humor journaling · three minutes · the club
In 2016 a Swiss group tested five humor exercises the way Seligman tested gratitude: online, placebo-controlled, hundreds of adults, one week. The dullest-sounding one — write down three funny things that happened today and why they were funny — was among those that kept working half a year later. It out-lasted most of the gratitude variants in that trial. Nobody expected it.
You go looking for what was funny, which means you spend the day half-noticing it. The why makes you replay the moment. Over a week, the habit of scanning for the absurd starts to run on its own, and the days you catalogue turn out funnier than the days you didn’t.
One trial, self-selected online volunteers, self-report. The happiness gain lasted; the drop in depressive symptoms didn’t. Effects are the usual size for this kind of thing — small — and the six-month figure is for people who kept some version of the habit.
Three bits on a set list, and after each one you hit the sign for why it killed — timing, truth, surprise. The “why” is the ingredient the six-month follow-up credited; the room laughing is the reward.
Try it in the city →from Attuned Work Design
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