Search Amazon.com for books about happiness and you’ll get 33,001 results.

But you don’t need to read a book to find happiness. Here are ten popular and easy habits that can give you a positive boost:

10 Habits of Happiness

1. Smile: Move your muscles into a smile to encourage the same positive emotions that make you smile.
2. Write down three positive things every day.
3. Get enough sleep: Inadequate Zzz’s can wreak havoc on your health and happiness.
4. Do something for someone else: a positive feedback loop could explain why happier people tend to give more and vice versa.
5. Spend time with friends and family: social connections affect our happiness.
6. Express Gratitude.
7. Eat healthier: one study tied a Mediterranean diet with decreased incidence of depression. There’s even a diet that suggests foods make you happy.
8. Exercise: physical activity releases endorphins that boost happiness.
9. Go outside: Vitamin D you’ll get from sunlight exposure increases the feel-good neurotransmitter Serotonin.
10. And the most obvious one: only you know what makes you happiest. Identify what that is and make it a habit:

How to Start a Happiness Habit:

Right Now: Pick the easiest habit on this list and do it. I chose #1: Smile.

Then: If you’re on Lift, add a daily habit that makes you happy or choose the more flexible goal Complete Something That Makes Me Happy.

Image© CC Roona-MBH on Deviant-Art 

My @liftapp habit “Write three positive things about today” doubled in participants today. Got featured on @Lifehacker! http://t.co/glOg1oXy

— Zack Shapiro (@ZackShapiro)

January 15, 2013

What compelled hundreds of people to add this habit into their already busy lives? Science shows it’ll boost your happiness.

Actively recognizing the positive things in your life increases your longterm happiness.

The father of positive psychology, Martin E. P. Seligman, found that the practice of writing down three positive things a day and why they happened increased happiness and decreased depression longterm in his famous study “Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions”:

We… found that two interventions—writing about three good things that happened each day and why they happened, and using signature strengths of character in a new way—made people happier (and less depressed) up to six months later.

There’s another great reason to start this habit: Write three positive things about today is one of our most supportive communities. There are 1.56 props given per check-in on average.

How to start building this habit:

Right Now: Think of one positive thing right now and why. I’ll start: I’m happy you read to the end of this post!

Then: Add the Write three positive things about today habit on Lift. Set a reminder for 10pm each night. Get more tips by reading The Happiness Advantage or checking out Zack’s post.

How often does this happen to you: you start the week with a list of very feasible goals but by Friday, the project launch has been pushed to next week, the blog post remains in draft mode, and sales calls haven’t been made.

No one knows busy days quite like entrepreneurs so we asked some of them what habits they rely on to keep their productivity high.

Click to read the productivity strategies used by founders of companies like Twitter, LeWeb and Buffer:

Evan Williams: Workout When You’re Least Productive
Erin McKean: Schedule Easy, Small Tasks as Work Breaks
Loïc Le Meur: Meditate – It’s the Productivity Trick People Are Afraid to Talk About
Chris Messina: Build Tiny Habits: They Can Be Surprisingly Powerful
Joel Gascoigne: Optimize Your Daily Routines
Buster Benson: Experiment with New Habits Regularly
Marshall Kirkpatrick: Hack the Science of Behavior Change

Download Lift’s iPhone App or Join the web beta

Thanks to all of the entrepreneurs featured and to Power Lifters Jason Shen, Erika Carlson, Lauren Bacon, Mark Suman and Peter Boyce II and Walter Chen.

Evan Williams isn’t at work in the middle of the day. You’ll find the founder of Blogger, Twitter and Medium at the gym instead. 

The potential for productivity fluctuates at different times of the day for different people. Clue into your energy changes and then plan your work schedule so that you’re doing your most important work during your most productive times. 

I used to go to the gym first thing in the morning. Exercise is, of course, great for energy levels and I believe it makes me more productive no matter what. But energy and focus naturally ebb and flow throughout the day.

My focus is usually great first thing in the morning, so going to the gym first is a trade off of very productive time. Instead, I’ve started going mid-morning or late afternoon (especially on days I work late). It feels weird (at first) to leave the office in the middle of the day, but total time spent is nearly the same with higher energy and focus across the board.

