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Blog Action Day
I was contacted by the nice people who run blog action day and asked if I would like to participate – and of course I would.
The idea is simple: On one date, October 15th, all participating blogs will blog about one topic – the environment.
If you have a blog, why not be a part of this – 1400 blogs have joined so far, this is going to be massive :o)
And what, I hear you ask, does the environment have to do with happiness at work? Lots, I tell you. Many companies are finding, that when they change their business to be more environmentally sustainable, their employees experience a growing sense of pride in the company – leading to more happiness at work.
These companies also find, interestingly, that customers become proud to place their business there and become more loyal – and that consequently the company makes more money.
Two great examples are:
1: Interface (the world’s largest carpet manufacturer) who produced a line of environmentally friendly carpets that, even though they were more expensive than their regular products, became their best selling product.Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface, had a rude awakening about the way his company had been polluting, saying:
It dawned on me that they way I’d been running Interface is the way of the plunderer. Plundering something that is not mine, something that belongs to every creature on earth.
So I said to myself “My goodness, some day people like me will end up in jail.”
2: Patagonia who make outdoor wear and mountain climbing gear and who donate 1% of their revenue or 10% of their profits, whichever is greater, to environmental causes chosen by their employees.
Much more on October 15th.
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More on secret salaries
My most controversial post ever, is still the one where I support having open salaries in a company. I was surprised by how very provocative this idea is to a lot of people, but I remain convinced that it’s the best way to ensure motivation, happiness and fairness.
And Today’s Dilbert strip supports me :o)
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Questions at the Job Lounge
Recently I’ve been serving as an expert at The Job Lounge, answering career related questions. If you’d like to see some of the sage advice I and others are dishing out, go check it out.Here are my answers so far:
What to Study to Make Money and Be Happy
Do you choose your studies based on money or on happiness? Do you even need to choose?Bad Boss, Bad Reference
What if your boss is a horrible person – but quitting will mean that she will give you a bad reference?Susan Ireland (author The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume) who runs the site has been getting together a lot of great answers – everything from explaining a gap in your resume to handling a job that ends badly to how to become a dealer in Vegas(!)
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My strategy for dealing with email back-log
So – as I blogged about yesterday, emails have been piling up in my inbox to the tune of 200 unanswered emails, some of them – I kid you not – from way back in Februrary.I really wanted to get down to an empty inbox, but lately when I sat down at my computer to get it done… I didn’t. I looked at that mountain of mail, many of which I really should’ve responded to long ago and felt really bad about, and kinda gave up in advance.
And this is where I could choose between two approaches. There’s the “Just get it done” approach. This means ignoring how much it sucks and just doing it anyway. Knuckling under, putting my nose to the grindstone and my shoulder to the wheel and some other body part to some other part of machinery and answer those darn emails.
Or I could ask myself the following question: How can I make it fun? How can I answer those emails in a way that feels effortless and makes me happy?
Being the Chief Happiness Officer, I couldn’t really go for the former option so I was forced to try to make it fun. I asked for advice on the blog yesterday and got some really good input.
After thinking about it I designed a strategy – and got all of my emails answered in less than a day. That also includes the 50 or so emails that came in during the day.
So without further ado, here’s the strategy that worked for me:
1: Accept myself
First of all, I stopped wasting time berating myself for getting into this situation. If there’s one thing experience has taught me it’s that I’m the kinda person who lets a mess build and then cleans it all up at once.I know that other people ar way more organized and get stuff done as they go (the bastards!) – but I’m just not one of them and I’m not going to waste time beating myself up over it.
I’m a lazy person – and this is not a problem, it’s a huge advantage.
2: Track and publish the number of unanswered emails
I published the number of unanswered emails and kept updating it during the day. This meant that I could see progress all the time. Your inbox looks pretty much the same with 100 emails in it as with 200. Keeping track of the number meant I knew I was getting results.Also publishing the number kept me going a few times when I felt like quitting because I reminded myself how cool it would be to end the day with 0 unanswered emails – AND brag about it here :o)
3: Move tasks to my todo-list
But possibly the single most important thing I did was use my todo-list. If answering an email required me to perform a more serious task, I’d put the task on my todo-list and answer the email saying when I would get back with the actual information.This allowed me to stay in the flow of answering emails, without getting sidetracked by writing documents etc.
4: Get out of the house
And of course I went to my favorite café. But I always do that when I need to get work done.
