And speaking of the ills of long commutes, check out this video that examines bicycling in Copenhagen from a car-centric North American perspective:
I have no doubt that a bike commute being physically active is a lot more likely to contribute to making you happy at work than driving your car.
What do you think – would you like your city to be more bike-centric?
And thanks to Ole Kassow for telling me about the video above.
According to a new survey, long commutes are bad for you. Really bad:
One in three employees with a commute longer than 90 minutes say they have had recurring neck or back pain within in the past 12 months. Just about the same amount say they have been diagnosed with high cholesterol…
The study shows a strong correlation between obesity and the length of your commute…
Employees with long commutes experienced lower levels of enjoyment and higher levels of fatigue and worry than employees with short commutes.
(source)
These findings don’t surprise me at all. Here are the top 3 reasons why long commutes are bad for ya:
1: Commute time is butt time
A recent article in the NYTimes said this:
It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.
(source)
And unless you commute by bicycle or walking/running you will spend most of your commute time on your butt, either behind your steering wheel or on a bus or train seat. This is bad for you even of you’re otherwise in good shape and get lots of exercise!
2: Commutes are stressful
Is your commute anything like this scene from the movie Office Space:
When do you commute? At the same time as everyone else.
You can almost expect a lot of traffic, delays, traffic jams, road work, lack of parking spaces, inconsiderate drivers and a host of other stress factors. Plus a lot of people always seem to leave home five minutes late so they’re in a hurry which just adds to the stress.
3: The commute takes time that you could spend on things that make you happy
The 1-2 hours you spend going to and from work is time that you can’t spend with your friends, kids, spouse, family or on exercise, movies, cooking, reading or other things that make you happy.
So I can easily see, why long commutes are bad for
So enough complaining – what are some things you can do, to reduce the impact of a long commute? Here are 5 suggestions:
Commute outside of peak times
Not all jobs will let you do this, but if you can come in earlier or later then maybe your commute will be faster and less stressful.
Leave for work a little earlier
If you leave for work in plenty of time, your commute make take a little longer but it will feel shorter and will be less stressful. It may take you an hour and ten minutes rather than just an hour, but at least you can spend that time in a more relaxed state of mind rather than fretting about whether or not you will be late.
Of course this works against point #3 above…
Commute by public transportation
This is not only environmentally better (lower carbon footprint) but it also means that you can get some work done during your commute and possibly reduce your working day accordingly.
Telecommute
I’ve seen studies that show that employees who telecommute 1-2 days a week are happier than those who come into the office every day. Is that an option for you?
Pick a job closer to where you live (or vice versa)
But maybe the simplest and most effective thing is to work close to where you live. The next time you look for a new job, maybe you should give preference to jobs that offer fewer or shorter commutes.
I fully realize that modern urban planning in most countries and most cities conspires to work against this. One notable exception is Copenhagen, that has focused on public transportation and bicycle safety since late 60s. And it works. I personally live 3 miles from work and ride my bicycle in every morning and 35% of all Copenhageners commute by bike. We’re also the happiest people at work? Coincidence? Probably mostly, but there may still be some causation going on :o)
How long is your commute? Have you tried having a long commute? How did it affect you and what did you do about it? Please write a comment, I’d love to know your take.
We’ve been running a very successful newsletter about happiness at work in Danish for years now – and we finally (finally!) got an international version in English up and running. In fact, the first newsletter went out today.
So of course, we’d love to know what you think. If you’ve seen the newsletter, please write a comment below to tell us what you liked, what sucked and what you’d like to see more of in coming newsletters.
And if you haven’t seen the newsletter, you can sign up for it right here:
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“If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden.
He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.”
– W. Beran Wolfe
The inherent paradox in all search for happiness is this: Seeking happiness for itself tends to be a shallow pursuit. But achieving happiness by doing great work or seeking happiness because it will allow you to do more good for others turns it from a selfish to a noble, meaningful goal. And the exact same thing goes at work.
Also: People who are active are happier! According to a new study, “People who stay busy with tasks tend to be happier than idle folks”.
Linda and Robin (authors of the excellent book The Power of Nice) just blogged about niceness in managers, and their post is one of those bad-news-good-news deals. First the bad news. They write that:
Some scientific studies suggest that being in a position of authority has a unique effect on the human brain, that can cause people to become less sympathetic to the emotions and concerns of others—and as history has shown us, this can have a devastating effect on a business’ bottom line.
I agree completely. There are two unfortunate factors working against niceness in management:
1: Many organizations don’t see niceness as a success factor in managers.
When they promote people to management positions, they may pick people who are professional, experienced, assertive, etc. Studies also show, that they tend to pick people who are taller than average and have good hair. Seriously.
In fact, being nice can actually hinder your career prospects. Just think of the old saw that “Nice guys finish last.”
2: Being given authority can actually make a person less nice.
