment, effort
and intimidation, participants rated High Flow (M = 4.12)
activities as significantly more conductive to facilitating
long term happiness than Passive (M  =  3.75) activities,
t(201) = 2.35, p = .048.
As in Study 1, a regression analysis was run on the
Frequency variable for High Flow activities, using rated
enjoyment, effort and intimidation (‘daunting-ness’) as
predictors, and yielded a significant solution (F = 30.53,
df = 3, 191, p < .001) R2 = .572. A second regression was
run on Frequency for Passive activities, again with the
enjoyment, effort and daunting variables as predictors,
and also yielded a significant solution (F = 25.58, df = 3,
188, p < .001) R2 = .544. Illustrated in Table 2, as in Study 1
enjoyment significantly accounted for engagement, while
the perceived daunting quality again accounted signifi-
cantly for participants’ opting not to engage in High Flow
activities. In contrast, only the enjoyment factor signifi-
cantly predicted engagement in Passive activities.
General discussion
Our two studies sought to answer three questions. First,
do people know that effortful activities facilitate happiness
better than passive ones? Second, do people’s everyday
lives reflect this knowledge? Third, if people know what will
facilitate long-term happiness, why are they not engaging
in those activities? Our findings supported our hypothesis
that people seem to know that high investment flow activi-
ties facilitate long-term happiness better than passive activ-
ities. Yet, our findings also indicated that people engage
in passive leisure far more than flow activities on a weekly
basis. Finally, our regressions indicated that one of the rea-
sons people do not engage in flow activities is because the
psychological component of activation energy required of
them is too high; the tasks are perceived be too daunting
to initiate. In other words, to the extent that a flow activity
is perceived as somehow too psychologically intimidating
to get going, we do not engage. We were surprised to find
in both samples that the perceived effort involved in flow
activities was not a significant barrier to people’s engage-
ment. Interestingly, the only predictor of engagement in
more passive leisure during a typical week is the perception
that such activities are enjoyable.
6   L. P. SCHIFFER AND T.-A. ROBERTS
When asked in Study 1 to nominate and in Study
2 to rate activities that facilitate long-term happiness,
participants recognized that flow activities were signifi-
cantly more facilitative than passive activities. The results
generally revealed that people are fully aware that high
investment activities promote happiness better than pas-
sive activities. Paradoxically, participants reported, only
moments before making these nominations or ratings,
that they actually engage in passive activities significantly
more often than flow activities on a weekly basis. In other
words, they may know what they should be doing, but do
not seem to be doing it. Participants’ answers regarding
the characteristics of passive activities offers some insight
into why they opt for them more often on a weekly basis
than flow activities: they rated more passive activities as
significantly more enjoyable, as requiring less effort to
initiate, and as being less daunting than flow activities.
Even though participants showed that they could accu-
rately affectively forecast for their long-term happiness,
we believe they inaccurately affectively forecast on a short-
term weekly basis. In other words, it seems like passive
activities are going to be more ‘fun’ in the moment because
they perhaps require less activation energy.
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has argued that passive lei-
sure can be pleasing and healthy when people use it as
a restorative homeostatic activity; using it strategically in
order to refuel and recalibrate to then return refreshed
to flow activities. However, when people engage in pas-
sive leisure exclusively, thinking that ‘relaxing’ is the key
to happiness, they run the risk of becoming complacent.
Stagnation and complacency are characterized by shying
away from complexities and adversity; people become
overly secure in routine, and assume success in all facets
of life (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). In other words, passive lei-
sure can provide pleasure to help maintain the body and
give us a sense of feeling relaxed and restored, but alone
it cannot facilitate growth or lasting happiness.
We interpret participants’ ratings of passive activities as
more enjoyable than effortful ones as a form of inaccurate
affective forecasting. Alternatively, perhaps they equated
enjoyment with pleasure. If people want pleasure, then
they are right to pursue passive leisure and are not inaccu-
rate in their affective forecasting. But we do not believe this
to be the case; people seem to choose immediate pleas-
ure despite knowing that it does not facilitate long-term
happiness. Impact bias (Loewenstein et al., 2003) may play
a role in these inaccuracies. In this case, people could be
overestimating the lasting happiness-value of pleasurable
activities, accounting for at least some of the motivation
to pursue things like ‘checking social media’. Time passes
quickly and before we know it we have spent hours pas-
sively refreshing our Facebook page; with each click of the
refresh button we hope to perpetuate the sense of instant
gratification and pleasure we are receiving, and lose hours
in the process.
Focalism bias (Wilson, Centerbar, Kermer, & Gilbert,
2005) could be operating in one of two ways in our studies.
First, when individuals are engaging in pleasurable activ-
ities they might devalue future flow activities and believe
they will not promote happiness. But our studies suggest
that people do know that pleasure does not last forever
and will not promote long-term happiness. Alternatively,
focalism bias might promote the overestimation of how
much engaging in a flow activity in the future will impact
overall happiness. People seem to know what they could
be doing to be happy, and perhaps this knowledge of what
they plan to do in the future justifies and compensates
for immediate engagement in passive leisure. In this way,
people engage in ‘procrastinated happiness’, believing
they can always be happy later or that they will ‘get to it
tomorrow’. With these predictions they engage in imme-
diate passive leisure under the false assumption that a
single high-energy activity in the future will compensate
for presently engaging in mindless hedonism.