5: Use snippets
I also used a tip from Michiel Trimpe who suggested using email snippets that can easily be inserted into an email. Specifically, I used the following text a lot:I apologize for taking so long to reply to your mail – I’ve been drowning in email lately :o)
6: Don’t be afraid to say no (Updated)
I almost forgot this one: Making sure to say no, when no is the answer. I get a lot of invitations, links, ideas, proposals, etc. Most of them are very good, but some are just not suitable for me.I’ve been training myself to “just say no”. In a polite way, of course :o)
One tactic I considered, but didn’t use
I did think about declaring email bankruptcy as George suggested but I decided that would be cheating :o)The upshot
The result of all of this was that I spent a nice, fun, productive day doing a task that I’d been dreading. A lot. For a long time.
The key, for me at least, is that I didn’t ask myself how I could get the job done the fastest or the most efficiently – my focus was on making it fun and pleasant. If I can do that, I know I can get the job done and I think that aspect is missing from most of the productivity systems and advice out there, which is focused entirely too much on the mechanics of productivity.
Make a task fun four yourself and you will be productive.
Your take
What about you? How do you take tasks you’ve been putting of for way too long and make them fun? I’m not talking about how you get them done – but how you do it so that you enjoy yourself? Got any great ideas? Please write a comment!
Related:
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The Ultimate Job Hunt Guide
Consultant and author Rowan Manahan has gathered together the ultimate list of resources for job hunters everywhere.Every aspect is covered, from deciding to look for a new job, to interviewing, to negotiating and actually starting in a new company. I contributed a post of my own on how to make sure you find a job that makes you happy.
If you’re at all considering switching jobs – and according to studies 60% of us are thinking about it at any given time – go check out The Definitive Job-Hunt Guide.
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E-mailing – not blogging
I’m taking a short break from blogging until I’ve done something about the staggering amount of unanswered emails in my inbox :o) I’m telling ya, it is totally getting out of hand…In the meantime I could really use your ideas: How can I make answering all those emails fun? How can I do it in a way that will make me happy? Any and all ideas are welcome- just write a comment.
I’ve already thought of one thing I’ll do: I’ll post the current number of unanswered emails right here. Right now the count stands at:
202 unanswered mails (10:30 PM, Aug. 14)
214 unanswered mails (8:15 AM, Aug. 15) – Yikes, that’s what I get for going to bed :o)
172 unanswered mails (10:01 AM, Aug. 15)
100 unanswered mails (11:10 AM, Aug. 15) (WOO-HOO!)
67 unanswered mails (11:57 AM, Aug. 15)
43 unanswered mails (2:22 PM, Aug. 15)
17 unanswered mails (3:23 PM, Aug. 15)
5 unanswered mails (3:34 PM, Aug. 15)
0 unanswered mails (3:50 PM, Aug. 15) WOOOO-HOOOOOOOOO!!!Phew, I made it. Tomorrow I’ll be posting on my strategy and on what tips I used or didn’t use.
And please don’t let this post hold you back from sending me email – I would LOVE to hear from you. And my inbox suddenly looks so… barren :o)
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Ask the CHO: Who has a right to complain
Jill read my post about why constant complaining is so toxic in the workplace and then experienced a moment of synchronicity:I broadly agree with your post, except that, well, right after reading it, my feed reader served up a post from another blogger I enjoy reading called “The Right to Complain“. She and I are both academics, and there’s certainly a culture among many academics to complain about the system we’re in. I’ve found your blog, among others, helpful in trying to figure out what it is that I’m not happy about in my job, and what I am happy about, and which things, if any, I want to change.
Anyway, coming just after each other like that, two posts on complaining that argue very differently. Dr. Crazy argues that academic jobs are extremely difficult, because of the large investment in time and money you’ve put into getting there (thank you Norway for better funding), the large amount of “invisible” work that goes into research, publishing, administration etc, and your lack of choice in where you live, among other things (I’m lucky, I work where I want to live). Yet people tend to think it’s a cushy job, “you only work 12 hours a week”! (that’s the classroom hours).
If you have time, I’d love to hear your opinion after reading her post. Could there be a kind of complaining that’s not directed to someone like the boss, but – well, with an idea that perhaps one should complain to the people who can change things, and those people are sometimes yourself and your colleagues?
Thanks for the link, Jill. That is indeed two very different views on complaining – at least at first glance.
I agree with Dr. Crazy that we all have the right to complain. It’s not like I can tell anyone else that their problems are not worthy of complaining about because what seems a molehill to me might well be a mountain to them – and vice versa.
