Axios Finish Line

October 30, 2025
Welcome back! Smart Brevityβ’ count: 366 words β¦ 1Β½ mins. Copy edited by Amy Stern
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1 big thing: Happiness hack
We're inundated with headlines about how well-being β especially among younger people β is cratering. Podcasters, psychologists and startup founders have put forth formulas on how we can boost happiness levels.
- But there might be a refreshingly uncomplicated hack to being happier if we just flip the equation, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes.
π° The money quote: "[T]he surest path to happiness for many of us could be as simple as this: Stop trying to be happy β and start figuring out how to make other people happy."
Zoom in: Milbank bases that conclusion on the results of a six-year study from Cornell.
- Researchers set out to test whether feeling a sense of purpose would make members of Gen Z β often described as an anxious and directionless generation β feel happier.
π§βπ Over the past six years, Cornell psychologist Anthony Burrow and his team have randomly selected 1,200 high school and college students to receive $400 "to pursue what matters most" to them.
- Each student had eight weeks to use the money on something that benefited their families, communities or themselves.
After eight weeks, researchers compared the well-being, sense of purpose and belonging of those who received the money to a control group.
- Though both groups started out with similar scores, the recipients showed significant improvement.
π‘ Zoom out: What's exciting about the preliminary results of this study is that we can all replicate it by thinking of ways to give our time and resources.
- Parents or teachers could experiment with giving kids some money or some time to spend on an activity that they feel does some good β whether that's donating to a local soup kitchen or volunteering at an animal shelter.
The bottom line: Cornell's Burrow told Milbank, "Invite people to think about a contribution they want to make and help them [to] make that contribution, and that person may walk around with greater purpose than if they hadn't done that."
πΈ Pic du jour

A car drives along a road near Hakenberg, northeastern Germany, today as trees with changing leaves cast shadows on a farmer's field.
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