Something I read online recently has made me think. (Frankly, I'm a little worried about the Internet; there seem to be less trolls and animated gifs recently and far more common sense.)
"I haven’t written nearly enough articles recently that I’ll be proud to show off more than a few months from now." (Marco Arment, May 2012.)
In this spirit, I thought I'd (try to) write something a bit more meaningful than a complaint about DVDs or an ode to the Magical New Gadget That I'll Just Replace In A Year Anyway.
I read an interesting post by Theresa Couchman a few days ago (I have no idea who she is either, but that's one of the cool things about the web):
She was explaining that she has written a lot less on her blog because she has less to complain about in her life. When she isn't happy, she has a lot more to say and she writes it down. When she is happy, she blogs less because she's spending more time doing other things that she enjoys.
It's the same for a lot of people: happiness affects everything you do. Being unhappy means you want to complain more and actually do less. You're much more productive when you're happy - in both your personal life and your professional environment. If you have less to complain about, you have more time to do the things that you actually enjoy. Joel Spolsky wrote about this a few years ago from a software development perspective:
Programmers are often pleased by cool technology; we're not difficult to buy presents for, we're just expensive! And once we have cool stuff to use, we're happier, and much less likely to complain about things like the salary, noise, or why clients are always changing things. The same "problems" exist, your happiness doesn't make them go away. It's just that your perspective has changed.
"Before you tell yourself it's just a different scene, remember it's just different from what you've seen." (Spotify link)
Maybe I'm happier with my life just now and that's why I'm not seeing so many trolls on the web.