In fact, if you want to increase workplace complaining, all you need to do is to tell people not to complain because their problems are so trivial they have no right to complain. That‘ll get them complaining for sure :o)
So it’s not really about whether or not we have a right to complain (if somethings’s wrong, you have the right) it’s about how we choose to complain. As I wrote in my post, I believe that there are two fundamentally ways to go about expressing your dissatisfaction: Constructive and destructive.
Broadly speaking, constructive complaining leads to change and destructive complaining leads to more complaining (more here).
I also disagree with her assertion that “if nobody complained, then nothing would ever change, then none of those sucky things would ever be eradicated. ”
Dissatisfaction and complaining is one way to go about changing things – a deep appreciation of what is and a positive desire for the future is another, and in my experience, more effective way of bringing about change. I often refer to this quote by Patch Adams which points to this dilemma:
Change that is deeply effective and positive presents a paradoxical challenge.
On the one hand, there needs to be an appreciation and acceptance of how things are in the here and now. On the other hand, there needs to be an active intention to make things better.
Nothing needs to change, and everything can improve. This is the way to avoid the two extremist traps of activist’s frustration or pessimistic complacency.
– Patch Adams
However I agree totally with Dr. Crazy’s final statement that “if one can’t bitch on a blog, where exactly can one bitch?” :o) It’s like blogs were made for it.
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Ask the CHO: What if you suddenly stopped being happy?
Russell Quinn asks a very interesting question in a comment:I’ve been reading your blog for a while and your career in “being happy” got me thinking.
Can an occupation in promoting an emotion like your own happiness be compared to something like an athlete? and what happens when it’s over?
For example, you can train yourself to be happier and work at improving your own happiness, in the same way as you can train your muscles to be a better runner. You can eventually become known as a “happiness officer” or an “athlete”.
But, in the same way that something unforeseen and out of your control, like a broken leg, can happen end your athletic career, a major trauma could send you into a spiral of depression and end your career in happiness.
I guess my point of this.. is that i was considering these two statements and how the public would react to them:
“I used to be an athlete, but a broken leg meant I had to give it up 5 years ago”, and
“I used to promote happiness, but a period of depression meant i gave it up”
They are both really the same thing after all.
Sorry for going off at a tangent ;)
That’s a great tangent! And I really like the mental image of the Chief Happiness Officer who’s sprained his happy muscle and is now depressed :o)
To me, happiness is not a fixed state – it’s a constantly fluctuating emotion. It’s not like I can make myself happy, and then be happy every moment of every day for the rest of my life.
No matter how happy a person is right this second, something could happen to make that person desperately unhappy. Depression is a great example – as it is a chemical imbalance in the brain resulting in a severely bad mood that may not have been triggered by any external events in your life.
But here’s the crucial point: As Russell writes, you can train happiness. This won’t mean that you’ll always be happy – but that you’ll be as happy as you can be, given your circumstances. And when something bad happens you will be unhappy, but you will be less unhappy and be so for a shorter time.
Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology admits that he is not a particularly happy person and that his efforts have taken him from depressive to moderately happy. Which kinda explains why the planet’s foremost proponent of happiness always looks so grumpy :o)
So it could absolutely happen: I could lose my happiness because something bad happened to me – or for no reason at all. And I probably would be forced to quit as the Chief Happiness Officer if that happened because there’s no way you can make other people happy if you’re unhappy yourself.
A large part of what I present in my presentations and workshops is me being happy and full of energy and customers constantly remark on this. They like what I say – and they like the way I say it just as much.
Another important point is that happiness is no less nice, desirable or beautiful for being fragile. Yes, you can build up amazing levels of happiness and lose it all in a moment when some terrifying, unstoppable event takes it all away. But that’s no reason not to be as happy as you can.
Does that make sense at all?
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They tell me that all the cool kids do it…
I’m now on facebook. Wanna be friends? :o)
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Front page material
Yesterday one of Denmark’s leading newspapers had me on the front page:
No, not the article about how ankle monitors keep convicts from falling back into crime – the one about how some people waste a lot of time at work complaining :o)
I had a great time last week talking to journalist Susanne Svendsen about happiness at work and how to take responsibility for your own work life. Susanne wrote a great article based on our conversation – .you can read the whole thing here (in Danish).
After the article came out, I was invited onto several TV and radio shows, including the national “Good Morning Denmark” where I appeared this morning together with Alfred Josefsen, the CEO of supermarket chain Irma which is Denmark’s happiest large workplace.
You can see the entire segment here (also in Danish). Click on Tuesday August 7th, then click on the segment marked “Arbejdsglæde”.
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