What's Your Happiness PR?

At What Counts, our mission is to uncover and share the science of self-improvement. 

Most of our work so far has focused on the physical and tangible aspect of self-improvement—from health scores to athletic pursuits and manual skills. 

But we’re equally interested in how we can study and optimise our mental and emotional wellbeing. 

If you’re an athlete, you’ll know how it feels to track your PRs and stats, and the benefit of having a clear data point to work toward. But how can we do that for something as intangible as happiness?

Well, this is a question that the small kingdom of Bhutan, tucked between India and China, has an answer to.

Back in the 1970s, as Bhutan began opening up to the world, its fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, was asked about his vision for the country’s development. While most leaders at the time focused on GDP as the ultimate measure of progress, the King offered a different perspective. He famously declared, “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product.”

While they didn’t really have any system set up at the time to track and measure this, the King decided to take his off-the-cuff answer and run with it. Since then, Bhutan has developed a complex and technical approach to measuring the happiness of its citizens. 

They developed something called the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index. Every few years, a national survey is sent out to measure happiness across nine key areas of life, including:

• Health and education

• Living standards

• Community vitality (How connected and supportive are your relationships?)

• Psychological well-being (Do you feel calm and content?)

• Time use (Are you spending your time on what really matters?)

• Environmental conservation

• Cultural diversity and resilience

• Good governance

It’s not just about asking people if they’re happy—it’s about understanding the conditions that help happiness flourish. The survey includes hundreds of questions and takes into account things like work-life balance, access to green spaces, and how involved people feel in their communities.

Once the data is collected, Bhutan uses it to guide titspolicies. For example, if the results show people aeeling stressed or disconnected, titmight focus on building stronger communities or improving access to mental health resources. IThis ensures thatthe government is always aligned with what people truly need to thrive.

Most of the media coverage of Bhutan you’ll find doesn't actually explore in detail how Bhutan runs these measurements, but we managed to find a fascinating interview with Dr Julia Kim (who worked as a Program Director of the GNH Centre Bhutan) where she breaks it down. 

Julia: If you were to crystallize what is unique about Bhutan's GNH as a philosophy it's measuring what matters. We know that in business and organizations metrics are really important, that's how we know we're approaching our goals.

So if you set the goal of well-being and happiness how do you know if you're getting there? You can't know if you're getting there if you're not measuring.

Host: I know from our conversation preparing for this that you wanted to take folks through the nine domains (used to measure happiness) so this might be a perfect time to introduce that.

Julia: So as I mentioned before, for a vision of happiness and well-being, it’s really important to have a survey or measurement to know if you're getting there. In Bhutan, they do a national survey every three years guiding policies. 

If you want to do a mini adapted GNH survey, these are the 9 categories. . .

(0 is very poor and 10 is excellent)

The first question is around health and the question here is ‘my lifestyle supports good physical and mental health’. Rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10.

Second is living standards. ‘I feel confident that I have enough financial security to meet my needs and those of my family’

Third question is around education. ‘I have enough learning opportunities to meet the shifting challenges in my professional career.’ 

Fourth question, thinking about the environment. ‘In my workplace there is high awareness and responsibility towards the environment.’

The fifth domain measured in Bhutan’s survey is community vitality.  ‘When I faced a personal crisis I felt I had enough support from my friends and colleagues.’

Sixth question, and this is one where a lot of surveys have shown it is really important to our sense of well-being—’I have enough time to do the things I enjoy with friends and family.’

Number seven, psychological well-being. ‘I feel there's good alignment between my sense of life purpose and my work’ 

Number eight is good governance. ‘In my work environment I feel that there's a good level of transparency and trust in leadership.’

And finally cultural diversity and resilience. ‘Where I work cultural diversity is seen as a positive contribution to society and to the workplace.’ 

So I hope that gives folks a sense of how these domains actually support an enabling environment for well-being and how they might be adapted and relevant to a work environment. 

Host: I've also heard you speak about how the nine factors have been used in Bhutan, I'd like to explore that just a little bit.

Julia: So I mentioned earlier that the gross national happiness survey is undertaken every three years or so and the idea there is to really see whether the government is creating an enabling environment for people to thrive and to be well and all those domains i mentioned give different information. 

The survey doesn’t just collect data—it informs policy decisions. For example, if there’s a proposal to build a mine, it’s evaluated not only for its economic impact but also for its effects on inequality, education, health, and community well-being. If the proposal doesn’t align with GNH values, it’s sent back for revision.

The survey results are also analyzed by demographics—age, gender, and region. This helps identify areas where policies can improve well-being for the population as a whole, rather than just making incremental improvements for those already thriving.

Bhutan’s approach to measuring happiness may not be perfect—or even universally acknowledged as the most accurate way to assess well-being. But as NPR points out, “Whatever the metric, the act of assessing nationwide happiness is crucial for trying to improve it. Even making the effort to measure happiness can make a difference.”

When it comes to our own lives, we’ve been trying to measure our subjective well-being for a while now, and we’ve found that it’s not an easy task. What we’ve learned is that measuring your happiness is only useful if you can use that data to make meaningful changes. Knowing that your happiness is an 8/10 might be interesting, but it’s not particularly helpful unless you can analyze the data and uncover the factors that influence it—positively or negatively.

At What Counts, we believe that understanding the “why” behind the numbers is what drives real progress. Whether it’s experimenting with new habits, refining your routines, or optimizing how you spend your time, the goal is to use the insights you gather to build a life that feels more fulfilling and aligned with your values.

We think there’s a long way to go until we understand the science of happiness and fulfillment, but countries like Bhutan are proving that this is an idea worth taking seriously. 

Until next week, 

Benji and Jacob

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