The Art of the Good Life

52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth, and Success

By: Rolf Dobelli

Narrated by: Keith Wickham

Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

Since antiquity, people have been asking themselves what it means to live a good life. How should I live? What constitutes a good life? What's the role of fate? What's the role of money? Is leading a good life a question of mind-set, or is it more about reaching your goals? Is it better to actively seek happiness or to avoid unhappiness?

Each generation poses these questions anew, and somehow the answers are always fundamentally disappointing. Why? Because we're constantly searching for a single principle, a single tenet, a single rule. Yet this holy grail - a single, simple path to happiness - doesn't exist. Rolf Dobelli - successful businessman, founder of the TED-style ideas conference Zurich Minds, best-selling author, and all-around seeker of big ideas - has made finding a shortcut to happiness his life's mission. He's synthesized the leading thinkers and the latest science in happiness to find the best shortcuts to satisfaction in The Art of the Good Life, his follow-up to the international best seller The Art of Thinking Clearly (which has sold more than 2.5 million copies in 40 languages all around the globe).

The Art of the Good Life is a toolkit designed for practical living. Here you'll find 52 happiness hacks - from guilt-free shunning of technology to gleefully paying your parking tickets - that are certain to optimize your happiness. These tips may not guarantee you a good life, but they'll give you a better chance (and that's all any of us can ask for).

©2017 Rolf Dobelli (P)2017 Hachette Audio

A selection of good life strategies

Loved it. Easy weekend read. Mindfulness and empathy strategies. I've also read Dobelli's other books.

straight forward

this book was one of the most straight forward and meaningful book. I enjoyed it !

No shortcuts, but some good perspectives

Narration was outstanding! The narrator is a big find for me.

I didn't feel there was enough content for this sort of book. The ideas apply to some people some of the time, I feel. Not enough of it applied to me. If the ideas were covered in more depth or if there were more ideas, I'd be more excited about the book.

To me the most interesting viewpoint presented had to do with specialization and generalization in one's life. The author is 100% on the side of specialization. He supports this one with broad historical anecdotes and it certainly does get one thinking.

In my opinion, each of the ideas requires a lot more work. The ideas deserve more effort, because each one offers lots of promise.

Lovely read

l thoroughly enjoyed this book and great narration with 52 bite sized chapters. Lots of life wisdom that will make you better.

an easy but sometimes dark listen

About 1/3 was nuggets of wisdom, 1/3 was neutral to me, and 1/3 was crap. His philosophy is mostly based on atheism, the stoics, and Warren Buffett. the chapters did go by quickly,though, and i found some advice i could use alongside the things i disagreed with.

Well done.

This author always solid. Gonna listen a second time. Definitely worth the time and money.

Not great

If you've already listened to the Art of Thinking Clearly, there's a lot of overlap with this book. a couple of good nuggets, but not much beyond good common sense.

Author doesn't know what he is talking about

This book doesn't contain legitimate information but copied from here and there what others said and also false information. Following are few examples,
1. Copy a lot from Poor Charlies Almanack, lots of copying from Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet. If you have read about them enough this book is half on those concepts.
2. Author says, meditation is good only when you meditate and it isn't true, Truth is when you do sit down meditation and your overall awareness improves during the day, also meditation is something you could do while you are at work and just be mindful. Author deny that mindfulness is useful. He hasn't meditated and he just speculate these things and decided to write them in his book.