Talk about a high energy talk. Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation by one of two Stanford faculty members who’ve recently published a book that’s doing really rather well: “Designing Your Life”. When I say it’s doing rather well, we’re talking a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

It’s written by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (it was Dave who gave the talk I attended) and its gist is that you can use “design thinking” to, as the authors suggest on the cover, “build a well-lived, joyful life.”

Design thinking is very in vogue for businesses at the moment, but using its methods to build a life is a relatively new idea. Actually, I say that, but Messrs Burnett and Evans have helped thousands of Stanford students find their way before they wrote their book.

When you use design thinking, it’s not surprising that you’re encouraged to think like a designer. Among other principles, this means doing lots of ideating (coming up with multiple possible solutions to problems), and “building your way forward” – trying things out, as quickly as you can.

I do the book a great disservice by trying to sum it up in such a very few words, but I’m enjoying it myself and it’s certainly making me think.

I’ll leave you with just one sentence, from the first chapter, which I love:

“You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.”

It made me think of the mood tracking I’ve done over the years, and looking back I can certainly see where I was…

On a different note, huge thanks to the hundreds (wow) of kind readers who’ve already completed the little mood questionnaire I mentioned yesterday. It’s a bit different, because it contains twelve conventional questions about emotions, then asks you to select one of four images that best represents how you’re feeling.

Although I haven’t yet done the proper number-crunching, I can already see that there’s going to be some fascinating findings, which I hope to reveal in a couple of days, on Wednesday. If you didn’t manage to get to it yesterday, there’s still a little more time:

https://uptalk.typeform.com/to/apoJie

Thanks for being here, as ever, and I hope this can be a good week for you.

How would you like to take part in some super-quick research with a difference?

https://uptalk.typeform.com/to/apoJie

A week ago I asked for your help completing yet another questionnaire, and hundreds of readers got involved, generating some fascinating results in the process.

A little surprisingly, quite a few people told me they actually enjoyed taking part, and after a conversation with my friend Josh, this inspired me to think about experimenting with another piece of research that’s intended to provide us with something more entertaining than another long list of numbers.

So this one’s a bit different.

https://uptalk.typeform.com/to/apoJie

There are 13 questions in total, the first twelve of which are intended to capture how you’re feeling.

The final question, though, asks you to select one of four images. I’m really interested to learn more about the choices people make.

I’ll say no more for now, but once I’ve crunched the numbers I’ll share what I discover. It should take a couple of days to do this, so expect some feedback on March 1st (this coming Wednesday).

Here’s the questionnaire:

https://uptalk.typeform.com/to/apoJie

Thank you hugely. I have a feeling this one could be fascinating.

…well, a bit complicated.

Yesterday I asked you, as a Moodnudges reader, for your thoughts about a positive word which means the opposite of Angry. If you were one of the almost 300 people who kindly pitched in to help, a massive thank you.

Although the process was set up so you could see other people’s aggregated responses after casting your vote, I thought I’d give you a sense of what we learned, and also encourage you to read the excellent and thoughtful reflections that have been posted on the Moodnudges blog.

Just as Happy seems logically to be the opposite of Sad, you’d think it would be plain-sailing to pinpoint an adjective that complements Angry, and indeed there was one hugely clear favourite: Calm.

Others, however, were also strong contenders – Peaceful, Good-tempered, and Unruffled stood out, for example.

As well as providing a number of possibilities for which you could vote, there was also a field for other suggestions – terms I’d not considered – and these were of great interest. I’ve listed below, in order of mentions, those that were spontaneously suggested by more than one person. The number of mentions is in brackets:

1.   Content/Contented (13)
2.   Serene (11)
3.   Accepting (9)
=4.  At peace (3)
=4.  Chilled (3)
=4.  Cool (3)
=4.  Equable (3)
=4.  Tranquil (3)
=5.  Balanced (2)
=5.  Even-tempered (2)
=5.  Happy (2)
=5.  Laid-back (2)
=5.  Loving (2)
=5.  Mellow (2)
=5.  Pleased (2)
=5.  Unperturbed (2)

If you think about some of the opposites people suggested, it demonstrates (at least it did to me) that people can view anger in differing ways. Some see it as a kind of dissatisfaction. Others as a state of agitation. Other ways of looking at it are as an unhappiness, or a dislike for others.