One notable exception to our finding that high invest-
ment activities are most happiness-promoting, was the
clearly passive activity of ‘sleep’ being a popular nomina-
tion in Study 1 as a significant lasting happiness-inducer.
In Study 2, ‘sleeping’ was no longer included among items
to rate for participants (did not load high enough on the
Passive factor), but ‘resting’ was. When we compared rat-
ings of Passive versus High Flow activities for yielding
long-term happiness in Study 2, the statistically significant
difference was increased between them if the ‘resting’ item
was removed (p = .023 if removed, p = .048 if included).
Even though sleep and rest loaded on the Passive factor,
growing research indicates the health and happiness
effects of good-quality sleep (Irwin, 2015). Furthermore,
studies have revealed the interruption to quality sleep
that screen-time appears to yield (Hale & Guan, 2015), and
MTurk workers clearly spend a lot of time engaging with
screens (for example, participating in studies like ours).
Perhaps most simply, these MTurk workers might be sleep
deprived and this may be why they view sleep and rest as
happiness-promoting.
Suggestions for intervention and future
research
Even though there are ‘self help’ frameworks and motiva-
tional speakers (e.g. Shawn Achor) whose messages are
about the usefulness of pre-planning and arranging to
facilitate transition into flow activities, little if any empir-
ical research has explored these ideas (Steger, 2011).
Regardless of which flow activity people prefer to engage
in, our findings indicate that one of the main difficulties

seems to be overcoming how daunting (i.e. psychologi-
cally intimidating) the activity is. Even though our regres-
sion analyses indicated that effort was not a significant
barrier to engagement in flow activities, we suggest that
reducing initiation effort could perhaps help compensate
for the feeling of an activity being too daunting.
One method to reduce initiation energy is to try to ease
the physical transition into flow activities. In the case of
exercising, a useful practice could be to place workout
clothes out the night before and to pick a gym that is close
by. Our findings suggest that people are aware that these
efforts are not significantly limiting; however because flow
activities are significantly daunting, psychological intimi-
dation might overrule an easy physical transition. Perhaps
by simply setting up the required materials in advance (e.g.
the journal and pen, the easel and paintbrushes), we can
make an easy task even easier and move more smoothly
into it.
Certain flow activities can feel simultaneously exciting
and insurmountably intimidating or daunting. One of the
reasons people may succumb to psychological intimi-
dation and ignore the low amount of physical energy
required to initiate flow activities is because of perceived
‘transition costs’ (Gilbert, personal communication, May
12, 2014), which can be thought of as forecasts of dis-
comfort that will likely be involved in the initial minutes
of engaging in a flow activity. Compared to the immediate
pleasure from sitting on the couch, the first five minutes
of walking, running, or riding my bike will be ‘costly’, or
uncomfortable. I will likely not feel particularly good – my
knees might hurt and my breathing might be strained.
The enjoyment will settle in later, perhaps even after the
run or bike ride is over. The more displeasure or pain we
perceive we will need to experience in order to transition
into a flow activity (even one that does not necessarily
require tremendous physical effort), the more daunting
the activity likely becomes.
Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) notion of controlled con-
sciousness – the ability to govern the direction of our
attention – may provide help in surmounting the intim-
idation that appears to come with engagement in flow
activities. But gaining dominion over consciousness is no
easy task, given how sensitive our attention is to distract-
ing external stimuli like popular media and advertising
(Kim et al., 2009). Methods like meditation and mind-
fulness have been empirically shown to aid the practice
of controlled consciousness. Perhaps mindfulness inter-
ventions could enable people to attend to the enjoyable
features of flow activities, and disregard or discount the
physical and psychological transitions involved in initiat-
ing these activities, bolstering our engagement in them.
One mindfulness intervention that might help involves
­harnessing psychological momentum via ‘SMART’ goal
THE JOURNAL OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY   7
tasks (specific, ­
measurable, assignable, realistic, time-
related; e.g. Chamberlin, 2011), wherein people consider
goals associated with flow-style activities they value.
Conclusions
People know that flow activities facilitate happiness better
than more passive leisure and yet they are not doing these
activities because it seems they do not know how to over-
come the activation energy or transition costs required to
pursue true enjoyment. This disjunction perhaps leads us
to assume that happiness is going to happen to us as an
outcome of our pursuit of hedonism. Thus, we develop a
more passive approach to happiness, opting for the easier
pleasurable activities that require less energy and are less
daunting than high-investment flow activities.
Even though what needs to be overcome is relatively
clear, the methods to do so are not. Future research is
necessary in order to empirically back our proposal that
preplanning, prearranging, and controlled consciousness
may aid overcoming the activation energy and transition
costs that stand in the way of our true happiness. There is
no easy ‘Five Step’ method to achieve lasting fulfillment,
but research has convincingly demonstrated that our deep
engagement in high-energy flow activities is a better path-
way than passive homeostatic restorative activities. Our
studies suggest a paradox of happiness: we seem to know
where it lies, but we do not know how to overcome per-
ceived hurdles in our pursuit of it.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the invaluable statistical assis-
tance provided by both Mark Saviano and Jason Weaver, both
of Colorado College, in this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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