The best decision I've ever made

The best decision I've ever made

I first came across the phrase “experienced well-being” in Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” The psychologist and Nobel Prize winner uses this to explain a few facts about happiness, the most fascinating of which is that a person's level of happiness increases with the amount of money they earn - but only up to a household income of $75,000 (£46,000) per year.

After that, the increase in well-being in relation to the increased wealth is on average zero.

In plain language: A multimillionaire is not much happier than a person who earns $75,000 a year. He may be more "satisfied" with life in general, but his "experienced well-being" - that is, how happy and content he feels from moment to moment and day to day - is about the same as his less well-off counterpart. I've thought about this concept several times over the last few months.

I had a good life in London. I had a large family with whom I laughed a lot, a partner who made me feel safe and loved, an interesting and challenging job at Penguin Random House and, the highlight of the London residency, a property just a minute from the tube. Still, I rarely stopped and thought, “I feel so happy right now.”

Traveling for two hours every weekday through London's underground pits, dealing with rush hour rudeness, not breathing clean air, not eating fresh food, longing for sunshine that rarely shone, all affected my experienced well-being.

I love London, I really do, and I'll return to its rusty towers, I'm sure, but two months into our trip of a lifetime, I'm struck by the frequency with which I feel happiness, whether it's sailing through stunning waters, waking up to a beautiful view, or doing something that really scares me.

I feel wonder and awe more often than ever before. Yesterday it was watching a first edition of Treasure Island at Robert Louis Stevenson's home, the house where he lived and died. Today it raced down the sliding rocks of Papase’ea in Samoa. There will be something new tomorrow.

I know this isn't real life. I know it can't be sustained. Even if I had the means to travel forever, it would eventually stop being new. It seems obvious to say that the best thing about traveling is that it makes you happy, of course it does, but the frequency with which it does that - the increase in experienced well-being - is empirically worth more than a million dollars.

Although I'm sure the romance and newness of the road will wear off, two months in it feels like the best decision I've ever made.
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