The Secret to Happiness at Work

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To be happy at work, you don’t have to hold a fascinating job that represents the pinnacle of your educational achievement or the most prestigious use of your “potential,” and you don’t have to make a lot of money. What matters is not so much the “what” of a job, but more the “who” and the “why”: Job satisfaction comes from people, values, and a sense of accomplishment.

Some of the squishiest aspects of a job are also the ones that make it most rewarding: the values held by your company and your co-workers. Research has shown, for example, that all over the world job satisfaction depends on a sense of accomplishment, recognition for a job well done, and work-life balance.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

The Myth of Romantic Love

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To serve as effectively as it does to trap us into marriage, the experience of falling in love probably must have as one of its characteristics the illusion that the experience will last forever.  

This illusion is fostered in our culture by the commonly held myth of romantic love, which has its origins in our favorite childhood fairy tales, wherein the prince and princess, once united, live happily forever after. They myth of romantic love tell us, in effect, that for every young may in the world there is a young woman who was “meant for him” and vise versa.

Should it come to pass, however, that we do not satisfy or meet all of each other’s needs and friction arises and we fall out of love, then it is clear that a dreadful mistake was make, we misread the stars, we did not hook up with our one and only perfect match, what we thought was love was not real or “true” love, and nothing can be done about the situation except to live unhappily ever after or get divorced. 

The myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie.  

Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth. 

Ultimately, if they stay in therapy, all couples learn that a true acceptance of their own and each other’s individuality and separateness is the only foundation upon which a mature marriage can be based and real love can grow.  

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The Risk Test shows how well you manage uncertainty

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The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a set of three simple questions designed to predict whether you will be good at things like managing uncertainty.  Each question has an intuitive –and wrong –response. Most people need a moment to get the right answer. 

Here are the three questions:

1. A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Everyday, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?

Shane Frederick, assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, devised the test to assess the specific cognitive ability that relates to decision‐making. It has an amazing correlation with people’s ability to evaluate risky propositions and to sort out the time value of money. (A dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future because today’s dollar ears interest.)

For example, those who incorrectly answered the first question thought that 92% of people would answer it correctly. Those that did answer it correctly thought that 62% would get it right. The ones who answered instinctively, and therefore incorrectly ‐ have an over‐inflated sense of confidence, misreading the difficulty of challenges. We have a natural tendency toward overconfidence and bias. Researchers say people consistently overrate their knowledge and skill.

Consider these two alternatives:  Would you rather receive $3,400 this month or $3,800 next month?   

The second choice is better. It is the same as getting 12% interest in only a single month. Of the people who got all three questions right on the CRT, 60% preferred to wait a month. Of the people who got all three questions wrong on the CRT, only 35% preferred to wait.  

In other words, people with higher scores indicated a greater tolerance for risk when the odds where in their favor. 

This is shown by another option offered to participants. People were asked which they would prefer, $500 for sure or a gamble in which there was a 15% chance of receiving one million dollars and an 85% chance of receiving nothing. 

Most of the people who scored zero on the CRT took the money while most of those who scored a perfect three on the test took the gamble. The later group instinctively understood the concept of the expected value, which is the sum of possible values, multiplied by its probability (15% of $1 million plus 85% of zero equals $150,000). The gamble is well-worth the $500, but many people don’t naturally see it that way.  They are basing their decisions on emotions rather than logic. 

This can be seen in what’s known as the Prospect Theory developed by two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They found that people take greater risks to avoid losses than they do to earn profits because the pain of losing is greater than the joy of winning. That’s why people hang onto stocks and other investments (including people) when they should have let go of them long ago.  

Oh, and the answers to the CRT? 

1. Five cents, not ten cents.

2. 5 minutes, not 100 minutes.

3. 47 days not 24 days.

Read the original study here. 

Can’t we just get this change over with?

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People often ask whether there isn't some way to speed up transition, to get it over sooner; when they do, they are usually thinking of the time in the neutral zone when very little seems to be happening. As does any unfolding natural process, the neutral zone takes its own sweet time. "Speeding things up,' hitting the fast forward button, is a tempting idea, but that only stirs things up in ways that disrupt the natural formative processes that are going on. Far from bringing you out of the neurtral zone sooner, such tactics usually set you back and force you to start over again. Frustrating through it is, the best advice is to opt for the turtle and forget the hare.

At the same time, do keep moving. Because the opposite temptation - to try to undo the changes and put things back the way they were before the transition started - is equally misguided. That undoubtedly was an easier time than this nonplace you occupy now! But your life lacks a replay button. The transition that brought you to this place cannot be undone. Even putting things back "the way they were" is a misnomer, because back then, you hadn't had the experience of being plunged into transition. And that experience won't go away.

William Bridges, Transitions

The Power of Setting Goals

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Can you imagine Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, explaining how he was able to accomplish that feat? Suppose he explained he was just out walking around on a day when he happened to find himself at the top of the tallest mountain in the world. Or the Chairman of the Board of General Motors explaining that he got his position because he just kept showing up for work and they just kept promoting him until one day he was Chairman of the Board. Ridiculous – of course – but no more ridiculous than your thinking you can accomplish anything significant without specific goals. 

Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top

Shrink the Change

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A sense of progress is critical, because the Elephant in us is easily demoralized. It’s easily spooked, easily derailed, and for that reason, it needs reassurance, even for the very first step of the journey.

