Are you one of those people who believe that happiness at work is an oxymoron? If so, maybe it’s time to rethink your perspective, and perhaps start enjoying work for a change. As an advisor to new entrepreneurs and new ventures, I’m seeing a refreshing new focus by Millennials on work and successful new companies with a purpose, and more productivity through happy employees.
Based on results and feedback from several leading companies, including Google, Apple, and Salesforce.com, happiness is the ultimate productivity booster. Happy employees, in this view, are more loyal, make better decisions, excel at managing their time, and develop other crucial leadership skills. There are many good articles which outline what these companies do right.
In fact, many people are quick to put the onus all back on companies to keep their employees happy, but I’m convinced that happiness at work requires effort on both sides. We need guidance on the employee responsibilities in the pursuit of happiness. It’s been my observation that employee attitudes, expectations, and bad habits are often the biggest barriers to success.
Thus I was pleased to see some guidance aimed at the people in the classic book, “Unlocking Happiness at Work,” by Jennifer Moss, who is a well-recognized speaker on the subject of happiness and gratitude at work. She is convinced that happiness at work can never be achieved without the right personal habits, and she has some key recommendations for getting there:
- Practical – focus on habits that are most relevant and useful. Although novelty is important in our lives, good work habit building is about opening up bandwidth in our brain to attend to things that we often take for granted, or ignore because we are too emotionally bogged down, like timely and positive response to phone calls and email.
- Enduring – add permanent positive changes every day. Building good habits is not a one-time-shot that has a beginning and end. The business world we live in today is constantly changing, so every habit improvement should be seen only as a part of an ongoing learning process. Most people are happiest when they are learning new things.
- Repeatable – practice daily repetition until automatic. If we reinforce a behavior through repetition, our brain will start to naturally select that behavior over another. With effort, the behavior change will be permanent. Take five minutes longer to enjoy coffee without diving into emails. Enjoy a 15-minute quiet time at lunch to reset, every day.
- Simple – start with some simple quick wins. Keeping a new habit simple will yield a quicker path to automaticity. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start more complicated habits; just start with a quick win to build the momentum and feedback. For example, sending someone a thank-you-note every day for a job well done will yield quick payoffs.
- Incremental – don’t aim for sweeping changes all at once. Want to get to work on time? Rather than make a big move and setting your clock for 4am, start by setting your clock five minutes earlier each day until the desired arrival time has been achieved. Get to appreciate your peers by stopping by some desk once a week for a couple of minutes.
- Short – limit time spent daily developing a new habit. If you never get around to strategic thinking, start with two minutes of quiet, focused time every morning, so it doesn’t seem like a huge investment of time all at once. Get in the habit of putting yourself first at least once per day. Your happiness and productivity will both go up.
- Targeted – integrate new habits into a healthy lifestyle. Don’t believe the old myth that it takes 21 days of pain to build a good habit. It’s more important to make key changes a part of your daily routine through healthy incremental steps. Develop a daily routine that includes self-care, including the proper rest, exercise, and recreation.
Given that most business professionals spend roughly 90,000 hours of their life working, separating work from happiness only gives rise to stress and unhappiness everywhere. It’s up to you, as well as your company, to stimulate that sense of meaning in your work that leads to satisfaction on both sides. How hard have you been persisting to make it a win-win relationship?
Marty Zwilling
Source: Startup Professionals
