Practice
Happiness practice worksheet
This worksheet takes about fifteen minutes. It does not optimise your happiness. It helps you see where you actually are, which is the right starting point.
This practice worksheet is a companion to the Happiness page. Reading that page first is recommended, though not required.
How to use this worksheet
Work through the four sections in order. Write your answers — actually write them, not just think them. The act of writing tends to produce more honest answers than mental rehearsal.
The goal is not to produce a plan. The goal is to produce a more accurate picture of where you are, which makes the question of what might be worth changing clearer.
Section 1: The five components audit
Rate your current situation for each component on a simple scale: low / moderate / high. Then note one specific thing that is contributing to that level.
Pleasure — the presence of enjoyable sensory and experiential moments in an average week. Rating: ___ What is contributing to this level: ___
Engagement — the presence of activities that require real attention and produce a sense of flow. Rating: ___ What is contributing to this level: ___
Meaning — the sense that what you are doing matters beyond immediate reward. Rating: ___ What is contributing to this level: ___
Relationships — the quality of connection with people you care about. Rating: ___ What is contributing to this level: ___
Achievement — a sense of forward movement toward goals that matter to you. Rating: ___ What is contributing to this level: ___
Section 2: The drain audit
Name one thing in each category that is currently draining your wellbeing, specifically and honestly.
In my daily routine: ___
In my relationships: ___
In my work or main occupation: ___
In my relationship to myself: ___
Section 3: The availability question
What would be genuinely available to you this week — not in an imagined future, but in the conditions of your actual life as it currently is — that would add something real to one of the five components above?
Be specific. Not "spend more time with friends" but "call X on Thursday."
One specific available thing: ___
Section 4: The one action
From what you wrote in Section 3, identify one single action you can take this week. It should be:
- specific enough to be schedulable
- genuinely possible in your actual life
- oriented toward one of the components where you are currently low
Write it here: ___
Write when you will do it: ___
After the worksheet
The worksheet works best as a regular practice rather than a one-off exercise. Running through it monthly produces useful data on whether the components you chose to address actually shifted.
The habits page is relevant if you found that what is most affecting your happiness is a pattern of behaviour rather than an external circumstance — those require a different kind of response.