This only happens to work because our office is across the street from the gym (which is part of the reason the office is there). If there were more travel time involved, it might not be worth it (or it might be worth switching how you exercise). 

More productivity tips from entrepreneurs:

Erin McKean: Schedule Easy, Small Tasks as Work Breaks
Loïc Le Meur: Meditate – It’s the Productivity Trick People Are Afraid to Talk About
Chris Messina: Build Tiny Habits: They Can Be Surprisingly Powerful
Joel Gascoigne: Optimize Your Daily Routines
Buster Benson: Experiment with New Habits Regularly
Marshall Kirkpatrick: Hack the Science of Behavior Change

All of these entrepreneurs have built habits with Lift. 

Download Lift’s iPhone App

Sign up for the web beta

Evan Williams isn’t at work in the middle of the day. You’ll find the founder of Blogger, Twitter and Medium at the gym instead. 

The potential for productivity fluctuates at different times of the day for different people. Clue into your energy changes and then plan your work schedule so that you’re doing your most important work during your most productive times. 

I used to go to the gym first thing in the morning. Exercise is, of course, great for energy levels and I believe it makes me more productive no matter what. But energy and focus naturally ebb and flow throughout the day.

My focus is usually great first thing in the morning, so going to the gym first is a trade off of very productive time. Instead, I’ve started going mid-morning or late afternoon (especially on days I work late). It feels weird (at first) to leave the office in the middle of the day, but total time spent is nearly the same with higher energy and focus across the board.

This only happens to work because our office is across the street from the gym (which is part of the reason the office is there). If there were more travel time involved, it might not be worth it (or it might be worth switching how you exercise). 

More productivity tips from entrepreneurs:

Erin McKean: Schedule Easy, Small Tasks as Work Breaks
Loïc Le Meur: Meditate – It’s the Productivity Trick People Are Afraid to Talk About
Chris Messina: Build Tiny Habits: They Can Be Surprisingly Powerful
Joel Gascoigne: Optimize Your Daily Routines
Buster Benson: Experiment with New Habits Regularly
Marshall Kirkpatrick: Hack the Science of Behavior Change

All of these entrepreneurs have built habits with Lift. 

Download Lift’s iPhone App

Sign up for the web beta

The godfather of behavior change apps Buster Benson learned a lot when building quantified self startups like 43 Things, Health Month and 750 Words. He discovered his most productive habit, writing, by trying new habits until he found the productivity hack that worked best for him.

Pay attention to the actions you take during the day to find out what habits make you more or less effective. Buster tracks everything: emails, tweets, photos, meals, exercise, meditation, mood levels, words, etc. He’s still trying out new habits like meditation and running, too. You don’t have track habits as intensely as Buster, but you could learn a lot about what makes you more productive by experimenting with new routines and reflecting on the results.

All of my favorite daily habits include letting some unfiltered stream-of-consciousness to the surface. Walking to and from work, meditating, and taking a picture at 8:36pm all fit this pattern. However, the most valuable of these unfiltered streams has been my habit of writing 3 pages of unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness, brain-dump *BLAH* on 750words.com.

The actual words rarely matter, it’s all about getting them out. It’s the best way I currently know that consistently helps me untangle something that’s bothering me, solve problems that I can’t quite articulate, or get something out of my system so I can move on. I always feel noticeably lighter after writing 750 words.

More productivity tips from entrepreneurs:

Evan Williams: Workout When You’re Least Productive
Erin McKean: Schedule Easy, Small Tasks as Work Breaks
Loïc Le Meur: Meditate – It’s the Productivity Trick People Are Afraid to Talk About
Chris Messina: Build Tiny Habits: They Can Be Surprisingly Powerful
Joel Gascoigne: Optimize Your Daily Routines
Marshall Kirkpatrick: Hack the Science of Behavior Change

There is one thing that all of these entrepreneurs have in common: they’ve all built habits using Lift. 

Download Lift’s iPhone App

Sign up for the web beta

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Erin McKean, the founder of the online dictionary Wordnik, interrupts her schedule with small, easy tasks in order to increase her productivity.

