Woohoo :) I was just booked to speak at Expo Capital Humano (a big HR conference) in Chile in November.
I can’t wait to be back in Santiago. The pic above is from my last trip there where I spoke at a conference arranged by Caja Los Andes.
I should bone up on my Spanish :)
These are the factory rules for an 1800s Manchester cotton factory. Scary!
I love how they had to add the last rule.
I just saw Whiplash and it is not only a great movie but also the perfect example of the “success through suffering” narrative that permeates the modern world in general and the US especially. In this movie a young jazz drumming prodigy is tortured relentlessly by his sadistic teacher and the extreme mental and physical pain he suffers makes him a star drummer.
There are a million other movies and books that subscribe to the same basic world view, according to which you can only achieve success through sacrifice and pain and the more it hurts, the more successful you will ultimately be.
I’ve been trying to think of stories in pop culture that have a narrative where someone achieves success through happiness, but the only ones I can think of (like Forest Gump and Big) are stories where idiots or children achieve success through their innocence and naiveté. This just serves to strengthen the narrative, since only idiots achieve success through happiness.
I think this world view is false. I think there is much more success to be found (in business, in art, and in life) in fun, happiness, camaraderie, and in simply enjoying what you do on the whole.
In real life there are many examples. Richard Branson clearly attributes much of his success to the fact that he’s enjoyed himself along the way. Ben and Jerry, the ice cream makers, say the same thing and so does Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Tony Hsieh of Zappos and many others.
I find it telling that the director of Whiplash Damien Chazelle was a serious drumming student as a young man and has this to say about that time:
[I was in] a very competitive jazz band that was modeled after professional bands. And I remembered being very terrified. That was my overall emotion during those years. Just dread. And not being able to eat meals before rehearsals and losing sleep and sweating my ass off.
To this day, he still gets nauseous when he sees a drum kit so when it came time to do the movie, here’s how he wanted to do it:
I like a set to be a happy place, where people can feel free to experiment. Especially, for instance, with this set. We only had 20 days to shoot the whole movie. The stress and the anxiety were just inherent in the schedule. So I tried to make it as stress-free of a set as possible.
So the whole “success through suffering” mindset is not only wrong, I think it’s become so pervasive that it’s become self-reinforcing. People go into many ventures expecting it to be tough, expecting to have to sacrifice many other aspects of their lives to “make it” – and if that’s what you expect, then there’s a good chance that that how it will end up.
Also, once people do become successful and start analyzing what worked, this narrative means that they’re more likely to attribute their succes to all the “hard work” and their sacrifices – even though their success may just as well have come from the times they had fun, the help they got from people who likes them or a supporting environment they found themselves in.
And finally, the very idea that you can slave away in stress and fear and frustration for years and sacrifice everything else in your life and THEN achieve your goal and just turn around and be happy seems very suspect to me. I think if you’ve been in pain for that long, that pain is most likely going to stay with you and you will be successful and unhappy.
And that’s why I’m convinced that the best path to success is not pain, it’s happiness. It’s not about comfort and choosing the easy path – but it is about making sure that you enjoy the process most of the time.
As we know, happy people are more productive, energetic, creative and motivated and also learn faster. So enjoying what do you will not only make you more likely to reach your goals, it will also vastly increase your chances of being happy once you do get there.
And that’s why I’m challenging the narrative that success comes through suffering.
I just got this hilarious email from Dean Langsam:
Hi. I’m Dean, a casual follower.
I work at a military base. The base has two entrances, one to the north and one to the south. The entrances have guards – regular soldiers who have other jobs but once every few month they have this guard duty for a week.
Let me tell you it is a CRAPPY duty, but it must be done. Most soldiers hate it and show it, telling you “good day” with out really meaning it.
But today, I showed my credentials to the soldier, and he replied “Good day sir, thank you for choosing the northern entrance”. It was funny and made my day nicer, his day nicer and I’m sure it had a positive effect on many people.
It was wonderful.
I just did a really fun interview for CNN Turkey. It goes out tomorrow at 4pm when they’re transmitting live from the conference I’m speaking at.
UPDATE: You can see the whole thing here. I’m on around 15 minutes into the video.
I just got this amazing email from “Lauren” who’s been stuck in an unhappy job:
Just wanted to send a note to say THANK YOU for your team’s wonderful work. It has inspired me greatly over the years, and last week I finally did something about my crappy job, with the goal of having it settled before International Quit Your Crappy Job Day!
