Spending a few minutes a day for a week doing simple things that bring joy increases well-being, decreases stress, and improves sleep, according to a new study. It shows you don’t need to invest in time-consuming well-being interventions for them to be effective.
People can feel time-poor due to increased work demands, the feeling of always “being on” that technology promotes, and society’s prioritization of productivity and achievement over self-care. So, it’s little wonder that most don’t – or can’t – set aside a significant amount of time for improving well-being.
Now, new research led by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has shown that you don’t need to dedicate much more than a few minutes a day to achieve higher levels of well-being and positive emotions, and lower levels of stress.
“Many people lack the time, motivation, and resources to commit to these lengthier programs, and they may be more likely to drop out,” said lead author Darwin Guevarra, PhD, who is a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF and is also affiliated with Miami University. “We were excited to get positive results in a program that required just a few minutes each day for a week.”
The researchers wanted to investigate the effectiveness of performing so-called “micro-acts of joy” in improving mood and well-being over a day and a week, as well as whether important sociodemographic factors, including age, sex, race, ethnicity, geography, and baseline levels of well-being and stress, had an impact on this effectiveness. So, they created The BIG JOY Project, a web-based platform for recording joyful micro-acts and the effects that flow from them.
When participants register to be part of The BIG JOY Project, they’re asked how they feel each morning, then given a micro-act of joy exercise to do. Each exercise takes a few minutes and could involve something as simple as watching a video, creating a gratitude list, or doing something kind for someone else. Afterwards, participants are asked to reflect on the thoughts and feelings they had while they were doing the micro-act. At the end of the day, they’re asked again how they feel. Participants set aside about seven minutes a day for seven days. At the end of the seven days, they’re given a report that includes the micro-acts that worked best for them, and how their feelings changed over the week-long intervention.
The researchers collected data from 17,598 BIG JOY Project participants in 169 countries and territories, including the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, and India between 2022 and 2024. They compared each participant’s emotional well-being, positive emotions, happiness, perceived stress, self-reported health, and sleep quality before and after each micro-act of joy.
They found that, after doing a week’s worth of micro-acts of joy, participants felt better emotionally, experienced more positive feelings, felt more in control of their own happiness, felt less stressed, rated their health as better, and their sleep improved. In terms of the size of the effect, both improvements and reductions were moderate. The researchers also noted a dose-response pattern. That is, people who participated more actively (were more consistent when it came to doing the daily activities, for example) showed better results.
Interestingly, the researchers also found that participants who faced greater social disadvantage, due to lower education, lower income, or identifying as an ethnic minority, experienced even greater improvements from performing micro-acts of joy. This suggests that the program may have been particularly beneficial to those facing greater life challenges. And, younger participants saw bigger improvements in emotional well-being and stress reduction compared to older participants.
There are plenty of studies demonstrating the benefits of engaging in lengthy interventions aimed at improving well-being. This is the first time that a short intervention has shown such strong health benefits. And, given the heterogeneity of participants, it suggests that it can work for a wide range of people. The researchers said that this type of quick-and-easy program would have long-lasting effects on health.
“People with higher well-being are less likely to develop chronic conditions, like cardiovascular diseases, and have reduced mortality in both healthy and unhealthy populations,” said Elissa Epel, PhD, the study’s corresponding author and a Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF.
The study was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Source: UCSF via EurekAlert!