If you’re leading a change effort… rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.  

A business cliché commands us to “raise the bar.” But that’s exactly the wrong instinct if you want to motivate a reluctant Elephant. You need to lower the bar. Picture taking a high-jump bar and lowering it so far that it can be stepped over. 

If you want a reluctant to get moving, you need to shirk the change.

Chip & Dan Heath, Switch

Judging From Behind the Curtain

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The world of classical music—particularly in its European home—was until very recently the preserve of white men. Women, it was believed, simply could not play like men. They didn’t have the strength, the attitude, or the resilience for certain kinds of pieces. Their lips were different. Their lungs were less powerful. Their hands were smaller. That did not seem like a prejudice. It seemed like a fact, because when conductors and music directors and maestros held auditions, the men always seemed to sound better than the women. No one paid much attention to how auditions were held, because it was an article of faith that one of the things that made a music expert a music expert was that he could listen to music played under any circumstances and gauge, instantly and objectively, the quality of the performance.

But over the past few decades, the classical music world has undergone a revolution. 

Many musicians thought that conductors were abusing their power and playing favorites. They wanted the audition process to be formalized. That meant an official audition committee was established instead of a conductor making the decision all by himself. In some places, rules were put in place forbidding the judges from speaking among themselves during auditions, so that one person’s opinion would not cloud the view of another. Musicians were identified not by name but by number. Screens were erected between the committee and the auditioner.. and as these new rules were put in place around the country, an extraordinary thing happened: orchestras began to hire women. 

In the past thirty years, since screens became commonplace, the number of women in the top U.S. orchestras has increased fivefold. 

“Some people look like they sound better than they actually sound, because they look confident and have good posture,’ one musician, a veteran of many auditions, says. “Other people look awful when they play but sound great. Other people have that belabored look when they play, but you can’t hear it in the sound. There is always this dissonance between what you see and hear. 

Too often we are resigned to what happens in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t seem like we have much control over whatever bubbles to the surface from our unconscious. But we do, and if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition. 

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink

The Best Teachers

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The best teachers … sometimes discard or place less emphasis on traditional goals in favor of the capacity to comprehend, to use evidence to draw conclusions, to raise important questions, and to understand one’s thinking. In most disciplines, that means they emphasize comprehension, reasoning, and brilliant insights over memory, order punctuality, or the spick-and-span. Spelling, the size of margins or fonts, and the style of footnotes and bibliographies are trivial in comparison to the power to think on paper; conceptual understanding of chemistry is more important than remembering individual details; the capacity to think about one’s thinking — to ponder metacognitively – and to correct it in progress is far more worthy than remembering any name, date, or number. 

The ability to understand the principles and concepts in thinking critically through a problem outranks any capacity to reach the correct answer on any particular question. These teachers want their students to learn to use a wide range of information, ideas, and concepts logically and consistently to draw meaningful conclusions. They help their students achieve those levels by providing meaningful directions and exemplary feedback that quietly yet forcefully couple lofty ideals with firm confidence in what students can do – without making any judgments of their worth as human beings. Most significant, they help students shift their focus from making the grade to thinking about personal goals of development. 

Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do

Disillusioned?

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Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition. At such times, we need to consider whether the old view or belief may not have been an enchantment cast on us in the past to keep us from seeing deeper into ourselves and others than we were ready to. For the whole idea of disenchantment is that reality has many layers, none “wrong”  but each appropriate to a particular phase of intellectual and spiritual development. The disenchantment experience is the signal that they time has come to look below the surface of what has been thought to be so. It is the sign that you are ready to see and understand more now. 

Lacking that perspective on such experiences, however, we often miss the point and simply become “disillusioned.” The disenchanted person recognized the old view as sufficient in its time, but insufficient now.

On the other hand, the disillusioned person simply rejects the embodiment of the earlier view; she finds a new husband or he gets a new boss, but both leave unchanged the old enchanted view of relationships. The disenchanted person moves on, but the disillusioned person stops and goes through the play again with new actors. Such a person is on a perpetual quest for a real friend, a true mate, and a trustworthy leader. The quest only goes around in circles, and real movement and real development are arrested. 

William Bridges, Transitions

Making habits that stick for the long term

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According to Good Habit, Bad Habit author Wendy Wood, forming new long-term behavioral patterns is possible to some extent for most people, and it’s largely a function of learning to do something so automatically that you perform the task without having to consciously decide to do it, like brushing your teeth before you go to bed.  

Amanda Mull writing in The Atlantic

 

The Algorithms of Nostalgia

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Nostalgia has become a template for the serial production of more content, a new income stream for copyright holders, a new data stream for platforms, and a new way to express identity for users. And there’s so much pop culture in the past to draw from, platform capitalism will seemingly never run out. We’re told our data is collected in an attempt to predict what we want, but this isn’t quite true. In attempting to predict our tastes, streaming services work to produce them in its image. Since algorithms are trained on the past, they aren’t merely transmitting nostalgia through neutral channels; they’re cultivating nostalgic biases, seeking to predispose users to crave retro. 

Even as Silicon Valley positions itself as progressive, its algorithms are stuck in the past.

Grafton Tanner, writing in Real Life Magazine