Finland is a country that punches well above its weight. The northern European nation is less than half the size of NSW, has a population of just 5.6 million people, and surprised the world – including many of its citizens – when it was first named the happiest country on Earth in 2018.

Last month, Finland held onto the title for an unprecedented eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report – a list published annually by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an initiative of the United Nations and Gallup research.

Finland: beautiful, serene, and a little bit “boring”.Credit: Getty Images

Every year, 100,000 people are asked how satisfied they are with their lives to compare differences in personal and national happiness. This year, Australia fell one place to be ranked 11th in the world.

As part of research for my latest book, Work Backwards, I spent almost a month travelling around Finland to try to get to the bottom of why they’ve risen to the top of the happiness charts and stayed there.

I discovered that one of the main........

© The Sydney Morning Herald