Shawn Achor

If you've ever tried to start up the habit of early-morning exercise, you have probably encountered how easy it is to get derailed by too much choice.

Our daily decisions and habits have a huge impact upon both our levels of happiness and success.

Joy makes us want to invest more deeply in the people around us. It makes us want to learn more about our communities. It makes us want to be able to find ways of being able to make this a better external world for all of us.

We know that recognition and intrinsic motivation are important to our success, but the key is finding ways to effectively operationalize them.

The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change.

Research shows you get multiple tasks done faster if you do them one at a time. It also decreases stress and raises happiness.

Positive and engaged brains are a company's greatest assets. More than time and even more than productivity, people must be happy.

Scientifically, happiness is a choice. It is a choice about where your single processor brain will devote its finite resources as you process the world.

You have to train your brain to be positive just like you work out your body.

Positive vacations have a significant effect upon energy and stress.

Not every vacation is equal. And theory - the idea that vacations should increase happiness - doesn't always translate to reality.

What we've been finding is people are afraid of happiness. They're afraid of happiness because they think we'll stagnate or we'll be blind: that if I'm happy now, I won't keep fighting as hard. If I'm happy now, I won't push as hard to make a better world. That's what pleasure does. Joy does the exact opposite.