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How Technology Can Help Us Find Happiness
The significance
People should be able to track their happiness in a similar way they track their fitness goals.
Apps tracking happiness effectively served as a glorified research project. The conclusion: people are happiest when they stop their minds from wandering.
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Marketing And Product Development Taught By A Blockbuster Game
Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold 13 million copies in six weeks, making it one of the most popular games of modern times. The universal, de-stressing nature of the game contrasted wi...
Listen To Your Customers And Act Fast
The way Nintendo worked on the issues, glitches and other problems it encountered and solved it quickly provides us another lesson: Listening to the end-user and prioritizing the features or the changes based on user feedback.
Don’t Give Everything Away For Free
Nintendo restricted players who have bought the ‘Switch’ console which plays the hit game, to only be able to create one island. This has been a controversial restriction, but has enabled more sales of the console.
The lesson here is to provide something for free but add revenue-creating restrictions to your business model.
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Not backed up by science
While popular, researchers say there is a serious lack of evidence to back up mindfulness apps, even though they are increasingly perceived as proven treatments for mental health.
Seeking scientific validation
A handful of studies have been published on the efficacy of mindfulness apps, thanks in part to Headspace, one of the most popular apps in the field. In hopes of getting its app scientifically validated, the organization has partnered on more than 60 studies with 35 academic institutions. In the meantime, in lieu of research proving that apps work, marketers tend to draw misleading, but attractive claims.
The paradox of mindfulness apps
Mindfulness disrupts unhelpful habits. If you get distracted easily or have addictions, mindfulness helps curb these habits. But, in contrast, apps become popular and profitable by getting users lightly addicted to repetitive use. So, can an app really treat addiction, or is it inherently part of the problem? As of now, we don’t know the answer to that question.
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Key Ideas
"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."
Marcus Aurelius
Where Happiness Comes From
Phenomena that happen outside of us don’t cause happiness. They might be correlated with happiness but it’s not a cause-and-effect relationship.
The most important part is what happens in our brain between the external event (a good cup of coffee) and our state of happiness.