Don’t Check Email First Thing. Unless this is required in your job, then let it go until after you’ve completed your top priority of the day. And then process email in batches, say two or three times a day.

This makes sense.  I would feel very happy if I could knock out my day’s top priority before checking email.  Unfortunately, I often feel like I have about 10 things to do in a day that are all labeled “Top Priority.” By working at them all a little at the time throughout the day, I generally finish enough of them to feel satisfied.

How do you manage your email? Do you really feel like wading through email each day decreases your contentment or productivity?  Do you have any suggestions for alternatives?

-MJ

What housing would bring real happiness?
In his book, “Stumbling on Happiness,” Daniel Gilbert notes that most people are ineffective at forecasting what would make them happy.
“People know what it feels like to be happy, but they’re very poor at predicting the sources of their satisfaction,” says Gilbert, a Harvard University professor of psychology.
Human beings are especially likely to misjudge the satisfaction they’ll derive from having more money.
“More money makes people happier if they’re living under a bridge and can move up to the middle class. But making a lot more money doesn’t make middle-class people a lot happier,” he says.
By the same token, moving from a modest home to a fancier property won’t necessarily increase your happiness, unless it translates to meaningful improvements in your lifestyle.
A larger home could make you happier if, for instance, it provides more space for your grown children and their families to visit. In this case, the more spacious property would support your deep desire for more family solidarity.

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Although some people may spend part of the Labor Day weekend complaining about their bosses or about job burnout, most Americans are satisfied with their jobs, a new University of Chicago study shows.

The survey found that job satisfaction increases with age, with workers over 65 among the most satisfied. The study shows that 86 percent of the people interviewed between 1972 and 2006 said they were satisfied at their jobs, with 48 percent saying they were very satisfied. Only four percent reported being very dissatisfied.

In addition to older workers, those with more education, those earning more money, and workers in the South Central states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississipi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee were the most satisfied. Blacks, Hispanics and people doing unskilled labor were the least happy, according to the report “Job Satisfaction in America: Trends and Socio-Demographic Correlates” by Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Center at the University of Chicago.

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People looking for jobs that bring satisfaction and happiness should concentrate on professions that focus primarily on serving other people, according to a new report from the University of Chicago, which found clergy to be the happiest and most satisfied of American workers.

“The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching, and protecting others and creative pursuits,” said Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey (GSS) at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The survey is the most comprehensive of its kind to explore satisfaction and happiness among American workers. The GSS asks a large variety of questions of a representative sample of Americans in face-to-face interviews. In the 1988 to 2006 GSS surveys, interviewers asked people how satisfied they were with their jobs. The interviewers also asked them about their general level of happiness and Smith correlated those general happiness findings with the jobs people held. People’s feelings about their work usually have a significant impact on their happiness, he said.

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Could the pursuit of happiness go too far?  Most self-help books on the subject offer tips on how to maximize one’s bliss, but a new study suggests that moderate happiness may be preferable to full-fledged elation.

The researchers, from the University of Virginia, the University of Illinois and Michigan State University, looked at data from the World Values Survey, a large-scale analysis of economic, social, political and religious influences around the world. They also analyzed the behaviors and attitudes of 193 undergraduate students at Illinois.

Their findings challenge the common assumption that all measures of well-being go up as happiness increases. While many indicators of success and well-being do correspond to higher levels of happiness, the researchers report, those at the uppermost end of the happiness scale (people who report that they are 10s on a 10-point life satisfaction score) are in some measures worse off than their slightly less elated counterparts.

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