The Happiness Project

Why happiness is good for business.

Why should employers take steps to help make their employees happy? Two reasons.

First, because it’s the right thing to do. A 2001 study showed that Americans spend more than twice as much time at work as in leisure, and for many people, their work dominates their life. So happiness at work is critically important for people’s general happiness.

Second, employee happiness is GOOD FOR BUSINESS. Research shows many ways in which happy employees out-perform their less happy peers.

A note of caution: this research is pretty strong stuff. It seems very harsh toward the less-happy people. As I read it, I kept thinking, “Life isn’t fair. The folks who are already feeling great are getting all the benefits, while the less-happy people are getting sick more often, getting worse work evaluations, and making fewer friends.”

Another note of caution: remember that correlation is not causation. It might be that happy people perform better because qualities that tend to make a person happier (such as extraversion, emotional stability, and energy) make a person perform better at work. So it's not the happiness per se that makes a person perform better, but other factors of personality.

Also, there’s an issue of feedback. For example, people generally like happier people more than less-happy people. So do managers rate employees more highly just because they like them, even if less-happy people might be performing just as well? Could be.

That said, why do happy people do better at work?

Teamwork
Happy people are good for teams. People like being around happier people much more than less-happy people. Happy people are perceived to be more friendly, warm, and even more physically attractive.

Also, research shows that happy people tend to be more cooperative, less self-absorbed, and to be able to offer the empathy needed in close relationships. They’re more willing to help other people—say, by sharing information or pitching in to help a colleague. Then, because they’ve helped others, others tend to help them.

Leadership
Happier people are viewed as more assertive and self-confident than less-happy people, and better at public speaking. They perform better on managerial tasks, like leadership and mastery of information.

Creativity and problem-solving
Positive moods improve problem-solving and creativity by making it easier for people to think with flexibility and complexity. Laughter, too, helps people think expansively.

Studies show that when people are put in a good mood, they choose higher goals, do better, and persist longer.

Studies also show that happy people will search for new answers to problems, while depressed people are more concerned with avoiding errors (of course, for certain jobs, this could be an advantage).

Emotional contagion“Emotional contagion” is a strong psychological effect in which we “catch” the happy, sad, or angry moods of others.

An employee in a happy, energetic mood will help boost the moods of others—
particularly important, obviously, when that person is engaged with customers, clients, patients, or a work team.

Unfortunately, negative moods are more contagious than positive moods, and one crabby employee can trigger a wave of bad feelings. And because people try to steer clear, unhappy people find it harder to be effective.

Absenteeism and turn-over
At the same time that happy people are more likely to show superior performance, they’re also less likely to show counterproductive behaviors like burnout, absenteeism, counter and non-productive work, work disputes, or retaliatory behavior.

Health-care costs
Happy people tend to be healthier than unhappy people. They have a stronger immune function. They have more tolerance for pain. They act in healthier ways than unhappy people do—e.g., by exercising more and eating more healthfully.

But here's a question. If all this is true, how do you explain, for example, Hollywood and Wall Street?

These folks are being paid a ton of money to be creative, to take educated risks, to work with large numbers of other people, and to perform at a very high level. But are their workplaces models of happiness, support, and encouragement? Nope.

So the question is – why? Do those employers know something we don’t about getting the best work out of people through stress, competition, and fear? Or does it take so much more discipline and effort to sustain happy workplaces that these industries can’t be bothered? Or is happiness so individual that looking at a particular industry doesn’t tell us much about the individuals and group working within it? Or are the people in those jobs happy despite (or because of) the nature of their workplaces?

Hmmmm….

Tomorrow I’m going to post about the steps that employers can take to help boost employees’ happiness.

This Wedneday: Six tips for how to FIGHT RIGHT in front of children.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Six tips for how to fight right in front of children.

Every couple fights.

Research shows that these conflicts fall into two categories: those that can be solved, like what movie to see on Saturday night, and those that can’t be solved, like how to spend money. Unfortunately, almost 70% of conflicts fall into the irresolvable category.

Since we know we’re going to fight, it’s important to learn to fight right. Studies reveal that how a couple fights matters more to the health of their relationship than how much they fight.

A couple with children has an additional pressure on their fighting style, because they owe it to their kids to maintain a certain level of civility, even if they’d take a no-holds-barred approach in private.

Here are some tips about how to fight right in front of children:

1. Don’t get physical -- obviously, not hitting, but also no throwing things, breaking things, or slamming doors.

2. Don’t criticize your spouse with sweeping generalizations, like “Your father never thinks about anyone but himself.” Instead, criticize specific actions, like “It really annoys me when your mother forgets to put gas in the car.”

