humor journaling · three minutes · new this season
In 2016 a Swiss group tested five humor exercises the way Seligman tested gratitude: online, placebo-controlled, hundreds of adults, one week. The dullest-sounding one — write down three funny things that happened today and why they were funny — was among those that kept working half a year later. It out-lasted most of the gratitude variants in that trial. Nobody expected it.
You go looking for what was funny, which means you spend the day half-noticing it. The why makes you replay the moment. Over a week, the habit of scanning for the absurd starts to run on its own, and the days you catalogue turn out funnier than the days you didn’t.
One trial, self-selected online volunteers, self-report. The happiness gain lasted; the drop in depressive symptoms didn’t. Effects are the usual size for this kind of thing — small — and the six-month figure is for people who kept some version of the habit.
A frog on a lily pad, three cards, a why field, a mic if typing is a chore. Shake the phone and the frog croaks; you’ll do it more than once.
Try it in the meadow →from Attuned Work Design
Anything you type in the meadow stays on your phone. There is no account and no server that sees it. · About · Make one for someone