This article started as a LinkedIn post, but as people commented and asked for it to be in a place of more visibility I decided to bring it here. Below you find some key takeaways from the study of the title along with a curated compendium of additional readings, books, and references relevant to help with the topic.
The “Harvard Study of Adult Development” was a 85-years study carried by Harvard University following 724 people through life (getting to 3000 people later as partners and children were also included).
Some key takeaways:
Fortune/career are not the strongest predictors of happiness in the long term, but:
1) The quality of your relationships, especially the closest ones like marriage/family/friends;
2) How well you exercise (keep your body active) and eat healthily along your life
… are.
And not only for happiness, but for longevity and against risks of dementia and other mental degenerative disorders as well.
Curiosity: “Men in a good marriage tend to live 12 years longer than unmarried ones, and women 7 years more”.
“When asked to look back at what they were most proud of in their lives, even Nobel prize winners and US presidents mentioned wins/memories related to their relationships/family above any others”.
Correspondent TED talk about the study: here.
In the same line of the theme above:
a) Netflix documentary “How to live till 100 - The secret of the Blue Zones”: link;
b) Graphs on how the time spent with family/friends/partner/children/alone evolves through life: instagram link.
c) Other books/readings:
- Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity: https://a.co/d/duYJGME (Stanford University doctor);
- Harvard Business Review 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself: https://a.co/d/4x4ZmqZ;
- The five calamities that can destroy your life - and how to avoid them: link (lessons from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger);
- Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues: https://a.co/d/ftLfyGc (lessons from the most popular course of the Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA - Interpersonal Dynamics, “Touchy-Feely” - written by the professors who taught it for decades);
- Can you handle being happy? : https://a.co/d/4gnynQE (respected Brazilian businessman Nizan Guanaes and his psychiatrist sharing decades of learnings);
- On the Brevity of Life - Seneca: https://a.co/d/9m9WZ0z (stoicism, same as in The Daily Stoic - https://a.co/d/hRG94yX which contains philosophical lessons from the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca too, translated to modern life);
- Four Thousand Weeks: https://a.co/d/4V3PnXJ (“Time Management for Mortals”);
- The Alchemist - a tale about self-discovery, purpose and wisdom: https://a.co/d/fjcLQf6 (reference mentioned by names like Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James and Malala Yousafzai);
- The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die: https://a.co/d/btBVTP0 (interviews with 200 people at the end of their lives);
- How Will You Measure Your Life? - https://a.co/d/94zryfm (guidances from the respected Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen to help anyone forge their own path to fulfillment - acclaimed by Forbes, Financial Times and Bloomberg);
- The Happiness Advantage (The Harvard way to Happiness) - How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life: https://a.co/d/2q8vJ7p or https://a.co/d/1X4Lq7R (lessons from the most popular course at Harvard - on Happiness and Positive Psychology, showcasing research defending that it is not success that fuels happiness, but it actually is the other way around);
- The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: https://a.co/d/gluliIU (written by Robin Sharma, who has among his clients entities like Microsoft, IBM, Nike, NASA, Yale and Harvard Business School);
- On stillness, stoicism, and suffering less: https://peterattiamd.com/ryanholiday (conversation between Attia and Holiday, respectively the Stanford doctor author of “Outlive” and the author of “The Daily Stoic”, both books mentioned above);
- Death is a day worth living: https://a.co/d/bypt5bJ (correspondent TED talk: YouTube link);
- The Good Life: Lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness: https://a.co/d/74fomHd (book written by the current director of the Harvard study mentioned above).
Additional links:
- i) The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse (short animation about life and friendship that won the Oscar): YouTube link (Apple TV link);
- ii) Professors Clóvis de Barros Filho and Leandro Karnal on “Happiness or Death”: YouTube link;
- iii) The Happy Brain - the science of where happiness comes from and why - book review: Medium link;
- iv) On Longevity and Biomedical Engineering - challenges and opportunities: YouTube Link (Monica Matsumoto PhD, Visiting Scholar at Stanford University School of Medicine and Professor at ITA);
- v) The benefits of the contact with nature for health and cognition (here), and the underrated importance of sleep for longevity (here);
- vi) Some graphs of Happiness vs Wealth are similar to this one here - in the beginning the steepness is greater with the gains on subsistence/security (base of the Maslow pyramid), and freedom, but then it tends to a plateau on which the marginal gains are smaller since money is not the bottleneck anymore for the majority of things (time starts to be for example) and more wealth will not unblock much more else compared to before;
- vii) Meditation/breathing technique to control stress, clean mind and train the brain to focus (used from athletes to U.S. Navy SEALs): https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing
- viii) The YouTube channel whose video motivated this article, Veritasium, is quite often releasing some interesting content (another example is “Is Success Luck or Hard Work?”: YouTube link);
- ix) Stanford Longevity Lab: https://longevity.stanford.edu
This is an interesting subject, I hope you find it useful, and if you have any other interesting links or readings please feel free to add them here in the comments :)