Right mix of pleasure and purpose

PROFESSOR of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics Paul Dolan takes a cool, scientific look at how we can organise our lives to put more joy into them. Happiness, says Dolan, lies in finding the right mix of pleasure and purpose – the feeling that what we’re doing is worthwhile. We often don’t feel as much happiness as we could simply because we don’t give enough attention to it. What’s more, we often focus on our overall level of happiness, rather than concentrating on how day-to-day experiences make us feel.

For Dolan, becoming happier is more to do with making small adjustments to what we do, rather than big changes – chatting to a stranger to enliven a boring queue, setting up out-of-office emails that make us laugh, minimising distractions – can mean more happiness. While much of this may be obvious, Dolan’s tips are helpful and it’s heartening to think that experiencing more of this elusive emotion is within our reach.

The Moth: This Is A True Story with an introduction by Neil Gaiman (Serpent’s Tail £12.99, ebook £4.63) 3/5 stars

THE Moth is a storytelling event in which all manner of people get up and tell the audience true stories about their lives. Obviously these tales are practised; still, there is a sense here of an odd intimacy, more so even than in a full memoir (which will inevitably require more structuring, more concessions to narrative form).

The 50 tales transcribed here are chosen from more than 3,000, and if they have one weakness, it’s that too many are from professional storytellers, whether that be novelists or Malcolm Gladwell. The most arresting are those from tellers less often found between two covers: cops, crooks, astronauts, harem girls. Obviously, opinions on the highlights will vary; equally obviously, this is a book for dipping into, not one to plough straight through. What can be said with some certainty is that very few readers will fail to find something of great interest here.