Talking Talent

If you want to get more done at work, it’s not to-do lists, diaries and a focus on the “urgent and important” quadrant that will make a difference.

As blogger, the Chief Happiness Officer (AKA Alexander Kjerulf), says “the single most efficient way to increase your productivity is to be happy at work. No system, tool or methodology in the world can beat the productivity boost you get from really, really enjoying your work.”

Source: Chief Happiness Officer 

Here are the 10 most important reasons (courtesy of Alexander) of why happiness at work is the #1 productivity booster.

1. Happy people work better with others. They are a lot more fun to be around and consequently have better relations at work. This translates into better teamwork with your colleagues, better manager-employee relations, more satisfied customers and improved sales.
2. Happy people are more creative.  If your productivity depends on being able to come up with new ideas, you need to be happy at work. Check out the research of Teresa Amibile for proof. She says: “If people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas that day, as well as the next day, even if we take into account their mood that next day.
3. Happy people fix problems instead of complaining about them. When you don’t like your job, every molehill looks like a mountain. It becomes difficult to fix any problem without agonising over it or complaining about it first. When you’re happy at work and you run into a snafu - you just fix it.
4. Happy people have more energy, and are therefore more efficient at everything they do.
5. Happy people are more optimistic, and as research shows (particularly Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology), optimists are way more successful and productive. It’s the old saying “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right” all over again.
6. Happy people are way more motivated.  Low motivation means low productivity, and the only sustainable, reliable way to be motivated at work is to be happy and like what you do. That’s why “motivation by pizza” doesn’t work.
7. Happy people get sick less often.  Getting sick is a productivity killer and if you don’t like your job you’re more prone to contract a long list of diseases including ulcers, cancer and diabetes. You’re also more prone to workplace stress and burnout.  One study assessed the impact of job strain on the health of 21,290 female nurses in the US and found that the women most at risk of ill health were those who didn’t like their jobs. The impact on their health was a great as that associated with smoking and sedentary lifestyles.
8. Happy people learn faster.  When you’re happy and relaxed, you’re much more open to learning new things at work and thereby increasing your productivity.
9. Happy people worry less about making mistakes - and consequently make fewer mistakes.  When you’re happy at work the occasional mistake doesn’t bother you much. You pick yourself up, learn from it and move on. You also don’t mind admitting to others that you screwed up - you simply take responsibility, apologise and fix it. This relaxed attitude means that less mistakes are made, and that you’re more likely to learn from them.
10. Happy people make better decisions. Unhappy people operate in permanent crisis mode. Their focus narrows, they lose sight of the big picture, their survival instincts kick in and they’re more likely to make short-term, here-and-now choices. Conversely, happy people make better, more informed decisions and are better able to prioritize their work.

In 1954, American psychologist Abraham Maslow developed his now famous ‘hierarchy of needs’.  Maslow’s theory says that the needs of all human beings fit into five broad categories: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation. 

Maslow argued that some needs take precedence over others.  For example, physical needs such as food and water, are the most basic needs.  When these are fulfilled, people will focus on the need for shelter and safety. 

Those of us lucky enough to live in the Western World are in an extraordinary situation – we are wealthier and healthier than the vast majority of the people on the planet. 

For example, if you have assets of more than $61,000, then you’re in the top 10 per cent of the global wealth league table. To belong to the top 1 per cent of the world’s wealthiest adults you would need more than $500,000, something that 37 million adults have achieved.

And if you can read this, then you are already ahead of more than half the world’s population, who are illiterate. 

Sadly, most of our fellow human beings will never move past phase one or two on Maslow’s hierarchy – they’ll never have the opportunity to climb to the top of the pyramid and achieve “self-actualisation”.  They’ll never have the opportunity to ask themselves “what is my life’s purpose?”

But for those of us who do, it’s important not to waste that opportunity.  Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness website has a great range of questionnaires to get you thinking about your approach to life and happiness, and perhaps put you on the path to fulfilling your highest purpose.

Despite the exponential increase in our wealth in the last 50 years, it seems our levels of happiness have not increased.  While our standard of living has increased dramatically, in some cases our levels of happiness have diminished slightly.  The evidence suggests that being richer isn’t making us happier.

In fact, Australia consistently scores highly (or highest) for happiness in education, health, security and wealth, when assessed by the United Nations Human Development Index.  And yet, other data shows us that Australians have some of the lowest levels of job satisfaction in the world. Only Japan, Taiwan, and six East European nations (including Russia) do worse in this regard.

So what does make us happy? 

Happiness is not a destination, but a decision.  We decide to be happy.

In Learned Optimism, Dr Martin Seligman, a leading specialist in positive psychology, presents scientific evidence that optimists get along better than pessimists in almost ever facet of life: at school, at work, in personal relationships and in sports. According to Seligman, optimists respond better to adversity of all kinds.  What’s more, they have better physical health and may even live longer.  The key is what we say to ourselves when we confront failure and disappointment.

Permanent change comes from rewiring habits. I keep a journal which I write every day before I go to bed.  I always write down my ‘three good things’ that happened that day.  This simple exercise helps with resilience and optimism.  By focusing on the positive, I can pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again when things feel wrong or go wrong in the workplace. Maintaining an attitude of gratitude is simple, yet liberating and empowering.

So, the question is: are you happy?  Seligman’s Authentic Happiness website features countless surveys on happiness, including optimism, relationship satisfaction, work/life balance and meaning of life.  You’ll find some clues to your mental attitude there.

“What do you want to do with your life?”

It’s a conundrum that most of us have wrestled with at some stage of our lives.

If you need some direction, 43 Things is a social networking website built on the principles of tagging.   Users create accounts and then list a number of goals; these goals are then connected to similar goals constructed by other people.

43 Things not only encourages people to write down their goals – an important factor in high achievement – but also provides a social networking space for people to meet other enthusiasts with the same (sometimes very obscure) goal, to share their progress and to learn from other people who already achieved that goal.

More than a 1.1 million people have joined the site and have set themselves goals such as ‘donate blood’, ‘learn sign language’, ‘travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway’, ‘grow my own vegetables’, ‘watch every Bette Davis movie ever made,’ ‘keep up with current web trends’ or ‘be happy even if the rest of the things on this list never happen’.

43 Things is very much like the ‘21 things to do in a lifetime’ concept that I’ve often talked about in motivational workshops, and written about in my book, SelfScape: Success through Balance.

My list includes ‘write a novel’, ‘retrace the steps of a famous explorer’, ‘ learn something from a child’, and ’sail the seven seas’.

The first time I wrote my list of 21 things, it was the result of a session facilitated by my supervisor at the time.  He was a creative thinker and looked for different ways to develop better teamwork among his executive group.  Each of us wrote our list and then one by one we displayed them and discussed each point.

My manager was looking for common areas of interest where the team or a sub-set of it could undertake activities together on the basis that that the best relationships are developed through shared experiences.  It lead to some of the group sailing together through the Whitsunday Islands, some racing cars in serious races and some four wheel driving across the Simpson Desert.

That was in 1995.  I wonder if today we’d all sign up for 43 Things and then share our lists through the Internet?