3. Children are highly attuned to their parents. Don’t think they won’t notice the "silent treatment.”

4. Don’t ask your kids to tattle on a parent, or to choose a side.

5. Don’t expose your kids to inappropriate information about finances, sex, previous behavior, job worries, etc.

6. Obviously, sometimes you will fight in front of your kids. Try to do so only if you’re going to resolve the fight in that conversation. That way, you show your kids that people can fight and come to resolution.

Even better – and I’m making a big effort to do this when I fight with the Big Man when our children are around – is to joke around and be affectionate, even during a fight. This is practically impossible, but when I can manage, it makes fighting much more pleasant for me and the Big Man, as well as for our daughters.

Happiness, my sister’s wedding, gold stars, and the duty to be happy.

I’m back at home after my sister’s wedding in Kansas City. It was a perfect weekend.

My mother did a tremendous amount of work for this wedding to give it a lot of beautiful, original, labor-intensive touches. I have an insatiable craving for the gold stars of praise and appreciation myself, so I kept giving gold stars to my mother – saying how wonderful, beautiful, thoughtful, well-organized, etc. etc. it was. And so did my sister.

I was struck by the fact, however, that my mother seemed only mildly gratified by this recognition. She was focused on getting everything done as best she could, and on making sure that everyone had a great time – especially the bride and bridegroom.

Which made me think about the duty to be happy. For my mother, it was far more important that my sister be happy with the wedding than that my sister be grateful or appreciative. Fortunately, that was easy. My sister loved every minute.

But what if she hadn’t been happy with the wedding? What if she'd been disappointed by the flowers, by the way the room looked, by the way the wedding turned out?

She should’ve acted exactly the way she did act: ecstatically happy.

How important it is to be easy to please! We pride ourselves on our critical faculties, our discernment, the subtle touches we use to express our personalities…but it’s far more difficult to be enthusiastic, to approve, to enjoy.

And of course, my mother had a duty to be happy, too. If she’d been snappish or frantic all weekend, because she was trying to control every little detail, she would’ve dragged down the mood.

It was tough, because my mother wanted everything to be perfect. I noticed that she kept repeating certain comments throughout the weekend, to keep herself calm.

“Often, it’s the things that go wrong that make the best memories, later.”
Someone makes a wildly inappropriate toast. The cake slides to the floor. The bride steps out of her shoe as she walks down the aisle. Later, this moment will be a wedding highlight.

“I’ll notice, but no one else will notice.”
My mother has an eye that astonishes me. As we neared the actual event, she kept reminding herself that other people wouldn’t even register details that she saw as less than perfect.

“Done’s done.”
At a certain point, my mother just let events unfold. She was able to have fun and enter into the moment instead of worrying about every little thing. This is very, very tough if you’re a perfectionist.

Research shows that your thinking style makes a real difference in your happiness. If my mother had instead been repeating phrases like, “If XYZ goes wrong, the wedding will be ruined,” “People can never do anything right,” or “We’re always unlucky with weather,” she would have been far less happy, even if the wedding had happened in the same way.

This Saturday: a quotation from Raymond Carver.

My sister and I both had this Raymond Carver poem printed in the Order of Services for our weddings.

Hummingbird

Suppose I say summer,
write the word "hummingbird,"
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.

Now, off to primp, then to the wedding...

A reminder that nothing lasts forever.

I’m in Kansas City for my sister’s wedding this Saturday. I got here on Tuesday, and the bride-to-be arrived Wednesday. The Big Man and our girls arrive this afternoon.

It was strange. I realized that Wednesday night was probably the last night for a long, long time that the four of us – me, my sister, my mother, my father – would be alone together. After years and years in which that was our everyday pattern, now that’s really over. From now on, we’ll always be with various husbands and children, too. Which is fun and wonderful, but not the same.

Right now, it’s not remarkable at all (obviously) for the Big Man, the Big Girl, and the Little Girl and I to be hanging around our apartment.

That night was a reminder to me that although these cozy family days seem limitless, they aren’t.

This Wednesday: tips for succeeding as a TV writer in Hollywood.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Tips for succeeding as a TV writer in Hollywood.

My sister is getting married on Saturday, so in her honor, I’m posting a list of her tips about trying to make a successful career of TV writing. She didn’t actually formulate these as tips, but every once in a while over the last few years, she’s dropped one of these truisms—which I find so interesting that I’ve remembered them all.

