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Work Happiness

Do the Painful Things First

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Before I became an entrepreneur, I went to business school. While studying for my MBA, there was one lesson I learned which has proved to be useful over and over again in my life.

I was sitting in a marketing class, and we were discussing ways to design a wonderful customer experience. The goal is not merely to provide decent service but to delight the customer. Behavioral scientists have discovered that one of the most effective ways to create a delightful experience is to stack the painful parts of the experience early in the process.

Psychologically, we prefer experiences that improve over time. That means it’s better for the annoying parts of a purchase to happen early in the experience. Furthermore, we don’t enjoy it when painful experiences are drawn out or repeated.

Here are some examples:

  • If you’re at the doctor’s office, it’s better to combine the pain of waiting into one segment. The wait will feel shorter to your brain if you spend 20 minutes in the waiting room rather than 10 minutes in the waiting room and 10 minutes in the exam room.
  • People enjoy all-inclusive vacations because they pay one lump sum at the beginning (the pain), and the rest of the trip is divided into positive experiences, excursions, and parties. In the words of my professor, all-inclusive vacations “segment the pleasure and combine the pain.”
  • If you’re a professional service provider (lawyer, insurance agent, freelancer, etc.), it’s better to give the bad news to your clients first and finish with the good news. Clients will remember an experience more favorably if you start weak but finish on a high note, rather than starting strong and ending poorly.

These examples got me thinking. If you can make a customer experience more delightful, why not make your life experiences more delightful?

Here are some ideas for how to take advantage of the way your brain processes painful and annoying experiences and use that knowledge to live a better life.

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5 Reasons You Don’t Do What Really Makes You Happy

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When we interviewed Dr. Stephen Schueller to learn the basics of positive psychology, he also offered insights into how we sometimes stand in the way of our happiness due to misconceptions, biases, and a lack of mindfulness.

Dr. Schueller is a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and member of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies. (This is the second part of our interview, presented in edited highlights. Read the first part here).

1.  We’re too dismissive of relationships and positive emotions.

Dr. Schueller:

Positive psychology has a lot within it which is the advice our grandmother would give us:  How do we live a good life? You express gratitude, you maintain optimism, you practice kindness, you focus on relationships.

We often don’t think grandmother knows best and do our own thing, and that gets us into trouble. We often pursue things like money, bigger houses, cars — material possessions — when experiences are actually much more stronger determinants of our happiness.

 

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4 Nourishing Routines for Your Success and Happiness

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Whether it’s a nice cup of tea or coffee or reviewing your diary, regular routines and rituals help forge the discipline, energy, and mental space to consistently make progress.

We reached out to some productivity superstars to ask:

What is one routine or ritual that contributes to your happiness and success?

Everyone’s response focused on nourishment, nurturing health, relationships, and mind.

Routines and rituals are inherently very personal — what works for you won’t necessarily work for somebody else — but the main takeaway here is that they’re also about prioritizing aspects of your life to create balance.

Here are four of those balancing routines:

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Making Happiness a Habit: The Best of the Internet

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bearHappy Friday! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week! 

Why you should stop keeping score at work.

You have to fight to make your distributed team a competitive advantage. And your right to party.

How to attack the dark heart of mismanagement and chronic stress.

Don’t be a Productivity Pinocchio.

Make happiness a habit.

imageDundee’s Tip of the Week: Display a list of entries over a span of time by clicking and dragging over the days you want to show on your iDoneThis calendar. Your chain of progress will show up on the right! You go, you!

 

Make Someone Feel Valued: The Best of the Internet

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Smilie DogHappy Friday! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week!  

Don’t lose touch with your customers.

Nonprofits get stuff done too.

Sometimes customers’ solutions become company problems.

“If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy.”

It takes seconds to make someone feel valued.

Dundee wants to know: What was the best thing you got done this week?

 

Practice for Productivity! The Best of the Internet

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Happy Friday! Catch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week! 

When you’re building a company, what’s the only thing that matters?

The most productive thing you’ll do today is PRACTICE.

The greatest startup hack: math & humble pie.

Make remote work less lonely.

Disconnect from the tubes.

8 ridiculously easy things that make you happier.

Don’t undermine company culture.

Dundee’s Tip of the Week:  Want to add to your list of dones as you finish it rather than waiting for your reminder email? You can always add dones whenever you want via web or email.

 

When Are You Most Happy? The Happiness Tracking App

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Matt Killingsworth is interested in not just what makes people happy but when people are happy. Gathering data from a happiness-tracking app that he built, he found that people are less happy when their minds are wandering, no matter what they’re doing.

So rewire yourself to stay in the moment, and watch how you’re paying attention.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Simple Work-Life Balance Shortcuts

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Frequently take stock of what’s working and what’s not — because it’s always changing. Put that on your calendar.

Cali Williams Yost, author of Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day, shares simple work-life balance shortcuts.

One thing people do to “have it all”? A regular practice of checking in and reflection.

What’s happening at work and in the other parts of my life? What do I want more of? What do I want less of? What do I want to continue? They realize that the actions that keep them healthy, their career network and job skills up to date, their personal relationships strong, and their personal finances in shape won’t happen by default and are always changing.

Work vs Home: Knock Down Those Walls!

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Although the pressures of society and work often cause us to behave differently in our work and home lives, I believe we must resolve to knock down these artificial walls and behave the same at work and at home.

Bill George, author of Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value, at Harvard Management Update.

We can’t really shut off our humanness at work, and indeed shouldn’t. Work is personal too. Do you agree that the walls between work and home are artificial?