The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • No need to succeed

    ,

    My main tool in coping with all the stuff going on in the Happy at Work Project right now has been to remind myself, that I don’t need to suceed. Every time I start to stress a little I think “This does not need to work out. It does not need to be a success. It is OK if it fails.”

    I tried it at a workshop with a customer the other day. I had about 30 people there, and it felt like I wasn’t really reaching them. They weren’t complaining or anything, I just felt like there was a huge distance between me and them and that I wasn’t communicating as clearly as I wanted. So I did two things:
    1: As above, I reminded myself, that I don’t have to suceed. What a relief :o)
    2: I consciusly focused my attention on what was going on.

    All our workshops have lots of sessions where the participants work in small groups, and I spent some time not thinking or planning ahead. I simply tried to notice what was happening tight now in as much detail as possible. From that came a sense of calm and a feeling of reconnecting with what was going on in the room at the time. The workshop was a great success. I even stuck in an exercise I’d never tried before, one that’s really designed to be used on one person – I just modified it on the fly to work on 30 people :o)

    The question in my mind is whether I’m honest with myself. I’m telling myself that I don’t need to suceed – to enhance my chances of suceeding. That seems like cheating, somehow. But it works!

  • Living vs. blogging

    , ,

    I haven’t been blogging much lately, and the reason is simple: I’m too busy living to write about living :o)

    The happy at work project is going so well, that it’s taking up all my time right now, I could fill page after page with all the good stuff that’s happening for us right now, but in brief:
    * The “happy at work” game is finished – and we immediately sold the first 10 copies.
    * We’ve moved into our new offices – they rock!
    * We’re planning yet another Happy at Work Conference – June 2nd at Basecamp.
    * We’re meeting new friends, partners and customers everywhere we go.
    * We hired Mette Nygaard Olsen to work full time.
    * There’s a new Happy at Work Website coming real soon now.
    * We just agreed on our biggest contract so far with a huge international customer.

    Phew! I think this will be a very interesting year :o)

  • Epicurus

    While I’m recovering from an intense but seemingly short-lived cold, I got out the TV and this morning I stumbled on a british documentary about the greek philosopher Epicurus. He lived from 341-270 BCE on the island of Samos, and did a lot of thinking on the subject of personal happiness, ie. what do we really need to be happy? His thinking is amazingly relevant here 2000 years later.

    One thing he came up with was:

    …the so-called ‘four-part cure’, the Epicurean remedy for the epidemic sickness of human anxiety; as a later Epicurean puts it, “Don’t fear god, don’t worry about death; what’s good is easy to get, and what’s terrible is easy to endure.”

    I like these four principles – following them will keep you safely grounded in the life you’re living right now, and strengthen your ability to believe that “everything will work out just fine”. While this belief may be right or wrong, it does tend to instill people with a confidence and serenity, that better allows them to make things turn out right.

    Epicurus emphasized pleasure – in moderation. Fine foods, sure, but no more than you need. He believed, that we don’t need much to be happy – mostly friends and contemplation (philosophy). There’s an excellent and comprehensive Epicurus reference at epicurus.info.

  • Shared space – in traffic and at work

    ,

    Danish media have been kicking up a storm lately about all the anarchistic bicycle riders (primarily in Copenhagen) who ignore traffic rules. The debate has been founded on an interesting but unstated premise that traffic safety comes from always following the rules. As long as you go by the book, nothin bad can happen to you.

    Well, according to this NYTimes article, dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman has a rather different approach: Throw away the book. He designed:

    a busy intersection in the center of town… Not only was it virtually naked, stripped of all lights, signs and road markings, but there was no division between road and sidewalk. It was, basically, a bare brick square.

    But in spite of the apparently anarchical layout, the traffic, a steady stream of trucks, cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, moved along fluidly and easily, as if directed by an invisible conductor. When Mr. Monderman, a traffic engineer and the intersection’s proud designer, deliberately failed to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the street, the drivers slowed for him. No one honked or shouted rude words out of the window.

