“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants.
The question is what are we busy about?”
– Henry David Thoreau
Category: Happy At Work
How to be happy at work
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Free webinar: How to stay happy when things get busy
Get the slides right here.
Are people in your workplace busy? Dumb question, right – everyone is these days.
Here are the results of one US study from 2005:
- 26% of employees were overworked often or very often in the last month
- 27% were overwhelmed by how much work they had to do often or very often in the last month
- 29% often or very often didn’t have time to step back and process or reflect on the work they were doing during the last month
And this was 10 years ago – indications are that it’s only gotten worse since.
This constant busyness is not only making us unhappy and stressed at work, it’s also hurting performance and keeping us form doing our best possible work.
Join our next free webinar to learn what we can do about it. Topics include:
- The negative effects of constant busyness on our happiness at work.
- Why overwork is not the answer and in fact usually makes things worse.
- Why we need time for reflection and learning at work.
- How some people end up convincing themselves they’re busy when really they’re not.
- How to create a workplace where people are happy even when they’re busy.
Date and time: Wednesday March 4th at noon US East coast time / 9am pacific time / 5pm GMT / 6pm Central European time.
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A happy cop
Music makes some people happy at work – and this cop is definitely one of them :)
I especially like how he has to look serious whenever he passes someone – and then busts lose right after!
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The Woohoo Partner Program is ALMOST here
We are days away from launching our partnership program – we call it Woohoo Partners.
I need feedback :) Does the idea make sense to you? Is it described fairly clearly? Any thoughts/suggestions/comments?Please write a comment! -
I need your best idea
If I write a short e-book about quitting your job, what should I call it?
Here are the best ideas from when I asked the same question on Facebook:
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Results of our intervention study: Short-term, mandatory interventions do not work
We have just completed our intervention study where we examined the effect of different happiness interventions in the workplace.
Our data show that short-term, superficial, mandatory interventions simply do not work. You can’t just come into a workplace and tell people to do X, to become happier at work.
You can read our report here: Happiness at work interventions – full report.
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Who you gonna call?
A symphony orchestra cuts loose and plays Ghostbusters:
I think there’s a case to be made for not taking our work too seriously :)
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Conference about happiness at work
We have JUST launched this year’s conference about happiness at work. This year we have 10 great speakers from 5 different countries who will share what they know abd do about happiness at work.
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Thank you Iceland
I’m back from Reykjavik where I did a workshop for Icelandic pharmaceutical company Medis (part of Actavis) at their 30th anniversary and 2015 kick-off meeting.
Thank you to everyone at Medis for being tremendously kind and for being such generous hosts.
I loved Iceland! People are kind and funny, Reykjavik is beautiful and the food there is AMAZING. I’ll be back :)
This means we’ve now spoken in 34 countries. Awesome!
From the workshop 
The view from the meeting room 
Inside the building 
The new concert house in Reykjavik where I spoke -
Top 5 Myths About Quitting Your Job
I’ve been pretty unhappy in my job for quite a while now. The workplace is fairly stressed, I feel completely unappreciated and I can’t really see the purpose of most of the work I do.
I want to get out of there but whenever I discuss the idea of quitting with my friends and family, I get the same reactions: “Are you sure that’s the right thing to do? Surely your job can’t be that bad. Maybe things will get better.”
My parents were worried how I would provide for my family and basically called me selfish for not just sticking with it. One friend even warned me “quitting will look bad on your CV.”
Quitting a job you don’t like is a tough call and it’s made tougher by some very persistent myths. These myths create a social stigma around quitting – which is silly because quitting is perfectly natural. In fact, 10-15% of us do it every year.
These myths keep us stuck in bad jobs and give bad leaders and toxic workplaces much more power over us than they would otherwise have. Let’s change that. Here are the Top 5 Myths About Quitting.
Myth #5: Quitting = failure
- “Don’t be a quitter.”
- “No one likes a quitter.”
- “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
Do any of these sound familiar? According to traditional thinking, once you’ve started something you should never quit and if you do it’s a clear sign of failure.
I say that’s completely wrong and sometimes quitting is exactly the right thing to do. I’m reminded of the story of Danish opera soprano Tina Kiberg.
As a child, Tina was a pretty good violinist and spent her free time practicing and practicing. One day she participated in a violin contest and realized that she would never be more than a mediocre violinist and that she also enjoyed singing more. She quit the violin, took up singing and became a leading international opera singer.
If she had seen quitting as always the wrong thing to do, she might have been stuck with the violin.
Also, try to guess what these somewhat successful people have in common: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Tiger Woods, Reese Witherspoon, John McEnroe and John Steinbeck?
Yep, they all dropped out of Stanford.
Truth #5: Sometimes quitting is the way to success in something else and staying = failure.
Myth #4: Quitting is the easy way out
You quit your job? Well, I guess you don’t have what it takes to succeed. Too bad you couldn’t hack it and chose the easy way out.
Some people see quitting as a sign of weakness. I say that’s nonsense. In fact, the easy thing to do is to just keep mindlessly going into that job you hate day after day, year after year. It may be horrible, but you know what you have and you avoid the uncertainty of making big life-changing decisions.
Quitting on the other hand takes guts. In fact, quitting a workplace that is toxic or getting away from a boss who’s a complete jerk can be a downright heroic act.
Truth #4: Quitting can be a courageous (or even heroic) act.
Myth #3: Quitting is selfish
How can you be so selfish and quit your job? You’re letting down the workplace, your customers and your coworkers. Also, think of your family – how are they going to manage if you quit?
Wrong.
If you don’t like your job, you’re doing no one a favor by staying. When you’re unhappy at work, it tends to affect everyone around you through a phenomenon called emotional contagion and there’s a good chance you’re making your coworkers and possibly even customers less happy.
As for your family, maybe they would be happier if you didn’t come home from work every day tired and frustrated. You might even set an example for your kids. A member of the audience asked me this at one of my speeches last year:
If you go into work day after day, year after year, and really hate your job and come home stressed and angry – what are you teaching your kids?
Truth #3: Quitting is not inherently selfish.
Myth #2: Quitting is risky for your career
If you quit your job it’s going to look bad on your CV and your career will take a hit.
Yes – and staying for years in a job you hate and that is slowly wearing you down is going to be AWESOME for your career.
This myth completely ignores the career risks of staying in a job you hate. In fact, the longer you stay, the more you lose the energy, motivation and self-confidence you need to advance your career.
Truth #2: Sometimes quitting is the best thing you can do for your career.
Myth #1: Quitting is a last resort
Sure you can consider quitting, but you should exhaust all other options first. You only quit when everything else has failed.
For people who believe this myth, quitting is the very last option. It’s what you do once you’re too broken and exhausted to possibly stay on at your current job.
That makes this potentially the most dangerous of the myths listed here, because it means people stay in bad jobs until (or past) their breaking points.
Truth #1: Quit when it’s the right thing to do – not when it’s the only option left.
The upshot
Whenever a friend tells me they’ve quit their job my instant reaction is always “Awesome! You made a tough career decision. You took initiative and decided to move away from a bad job or into something even better.”
I say we start celebrating those who quit their jobs for the brave, motivated and proactive individuals they are.
Your take
Did I miss any myths about quitting? Have you encountered any of these in your work life? How do you react when someone close to you talks about possibly quitting their jobs?
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