What’s in it for me? Learn how to be happier at work.
Eat, sleep, work, repeat. For many of us, that sounds like an all too accurate description of our day-to-day lives. Of course, it’s a bit of an exaggeration. Even those of us who work more than 40 hours per week still manage to do other things with our limited free time.
But still, it captures the main thrust of the cycle many of us feel trapped in. And in some ways, it’s even an understatement. Many of us skip our lunch breaks, burn the midnight oil, and wake up at the crack of dawn for our jobs. Forget about “eat” and “sleep” – it’s mostly just “work, repeat.”
Even worse, the work itself often feels stressful, draining, and devoid of meaning. It all adds up to a recipe for a profoundly unhappy, unfulfilling work-life. What’s gone wrong? And what can we do about it? Those are the questions we’re about to explore.
In these blinks, you’ll learn
what a rock band can teach us about stress;
why you might be suffering from Hurry Sickness; and
how to disconnect from distractions by entering monk mode.
Workplace unhappiness is a widespread problem that deeply affects our health, well-being, and productivity.
Feeling unhappy at your job? If so, welcome to the club!
In one survey after another, the majority of people report negative sentiments about their work. An overwhelming 83 percent of American employees say their jobs make them stressed. More than half of all British workers report feeling burned out by their jobs. And when workers across the world are asked to rank their daily activities from favorite to least favorite, being at work ends up in second-to-last place – just a notch ahead of being sick in bed.
The picture is pretty bleak, and it gets even bleaker when you start looking at the consequences of all this unhappiness.
The key message here is: Workplace unhappiness is a widespread problem that deeply affects our health, well-being, and productivity.
A stressful job doesn’t just make your life unpleasant. It can also take a heavy toll on both your body and your mind. Consider a study by Alexandra Michel, a researcher at the University of Southern California. She looked at how working long, stressful hours impacted investment bankers, who routinely put in 15-hour days at the beginning of their careers.
Michel found that the bankers exhibited a range of physical symptoms, including hair loss, extreme weight changes, panic attacks, and insomnia. By the fourth year on the job, they were suffering from an increased rate of diabetes, heart problems, and even cancer. The mental health consequences were also serious. They included higher rates of depression, anxiety, and addiction to drugs and alcohol.
These are all problems that should trouble us in their own right. But even if you were a totally heartless boss who cared only about your business’s bottom line, there would still be serious cause for concern – it’s not just workers’ health and well-being that are being negatively impacted, it’s also their ability to do their jobs.
Here again, the statistics speak for themselves. A study by researchers at Warwick University shows that happy workers are 22 percent more productive than their unhappy counterparts. And the symptoms of stress can also have a major impact on work performance. For instance, a lack of sleep can increase the rate at which workers make mistakes on the job.
Researchers have confirmed this connection in a variety of job sectors, ranging from the healthcare industry to the military. But you probably don’t need science to tell you what all of us have experienced first-hand: it’s hard to think straight when you’re exhausted.
Stress is generally bad for our creativity.
Sure, stress can have negative impacts on our health and well-being – but can’t it also be a good thing? After all, many people say they “work better under pressure.”
Hit a wall with a project? Nothing like a looming deadline to get your creative juices flowing – or so it seems to many of us. But that’s only true up to a certain point.
The key message here is: Stress is generally bad for our creativity.
This might seem counterintuitive, but there’s a reason for that. In addition to interfering with our creativity, stress can also undermine our ability to make accurate assessments of our own achievements. As a result, the work we do under pressure can feel a lot more creative than it actually is.
That was the conclusion of a study conducted by Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School. In this study, office workers were given a diary to fill out while they did their jobs. The greater the time pressure they were under, the higher they tended to rate the creativity of their work. But when Amabile took a look at their diaries for signs of creative thinking, she found the opposite to be the case: the greater the time pressure, the lower the creativity.
Some basic neuroscience can help to explain why this happens. To be creative, we need to be willing to explore new ideas and take risks. Now, when we’re under pressure, the stress boosts our adrenaline, which can give our brains a little kickstart. But it also activates our brain’s fear system. This, in turn, deactivates the parts of the brain involved in exploration and risk-taking.
That’s one reason why musical artists often experience a “sophomore slump.” Consider The Strokes. In 2001, the New York City rock band released their critically acclaimed debut album, Is This It. But then the pressure to deliver a worthy follow-up album went to their heads.
