Exercise1 and have good friends.
Being lonely is as bad for health as smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day, or being obese.2 Exercise has the opposite effect: every minute of exercise increases your life expectancy by about seven minutes.3
That’s pretty much it. I can’t really imagine a life where you have both and you’re not doing at least okay.
You want more?4
Okay find a good spouse, sleep and eat well.
Still more?
Well ideally find a job you like. And avoid being broke - it will increase your stress.
It would be useful to think about your priorities too. For example, writer Paul Millerd’s priorities in order are:
And in the end, you have to live a life true to yourself. That’s a lot harder to measure for scientific purposes though.
“If exercise were a pill, it would be the most widely prescribed and beneficial drug in the world. Taken once a day it would make you live a longer and happier life. Not only that, this pill would make you stronger. It would profoundly increase your energy levels, your mood, your brain function, and your concentration. In fact, this pill would outperform every other known medicine for improving overall markers of health." The Exercise Happiness Paradox | Chris Wharton | TEDxSevenoaks ↩︎
Quote from Julianne Holt-Lunstad in What is the secret of a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness - Veritasium. Accessed June 2025.
One academic result is here: Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227-237. DOI: 10.1177/1745691614568352 ↩︎Note this a populaion level statisic. It originates from the analysis that 15 minutes of moderate exercise per day (≈105 minutes per week) can add ~3 years of life expectancy. A good article on the paper (Moore et al. 2012) The original paper ↩︎
NB I haven’t looked at the research for these parts ↩︎
Actually, reflecting on these points it’s clear to me you can’t enjoy much in life without good health. That includes mental and physical. ↩︎
Interestingly, good relationships are also good for mental health. ↩︎