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"  Have you been feeling blah lately? In these post-Eat Pray Love days, the premium on happiness is higher than ever before, and Americans are constantly searching for their own. Is it binging on TV marathons? Doing yoga every day? Eating a whole wheel of cheese? There are plenty of happiness-hacking tips out there, but it may actually be more about your scheduling activities than the actual activities themselves. A new study of subjective well-being (SWB) printed in the Journal of Economic Psychology has determined that if you&amp;#039;re not leading a blissful existence, it may have to do with scheduling your day in a manner that&amp;#039;s not optimized for happiness. Or, more specifically, doing everything\u2014both work and play\u2014in smaller chunks of time rather than long, five-hour stretches. Rsearchers came up with a chart that lists the activities and time frames of a 16-hour &amp;quot;happiness-optimized&amp;quot; day. Even the things that supposedly make us happiest, like watching TV, shopping, eating and talking on the phone, are suggested in smaller doses than the binging that most of us do. (Most of them are suggested to end under an hour, with the thankful exception of eating, which is slated at 75 minutes). Corrected for all overindulgences, regardless of the activity, the underlying principle of the schedule is this: &amp;quot;Even the most pleasurable activities are usually less enjoyable the longer they last and the more often we do them.&amp;quot; Of course, this schedule isn&amp;#039;t convenient or practical for most of us to follow (a meager 48 minutes on the computer? Unnnnlikely). But the most unrealistic part of this happy-optimized schedule is the first item on the list: &amp;quot;Intimate relations: 106 minutes.&amp;quot; Compare this with the recommended 36 minutes of work. HAHAHA. Yeahhh, that&amp;#039;s hilarious. Tell me another one. Nevertheless, the 106 : 36 ratio is a good depiction of the wide gulf between a ideal, happy lifestyle and what most American schedules actually look like. Specifically, 244 minutes a day are spent on our least favorite activities (e.g. working), and just seven minutes on having sex and socializing. Now, who feels like showing these results to their boss and making change happen? Maybe Sheryl Sandberg can take up the cause in her next book. Follow Anna on Twitter: @annabreslaw Photo via Thinkstockphoto "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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