DJ emailed me a reminder that getting angry can also be a way to demonstrate to others that you care passionately about something, referencing this rather nice tweet from BBC Radio 3:

“Anger is underrated as a creative force.” Wise words from Grayson Perry.https://t.co/AMBsWkjzb5 pic.twitter.com/Tv35ioLn6Z

— BBC Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3) October 4, 2016

And thanks to the anonymous reader, by the way, who suggested that the opposite of Angry is Depressed – since “anger is sadness expressed, while depression is sadness repressed.” That got me thinking.

I also loved the tongue-in-cheek suggestions of two readers who recognised how relatively hard it is to find a word that works precisely – what about, they proposed, Unangry or Angerless? Hmm, I do know what you mean.

Incidentally, I’ve been making use of a terrific online resource called Power Thesaurus, that’s ‘crowd-sourced,’ in that users can vote for the most apt synonyms and antonyms.

Their users, just like our readers, have made Calm the top antonym for Angry.

What I found thoroughly intriguing though, was looking up the highest-voted opposite of Anxious, using the same resource.

Yup, you guessed.

Calm.

Sorry, yesterday slipped by without a Moodnudge. It was Presidents’ Day here in the USA, so routines got a bit disrupted. I also had my head down all day, working hard to make sense of the amazingly useful data we collected last Friday.

At the risk of running your “help tank” dry, there’s actually something I’m struggling with, so I wonder if you might briefly lend a hand once again please?

The thing is, I’m trying to pin down a fairly simple word that means the opposite of Angry, but despite trawling through the antonym sections of thesauri/thesauruses, I can’t seem to find exactly what I want.

I’ve therefore assembled a shortlist, and will welcome your vote(s) for words you believe are right, as well as suggestions for any I’ve not thought of.

Here’s the list:

https://goo.gl/forms/MGb8FNvWkISTYVAj1

The form has been set up so that you should be able to review other people’s responses (all anonymously, of course) after you’ve submitted your own thoughts.

Let’s see what the wisdom of the crowd comes up with. Could be interesting.

As ever, a “yuge” thank you (well, it was still Presidents’ Day when I wrote this) for your generosity, and willingness to participate. I really do appreciate it.

Thank you. As ever, I was delighted by the response to my Friday request to complete a short mood questionnaire, even though I’d explained that it wouldn’t actually give you any feedback at its conclusion. 310 people were kind enough to take part, which is over 10% of our readership – an impressive response rate. So, as I say, thank you hugely to everyone who helped out.

Now I know this probably won’t interest everyone, but I thought I’d give you some of the results in today’s post. Please feel free to skip them, and come back tomorrow if this kind of thing isn’t your scene. However there are some quite intriguing findings, which have already helped me as I continue to work towards finding a really versatile mood test.

Here we go then. First, the top line numbers for three overall themes – Anxiety, Anger, and Sadness.

The percentage figures are the proportion of respondents who fell into each of six “buckets”:

Angry
Very – 0.3%
Quite a bit – 7.0%
Moderately – 16.1%
A little – 30.8%
Very slightly – 41.1%
Not at all – 4.7%

Anxious
Very – 3.3%
Quite a bit – 10.0%
Moderately – 28.1%
A little – 38.5%
Very slightly – 18.4%
Not at all – 1.7%

Sad
Very – 7.0%
Quite a bit – 14.0%
Moderately – 19.1%
A little – 25.8%
Very slightly – 31.4%
Not at all – 2.7%

Of the three broad emotions, Anxiety and Sadness seemed the most top-loaded, while Anger was relatively less common (certainly in this sample).

Now we’ll get into a lot more detail. (Hopefully not TOO much, but as I said earlier, please feel free to skip the rest if numbers aren’t your thing.)

A few paragraphs down, you’ll find a table of sorts.

Its first column is a correlation coefficient, which is a way of understanding how closely the two items in the second column are related. In this table, a score of 1 would mean that the two terms are completely in sync – in other words, all 310 people who took part in the survey selected exactly the same answer for both of the two items. For example, everyone who said they were Moderately Sad would have needed to also say they were Moderately Downhearted.

