Happiness may be one of the least motivating of all the factors that determine where we work or live. Many people choose to work at places that do not maximize their happiness in order to receive other rewards (economic, status or prestige, etc.). Moreover, subjective measures like job satisfaction do not seem to have much of a correlation with productivity measures. We don’t work hard because it will make us happier. The link between enjoyment and economic payoff just doesn’t seem to be very strong.
So why should we be concerned about happiness anyway? In my mind, happiness is something that most people would like to have in their lives but it’s often seen as an end state (e.g. I’ll be happy when I get this *#%*^ paper finished!) or a subjective state you hope to experience but over which you have little control.
