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EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@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
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
PLEASURE PURPOSEvs
A satisfying life is a balance between pleasure and purpose. Too much of either tends to lead to dissatisfaction.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
Average Londoner has a 77 minute journey to work. Especially amongst women long commute times correlate with stress and
unhappiness.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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…
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEYThere’s a significant amount of work to say that exhausting the brain with emails, meetings, decisions leave
it spent later on.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
SOLUTIONS?
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEYMore demands on a finite brain, what can we do to make work more effective?
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
GET HAPPIER FRIENDS
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@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?
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
3THINGS TO CHANGE
Here’s 3 things you could do…
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@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)
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEYLife comes at you fast.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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”
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.
EAT SLEEP WORK REPEAT
@BRUCEDAISLEY
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.