The Happiness Equation (Events Minus Expectations)
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Gawdat reverse-engineered happiness like an engineer. He wrote down 92 moments when he felt happy and plotted them against every variable he could think of — age, weight, money, even losing his hair — looking for a fitting line. No single event predicted happiness. The same event could produce either state: his daughter smiling made him happy, unless she was smiling after failing an exam. What actually predicted the feeling was the gap between what happened and what he expected to happen. The model that came out of it is that happiness is greater than or equal to your perception of events minus your expectations of how life should be. Because expectations are the half you control, happiness becomes something you can audit rather than something life hands you.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Define what you are actually solving for
Before measuring anything, fix the definition. Gawdat's target is not fun, excitement, elation or pleasure — it is the calm and peaceful contentment you feel when you are okay with life as it is. If you optimise for the wrong feeling, the equation will not help you.
Pro tip Use the river test: the state you feel sitting by a river with no phone signal is the state you are solving for.
- 2
Log the moments, not the theory
Write down concrete moments when you felt that calm contentment, and moments when you did not. Gawdat listed 92 of them. Keep them specific — 'a good cup of coffee', 'an enriching conversation' — rather than abstract categories.
Watch out Do not stop at ten entries. The pattern only shows up once the same event appears on both the happy and unhappy lists.
- 3
Look for the same event on both lists
Find an event that made you happy once and unhappy another time. This proves the event is not the cause and forces you to look for the second variable in the equation. Rain at your wedding versus rain at your ex's wedding is the same rain.
- 4
Name the expectation behind each unhappy moment
For every unhappy entry, write the sentence 'I expected that...'. Gawdat's example: 'I expect that when someone fails an exam they should not be very happy.' Most people have never seen their expectations written down as explicit claims about how life should be.
Pro tip Write the expectation in the present tense as a rule about the world — that is what makes it testable.
- 5
Test the expectation for realism
Ask whether the expectation was a realistic model of how life actually works, or a demand that life bless you specifically. Unrealistic expectations are the cheapest thing in the equation to change, because reality is not negotiating with you either way.
Watch out Realistic does not mean low. Deliberately deflating every expectation buys peace at the cost of ambition — see the realistic-expectation-plus-ambition framework.
- 6
Adjust the controllable side and re-run
Either revise the expectation to something realistic, or revise your perception of the event by looking for what is right about it. Then re-check whether the same class of event still triggers unhappiness a week later.
In the wild
Gawdat's stock illustration of the equation. Rain, he argues, never makes anyone happy or unhappy on its own. Rain on the day of your ex-boyfriend's wedding feels delightful. The identical weather on the day of your own wedding feels like a catastrophe. The event is unchanged; only the expectation moved. You expected life to bless your wedding and pour on his. Once you can see the expectation sitting underneath the reaction, the reaction stops feeling like an objective response to the world and starts looking like an editable input.
→ The same external event is correctly diagnosed as an expectation problem rather than a weather problem.
One of Gawdat's original 92 entries was 'I feel happy when my daughter smiles.' It held for most of his life. Then she came home from school smiling after failing a class, and the same smile made him unhappy. Digging into it, he found a hidden expectation: someone who fails an exam should not look pleased, because a happy face suggests she has not registered the weight of the issue. The event that had reliably produced happiness produced misery once it collided with a different expectation — which is what told him events alone could not be the variable.
→ Proved to him that no event is inherently happy or unhappy, forcing the second term into the equation.
Common mistakes
Solving for fun instead of contentment
If you plug parties, video games and excitement into the events side, you are measuring dopamine, not happiness. Gawdat's whole equation is calibrated to calm and peaceful contentment; feed it the wrong target feeling and every adjustment you make optimises the transient state that collapses the moment the stimulus stops.
Treating expectations as facts about the world
Most people never articulate the expectation, so it never gets audited. It shows up disguised as 'this shouldn't be happening', which feels like an objective statement rather than a personal rule. Until it is written down as a sentence, there is nothing in the equation you can change.
Concluding that you should expect nothing at all
The equation says you can buy happiness by flattening expectations, and that is true — but Gawdat points out it also flattens ambition and impact. The equation is a diagnostic, not a licence to want nothing.
From the transcript
“happiness is events minus expectations”
“rain never makes you happy or unhappy”
“even the same event does not always trigger happiness”
From the episode
Lessons in Happiness, Side Hustles, Self-Care, Productivity, Luck and Business - Season 3 Round Up
Season 3 Round Up