After scraping whole recording sessions and restarting the project multiple times, the band finally released their sophomore album, Room on Fire, in 2003 – only to be met with mixed reviews. Many critics panned it, calling it a less inspired copy of The Stroke’s first album. In their view, the band had mostly just gone back to their same old bag of tricks, resulting in music that lacked a sense of freshness.
The lesson? Pressure encourages people to play it safe – to cling to old ways of doing things, rather than trying out new ones. In an economy where innovation is increasingly the key to success, that should be a concern for rock bands and corporations alike.
Many employees lack engagement with their jobs, which is bad for business.
Less productivity, less creativity – even from a purely business-minded standpoint, the case against workplace unhappiness is already compelling. But wait, the problem gets even worse.
On top of being stressed out by their jobs, today’s workers are also experiencing a lack of engagement. That means they don’t feel enthusiastic about or connected with the jobs they do or the people they work for. A 2018 Gallup survey found this to be the case for 53 percent of US workers, while another 13 percent were actively disengaged.
From a management perspective, that’s a problem. Why? Well, it comes down to something called discretionary effort.
The key message here is: Many employees lack engagement with their jobs, which is bad for business.
Imagine you’re a CEO. What do you want your employees to do? Well, obviously, you want them to do their work – but that’s not all. Ideally, you want them to go above and beyond the bare minimum of what they need to do to receive their paychecks and keep their jobs. In fancy business jargon, this extra work is called discretionary effort, since it’s something workers can choose to do or not to do, depending on how motivated they feel.
And that brings us back to engagement. The more employees feel engaged by their jobs, the more motivated they’ll be to put in discretionary effort. After all, if they’re just showing up for a paycheck, they’ll tend to only do what’s needed to get paid and go home. In contrast, if they feel enthusiastic about their work and connected to their companies, they’ll tend to apply themselves more to their jobs.
Unsurprisingly, companies that try to create a more positive “employee experience” don’t only enjoy higher levels of employee engagement; they also have greater success. Calculated on a per employee basis, their profits are four times higher than the average company’s profit. They’re also 28 times more likely to end up on Fast Company’s coveted “Most Innovative Companies” list.
So, to sum up what we’ve learned so far: a happy, relaxed, and engaged worker is a healthy, productive, creative, and dedicated worker. That’s an outcome that employers and employees alike can celebrate. But how can we achieve it?
Well, first we need to identify the problems behind workplace unhappiness, and then we need to find some solutions.
Many of us are exhausted by overwork, constant connectivity, and continual distractions.
Do you feel restless about your job? Does it seem like there’s always more work to be done? Do you feel guilty or anxious if you don’t keep busy?
If so, you might be suffering from a condition called hurry sickness – and you’re definitely not alone. It’s a condition that afflicts many of us. That’s because it’s tied up with some larger problems that are endemic to the modern workplace.
The key message here is: Many of us are exhausted by overwork, constant connectivity, and continual distractions.
There are many ways we can end up getting overworked by our jobs. Long workdays and workweeks are the most obvious examples, but the problem isn’t just how many hours we spend at work. It’s also how we spend our time inside and outside those hours.
Inside our working hours, many of us feel unable to take any breaks, and we feel a relentless pressure to keep busy. Especially if we work in offices, we feel tied down to our desks, needing to constantly “stay on task” – whatever that task might be.
It’s hard to pinpoint and talk about it in the singular, because the task at hand is always shifting from one thing to another. Maybe you’re trying to focus on a project, but then you get an email that grabs your attention. Or you’re interrupted by a colleague who comes over to ask a question. Or you’re called away by your boss for yet another meeting.
Thanks to the rise of digital communication technologies, we’re constantly connected to our colleagues – and continually distracted by them as a result. If it’s not one of the 200 emails the average office worker sends and receives per day, it’s one of the myriad texts, chat messages, or phone calls that demand our attention. Meanwhile, thanks to the popularity of open-plan offices, we’re constantly vulnerable to our colleagues interrupting and distracting us in person as well. Add to that the obsession that many companies have with conducting meetings all the time, and it’s a wonder any of us can get any work done.
Or to put it another way: it’s hardly surprising that we feel like there’s always more work to do. The interruptions and distractions keep pulling us away from our work, and the messages never stop rolling into our phones and computers – even when we’re at home, where we continue to monitor them.
As a result, 60 percent of professionals stay connected to work for 13.5 hours per weekday and 5 hours over the weekend, for a total of 70 hours of connectivity per week. No wonder we’re exhausted.
Some simple changes of practice can help us to recharge our energy at the workplace.
Alright, so we feel exhausted by overwork, constant connectivity, and continual distraction – but how can we start recharging our depleted energy?
