We seek happiness in a variety of ways and most of us have many sources that add up to making us happy. These may include family, job satisfaction, materials rewards, spirituality, community, hobbies, sports, travel ….
But we deprive ourselves of a lot of experiences that could add happiness and reduce stress in the interest of being efficient.
Daniele Quercia works in the area of social media at Yahoo Labs in Barcelona. Before that, he was a Horizon senior researcher at The Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. He is interested in the relationship between online and offline worlds and his work has been focusing in the areas of data mining, computational social science, and urban informatics.
His biography doesn’t make him out to be the kind of person you would expect to give high importance to stopping and smelling the roses. But he has found a way that all of us can find a midway point between smelling the roses and running the rat-race – and he is implementing his idea at his job, developing Yahoo’s mapping software for your Smartphone.
Many of us use our phones to direct us how to get from point A to point B. But the phone offers just one route. What if that route takes you through commercial and industrial neighborhoods with lots of traffic and nothing for the soul to feed on?
Quercia is creating optional routing where you can decide whether you want to travel the fastest or a more enjoyable route that might only cost you a few extra minutes.
I have already said too much. You can hear directly from Daniele about his idea on a TED Talk about Happy Maps. Click here to view.
Herb