Journalist Jodi Kantor and happiness expert Arthur Brooks on how to find purpose

NPR's Book of the Day - NPR

In this episode of NPR's Book of the Day, happiness expert Arthur Brooks discusses his book 'The Meaning of Your Life,' exploring how modern ambition, digital distraction, and smartphone

Key takeaways

• The left side of the brain excels at 'how-to' questions, while the right side handles 'why' questions related to meaning, love, and purpose.
• Smartphones and constant digital stimulation reduce opportunities for mind-wandering, which is essential for finding meaning.

Main topics

• The crisis of meaning in modern life
• Impact of smartphones and digital overuse on mental health

Notable quotes

We've sent ourselves over to the left side of our brain and have increasingly neglected the right side of our brain where meaning can be found.

Conclusion

Arthur Brooks emphasizes that true meaning comes not from relentless achievement or digital engagement,

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:01) Hello, I'm Alyssa Nadvorny, and you're listening to NPR's Book of the Day. Today, two books to help you live your life. In a minute, we'll hear from the incredible journalist Jodi Kantor, who adapted a graduation speech into a book called How to Start. But first, Arthur Brooks, who studies happiness at Harvard, has a new book about how our ambitions and drive might be getting in the way of finding true joy. in our lives. It's called The Meaning of Your Life. Brooke spoke with Here and Now host Indira Lakshmanan. Speaker 8 (0:36) This message comes from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Speaker 1 (0:53) Hey, it's Latif from Radiolab. Our goal with each episode is to make you think, how did I live this long and not know that? Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Listen wherever you get podcasts. Speaker 3 (1:09) What is the meaning of life? It may sound like a lofty, philosophical, or even unanswerable question, but we all need meaning in our lives to get up every day and keep going. If you don't have a sense of purpose in your life, it's probably making you feel empty, anxious, or depressed. Author, Harvard professor, and happiness expert Arthur Brooks wants to help. In his latest book, Brooks argues that our tendency to be strivers working towards measurable goals often gets in the way of finding meaning in our lives. He also believes rapid technological changes have rewired our brains for the worse. Yes, he's talking about our ever-present smartphones, reducing our ability to find or perceive purpose and satisfaction. Arthur Brooks' new book is called The Meaning of Your Life, and he joins us now from NPR New York Studios. Welcome, Arthur. Speaker 2 (1:58) Hi, Indira. Great to be with you. Great Speaker 3 (2:00) to have you. So you've written bestsellers about finding happiness, purpose, and success before, including your last book, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey. Why this book now? What's new? Speaker 2 (2:12) Well, I've been studying happiness my whole career for decades, as a matter of fact. And over the past seven years, I've been exclusively dedicated to teaching it to my students at the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. And there's a particular crisis that I have seen, especially over the past 10 years. There was a major explosion in depression and anxiety after about 2008. Now, I left academia temporarily at the end of 2008. And when I left academia, it was happier. than the rest of the world. I mean, the statistics were clear. People went to college, they were having fun, they were making friends, they were falling in love. And when I came back in 2019, it had completely darkened. And what I found was that depression had tripled, anxiety had doubled, that loneliness had exploded, that addiction was up, that self-harm was more common than it had ever been before. And the reason had everything to do with this link. There's an interesting set of statistics that asks, does your life feel meaningless? The best predictor of depression and anxiety for people under 30 is an answer yes to the question, my life feels meaningless. Speaker 3 (3:20) Many of the people you cite in this book, including the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, are or were highly ambitious people with the outward trappings of success who nevertheless feel dissatisfaction in their lives. You talk a lot about high achievers, people you call strivers, who are nevertheless unmoored from meaning. It felt to me as if you were talking directly to many of the students you teach at Harvard. So what is afflicting ambitious young people today? Speaker 2 (3:50) The culture of engineering, hustle and grind, constant busyness, plus this whole idea that there's a complicated solution to every problem, and that's what you need to be in the business of finding. The result of that is that there's been a de-emphasis on the meaning-rich parts of life, like the humanities, like the arts, like philosophy. And we've been upskilling in areas of study that use our brains. in a very asymmetric way that use our brains only for the how-to and what questions and almost not at all for the why questions of life. Speaker 3 (4:25) Well, you point to a major distraction in our lives that we're all familiar with, our smartphones. Right. Speaker 2 (4:31) To understand the real root of the problem gets to a very interesting... area of neuroscience today called hemispheric lateralization. The two sides of your brain do different things. The right side of your brain is dedicated to the why questions of life, the mystery, the meaning, love and happiness, what's it all about. The left side of your brain is dedicated to the how-to and what questions, the how-do-I-do-stuff questions. So chat GPT is good for improving the left side of your brain, and it's horrible for anything having to do with the right side of your brain. This is one of the reasons that if you use it as a friend or a lover or a therapist, you'll get way more depressed and anxious and lonely. But if you use it to, you know, figure out ordinary stuff in life and then use the time that you have left to go hang out with your friends, life gets better. Just in general, Indira, any technology that is a substitute for in real life socialization is going to hurt your happiness. And so in our efforts to solve every problem and distract ourselves from encroaching misery in our lives, enter the smartphone, which has made it possible for us to solve