Where a pair of terms are a combination of a negative and positive term, I’ve reversed the scoring. So to arrive at a coefficient of 1 (the maximum, remember) everyone, for example, who said they were Not at all Sad, would also have had to say they were Very Happy (an opposites kind of thing).

A correlation coefficient of 0 (zero) would mean that there was absolutely no relationship between the two items. You might get a result like that if you asked people to report on their eye colour alongside their weight. As far as I know, the two are entirely unrelated.

Looking at our results, then, we see that the strongest relationship of the 66 pairs was between Sad and Downhearted. Not too suprising, that, and it’s evidence that Downhearted pretty much means the same as Sad.

The weakest relationship? It was between Confident and Annoyed: there’s very little connection between NOT being Annoyed, and feeling Confident. Again, I’d suggest this isn’t too surprising.

So, what – if any – surprises WERE there? Well, after all the more obvious pairings, when you get about twenty items down, you start to see a few quite strong connections between unhappiness and anxiety. Certainly for Moodnudges readers, anxiety seems to contribute quite strongly to a lower overall mood.

0.77    Sad – Downhearted
0.73    Upbeat – Happy
0.70    Happy – Good-Tempered
0.69    Annoyed – Angry
0.68    Happy – Downhearted
0.68    Nervous – Anxious
0.65    Good-Tempered – Easygoing
0.65    Sad – Happy
0.62    Happy – Confident
0.62    Happy – Easygoing
0.62    Upbeat – Downhearted
0.62    Upbeat – Good-Tempered
0.61    Upbeat – Confident
0.60    Upbeat – Sad
0.59    Good-Tempered – Downhearted
0.59    Sad – Good-Tempered
0.57    Downhearted – Angry
0.54    Downhearted – Anxious
0.54    Good-Tempered – Angry
0.53    Downhearted – Confident
0.53    Sad – Anxious
0.53    Sad – Confident
0.51    Unworried – Happy
0.50    Good-Tempered – Annoyed
0.50    Good-Tempered – Confident
0.50    Nervous – Downhearted
0.50    Sad – Easygoing
0.49    Downhearted – Annoyed
0.49    Easygoing – Anxious
0.49    Easygoing – Confident
0.49    Easygoing – Downhearted
0.48    Confident – Anxious
0.48    Unworried – Anxious
0.48    Unworried – Good-Tempered
0.48    Upbeat – Easygoing
0.47    Sad – Nervous
0.47    Unworried – Easygoing
0.47    Upbeat – Unworried
0.46    Anxious – Angry
0.46    Good-Tempered – Anxious
0.46    Unworried – Downhearted
0.44    Happy – Anxious
0.44    Sad – Angry
0.44    Unworried – Nervous
0.44    Unworried – Sad
0.43    Unworried – Confident
0.42    Nervous – Confident
0.41    Happy – Angry
0.40    Anxious – Annoyed
0.40    Nervous – Easygoing
0.39    Easygoing – Angry
0.39    Nervous – Angry
0.39    Nervous – Happy
0.39    Upbeat – Anxious
0.38    Upbeat – Angry
0.37    Happy – Annoyed
0.37    Sad – Annoyed
0.36    Easygoing – Annoyed
0.36    Nervous – Annoyed
0.36    Nervous – Good-Tempered
0.35    Unworried – Annoyed
0.34    Unworried – Angry
0.33    Confident – Angry
0.33    Upbeat – Nervous
0.30    Upbeat – Annoyed
0.26    Confident – Annoyed

Perhaps you’ve spotted things of interest in here? If so, I’d welcome your thoughts. Please feel free to share them…

In Stephen Covey’s book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, he writes about ‘sharpening the saw’, an idea explained by the story of a man who was getting nowhere trying to cut down a tree with a blunt saw.

Struggling on ineffectively, the man explained that he was too busy to get the tool sharpened.

Do you wonder if sometimes we all try too hard?

You have a million and one things to do, but you’re tired, and this probably means you’ll (a) achieve little, and (b) end up even more tired in the process.

I was sitting at my desk the other day trying to force myself to think, but the thinks simply wouldn’t come, so with no great plan in mind I got up and went for a walk, and – well – you can probably guess the rest.

As soon as I stopped trying to force myself, everything slotted into place.

It’s worth remembering this when that same feeling strikes you.

Sometimes we all need to step away from the tree to sharpen that saw.