What’s the science behind “productive” distractions? Dr. Shelley Carson of Harvard University discovered that focusing on a problem limits creativity because you become more selective when responding to brain signals.  Switching to a task that requires less focus reverses the bias and therefore increases your ability to think creatively.

Working on something else is a great way to clear your mind of the ‘primary problems.’ There’s only so far you can run and only so many showers you can take to try to trigger that creative distance. Sometimes stepping away from the problem is the best way to solve it.

When I want a little break, I look at my daily Lift goals and tackle one of them. I like Robert Benchley’s maxim: Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.” Doing that ‘work I’m not supposed to be doing’ is much more productive than looking at funny cat pictures!

More productivity tips from entrepreneurs:

Evan Williams: Workout When You’re Least Productive
Loïc Le Meur: Meditate – It’s the Productivity Trick People Are Afraid to Talk About
Chris Messina: Build Tiny Habits: They Can Be Surprisingly Powerful
Joel Gascoigne: Optimize Your Daily Routines
Buster Benson: Experiment with New Habits Regularly
Marshall Kirkpatrick: Hack the Science of Behavior Change

There is one thing that all of these entrepreneurs have in common: they’ve all built habits using Lift. 

Download Lift’s iPhone App

Sign up for the web beta

Here’s a collection of tips & research to help you build a meditation habit. 

In our meditation research, 75% said meditation improved their focus at work.#liftchat

April 3, 2013

Data-based Tips & Research

Lift Data Insights: Why you should start with short, daily sessions, your chances of keeping a streak and meditation app recommendations from Lifters.

Lift Data Insights II: Does the time of day you meditate matter, what positions are most popular among Lifters and the most popular meditation styles.

5 Meditation Tips for Beginners by Dr. Alice Boyes, a Psychology Today article featuring data from Lift.

Insights from Quora users on how to build a meditation habit.

User Video Tips

Buster Benson & Tony Stubblebine exchange tips on getting a meditation habit to stick including making it part of your daily routine, using an app and incorporating meditation as a booster for other habits.

Alyson Madrigan explains how she started meditating and the impact it has on her personal and professional life.

John Muldoon tells us why meditation has improved his business success.

Jason Shen explains why you should experiment with different meditation styles until you find the right one for you.

Search for #MarchMeditation on Twitter to read more tips, articles and user stories from the 2013 March Meditation Challenge.

We’ve received a lot of questions about how, exactly, one should meditate since launching the March Meditation Challenge. We asked Lifters in the Meditate habit to share the techniques they use.

Time of Day

Rise and shine, most people on Lift meditate in the morning. 

Does the time of day affect how quickly you benefit from meditation? Our data says not really. Two-thirds of all survey respondents started feeling benefits within a week and that percentage stayed constant regardless of what time of day you meditated. 

Position

Three-fourths of survey respondents reported that they sit on the floor or a chair when they meditate. If you don’t like to sit, you can lie down, walk, stand, or do yoga. One person reported meditating as they swam. The most important thing is to find a position that you’re comfortable staying in for the duration of the session. It’s hard enough to maintain focus without your foot falling asleep! 

The next most popular position after sitting was lying down. Surely you’d fall asleep, especially if you are one of the 86% of people who close their eyes when they meditate, right?  If you do fall asleep, take comfort in knowing that more than half of survey respondents (58%) had fallen asleep during a meditation session at least once. 

Styles

Choosing a style of meditation may seem like the most overwhelming decision to make when you first start meditating but it doesn’t have to be. Don’t be anxious about about choosing the right style immediately. Experiment with different styles, apps and techniques until you find what works best for you. 

“What style of meditation do you practice?”

We see all sorts of styles on Lift. The most popular include:

• Counting your breath: great for beginners.
• Guided meditation: following the instructions of a teacher in person or via an app/recording. Instructors will take you through various awareness excercises like counting your breath, scanning your body, noticing sounds and visuals around you. Great for beginners.
• Mindfulness Meditation: Defined by expert Jon Kabat-Zinn as ‘moment to moment non-judgmental awareness.’ Related styles are Vispassana/Buddhist. 
• Zazen: Seated meditation with roots in Zen Buddhism.
• Yoga incorporates meditation, too. 

