Notes on Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

I kept hearing Tim Ferriss talk ​about Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, so I wanted to pick it up. The book focuses on repeatable mistakes of how we predict our future and the psychology of happiness. It reminded me a lot of other psychology books I've read like those of Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman, so it wasn't a ton of new material (for me), but it was a nice read and overview.

Part 1 prospection

Ch 1 journey to elsewhere
We think about the future like no animal does
We are only animal that truly thinks about future
Ability to imagine world as it isn't
Nexting: Brains constantly predicting what will see next
Surprise is when see something unexpected
Frontal lobe latest brain development
Controls ability to add plan and anxiety
Forestalling pleasure creates pleasure of anticipation
Anticipating unpleasant events can lessen their impact
Brains want control over future experiences
Feeling of control gives happiness

Part 2 subjectivity: experience is unobservable to everyone except the person having it

Ch 2 the view from in here
Emotional happiness, moral happiness, judgmental happiness 
People bad at noticing visual discontinuities
Experiences of our former selves foreign to us as if of someone else
Forced to rely on our memories we are not effective

Ch 3 outside looking in

Part 3 realism: The belief that things exist in reality as in the mind

Ch 4 in the blind spot in the minds eye
Very hard to imagine what it would be like if
Memory changed by info after it
Perception affected by mind not just senses

Ch 5 the hound of silence
Hard to think of what is missing

Part 4 presentism: the tendency to have current experience affect views of past and future

Ch 6 the future is now
Prefeeling
Reality around u affects real feelings and imagined feelings
Hard for imagination to transcend present
Time share between perception and imagination

Ch 7 time bombs
Starting points have a big impact on ending point
Can't just imagine event in present and translate to future
Brain detects changes and relative not absolute
Comparing with the past vs the possible (both yield mistakes)

Part 5 rationalization: the act of causing something to seem reasonable

Ch 8 paradise glossed
Negative events aren't as bad as we are afraid they may be

Ch 9 immune to reality
Unconscious cooking of facts
Most regrets are from things we didn't do
Intense events trigger our defenses more than mild ones and so they are overcome by us better by rationalizing or interpreting reality differently 
Mild negative events are more annoying
We don't anticipate that psychological immune system will protect when have bad experience 
Unpleasant events are explained away
Explanations also lessen pleasant events
Irrepressible urge to explain things but also diminishes happiness 

Part 6 corrigibility capable of being corrected or improved

Ch 10 once bitten
Tend to recall items at end of series or experience far better than those in middle

Ch 11 reporting live from tomorrow
Transmission of beliefs
False belief is joy of money
Seek others who had experience you're considering and ask them about it

Afterword

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