The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • Book review: A simpler way

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    This book by Margaret Wheatley is without a doubt the most beautiful and unconventional business-related book I’ve ever read. It conveys it’s message not only through prose, but also in poems and photographs.

    And the message itself is simple and beautiful, namely that:
    There is a simpler way to organize human endeavour. It requires a new way of being in the world. It requires being in the world without fear. Being in the world with play and creativity. Seeking after what’s possible. Being willing to learn and to be surprised.

    So what is this simpler way?
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  • Life without TV, month 3

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    My name is Alexander, and I’m a TV-addict. Not a hard-core addict, I just have very little will power when it comes to resisting TV.

    If I have a TV, I’ll typically watch 2-3 hours a day on weekdays and more in the weekends. The amount of time I spend in front of the TV is totally unrelated to the quality of the programs. If I can’t find one good program, I’ll zap between 5 bad ones.

    The solution is simple: Loose the TV, and so we did. On january 2nd, my girlfriend and I packed away our TV, and it’s been sitting in the basement ever since. What follows is a report from our lives after two months without a TV.
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  • Roller coaster sites

    I became a roller coaster fanatic a couple of years back on a trip to Florida. Before that, I’d been too scared to get on anything but pretty small coasters, but after having tried the wildest that they have to offer, I’m now a pro.

    Now, we don’t have big roller coasters in Denmark, so until the next trip I’ll have to enjoy them by proxy. A good site for that is the Roller Coaster DataBase which is to roller coasters what imdb is to movies. Pretty much every roller coaster in the world is listed with stats and pictures.

    For roller coaster reviews, my favourite is thrillride.com. There aren’t that many review, but they’re very well written – almost like being there yourself. Now: Who wants to go to California and try this one.

  • Book review: Inner skiing

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    “Inner Skiing” is an excellent account of how learning occurs, but this time it’s not at work, it’s out on the ski slopes.

    As every skier knows, skiing can be a wonderful experience, when you’re in flow, your skis obey your every command and you zoom down the mountainside. And every skier knows the flip side: When your skis won’t do anything you ask them to, every other skier on the mountain seems to deliberately get in your way, and you spend more time falling than skiing.

    What determines the experience you will get? How do you you move from one to the other?
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  • Goodbye Microsoft

    A couple of days ago, my Office Suite died on me. And for once, this was no fault of Bills. I was cleaning out my harddisk, and must have deleted one file too many. Suddenly Outlook, Word, Excel etc. had stopped working.

    I spent a few seconds in the required (and familiar to any PC user) state of semi-panic, and then the solution came to me.
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  • Egoland online

    Yes, yes, yes: Egoland is online with a new strip every day. For those who don’t know, this is the best daily comic strip in Denmark, and one of the best in the world.

    The artwork is brilliant, the humour alternates between the lowbrow and deep philosophy, and the whole package seems to never get old or tired, only better and better. It’s in danish though, so the rest of the world will just have to grieve at what they’re missing.

    Here’s one of my recent favourites, which pretty much illustrates the depth of the series.

  • Getting it wrong

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    If you’re not having a fair degree of failures, you’re not exposing yourself to the upside of getting it dramatically right on dark horses. If you don’t like going home at night with a feeling of uncertainty, then you’re not cut out for it. If you try too hard to improve your failure rate, you become afraid of your inbox, terrified by the proposals made by authors and their agents. You end up having either no output or a book that is so bland that no one will want to read it. Discovering J.K. Rowling has reminded me of the sheer fun of knowing long before anyone else that you have something that will change the world.
    – Nigel Newton, CEO of Bloomsbury, the publishing company who “discovered” Harry Potter

    This underlines the importance of getting it wrong once in a while, and the utter stupidity of the old “Get it right the first time” maxim. From an article in Fast Company.

  • Book review: Playful approaches to serious problems

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    So, why on earth am I reading a book about child therapy? First of all, therapy is all about change. You have a problem, you need to change, therapy is one potential tool, and therapy contains many potentially useful methods for promoting change. And one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today is the need for constant change. It’s almost a clich? to say it, but it remains true.

    Secondly, I discovered the concept of narrative therapy on the net, while netresearching therapy, and it seemed really interesting for a number of reasons.
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  • Quote

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    I remember the Vietnamese spiritual teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, right after 9/11, speaking in New York City. Somebody asked him what would he do if he was able to meet with Osama bin Laden. He said, “If he had his choice, he would sit down and listen to what Osama bin Laden had to say, so that he could hear his perspective and his motivation.” That’s a profound response.

    It is this kind of dialogue that’s so important in this new world we occupy. Democracy is rooted in conversation. It’s rooted in the exchange of ideas. It’s rooted in multiple voices. It’s rooted in diversity. It’s rooted in hearing all the different perspectives. That’s what democracy is about. It’s not about one view, or one solitary approach. It’s not about the, “America right, wrong and always” form of patriotism. It’s not about that. It’s about something much deeper, much more precious, even mysterious.

    – Michael Toms in an article in powells.com

  • Selling fish in Seattle – and having fun

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    I’ve never been to the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, but people who have describe it as a joyful chaos. The fishmongers throw the fish and crabs around, catch them one-handed, yell at and with the customers and generally have a great time.

    But things weren’t always great. Yokoyama, the owner, describes himself as an ex-tyrant, who only recently learned to treat employees as peers in stead of peons. And the reward has been to see the company come to life, and the customers have followed.

    Let me give you an example of what happens in a company, where people have this much fun.
    (more…)

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