Well-doing: Personal projects and the quality of lives

‘What are you doing?’ and ‘How is it going?’ are foundational questions we can ask of agents. They elicit answers that illuminate aspects of well-doing, or felicitous action, by directing attention to an agent’s personal projects. Personal projects are constitutive elements of daily existence and are consequential for a happy and virtuous life. They have been studied within philosophy, especially in critiques of consequentialist theory. They have been studied by personality psychologists with a methodology, Personal Projects Analysis that measures the content, appraisal, dynamics, and impact of the projects being pursued by individuals. In contrast with more traditional ways of measuring personality, Personal Projects Analysis provides ‘thick’ descriptions of how happiness and virtue are embodied in daily action and embedded in social, physical, temporal, and value contexts. The methodology is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration in contributing to the explanation and the enhancement of well-doing and the quality of lives.