In this blink, we’ll start with the simplest and most unobjectionable things we can do. In the next blink, we’ll then look at some more radical and potentially controversial solutions.
The key message here is: Some simple changes of practice can help us to recharge our energy at the workplace.
Now, this first thing might sound a little silly or trite, but it’s actually one of the most effective things you can do: turn off the email notifications on your phone and computer. When the notification ping or banner goes off, it’s really hard to resist the urge to check your messages immediately. So why not remove the temptation altogether and only check your inbox at designated times?
OK, now another straightforward thing you should do: have a lunch break, preferably with your colleagues. Don’t skip lunch – and don’t eat alone – if you can help it. Obviously, skipping lunch can deplete your energy that same day, but research suggests it can also interfere with your sleep and make you exhausted over the weekend. As for eating alone, researchers at Oxford University have found that this is the second greatest contributor to unhappiness, right after having a preexisting mental illness. In contrast, when we share lunch with other people, the social interaction releases feel-good endorphins into the brain.
Ready for another no-brainer? Go for a walk. The physical benefits of this are obvious, but there are mental benefits too. Studies from researchers at Stanford University have found that walks can help to boost both our creativity and our concentration.
Want to take your walks to the next level? Add a social and professional element to them by having a walking meeting with a colleague. Here’s how it works: the two of you go for a walk, and one of you talks about a work problem you’re experiencing while the other person just listens. The idea is that by “talking it out,” you can clarify your thoughts.
How long should you walk? Anywhere from seven minutes to half an hour – whatever works for you.
With the cooperation of their employers, workers can take even more radical steps to recharge their energy.
Ready for some more radical steps you can take to recharge your energy? Great – but first, a quick word of warning.
If you’re an employee, keep in mind that these “hacks” will ultimately require the cooperation of your employer – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start a conversation about trying them out at your workplace!
The key message here is: With the cooperation of their employers, workers can take even more radical steps to recharge their energy.
If you have a smartphone, you know about airplane mode – but you might not have heard about monk mode. OK, it’s not an actual feature on your phone, but it’s still something you and your colleagues can start implementing. It means you’re unavailable for any form of contact during certain preestablished hours – say, every Wednesday and Friday morning until 11:00 a.m., or whatever works for you. This way, you can focus entirely on your work for at least a couple of solid blocks of time per week. To help enforce your monk-like solitude, you could work from home during these hours.
Back at the workplace, you can also have designated hours during which you and your colleagues are allowed to wear headphones. There are pros and cons to both having and not having headphones in the workplace, but this way, you can experience the best of both worlds. During the designated hours, you can use headphones to tune out the noise of your surroundings and send a signal to other people that you’d rather not be interrupted right now. Outside those hours, you will be reconnected with the ambient social atmosphere of your workplace.
If headphones or monk mode aren’t enough and you want a stronger fix of peace and quiet, try going off-grid for a whole day. No email. No texts. Nothing. You’re completely unreachable for the day. You and your colleagues can take turns doing this, so that only one of you is unavailable at a time.
If that’s a bridge too far, you should at least be going off-grid over the weekend. Having a work-free weekend is crucial, even from a productivity standpoint. Research from Stanford University shows that people who work 48 hours per week with Sunday off get more work done than when they work 56 hours with no day off.
Shorter work hours can be a huge energy booster in general. In Sweden, an experiment with a large group of public sector workers showed that when their work schedules were reduced from eight hours per day to six, their productivity increased, their health improved, and they missed less work – a win, win, win for employers and employees alike.
Minor tweaks of the work environment can lead to major improvements in our relationships to our colleagues.
You go to work, you’re surrounded by dozens – or maybe even hundreds – of colleagues, yet somehow you still feel isolated. Does this sound at all familiar?
If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone in feeling alone. Workplace loneliness is on the rise. Nearly half of American adults report feeling lonely sometimes or always, despite spending most of the day with other people at work.
This loneliness is another major cause of workplace unhappiness. What can we do to combat it and feel more connected to our coworkers?
The key message here is: Minor tweaks of the work environment can lead to major improvements in our relationships to our colleagues.
Let’s start with the obvious: if you want to bring people together, you’ve got to get them talking to each other! But not just any kind of talking – we need to have real conversations with our colleagues. Email exchanges or meetings won’t cut it.
Small talk has a bad rap, but it’s a surprisingly important aspect of building relationships with other people. That’s especially true at the workplace. Not only does casual conversation enable us to get to know our colleagues, but it also allows us to talk about our work problems, share tips, and bounce ideas off each other.
