Happiness Is . . . Your iPhone

A new iPhone app, designed by Harvard grad student Matt Killingsworth, is designed to help you find out what makes you happy. Track Your Happiness uses e-mail or text message notifications to ask you how you are feeling and what you are doing several times a day. You decide how often you want to be cued (between 3 and 5 times a day).

After enough data is collected (50 surveys), you receive a Happiness Report that tells you “how your happiness varies depending on what you are doing, who you are with, where you are, what time of day it is, and a variety of other factors.” Killingsworth, who works with Daniel Gilbert of the Hedonic Psychology Lab, designed the app as part of a doctoral research project to collect real-time data on what factors makes people happy.

Want to try it out? Click here. Could also be used by your favourite teenager . . .

"Connected Parenting advises us not just how to parent, but—far more important—who to be as parents. The therapeutic methods suggested by Jennifer Kolari are based not on simple-minded behavioural solutions, but on building warm, nurturing relationships with our children, with insight and compassion not only for their little flaws, but also for our own larger ones."
—Gabor Maté, M.D.

"A must read for parents, educators, and any other adults who want to connect in a deeply caring and positive way with the children in their lives."
—Barbara Coloroso