    (more…)

  • Coffee in the office… or office in the coffee house?

    Wired has an article on a company that use a coffee house as their office:

    Delicious Monster is the Mac software company behind the hit Delicious Library, a program for cataloging collections of books, movies and games. The software is selling like hot cakes and has garnered rave reviews and awards, yet the company’s headquarters is a Seattle coffee house.

    As well as creamy lattes, the coffee shop offers wireless internet access and big, bench-like tables that several people can gather around. Often, Delicious Monster’s entire seven-person staff will work there.

    “Zoka is pretty much their office,” said Reid Hickman, a Zoka barista. “It’s a pretty good deal. They hang out here all day and they often get lunch and dinner here. They take good care of us.”

    This is yet another interesting blurring of what is and isn’t work. Or of where work can or can’t be performed. Expect more of this kind of thing.

  • Spot the fake

    ,

    Can you tell a real smile from a fake one? I got 13 out of 20, which is barely better than just guessing.

  • Speaking of toys

    ,

    I’ve gotta have a Mac mini. I mean, just look at it.

  • Office toys

    ,

    Yep, office toys. I want’em. I want’em all.

  • Attacking the staus quo

    ,

    Clay Shirky talks about folksonomies (community generated taxonomies) and then comes up with this BRILLIANT quote, which can be applied to just about any area:

    We need a word for the class of comparisons that assumes that the status quo is cost-free, so that all new work, when it can be shown to have disadvantages to the status quo, is also assumed to be inferior to the status quo.

    Yes, yes, YES! The status quo ain’t free!

  • Giving it away

    ,

    According to a recent analysis, 35% of all traffic on the internet today is done in a protocol called bittorrent. So this was probably developed by Microsoft, who’re making a zillion bucks on it, right? Wrong! Well, then it must’ve been created and marketed by some other big internet company, RIGHT? WRONG!

    Bittorrent, which is a radically new way of transferring large amounts of data, which has the distinction of becoming MORE efficient, the more people use it, was created by one lone geek name of Bram Cohen.

    Like many geeks in the ’90s, Cohen coded for a parade of dotcoms that went bust without a product ever seeing daylight. He decided his next project would be something he wrote for himself in his own way, and gave away free. “You get so tired of having your work die,” he says. “I just wanted to make something that people would actually use.”
    …
    “Give and ye shall receive” became Cohen’s motto, which he printed on T-shirts and sold to supporters.

    He open sourced the whole thing, and there are now lots of bittorrent clients that use his technology and code. There’s a very interesting interview with Bram Cohen on Wired.

    This technology is about to change the way we access media. It’s easy, user-friendly and unstoppable because since nobody owns it, you can’t sue to make it stop like they did with Napster and are doing to Kazaa.

    Which just goes to show that one man’s work CAN change the world.

Connect

Get our newsletter

“I can’t believe it – a newsletter actually worth reading!”
– Subscriber

Over 6,000 people subscribe to our newsletter with tons of tips about happiness at work.

Get our books

“It’s very, very good. It’s incredibly well written, full of insights, and there are exercises to improve your own happiness at work. You can’t ask for more than that!”
– David Maister, author of Practice What You Preach

“What an inspiring book. Every leader should read it. This type of leadership has been integral to our success and I know it will boost your results too.“
– Garry Ridge, CEO WD-40 Company

Get Our Free Newsletter

Over 6,000 people already get our free newsletter with useful tips, videos, links and articles about happiness at work.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Top posts last week

Non-inspirational quotesOctober 22, 2003
Top 10 reasons why constant complaining is so toxic in the workplaceAugust 7, 2007
The movie "The Secret" is entirely fakeMarch 15, 2007
Have you ever quit a job without having a new one lined up?February 12, 2013
How to handle chronic complainersAugust 24, 2006

recent Posts