Research by MIT professor Alex Pentland shows that one-third to one-half of all improvements in productivity come from innovations that originally arise out of informal interactions. Those same interactions also make our brains release endorphins – so once again, we have a win-win situation for employees’ happiness and employers’ bottom line.
To encourage informal conversation, companies should tweak the work environment to facilitate it. Want two teams talking to each other more? Place the coffee machine or water cooler in between their two areas of the office, or let them share a break room together.
Another great way to bring people together is to have social events during work hours – say, every Friday at 4:30 p.m. After-work gatherings can be nice, but they unfairly exclude or inconvenience employees who have responsibilities at home, such as parenting, so companies shouldn’t rely on them.
Two things can help bring these events to the next level. First, a little structure: at each event, gather everyone together and have a couple people introduce themselves. Second, have some food and drinks. There’s nothing like a pizza, a cup of tea, or a bottle of beer to help bring people together!
Companies can generate workplace buzz by promoting feelings of positive affect and psychological safety.
Have you ever walked into an office and felt as if you were stepping into some sort of cross between a library and a morgue? Everyone’s silently sitting at their desks, typing away at their computers with a grim look on their faces. The whole place feels dead.
That’s not the work environment that most of us want to experience. We’d like there to be a sense of excitement in the air. But unfortunately, that’s the prevailing atmosphere in all too many workplaces. In this final blink, let’s look at how we can turn this around and generate the “buzz” that turns a place of work into a great place to work.
The key message here is: Companies can generate workplace buzz by promoting feelings of positive affect and psychological safety.
To feel a sense of buzz, members of a work team need to have two feelings. The first is positive affect. This is sort of like being in a good mood, only it’s even more diffuse. You don’t feel it about anything in particular; it’s more of a general, free-floating emotion that fills your overall outlook on life with a sense of well-being.
The second feeling is psychological safety. In this context, this means you feel comfortable and secure around your bosses and colleagues. You don’t fear their judgment. You don’t worry about what will happen if you make a small mistake in front of them. Instead, you feel like you can be yourself around them.
Here’s one way that companies can foster both feelings at once: have a hack day every couple of months, or even a whole hack week once or twice a year. The idea is that for an entire day or week, everyone at the workplace splits into teams, puts aside their normal tasks, and experiments with new ideas for improvements in a product or service. This reintroduces a sense of playfulness into our teamwork. It also encourages us to be OK with each other making mistakes, since that’s part of the whole experimental process.
Having a theme can help to structure a hack day or hack week. For example, at Twitter, themes have included a focus on improving the social media network’s ability to foster conversations. This has led to many improvements in the company’s app and website, including threaded conversations and ways to combat abusive Twitter users.
If you follow Twitter’s lead with a hack week of your own, what kind of innovations could you and your colleagues discover?
Final summary
The key message in these blinks:
Workplace unhappiness is a widespread problem with many causes: overwork, constant connectivity, continual distraction, loneliness, and lack of a sense of buzz. Companies can solve these problems by enabling employees to energize themselves and come together as team members. To accomplish these objectives, employees and employers have many options available to them. These include taking breaks, implementing periods of disconnection, limiting work hours, hosting social events, and instituting hack days or hack weeks.
Actionable advice:
Generate more connection and buzz by focusing on small teams.
For large companies, one of the reasons that hack days and hack weeks can work so great is that they involve huge workforces splitting into small teams. In larger groups, we have a tendency to get lost in the crowd and feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of communication channels we have to deal with. In contrast, exchange is easier when you’re part of a small group of people who work closely together. Instead of obsessing with our overall company’s culture so much, we should be focusing on cultivating the culture of small teams instead. For many companies, that requires creating smaller teams – eight or nine people is a good rule of thumb.
Got feedback?
We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with Eat Sleep Work Repeat as the subject line and share your thoughts!
What to read next: The Best Place to Work, by Ron Friedman
You’ve just learned how companies can provide their employees with a better place to work. Why not take this one step further and learn how they can create the best place to work – a place where employees are both as happy and productive as they can be?
Drawing from his background in psychology, Ron Friedman has many insights and tips on how companies can do just that. For example, did you know that they can actually boost their workers’ productivity by letting them have more flexibility with their work schedules? Or that something as simple as the placement of chairs in an office space can have a major impact on employees’ well-being? To learn about these and many other fascinating ideas, check out our blinks to The Best Place to Work, by Ron Friedman.
Leave a Reply