It has been brought to my attention that the secret of human happiness has not yet been discovered. This seems a remarkable oversight, given the amount of consideration the topic has received from history's greatest thinkers, such as Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, and Paul McKenna, in his Paul McKenna's Change Your Life In Seven Days: The World's Leading Hypnotist Shows You How. Every few months researchers announce that they have discovered the world's happiest country, but within weeks a new survey reaches a different conclusion. One of the only consistent results is that Britain never ranks highly, although neither does the US, casting doubt on the theory that John Reid, Ryanair and Thought For The Day are responsible for all human misery.
We still have a lot to learn, then, about how to be happy. But we can't be faulted for not trying. The academic field of happiness studies is booming as never before, while the number of self-help titles on Amazon.com - a figure that may serve as a kind of makeshift index of western melancholy - stands at more than 61,000, almost three times what it was five years ago.
On the web, meanwhile, sites devoted to personal development and productivity, or "life...#8209;hacking", to use the brilliant geek neologism, are exploding. For several months recently, one of this movement's insane geniuses, the blogger Steve Pavlina, abandoned the humdrum convention of going to bed for seven hours a night in favour of polyphasic sleep, a pattern of naps taken every few hours that is said to allow its followers to reduce time spent in bed to three or four hours. Mostly, though, life-hackers focus on more modest challenges: how to overcome procrastination, keep track of the things you need to do and stay sane in a world whose curses include, in addition to war and climate change, altogether too many emails.
In the coming months, I'll scout the frontiers of the happiness and productivity movements, test their theories and report back. I reserve the right to engage in Buddhist meditation or just better time management; to keep a more orderly to-do list or sign away my savings to a glint-eyed motivational coach who makes me walk across hot coals to realise my dreams.
I ought to confess from the start that my mockery is largely defensive: like anal retentives everywhere, I secretly love all this self-improvement stuff. If, as a child, you spent longer making revision timetables than revising, you're already in this club; if you use a Palm personal organiser, you're well on your way to membership; and if you own a copy of Getting Things Done, by the "productivity guru" David Allen, you're a senior member and may be asked to take minutes at meetings.
At the end of this experiment, assuming all goes to plan, I'll be extremely happy, unprecedentedly productive and massively wealthy, so I'll never have to work again. At this point the column will be terminated.
