The ObservatoryPart of your subjective wellbeing
Positive affect
How often positive emotional states have been experienced during the stated period.
How it's measured
3 statements in the wellbeing assessment, scored from "doesn't apply at all" to "applies completely".
- Over the past four weeks, I have often felt joy.
- Over the past four weeks, I have often felt calm and content.
- Over the past four weeks, I have often felt interested and enthusiastic.
Where you work with it
The life areas in this section — assess yourself, answer the questions, and track them over time.
Getting started
Exercise
Joy list
List twenty things that bring you joy, keep the five simplest, and put one of them in your calendar already this week.
10 min · Compassion
Exercise
The joy schedule
Don't wait for the urge. Joy usually comes after you start, not before. So you schedule it.
11 min · Discipline
Article
Why 'feeling good' is the wrong thing to aim for
The harder you chase happiness, the more it tends to slip away. Research points toward something less glamorous, and more lasting.
2 min · Rationality
Exercise
Action before motivation
Low mood says: do nothing until you feel like it. The research says the opposite — action comes first, the wish follows. An exercise in starting from the right end.
12 min · Discipline
Exercise
Hold on to the good
An exercise in catching a good moment before it slips past. Not afterwards, but while you wait for it or while you are in it
9 min · Discipline
Tool
The enjoyment log
A standing place to record good moments, so the pattern of what actually fills you up becomes visible over time
7 min · Compassion
Exercise
One minute: count today's kindnesses
Count the small kindnesses you have done yourself today. They are easy to miss.
1 min · Compassion
Exercise
3 good things
Write down three things from the day that went well, and consider what made them possible. The brain is trained to notice what works.
6 min · Compassion
How's your positive affect?
The wellbeing assessment gives you a profile across all six dimensions, and you see it change over time. Free account, no payment.