1. “Every stereotype about L.A. is more true than you can possibly imagine.”
My sister once went into a meeting to pitch a TV shows about a bunch of teenagers at a boarding school where they’re trained to use magical powers. The executives at the meeting said, “We love it! We absolutely love it! But what about changing the teens to adults, and setting it on Wall Street?” Just like you read about.

2. “People succeed in groups.”
We all know the uncomfortable, competitive feelings that you can get when friends score a success—it can even feel like that their success makes your own success less likely. My sister’s motto is “People succeed in groups,” so good career news for a friend is good for her, too. Not only is this line true, it makes you a much nicer person.

3. “Good news comes right away; bad news never comes.”
This rule applies when you’re waiting to hear whether people liked an idea, a proposal, a draft, etc. If you don’t hear back pretty quick, they didn’t like it.

4. “You have to live in L.A. for three years before anything much happens.”
People told my sister this when she moved out there, and indeed, after she’d been there for three years, her career really picked up speed. This is largely because relationships are so important in L.A., and it takes about three years to work up a serious network.

5. “In a meeting, if someone asks if you want something to drink, say ‘yes.’”
This is a generally applicable tip about the use of power. If you want to read more about this rule, and why it’s true, check out my book, Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide.

6. “Remember, the person you hire today might be hiring you tomorrow.”
The TV business is in constant flux, and there are abrupt shifts of fortune. You’d think that as a result, people would feel compelled to be nice to everyone else, out of pure self-interest if not altruism, but they don’t.

Who knew? There are two kinds of stress: distress and eustress.

In a few hours, I’m off to Kansas City, to help get everything organized for my sister’s wedding this weekend.

A wedding is a wonderful occasion, but it also produces a lot of anxiety.

I just learned a new term, “eustress.” When we talk about stress, we generally mean “distress,” stress with its negative aspects. “Eustress” is the desirable kind of stress that comes from stimulating circumstances or challenges.

The distinction between dis-stress and eu-stress refers not to the effect on the person, but to the nature of the stress.

Although eustress is positive, it can be just as taxing at regular stress. My sister, for example, has two huge sources of eustress right now: getting married and getting her pilot picked up by ABC. Both of these are wonderful, and she’s thrilled – but she’s also very stressed. Or rather, eustressed.

This is familiar to everyone, of course. Happy occasions like getting a big promotion, the Christmas holidays, buying a new house, having a baby, or going rock-climbing can be very stressful.

I think it’s helpful to know this distinction. I’ll bet that reminding myself that I’m “eustressed” will help me remember to keep a grateful, appreciative frame of mind when I’m feeling stressed about a positive event.

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I can't believe that I've never mentioned Lifehack before, but apparently I never have. It's a site I love to visit when I'm between tasks and can't seem to get myself motivated to start the next thing. It's always interesting and helpful, and just dipping into its enthusiastic, we-can-tackle-it atmosphere gives me a boost.

The influence of thinking style on happiness—it really does matter.

In my research about happiness, I frequently come across discussions of how people's happiness is affected by their ideas and assumptions about themselves and how the world works.

We’re not merely neutral computers absorbing information; we process and shape information in order to make sense of it. Research shows that unhappy people experience and react to circumstances differently from happy people.

For example, maybe you believe that you’re somehow always responsible for everything bad that happens. Maybe you believe that people are dishonest and are trying to cheat you. Maybe you believe that the worst possible consequence is the one most likely to happen. Different sets of assumptions make folks much more prone to anger, sorrow, and guilt—or not.

But, you may be asking, do habits of thinking really make much practical difference in a person’s life? After all, the actual “reality” of a person’s life is the same, no matter what’s going on in his or her head.

Over the weekend, the Big Man and I rented a good movie, The Upside of Anger, with Joan Allen and Kevin Costner. The movie presents an astonishingly persuasive example of the power of habits of mind. There’s a dramatic, surprise twist at the end (I do love a surprise twist) which turns SOLELY on the consequences of the main character's way of thinking.

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This Saturday: a quotation from Plutarch.

“Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.” --Plutarch

In which a flower shop reminds me to "Be nice."

Several times a week, I walk past the Sunshine Flowers deli at the corner of 62nd and Lexington.

Every time I go by, I smile and get a bit of a boost to keep my happiness resolutions when I see the handwritten admonition on the side of the flower case to "Be nice."

One of my Twelve Commandments (see left column) is "Be polite and be fair," and it's important to "Be nice," too.

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I enjoy checking out the Ririan Project blog. It covers many of the subjects that interest me, from a more GTD, business angle. Lots of great info -- especially tip lists, if you love tip lists, as I do. But what is a "Ririan" project? you may ask. Ririan is the name of the blogger.