The Life Satisfaction Project

The one number nobody keeps.

Your bank has a number for you. Your employer has eleven. Nobody anywhere is keeping the number those are all supposed to be for. We would like to fix that, and we would like to sit you next to the people who move it.

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The problem

Economists like to measure everything except the things that matter.

Unknown

What gets measured, gets done.

Not Peter Drucker, though everyone says it was. Nobody can find it.

The second line is why the first one is a disaster rather than a joke. GDP is counted every quarter by thousands of people. Your revenue is counted every month, your steps every day, your sleep in five-minute blocks. How satisfied you are with your life is counted by nobody, which means nobody manages it, which means it drifts.

We are not the first people to say this. We might be the first ones annoying enough to buy a domain about it.

A woman at a kitchen table drawing an eight-spoke wheel of her own life on the back of an envelope, ignoring a laptop beside her covered in financial charts

Everything on the screen is counted by somebody. The thing on the envelope is counted by nobody.

The mission

To maximise global human life satisfaction.

That is the whole thing, and everything after it is a means. It reads absurdly large written down. At the time of writing it consists of 130 dinners, 50 trained hosts and two unfinished ideas, which we will now describe in the order we believe them.

Goal one

Help people measure it, then move it.

Eight dimensions, scored by you, rolled into one number you can actually watch. Health, Money, Work, Growth, Play, Friends, Love, Purpose.

Health Money Work Growth Play Friends Love Purpose Life satisfaction, total 41 53 39 62 Today You start saying yes The promotion You fix it

One illustrative person. The shape is made up; the method is not.

Here is what the wheel gives away. The two spokes you can already measure, work and money, are the two that eat the others. You take the promotion. Work goes to ten and money to nine, and health, friends and play get eaten to pay for it. The total comes out at 39, lower than the 41 you started at, and nobody says anything, because nobody has the total.

A man working alone under a desk lamp late at night while two friends with beers, a woman holding tickets, a guitar and an older couple on the stairs all wait patiently in the dim hallway behind him

Nobody in the hallway is angry. That is the problem: nothing about this feels like a decision at the time.

A wheel of life is a coaching cliché and we are not pretending otherwise. The part that is missing is not the diagram. It is that nobody keeps yours, nobody remembers what you said in January, and nobody notices in March when it stops being true.

Goal two

Bring humans together.

The strongest predictor of a good life is who is in it.

Eighty-six years, 724 men, and then their children. Not cholesterol, not income, not fame. The people who were most satisfied with their relationships at fifty were the healthiest at eighty.

So if the mission is life satisfaction, the highest-leverage thing available is not an app that tracks your mood. It is a room with the right eight people in it, and an excuse to be in it on a Tuesday.

Harvard Study of Adult Development, running since 1938

Eight people of different ages around a long cafe table, leaning in and laughing, two handwritten question cards on the table
What exists today

We Like Humans. 90 minutes, two questions.

The gatherings are the half of this that is real and running. Eight or so people around a table, two questions, ninety minutes, no name badges and nothing to buy. They are free, and they have been going since July.

130+gatherings since July
98%make a connection they call meaningful
4.74average rating out of five
50+hosts trained to run one without us

The number that matters is the last one. One person hosting dinners is a hobby. Fifty people hosting dinners is a format, and a format is the only thing that survives one person's diary.

How the two halves meet
A woman in a mustard raincoat sits in a comfortable study, holding open a book marked Life Satisfaction to show a man in the chair opposite an eight-spoke chart

One person whose only job is you.

We call her a Fairy Godmother, and she is an AI superconnector who works for exactly one human. She holds your eight spokes. She hears the thing you would never put on LinkedIn, because there is nobody to perform for. Then she goes and finds the person who fixes it, and tells them why they should care.

She has no wings and no wand. The umbrella is the wand.

This is the part that could not be built three years ago. Making a match safe used to need one human who knew everybody, and there were never enough of those.

Where this actually is

Half of it exists. Half of it is a drawing.

Built, running, free

  • The gatherings. 130 of them since July.
  • 50-plus hosts who run one without us in the room.
  • The two questions. They are better than they look, and they are free.

Not built yet

  • The eight spokes, scored and kept somewhere that is yours.
  • The single number, and the honest version of the chart above.
  • The Fairy Godmother. She is a character in a picture so far.

If you came here for a product, it is one table and a very good question. That part works.

Come to a table.

We will put you next to the person you should have met four years ago. Ninety minutes, no cost, no pitching, and you can leave when the coffee runs out.

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