Summary of Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | TED

00:00:00 - 00:10:00

This video discusses the findings of a study on happiness and what makes for a good life. The study found that close relationships are key to happiness and that work should be balanced with social time.

• 00:00:00 The Harvard Study of Adult Development has tracked the lives of 724 men for 75 years, asking them about their work, home lives, health, and fame. Most of what we know about human life comes from asking people to remember the past, and as the study has progressed, it has become more and more difficult to find participants. However, through a combination of luck and the persistence of several generations of researchers, the study has survived. In the last few years, the study has begun to track the lives of 2,000 children of the original 724 participants. This video is a report on the study's latest findings, which show that while many of the participants have achieved success in their lives, there are also many who have struggled.
• 00:05:00 The study of human happiness has yielded some clear lessons, including that having positive social relationships is key to a good life, that living in the midst of conflict is harmful, and that strong attachments can protect the brain against memory decline.
• 00:10:00 The speaker discusses the wisdom that good, close relationships are good for our health and well-being and that replacing worktime with social time is a key to a happy life. He cites Mark Twain who wrote more than a century ago that "there is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that."