Click on the terms in the word cloud to go to a google search of the word. To learn more about different meditation styles, you can also browse the check-in notes in the Meditate habit & ask questions using the comment feature. pjk

Length of Session

We mentioned this in our last post, but when you’re just getting started begin with small sessions and build up the duration over time. Most people on Lift meditated between 3-5 minutes per session when they first began the habit.

Don’t feel like you need to work up to a crazy session length, either.  Lifters meditate an average of 16.8 minutes per session.

Need more help?

44% of people who signed up for the March Meditation Challenge are meditating regularly for the first time. The same percentage of people reported feeling frustrated during their sessions.

What do first-timers struggle with?

• Fitting the habit into their current schedule
• Not enjoying their session/getting bored
• Fidgeting or being unable to concentrate during a session
• Anxiety over whether they’re doing it “right” 

You might be surprised to learn that frustration with your meditation practice didn’t correlate to experience level: you had a 50% chance of feeling frustrated regardless of how long you’d practiced meditation. As a wise Lifter told us:

“Give it time – meditation is a process, not a goal. Follow your own rhythm & you’ll get the results you need.”

If reading this post helped you, please share it on Twitter.

Meditation has the power to change lives but many people say it’s too hard to do. We think the habit is just as easy to pick up as any other daily habit, maybe even easier.

It’s as Easy as Taking Your Vitamins

The first few days of building a habit are hard–our minds and bodies naturally revolt against change–but there comes a time when you adapt to the new behavior and momentum starts to move you forward instead of push you backward.

When does this happen in Meditation? Well, we’re not going to make any wild claims about how long it takes to form the habit but we do know that it gets easier to meditate after the 11th day of daily meditation.

To find this out, we graphed the likelihood that someone would continue their daily streak over time. In the Meditate habit, 90% of people with an 11 day streak went on to have a 12 day streak. The odds remained in their favor after that date. 

How does Meditation compare to habits listed in our Easiest Habits category (which we selected because they had the most 21+ day streaks)?  

It’s almost as easy to get into the habit of daily meditation as it is to floss. You’re as likely to keep meditating as you are to take your vitamins daily. People find it harder to drink more water and eat breakfast every day than they do to meditate.

Consistency is King.

Half of people who meditate on Lift do it at least once a day. We found this out by surveying Lifters in the Meditate habit. We also asked for their advice for newbies.The most popular tip they gave was to practice daily and not to judge a session by its quality or length.  

Meditation seems to defy the Deliberate Practice rule we love at Lift: that you get more out of consistency if you have strong fundamentals. We’re sure that fundamentals help but frequency trumps all in meditation.

I find it helpful to have more frequent, rather than longer, sittings.

Missing a day is much worse than having an ineffective day.

Even if your meditation does not go well it’s still worth doing. Athletes don’t set a personal best each time they train.

Start with Short Sessions

Another common tip was to start small. It’s okay to just count a few breaths or meditate for a minute or less.  Most people meditated between 3-5 minutes per session when they first began the habit.

Don’t feel like you need to work up to a crazy session length, either.  Lifters meditate an average of 16.8 minutes per session.

Use an App to Be More Successful

59% of people who meditate on Lift enlist the help of an app. In fact, app use correlated to more frequent meditation. 62% of people who meditated more than 3 days a week used an app compared to 50% of people who meditated 3 days a week or less. 

These were some of the apps mentioned:

• Headspace 
• Buddhify
• Meditation
• Insight Timer
• Mindfulness Meditation
• Equanimity
• Omvana

Don’t want to download another app? Many Lifters just use Apple’s iOS timer. Also consider reading a book on meditation, listening to an audio recording, attending a class, center or retreat or finding a buddy or mentor to practice with you; all of these strategies were highly recommended by Lifters in the Meditate habit. 

We’ll post additional tips on Twitter over the next month and feel free to share your own by tweeting with the hashtag #MarchMeditation. Oh, and don’t forget to sign up for the March Meditation Challenge. 

Notes:

1. In the survey we asked people if they used an app to help them meditate and some folks answered “Lift.” We should have clarified that we meant apps in addition to Lift.