Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy

A startlingly original book in the tradition of The Power of Now and The Art of Happiness, written by a top Google executive with an engineer’s training and a gift for thoroughly analyzing a problem, Solve for Happy presents the first-ever equation for achieving enduring happiness.

In 2004, Mo Gawdat, a remarkable thinker and leading technology executive, realized that, despite his material success, he was desperately unhappy. A lifelong learner, he attacked the problem as an engineer would, examining all the provable facts and scrupulously following logic. Eventually he discovered the equation for permanent happiness. Ten years later, that research saved him from despair when his college-aged son, Ali, failed to survive routine surgery. In dealing with the horrible loss, Mo found his mission: he would pull off the type of “moonshot” goal that he and his colleagues at Google’s “dream factory,” Google [X], were always aiming for: he would help ten million people become happier by revealing his happiness principles in a book.

In Solve for Happy Mo questions some of the most fundamental aspects of our existence. He begins with the powerful premise that happiness is our default state of being and explains how to shape expectations to acknowledge the full range of possible events, ensuring that what happens is always what we would have happily predicted. He shows us how to view life through a clear lens, teaches us how to dispel the illusions that cloud our thinking, and helps us to embrace five ultimate truths.

The message in Solve for Happy is clear: humans are designed to be happy. No matter what obstacles we face, what burdens we bear, what trials we’ve experienced, we can all be content with our present situation and optimistic about the future.