I am by no means an expert in psychology. Far from it, I have never undertaken any formal study of the field. I have noticed a couple things about myself though, which I thought I’d share here for anyone who drifts by.
A very large part of how well the human brain performs is based on how well rested we are. In fact, tired driving is involved in roughly 20% of fatal crashes in the US every year. This is comparable to drunk driving, which is involved in around 30% of fatal crashes.
On a side note, it’s very interesting that fatigued driving is, for the most part, not regulated, while drunk driving is highly illegal in most countries.
Sleep is also proven to affect other mental and physical components of your health, and staying well rested is one of the most effective ways to ensure peak performance regardless of the task.
There are a lot of factors that influence how effective sleeping can be. How long you sleep for, under what conditions you’re sleeping and how tired you are when you fall asleep all have a major impact on the quality and effectiveness of sleeping. There is actually another factor which is shown may affect sleep quality, and that is happiness 1. Note that this isn’t spontaneous happiness, but a general satisfaction with life.
Interestingly, good sleep is inversely linked with happiness and mental health, so it’s quite difficult to differentiate the two.
One thing you can do to get yourself really good sleep is to exhaust yourself. My personal recommendation is anything that also contains a social aspect and which can create lasting memories. It’s generally considered that your brain processes memories while it sleeps, so giving it good memories seems like a pretty good way to help that process along. Also there’s a decent chance you’ll dream about those good memories, which might set you up for a better mood when you wake up, as opposed to dreaming about some potentially traumatic experience.
Some research also suggests that taking a hot shower before bed can help improve sleep. This is called the “warm bath effect” if you want to google it and get more conclusive results than just me telling you it might be true.
Being generally happier is generally a good thing, but I posit that it is also linked to motivation. I’m fairly sure there are scientific studies backing this up, but I really can’t be fucked to find them.
More to the point, if happiness isn’t linked to motivation, how come lack of motivation is linked with sadness, malaise and depression?
At the very least, be happy to avoid those, even if it doesn’t bring you intrinsic motivation.
I personally find volunteering to be a very good way to be consistently happy. Volunteering can come in many forms, open source contributions are probably the most likely for this particular target audience.
There are a number of other ways to volunteer. Many companies want volunteers for a number of reasons, and you can help run and organise events as a volunteer.
Groups like scouts are also usually volunteer run, and there’s a lot of potential to do fun and interesting things through such organisations.
I feel that this has been a very short and abrupt end, but I’ve also covered pretty much all my thoughts on the topic. To recap, be generally and consistently happier. Do things which help others and be active. Go running or something. You’ll be fitter, happier and more motivated.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-013-9484-8 ↩