From the pool of his house in Madrid, Alejandro Cancerrado (Albacete, 1986) talks to this newspaper about an unusual personal project that reveals some lessons that could be universal about the straightest path to well-being. A physicist by training and reconverted into a data analyst at the Copenhagen Institute of Happiness, Alejandro has dedicated the last two decades of his biography to measuring his own state of mind and happiness. “It all started in 2005, in a difficult moment in my life“I was still living with my parents, I had self-esteem issues and I argued a lot with my partner. I decided that I wanted to be happy and I thought that the best way to achieve this was to measure my daily level,” she explains.
His simple but effective method was to reflect on his day each night and give it a score from 0 to 10. He started using the calendars his father received from the bank, and with the arrival of smartphones, he moved on to keeping a diary on his phone’s notepad. “The key is to be honest with yourself and evaluate whether you would repeat the day or not,” he says. He says that this self-analysis has allowed him to detect patterns and correct memory biases, of which we are all victims.
Alejandro is not a happiness guru who offers easy solutions. His approach, which has sparked growing interest and which is also included in “In Defense of Unhappiness” (Destino), takes into account that life has grays and moments. It is not just about seeing in black or white. “I think people like it because we are Tired of being sold magic recipes to be happy, which, by the way, never work,” he reflects.
This physicist recalls how his happiness has fluctuated over the years, depending on the state of his personal relationships and his connection to work. “There are a lot of fluctuations in my data. Monday is usually a very bad day and Sunday too.“Then the feeling of well-being increases until the weekend, something we all know well,” he explains.
The couple and raising children are two factors that have a huge influence on the results of this meta-analysis. “With romantic relationships I have seen something very clear. During the first seven months you are very happy, although the beginnings usually come with very marked variations; there are moments of great effusiveness in which you feel very special for the other person, but also periods of insecurity “in which you fear that the other person won’t like you.”
When the shift relationship is consolidated, a plateau arrives in which things moderate, there are no longer such high rises or such low falls. Looking back, he estimates that, on average, each year of these two decades will have had about 80 bad days (above five) and about 100 good days (more than that grade). And the rest, nothing special. In any case, the curve of happiness was on the rise until he became a father. Not because it rose more, but quite the opposite. “With raising children came tiredness, anger, having to constantly correct the instincts of a small child. And I started to have more bad days. Now I have about 100 bad days and 80 good ones,” he says honestly. He has confirmed and recorded that health is essential for happiness. The only three “ones” he has given in these 20 years have been for days when he was sick, either because of a bad oyster or some other reason that kept him in bed.
His work performance also kept him at the lowest threshold for a long time.Of the four jobs I’ve had, one kept me unhappy. for a year and a half. It was a place where I felt alone and undervalued. That’s when I realized that work can have a big impact on your happiness. If you work in a place where the only thing that matters is whether you do things well or if you produce poorly. The human side is important, that you are valued. That you are not a number.
His personal diary also draws conclusions that everyone knows. Namely, that sport is good, and social networks are terrible. These are obvious truths that, however, we do not quite understand. That is another: the record of his ills has not always made it easy for him to change course, which is so difficult to correct. “Ugh, it is very hard to change. I think we develop a personality when we are young and then we spend the rest of our lives doing things the same way. Year after year.” In any case, and despite his diary, he believes it is essential “not to obsess over happiness, bad days are inevitable, just like boredom. It’s part of being alive.”