Time Spent Well

Time spent well is an oddly satisfying thing. Odd, because it can happen in quite trivial activities, and yet be satisfying....and we often don't know at the start that it's going to be well spent.
That, for me, is the really strange thing.
Humans are pretty bad at predicting what's going to make us happy - the best book I've read about this is "Stumbling On Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. We persist in going for short-term, hedonic gains, which are transient and inherently unsatisfying - "retail therapy" being a prime example, watching television being a more banal example.
The deeper kind of happiness - eudaimonic happiness - can be found both in the simplest of things - the company of friends, cooking a meal - and in more complex tasks that stretch us without stressing us, that require some concentration and participation on our part. I'll write more about "flow" later.

For me, time flies when I'm enjoying myself and it slows down as well - there's more of it. For a while I can stand outside time, until I notice myself doing it and snap back to here and now.
I never get this feeling watching television, where I'm a passive consumer. I often get it when watching a play, or listening to live music.

The first part of the trick is knowing beforehand what's going to make us properly happy, by noticing how we have done it in the past, and doing that more often.
The second part is being present enough to recognise and grab these moments when they come, ride the wave before it passes.
The third part is feeling gratitude for that moment and storing it away in the memory banks for the future.

Repeat as often as necessary