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In times like these—when most people are worried about economic issues and job stability—you’d expect Americans to be a lot less happy than they were last year at this time. Right?

Wrong! As the old saying goes, money can’t buy happiness; and maybe worries over money can’t deplete happiness, either. According to a recent Harris Interactive Poll (the Harris Poll Happiness Index) 35% of Americans are very happy, indeed.

But what, exactly, makes people happy? According to the poll, happiness isn’t just about money or jobs or even economic stability. Rather, it’s having a close network of friends, positive relationships with family members, and spiritual beliefs. When all of these are examined in total, it’s clear that Americans are not unhappy. They may be frustrated with certain aspects of their lives. They may watch the economic news and wish their 401(k)s or stock portfolios were doing better. They may worry that they or a loved one will lose a job, but the important parts that make up the rest of their lives seem to be going well.

To obtain results, Harris Interactive polled 2,401 U.S. adults (18 and older) online between April 13 and 21, 2009. Here are some of the key findings:

• Women are slightly happier than men (36% vs. 34%). Among women, 38% of married women are very happy compared to 34% of single women.
• The more education one has, the happier one is: 33% of those who have a high school or less education are happy; 36% of both those with some college and college graduates are happy; and 39% of those with a post graduate education are happy.
• With regard to income, however, more isn’t necessarily better: the happiest income group consisted of those making between $50,000 and $74,999 (39%), followed by those with incomes of $75,000 and up (36%).
• When looking at happiness by age, just under one-third of those between 18 and 49 are very happy. But 37% of those aged 50-64 are very happy, and almost half of those 65 and older are very happy (45%).
• One of the only real changes in happiness from last year is among African Americans and Hispanics. Last year, 35% of African Americans were happy as were 32% of Hispanics. This year, those numbers go up to 41% and 36% respectively. Whites, however, are unchanged at 35% for both last year and this year.
• The number of Democrats who were happy also ticked up this year (from 33% to 36%) and the Republican number ticked down a little (39% to 37%). These changes probably have something to do with the election of President Obama.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agree to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

More survey and study results about how human beings waste time or use it ineffectively (it’s not always our fault, though!):

• Email statistics and projections indicate that, by 2011, the average number of corporate emails sent and received per person each day will be 228 (up from 142 in 2007). The corresponding percent of work spent managing email for the average corporate email user will rise from 17% in 2003 to a projected 41% this year. (2007 study conducted by technology market research firm Radicati Group)
• In 2009, about 81% of all email traffic is expected to be spam. Projections indicate that the typical 1000-user organization can spend as much as $1.8 million pear year to manage spam (2009 study by the Radicati Group)
• The average office has 19 copies of each document. (From an article in USA Today)
• The average retrieval/refiling time for a paper document: 10 minutes. However, about 3% of documenets are lost or misfiled, leading to a recovery rate of $120 per document. (Study by the Gartner Group, Coopers & Lybrand, Ernst & Young)
• The average executive wastes 150 hours each year looking for misplaced documents. (2003 study by Office World News)
• Misplacing items isn’t confined to the office: Americans as a whole waste more than 9 million hours each day looking for lost/misplaced items. (Study by the American Demographic Society)
• The average manager is interrupted every 8 minutes. As for the non-average, 50% are interrupted 8-9 times per hour; 22%,, 10-11 times; 11%, 6-7 times; 5%, 1-3 times; and 2% more than 12 times per hour!  (Study conducted by Priority Management Systems)
• The average amount of time executives spend in (mostly needless) meetings each week: 7.8 hours. (Survey by Accountemps)
• The desk of the average white collar worker holds 36 hours of uncompleted work. That desk’s occupant spends 3  hours per week sorting piles to find and organize the project/s being worked upon. (From The Overload Syndrome, by Richard Swenson)
• Studies show that a certain percentage of executives pick up a  single piece of paper on their desk from 30 to 40 times before deciding to take action upon it. (From Seize the Day, by Michael Woolery)
• About 25% of workers save things in piles instead of files. (Paper presented by Global Market Research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres)

See our earlier post on Organizing Statistics & Surveys.

Someone is always conducting a study of one kind or another on the way people work, organize themselves and their workplaces, and waste or use time effectively. Here’s a roundup of interesting study results from the last few years:

• People who multitask are less efficient than those who focus on one project at a time. Time lost switching among tasks increases with complexity of the tasks. (2003 Study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology)

• A related (undated) study by the Journal Neuroimage determined that managing two mental tasks at once reduces the brainpower available for either task.

• The process of switching back immediately to a task you’ve performed takes longer than switching back after a bit more time has passed. Why? Because the brain has to overcome “inhibitions” it imposed on itself to stop doing the task in the first place. (a 2002 study by the National Institute of Mental Health)

• 48% of American execs admit to having a messy desk, but claim to know where everything is. In contrast, 12% say that—although their desk appears organized—they have no idea where to find anything. Maybe that’s why executives waste an estimated six weeks per year searching for lost documents. (This 2004 survey of 2600 execs by Esselte appeared in the 8/04 FastCompany Magazine)

• A related survey found that the average American “burns” 55 minutes a day, or 12 weeks a year, looking for things they know they own but can’t find. (2004 study by an un-named Boston marketing firm)

• A 2008 study by the National Association of Professional Organizers found that 55% of respondents would save from 16 minutes to 1 hour each day if they were more organized. That translates into anywhere from two to 15 wasted days each year.

• Of the total 8 hours wasted each week in paper document management, we spend 1 hour finding documents, 1 hour finding it difficult (for various reasons) to share documents, 1 hour in distribution/storage, and .5 hours in archiving and retrieval. (2003 study by the Gartner Group)

• According to a study by the Small Business Administration, 80% of papers that are filed are never referenced again.

• Way, way back in 2003, the average worker was sending and receiving more than 190 messages each day. (2003 study by Pitney Bowes, Inc.) Note: The numbers can only have multiplied steeply since then, don’t you agree?

• Sales reps in a survey were most productive when they assigned themselves only three tasks per day. It gave them a greater sense of accomplishment when they were able to cross off those tasks. (An undated study by Accountemps)