Blah Blah Land

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@BRUCEDAISLEY

BLAH BLAH LANDSurviving a working world under stress

EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT

@BRUCEDAISLEYhi - I’m @brucedaisley - I work at Twitter - in my spare time I run a podcast on work culture and happiness

called Eat Sleep Work Repeat. You can find it on iTunes

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EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT

@BRUCEDAISLEYThere’s lots of talk about work - and the changing nature of work. We are all interested in how work looks in

10 years.

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WE

WORKFirst thing to be clear on is that we love work. Unemployed people are unhappier. Working people are

happier. They live longer and report feeling more fulfilled.

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PLEASURE PURPOSEvs

A satisfying life is a balance between pleasure and purpose. Too much of either tends to lead to dissatisfaction.

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WORK IS

HARDERHowever work is harder than ever. Mobiles mean we are adding 2 hrs to each working day. Half of people

who check emails out of work exhibit high levels of stress.

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Not only is work getting harder - but the need to work is stronger than ever. More mums are returning to work

due to higher property prices

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Average Londoner has a 77 minute journey to work. Especially amongst women long commute times correlate with stress and

unhappiness.

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FIERCER DEMANDSHARDER TO SUCCEED

We need to work more than ever but the additional stresses of connectivity are making work feel more demanding than in our parent’s lives.

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CAN WORK MAKE US HAPPIER?However work is harder than ever. Mobile phones are adding 2 hrs additional work to each working day. Half

of people who check emails out of work hours exhibit high levels of stress.

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CAN WORK MAKE US HAPPIER?

O B L I Q U I T YSo… can work make us happier? Well sort of. Happiness at work is an output. It’s not something you can aim to create directly. You need to create it obliquely. If you create satisfying work happiness may result.

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BEWARE RED HERRINGS

But when we talk about culture there are a few things that are total red herrings. Completely unrelated to happiness at work.

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RED HERRING #1

THE SMOOTHIE DELUSION

Perks and benefits are NOT culture. They don’t correlate at all with people being more fulfilled at work.

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RED HERRING #2

Working longer hours is proven to be (1) ineffective (2) unrelated to greater work satisfaction. But I guess sometimes we all like to explain our good fortune as self created…

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RED HERRING #3

Pool tables, ping pong, Playstations. These things are sometimes called ‘geeksploitation’. Making work feel like home might make people stay longer but that’s not always a good thing.

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EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT

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BRAIN HAS FINITE CAPACITY

Here’s the critical science. As Daniel Levitin makes clear in The Organized Mind our brains have a finite capacity. Expend too much energy making tiny decisions and the brain simply feels incapable when the big

decisions come along at the end of the day

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@BRUCEDAISLEYThere’s a significant amount of work to say that exhausting the brain with emails, meetings, decisions leave

it spent later on.

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50 HOURS PER WEEK

Evidence also suggests that if you work 70 hours work a week the output is the same as someone who works 55. Over 50 hours work a week and the marginal gain is close to zero.

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SOLUTIONS?

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@BRUCEDAISLEYMore demands on a finite brain, what can we do to make work more effective?

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GET HAPPIER FRIENDS

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@BRUCEDAISLEYWell the number one way to be happier in your life is clear. It’s ‘get happier friends’. Our friends and family

are the biggest determinant of our happiness. But what about at work?

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3THINGS TO CHANGE

Here’s 3 things you could do…

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1 AVOID DISTRACTIONLimit distractions. Evidence suggest you should try to find an hour first thing in the morning to work

uninterrupted on your main task.

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I can’t seem to get anything done at work my most productive

time is before everyone comes in

Of course - either due to cost or to appear unhierarchical most offices these days are open plan. If you recognise these comments it’s because interruptions cause us anxiety and stress.

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@BRUCEDAISLEYYes - I know - working from home isn’t always the solution. Not least it swaps one broken configuration (too

much interaction) for another (too little)

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@BRUCEDAISLEYLife comes at you fast.

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F L O WFlow is one of the most satisfying working experiences. It’s when you're so ‘in the zone’ of work that you feel

consumed by it. When people are in flow they tend to see work as very satisfying.

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2 ARTICULATE VALUES CLEARLYThe next thing is that workplaces should articulate and police rules very clearly.

Ben Horowitz from VC firm Andreeson Horowitz said firms should create ‘shocking rules’ like ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ from Facebook.

Facebook themselves actually found the rule too shocking and changed it. Not quite a tangy. I guess some bad stuff got broken.

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2 ARTICULATE VALUES CLEARLY

How you articulate values runs through the whole company. Uber’s ‘always be hustlin’ might be the reason why they’ve had a few stressful moments of late. Netflix made it clear “if you work here and deliver B level

results, we’re going to pay you to leave”

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EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT

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3 WORK IN BURSTSThird thing is to work in bursts. If you think of your 40 (or 50) hours of work a week allocate them wisely.

The most important way to maximise the impact of them is to take breaks in between.

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EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT

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1 AVOID DISTRACTION 2 ARTICULATE VALUES CLEARLY 3 WORK IN BURSTS

There’s clearly lots more to being satisfied at work - but here are three points to start people off.

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BLAH BLAH LANDEAT SLEEP

WORK REPEAT

@BRUCEDAISLEYYou can hear more about these things - and discussions on happiness at work on @brucedaisley’s podcast.

Eat Sleep Work Repeat is on iTunes or Acast.