I have the usual range of excuses for keeping the job way too long: “It’s not THAT bad, is it? Maybe I’m just oversensitive.” “It’s stable for the most part, and this economy is crappy. Really, who needs passion or purpose when there’s stability?” “I’m afraid it will wreck my career if I deliberately leave a management position.” “The pay is pretty good.” “I love my coworkers too much to ditch them.” “I should be able to tough it out! I am a warrior, descended from Celts and Vikings! I have lived through far worse than this! Weakness is not an option! RAAA!!” Blah blah blah.
To add to that list: my job, despite all of its down sides, has offered a great deal of schedule flexibility and I get to work from home often. This is pretty powerful; I have a young family, and I have been very grateful for the ability to stay close and cultivate a beautiful home life for so long while still working. Because of this, I was more than willing to keep shouldering a lot of responsibility and work hard at odd hours, and I kept that balance pretty successfully for several years.
But things took a big turn downhill a couple of years ago in the job. In a nutshell, there are bad ethics going on in the levels above me, and I am not able to make peace with that. I’ve also got a seriously passive-aggressive boss who finds it easy to disregard people who don’t agree with him. There is simply nowhere for this job to go but backward, no matter how hard I work. It’s all been tearing me apart for too long, and straddling two worlds — one gorgeous, one awful — has exhausted me beyond my limit at last.
My partner told me a few weeks ago that he doesn’t want me to cry at dinner anymore when we chat about our work days. (I hadn’t even realized I was doing it.) He’s been so patient and so awesome through all of my angst; it finally opened my eyes to the fact that no matter how well I think I’m hiding it, my stress DOES affect my family (duh!), and it is not fair to them. That did the trick.
I told my boss last week that I want to step down from management and join the team I’ve been leading, and asked for conditions that are yet MORE flexible and amount to fewer hours. Negotiations are still under way, but it looks like this will go through, because I have many skills that are unique in the organization. There will be less money, but I’ll be able to stay close to my family, and I’ll still earn a paycheck and get back to building my creative portfolio. I’ll also have more bandwidth to look for my next job, if the new arrangement doesn’t work out better for me. (I had been looking lightly for a while, but just couldn’t drum up enough energy to do it for real, along with being a good manager and a good mom and a good partner and everything else… it contributed to the feeling that I was trapped in this dead-end work situation.)
Now I am navigating “stages of grief” as I prepare to step down after many years at this company. There’s a lot of relief, but there’s also fear of what will happen to the people I’ve been looking out for. I’m also feeling that the bulk of my efforts — not to mention my ethics — have been unappreciated all this time, and that I sorely overestimated what this job could really be. Naturally, I feel a bit foolish, even though I thought I had good reasons for investing as much as I did for so long. Anyway: all of these things confirm that it’s absolutely time to make this move, and I’m having no second thoughts, but in some ways it’s still a little more painful than I thought it would be.
Anyway — thank you again. Things are going to get better. Spring is here, and there are so many adventures ahead.
If any part of my tale of woe might help inspire others, you are very welcome to share it; I ask that you stick a fake name on it, if you don’t mind. I would be delighted if some of my coworkers read your website, but would rather not be found out personally :)
Thank you again!
I’m in Istanbul to do a couple of gigs AND to celebrate the launch of Happy Hour is 9 to 5 in Turkish. I even spotted it in a book shop :)
The TV show Parks and Recreation recently ended and while I was sad to see it go, the final episodes were awesome and very satisfying.
I have admired the show for a while not just for being very funny and moving but also for how much the cast and crew obviously loved their work.
Here are 3 lessons any workplace could stand to learn from the cast of Parks and Rec.
In this clip Chris Pratt talks about the positive atmosphere they had on the set and how that started with their biggest star (#1 on the call sheet) Amy Poehler.
Here the cast talk about the freedom they have to improvise lines because the set is “a super-safe environment” as Jim O’Heir who plays Garry/Jerry/Larry/Terry on the show puts it.
I love that – it reminds me of an article I wrote previously about Why You Should Celebrate Mistakes at Work.
Here are two clips from a late night show where the cast plays a game in which they have to toast each other in 20 seconds.
Could your team do something like this?
I think we all know that the world of movies and TV is not necessarily very happy. Just for contrast, here’s a list of movie co-stars who hated each other’s guts.
So to see a group of people who clearly love each other working together to create something amazing is all the more encouraging and I think there are some lessons here for workplaces all around the world.
Normally our work is focused very much on the positive when we help our clients become happier workplaces. But it is equally important to know what makes us unhappy at work and do our best to eliminate these frustrations.
So we’ve set up a survey and want to know how often you have bad days at work and what makes them bad. The survey has 12 quick questions and should take 4-5 minutes to fill out.
We look forward to seeing and sharing the results.
Have you done a good job? Step into the self-praise machine:
If no one else gives you recognition at work, you’ll just have to do it yourself!
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