The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Book review: Corporate Kindergarten

    What is the value of play in the corporate world, and how could we go about introducing more of it? These are the main questions that Jesper Bove-Nielsen examines in his book Corporate Kindergarten.

    This book falls somewhere between manifest, business book and academic book. It has the depth and reach of a good business book, but it clearly has a message, namely that playing is a good thing, and has tremendous value to offer the business world. The book is in danish, so non-danes will have to wait for a translation.
    (more…)

  • Quote

    I’m a businessman, but I’m still going to do things on my own terms. I’m going to break a lot of rules, and we’re going to blur the distinction between work and play. So we have a policy here – it’s called “Let My People Go Surfing.” A policy which is, when the surf comes up, anybody can just go surfing. Any time of the day, you just take off and go surfing… That attitude changes your whole life. If your life is set up so that you can drop anything when the surf comes up, it changes the whole way you do your life. And it has changed this whole company here.

    – Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia

    Yvon explains the surf boards lined up in the entrance hallway of the companys headquarters in Ventura, California. Quoted in “Good Business” by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.

  • Beaten to it – by the Dalai Lama

    We’re currently writing a book about happiness at work that will:
    * Describe why happiness at work is important to both companies and employees
    * Show concrete methods that are proven to work
    * Attempt to energize the reader to work towards being happy at work

    The writing is going beautifully. I’m finding my voice and the right style, and I’m simply churning out pages. Writing 10 book pages takes me about half a day. And fortunately I have a lot of help in the process, from fellow happiness-at-work-member Lars Henrik Nielsen.

    And I’ve just discovered that the Dalai Lama has written a book called “the art of happiness at work“. Dammit! There’s a fine review of it here. I’ll have to read the book soon, to see if there’s anything in it that we can steal, er, borrow.

  • Want happiness at work? Control your own time!

    Giving employees something to smile about at the office may be as simple as offering them more control over their time, its recent survey suggests. One-third (33 percent) of workers polled said greater schedule flexibility would result in increased job satisfaction.

    From an article in the Sillicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.

  • Workday simulator

    Try it.

    I can’t quite decide whether it’s funny or depressing.

  • Interesting weblog

    I notice that Bigger Picture’s weblog now has contributions from both Liselotte Strøyberg and Finn Kollerup in addition to Ole’s. That’s certainly worth reading (in danish). You might start with Finn’s defense of “annoyingly creative” people. Well stated!

  • Physical activity increases office productivity

    Felcher and Sons increased their productivity by 46% when they put a linebacker in their offices.

    Extremely funny!

  • Bionic office

    Does the way your office look affect the way you feel at work? Of course it does, and Joel Spolsky knows this and has gone all the way in designing an office that is beautiful and functional.

  • Ideas needed for book

    I need your help: I’m currently writing a book about happiness at work. The book is directed at both managers and employees, and should give the reader a better understanding of what makes people happy at work, as well as a lot of practical tools to use.

    If you were reading such a book, what would you like to see in it? Drop me a comment if you have any ideas – good or bad :o)

  • More happiness at work

    The happiness at work project is really taking off now. We’re working on a lot of interesting things, and the newest development is that customers have actually started calling me up to arrange seminars and workshops. I just looooooove that.

    This afternoon I have a workshop with a large european car manufacturer and on tuesday I’m giving a speech to 50 employees at a danish sports school. I’m really excited about this development – I’ve felt, that all we need is a few paying customers and some good references, and now we have just that. I think there are interesting times ahead, and I can’t wait to see’em.