Pokemon go? No!

As I study the happiness and the delicate mechanisms behind the hedonic adaptation, I did a very interesting field study on the release of the new virtual augmented reality game Pokemon Go!. I will start with that classic story of first release of internet on the plane, in Seventies. The story say that when this was first time presented to the passengers, they were amazed, ecstatic even. Internet on the plane, during flight, imagine that. Many of them did not have internet at home, and the mobile connected phones were yet to be invented. But sometimes in the middle of the flight the connection will drop, and everybody become angry and frustrated. That is just how much a miracle will last.

Now back to our pokemons. The goal of every game we play is to bring us some kind of satisfaction, to improve gradually or to compete with others. Pokemon Go! is bringing all this at once, through the capture of your own pokemons, and competing for the gym, to get more gold coins, basically. They will make money through the general public tendency of impatience, the modern culture of "I want it now", although seems that you can get everything for free if you want to walk enough. The innovation is that people need to physically walk to get the eggs open, and to find new pokemons to capture for your Pokedex. At the moment connection is difficult, if not impossible, as the people told me that they tried to login and couldn't for 90% of the time in the last 3 days. They like the game, that is becoming a global phenomenon, but the problem is that at the moment everybody is frustrated because they cannot play. It is only a fine line between being a craze and being the biggest failure of all time as the potential is practically unlimited, starting to influencing even the economy and marketing of the small or bigger businesses. The tipping point is here, and they need to get together, fixing the major bugs (the screen is freezing faster then Elsa's room in Frozen) and building a sustainable server or they will lose all.

We will see what happen.

How to be happy for ever ( Not a fairy tale! )

I will just underline some ideas in order to get a structure for my thoughts. If you are an intelligent, you can apply this concept even further. As the story said: the only limit is your imagination.

- Obstacles in maintaining a higher level of happiness are:
a) a genetically determined set point for happiness , our average level of happiness will gravitate towards this value
b) happiness is a long life trait, and this kind of traits are not easily to change. It is possible, but it is implying a lot of effort.
c) hedonic adaptation - we adapt to all the positive (and negative) things (we get used with the good life), even if we receive a boost, it is only temporary.

-How to achieve sustainable increases of our happiness
a) the happiness set point is fixed, stable over time and immune to influence and control. We do not know any way to change it as he reflects immutable intrapersonal, temperamental and affective personality traits. Not a good way to increase happiness
b) circumstantial factors will provide a temporary boost, that it is rapidly lost due to hedonic adaptation. Work well on short term, but not feasible on long term.
c) intentional activity - we are talking about behavioral, cognitive and volitional activity. Hedonic adaptation seems to be much weaker in case on intentional activity. The slowest hedonic adaptation is observed in the volitional activity.

Conclusion:
Positive activity based changes last much longer than circumstantial changes, and volitional activity seems to be the best way to enhance and maintain happiness almost permanently.