From Ephrat Livnin at Quartz: Daniel Kahneman contends that happiness and satisfaction are distinct. Happiness is a momentary experience that arises spontaneously and is fleeting. Satisfaction is a long-term feeling, built over time and based on achieving goals and the kind of life we want. And working towards the one may undermine our ability to experience the other. Spending time with friends, for example, makes us happy but when we focus on long-term goals we don’t necessarily prioritise socialising, as we’re too busy with the bigger picture. Such choices led Kahneman to conclude that we’re not as interested in happiness as we may claim. "People want to maximise their satisfaction, and that leads in completely different directions than the maximisation of happiness," he says. "Life satisfaction is connected to a large degree to social yardsticks – achieving goals, meeting expectations." Money, for example, has a significant influence on life satisfaction. Poverty creates sufferin...
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