Mike Wagner pointed me to this article in Business 2.0 on measuring happiness.
Does money really buy happiness? Not in Japan, apparently. Even the United States, the alleged capital of materialism, is not nearly as happy as its per capita income suggests it should be. Colombians and Costa Ricans, on the other hand, claim a level of satisfaction with their lives that is totally out of proportion with their income.
I got an email from Mike Wagner, who wrote:
Have you ever heard James Taylor sing “Secret O’ Life”? I think it is a good
“happiness” song. Perhaps there is an entire category of “happiness songs”
we could gather, or likely someone already has. Simon and Garfunkel’s
“Feelin’ Groovy” might fit too.
I immediately thought of Don’t worry-be happy by Bobby McFerrin. Do you have any additions to the list of happiness songs?
An article in The Economist talks about an experiment in which inmates in a british prison were given extra vitamins, minerals and fatty oils.
Bernard Gesch, a researcher at Oxford University, wanted to see if bringing inmates’ consumption of various vitamins, minerals and fatty acids (the stuff found in fish oil) up to recommended daily levels would affect their behaviour…
Half of the offenders received daily nutritional supplements, and the rest placebo pills. The two groups included a comparable mix of anxious, depressed and aggressive individuals. Their antisocial antics?ranging from violent assaults to swearing at the guards?were recorded before and during the experiment.
The results, published in the July issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, are striking. Those on supplements committed 25% fewer offences than those taking placebos. Moreover, with at least two weeks’ ?treatment?, inmates receiving supplements committed 35% fewer offences than before starting the trial, compared with a 7% reduction in those taking placebos.
Well, duh! Of course it matters what you eat. Of course you get cranky if your body isn’t functioning optimally, because your diet is wrong.
I had the pleasure of visiting Denmarks biggest prison a few months ago to talk about happiness at work with the prison guards, and I saw the food they served there: Awful! We’re talking old school, meat and gravy style food for both the prisoners and the guards. I’m certain that the conditions could be improved all around with something as simple as better food.
Harrison Owen wrote a brilliant summation on OST on the open space mailing list, which covers the origins, history and current status of Open Space Technology.
The ending contains a wonderful challenge to all of us who know and use open space, and has certainly started med thinking about what the next step will be. Here is the entire text.
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This story was sent to me by Maria Bakari, who I met at the Kaospilots conference in January. She’s greek and I’m half-greek, so we had an instant connection. Maria does not have a blog, so with her permission, I’m posting the story here:
Yesterday I had the special pleasure to meet Mr and Mrs De Montalembert. The parents of the Marc de Montalembert Foundation which has been established here in Rhodes in 1994. The Foundation was created in the memory of their son, Marc, who passed away in a sailing accident outside Rhodes, near the Turkish shores in July 1993. His parents, French-born Marc Renee and Italian-born Manuela, have made it their mission to carry on the ideals that they feel Marc would have wanted to promote. They say of Marc: “He had a vision of the world animated by tolerance and inter-cultural understanding”.
The Marc de Montalembert Foundation, offers young people under the age of 30 the opportunity to win a 7,000-euro grant to travel around Mediterranean countries and pursue research on their subject of choice. The winner of the grant is also given the chance to stay for a period of up to six months at the Foundation, located in the Medieval town of the island of Rhodes.
The couple believes that the grant enables young people from Mediterranean countries to bring down barriers and raise awareness of cultural similarities and means of communication with people who appear ‘too different’. “Young people are particularly able to bridge over differences and overcome the anxiety when faced with the unknown, they say. Overcoming isolation and ignorance is the greatest challenge. This is why a major activity of the Foundation is the annual grant, enabling a Mediterranean youngster to discover and study the cultures of the region”.
I truly felt privileged to be able to be in touch with this vision, this beautiful ?in many aspects- dream and the magnificent beauty of the summerhouse and gardens where the Foundation is hosted combining elements of the cultural diversity (particularly Byzantine, Ottoman and Medieval) of this blessed island. While being guided in the garden and listening to the story of the place being restored and transformed (from an abandoned property to an inspiring pavilion) I could feel the honour, the integrity and the respect that this space holds.
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I’ve been spending the last 4 days at a yoga retreat arranged by the Art of Living. We’re talking four days of getting up REALLY early, meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, talks and various other exercises.
And the most interesting thing was that two of those days were spent in silence. No talking, reading, music, TV, emails, phones or communicating of any kind. Just long, loooong hours spent in silence and meditation. Beautiful. And frustrating. I’ve tried it once before, and I wrote about the experience here.
There’s a kinda funny kinda sad story on NY Times about one Jayson Littman.
He is a financial analyst who happens to think that New Yorkers could use a hug. So it was, a month ago, that Mr. Littman began distributing hugs – free – from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sundays in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.
“At first I thought no one would respond,” said Mr. Littman, 26, who lives in Manhattan. But on his first Sunday, standing before a giant hand-lettered sign that reads “Free Hugs,” Mr. Littman and a friend embraced 200 people in two and a half hours. “There’s a lot of war and blood in the world right now,” he said, “and this helps to even it out.”
I found this wonderful little tale on Bernie DeKoven’s excellent website, Deep fun.
I asked the Oaqui if they/he/she could entertain me with a profound-seeming, instructive-like story.
“TWO PLAYERS,” the Oaqui eventually responded, almost without hesitation.
“There are two players in the heart: Serious and Silly,” the Oaqui began in a tone bordering on instructive glibness.
“From time to time they play games.”
“Which one wins?” I innocently inquired.
“It depends,” responded the Oaqui, “on who’s keeping score.”
It’s nice to see that Fast Company agrees with me on the values and pitfalls of metrics :o)
Here’s a current Fast Company article on the “what gets measured gets done” thinking.
And here’s one I wrote a while back, and a more recent one.
Fast Company:
In fact, the jobs that are most effectively reduced to single quantities are the ones that are the most one dimensional. The broader a person’s responsibilities, the more complex and subjective the evaluation. Measures become more ambiguous. There are more stakeholders with a wider range of needs. Evaluations come at specific points in time, but there are always short-term versus long-term tradeoffs. In the face of such complexity, do you want to motivate only what is measurable?
Me:
And this is the whole point: In all organizations, much of the work done and much of the value created is unmeasured and maybe even unmeasureable. Let’s say a person has a great day, and spreads a good mood in his department. Can you measure that? No! Is it important? Certainly! It can have a significant impact on that departments productivity… So what get’s measured is not what get’s done. There’s so much else being done that has huge impact on your organization, which will never be measured. We must learn to live with this!
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