Arthur Brooks is the poster child for an interesting and accomplished life. He has made it a practice to upend his career every decade. He played the French horn for the Barcelona orchestra, is friends with the Dalai Lama, and is the author of 14 books (including one coauthored with Oprah Winfrey).
He's also a happiness evangelist and a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, where he teaches a popular course on leadership and happiness. In addition, he's a columnist for The Atlantic, where he writes weekly about the tools for building a happier life. Yet even he struggles with his own happiness, which is why he studies it. Now he's gathered his most popular essays into a new book, The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life (Harvard Business Review Press), which goes on sale August 12.
I connected with Brooks on August 4 for an in-depth conversation, in which you'll learn: