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Viliam_Bur comments on Open thread, Feb. 9 - Feb. 15, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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My impression is that for a lot of people, much of their unhappiness comes from things that happen at work (and from the mere fact of having to do it at all). And yet the available evidence suggests that winning a big lottery prize doesn't typically make people all that much happier.
An obvious explanation is that we get annoyed whenever anything fails to go as we hope it will, and giving up work just means that instead of being frustrated by random inconveniences at work you'd be similarly frustrated by random inconveniences on your yacht, or wherever you were instead of working.
Of course that explanation might be wrong -- but although my experience is comparable to yours, I am inclined to be much less confident that my happiness would be hugely increased by not having to work.
Maybe typically people use their winnings in a wrong way. For example, they buy an expensive car, go to an expensive vacation, etc. And a year later, there is nothing left. And they know they will probably never win the lottery again.
It would be interesting to have a data on a subset which instead of doing this does something smart, such as retire early. Or some other big change in their life, for example pay for education they didn't have, so even when the money is gone, their everyday life remains different.
I agree: that would be extremely interesting.