It’s the Little Things in Life: Enjoyment of Different Types of Personal Projects

Many positive psychology interventions aim to improve happiness through engagement in simple and intentional everyday activities that offer intrinsic rewards. Personal projects are personally relevant goal-directed activities that take place over an extended period of time, and are a way to study the intentional pursuit of happiness. This exploratory study identifies the types of projects that people engage in and which project dimensions predict hedonic well-being (enjoyment). Students (N = 327) and community participants completed the Personal Project Analysis in a cross-sectional survey. Two coders thematically coded projects into seven types. We used linear mixed models to identify which project types and dimensions uniquely predict enjoyment. People engaged in various types of activities (7 project types) which were enjoyed to different extents (relationship projects were most enjoyable while household maintenance were least enjoyable) and tend to experience greater enjoyment when projects encourage autonomy, control, likelihood of success, progress, absorption, low difficulty, and low challenge. Knowledge on which activity characteristics are linked to well-being can inform tailored positive psychology programming. Overall, people tend to find activities which are relatively easy and where they make a lot of progress more enjoyable, indicating simple daily activities are one way to intentionally prioritize daily well-being.