Bob Sutton wrote about this in The No Asshole Rule:
One of the simplest and yet most fascinating experiments to test the thesis is the “cookie crumbles” experiment. Researchers placed college students in groups of three and gave them an artificial assignment — collaboration on a short policy paper about a social issue. They then randomly assigned one of the students to evaluate the other two for points that would affect their ability to win a cash bonus. Having set up this artificial power hierarchy, researchers then casually brought to working trios plates containing five cookies.
They found that not only did the disinhibited “powerful” students eat more than their share of the cookies, they were more likely to chew with their mouths open and to scatter crumbs over the table.
Fortunately, there’s good news too in Linda’s and Robin’s post.
In order for NICE guys who made it to the top to avoid falling victim to the power paradox, all they need to do is flex their NICE muscles, daily.
They go on to give some specific actions that managers can take to stay nice. Go read their post, it’s excellent.
And of course I hardly have to add that nice managers are essential to happiness at work. They’re much more likely to be happy themselves, much more likely to have happy employees and hence are much more successful.
Is niceness a trait you want to see in your boss? Who’s the nicest boss you’ve ever had? What did he or she do that worked? What did that do to you and your colleagues? Please write a comment, I’d love to know your take.
We’re reviving one of my favorite traditions on this blog namely the Monday Tip. Every Monday, we’ll give you one simple tool, trick, tip or idea that you can use to make yourself or your co-workers a little happier.
This week’s tip is to put something fun on your office door (or your cubicle wall) where co-workers, employees and bosses will see it.
This 2-minute video shows you how – and if you can do it in a bank, I guess it can be done anywhere :o)
What will you put on your door? Have a happy week!
The Chief Happiness Officer’s Monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.
Why don’t I ever see something like this in my local supermarket:
Have a very happy weekend :o)
On Wednesday I gave a speech to 150 bank managers (it went great). The dress code there was typical Danish business style, including a lot of suits and ties. It was all very… blue.
On Thursday my audience was a lot… greener:
What you see in the picture is the Air Control Wing of the Danish Air Force. These are the people who monitor Danish air space. Some of them are also stationed around the world, including in Afghanistan. The presentation went really, really well and before I went on stage I got a great tour of the air base. They even taught me to field strip one of these:
Yep, that’s me with an M-96. It’s not every client I go to, that has these lying around the office :o)
I was the main keynote speaker at the 20th. annual conference of AGRH, the association of HR managers in Guatemala. In addition to the keynote I also spoke at a shorter VIP event and had a whole bunch of meetings with business people and interviews with various media.
I had a great time, but here are my top 5 things about my trip:
1: A conference about happiness at work – in Guatemala(!)
Here I am in stage for my presentation. Notice the Danish flag in the background with all the Latin American flags:
The conference was a day and a half and the theme for the whole event was happiness at work or Felicidad Laboral as you can see in the logo above. As far as we know, this was only the second conference about workplace happiness in the world – and ours was the first. That’s pretty good for a Latin American country, to focus not only on having jobs but on creating happy workplaces. The conference was opened with a speech by the Guatemalan Minister of Labor, who also spoke on the importance of having a job you like.
2: The fantastic people of Guatemala
Every single person I met at the conference and in Guatemala in general was friendly, open, curious and happy. Here I am with the conference arrangers at the closing party:
3: I was a rock star for 4 days :o)
All the other speakers were from the region (Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras) so I was the main international speaker. That meant that everyone wanted to talk to me, have their picture taken with me or even get autographs. I could get used to that :o)
Here’s a poster for the event:
Notice the part below my name that says “Experto Mundial #1”. I’m having a T-shirt made with those words on it :o)
4: The Guatemala Sink hole
I was fortunate enough to get a private tour of Guatemala City and when my guide asked me what I would like to see besides the usual sights, I immediately mentioned the Guatemala sink hole. I’m apparently the first tourist ever to ask to see that, so he didn’t even know exactly where it was. But we asked around and finally found it. It’s a bizarre sight to see a big round hole in the middle of a street in the middle of a big city.
5: Guatamala gets it
The 250 HR managers in attendance loved my presentation and I sold a lot of signed copies of my first book in its Spanish translation. But the best thing wa to talk to the participants afterwards and get the clear impression that they are committed to creating happy workplaces.
One of the other presentations at the conference was an survey done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers of HR managers in Guatemala, and according to their report, 95% agree that happiness is good for business results and 75% already have initiatives to create happiness or will soon begin.
All in all it was a fantastic trip, and we’re proud to be able to add Guatemala to the list of countries we’ve worked in. Here’s the complete list: Germany, England, Ireland, USA, Sweden, Turkey, Denmark, Ireland, France, Poland, Holland, Estonia, Slovenia, India, Croatia, Bahamas, Switzerland and Guatemala.
My summer vacation is almost over and regular blogging is about to resume. Until then, please enjoy this week’s Friday Spoing:
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