Five-Year Happiness Priority Audit
Work backward from a happy future to today's highest priorities
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
This audit uses a future-self exercise to compare stated values with actual investment. Imagine yourself five years from now in a genuinely happy state. Write the five main reasons you are happy and rank them in order. Return to the present and compare how aggressively you manage each reason. Brooks predicts that money and success often appear lower on the list, while love and friendship rank near the top, even though daily effort is allocated in the opposite order. The gap becomes a planning prompt: make a strategic plan for the top two causes of future happiness and place concrete actions on the calendar. The mechanism is backward design. By defining the desired life first, current priorities can be evaluated by whether they plausibly create it.
Origin
Brooks offers this visualization and ranking exercise as the third of three immediate practices for becoming happier.
Core principles
- 01Future happiness is built by current investment
- 02Important relationships do not maintain themselves
- 03Urgent work can crowd out higher priorities
- 04A ranked list exposes mismatched effort
How to run it
- 1
Enter the future
Imagine yourself exactly five years from now and define what being happy means in concrete terms.
Pro tip Picture an ordinary week, not a perfect vacation.
- 2
List five causes
Write the five main reasons that future version of you is happy.
- 3
Rank the causes
Order the reasons from most to least important without considering current effort yet.
Pro tip Force a ranking to reveal trade-offs.
- 4
Audit current investment
Compare the time, attention, and planning you currently devote to each reason.
Watch out Do not confuse urgent activity with meaningful investment.
- 5
Plan the top two
Create a strategic plan and immediate calendar action for the two highest-ranked causes.
Pro tip Use recurring commitments for relationships rather than vague intentions.
In the wild
An entrepreneur imagines being happy in five years because of a strong marriage, close friendships, good health, meaningful work, and financial security. Her calendar currently gives nearly all discretionary time to work and money, so she protects two weekly relationship commitments first.
→ Present behavior begins to build the future she actually ranked highest.
Common mistakes
Imagining only achievements
A future picture copied from current status goals may conceal the relationships and meaning that actually sustain happiness.
Leaving priorities as intentions
Top-ranked reasons will not take care of themselves without concrete plans and time.
Is it for you?
Best for
People whose daily workload feels urgent but may not reflect what they ultimately value.
Not ideal for
People making a crisis decision where the five-year picture is too uncertain to guide immediate safety needs.
From the transcript
“Now take a piece of paper and write down the five main reasons that you're happy. In order, right?”
“Make a strategic plan for managing one and two, and you will get to that happy state”
From the episode
Arthur C. Brooks: Cracking the Code to Happiness, The Biology of Intelligence, and Creating a Fulfilling Life
Arthur C. Brooks