Happy at work, happy at home. Suggestions for a happy life.

Is there a correlation between happiness at work and happiness at home? This question was asked by Marshall and Kelly Goldsmith of 3000 people, about half men and half women, who were well educated. These findings might not apply to everyone. None-the-less, they are quite interesting.
Happiness is a fuzzy concept so we need to make it a bit more concrete. One way of doing that is to divide it into pleasures and gratification. Pleasures are those short-term satisfactions that give one the raw feeling of pleasure, such as enjoying a good meal, getting a neck rub, or seeing a sunset. The pleasure lasts only as long as the stimulus. As soon as the sun has set, the pleasure is gone. Gratifications, on the other hand, are long-term benefits that do not necessarily bring a feeling of pleasure but are meaningful. Gratification comes from recognizing that you have done a particularly good job, from helping someone, from spending time with a good friend.
The researchers found that there is a high correlation between people’s happiness at work and at home. These researchers saw that if either pleasure or gratification were low in one place, it would reduce overall satisfaction. This means that professionals don’t increase their overall satisfaction either by being a “martyr” or by just having fun. Happy at work equals happy at home.

Here are their suggestions for a happy life:

• Reduce TV watching. It's stimulating but doesn't increase overall satisfaction with life—at work or home. In fact, when 824 American teenagers were queried, watching TV caused apathy 37% of the time and pleasure only 14% of the time. The mood state when watching TV, on average, is mildly depressed.

• Cut back on surfing the Web for non-professional reasons. It's negatively correlated with the experience of both happiness and meaning for much the same reason as watching TV. It is passive and solitary rather than engaged with other people.

• Do as few chores as you can (whatever that word means to you).

• Spend time exercising and with people you love (respondents who did this had more satisfaction with life at work and at home).

• Feeling challenged is linked to greater satisfaction, so challenge yourself.