“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.”
ANDREW CARNEGIE
Unhappiness can be expensive. According to a Gallup-Healthways study, unhappiness is costing the United States as much as $300 billion annually in lost productivity.
Why? A higher level of life satisfaction or a cheery disposition will actually make you better at your job, more likely to get a promotion, and less likely to quit. One study of government workers found that happy people are more productive, and people are more productive when in a happy mood. Another report, out of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, put a precise number on it: Happiness led to a 12 percent jump in productivity, while unhappy workers are 10 percent less productive than their happier peers. Sales? Thirty-seven percent higher from happy workers. Creativity? Three times higher.
These aren’t isolated findings; a meta-analysis of 225 academic studies by some of the most prominent researchers in the field of positive psychology found direct causality between life satisfaction and positive business results.
But being happy at work is easier said than done. Even if you love your job, there’s probably something you hate about it: a long commute, a boss who doesn’t give you the credit you deserve, a coworker who eats lunch with their mouth open. Even if you start the day eager to dive into a project, by late afternoon you are likely struggling to stay focused. Even if you’re great at what you do, there’s that nagging voice in the back of your mind asking if you wouldn’t be happier in another job, or if you shouldn’t be getting paid more for this one.
Whatever the reason, if you’re one of the majority of people who aren’t exactly tap dancing to work, here are some ways to tick up your level of on-the-job happiness.
Ask: Why Are You Doing This?
It’s the basic question every person should ask themself every now and then. A person is more likely to find satisfaction in their job and be better at it if they pursue work goals that are in line with their core values, or are what psychologists call “self-concordant.” A pair of researchers found that those pursuing goals in line with their interests put more sustained effort into accomplishing the goals and felt a greater sense of well-being when they accomplished them.
The researchers validated this through a study of 169 students who were asked to list ten personal goals they wanted to pursue for the semester. They were asked to rank from one to ten their reasons for pursuing each goal (e.g., “you pursue this striving because of the fun and enjoyment it provides you”). Throughout the semester, they noted how much effort they were putting in toward each goal and rated their progress on each. There was a positive correlation between self-concordant goals and both effort toward and attainment of the goals, compared to those that were not. The study also found that those who achieved these goals felt a greater sense of well-being than those who pursued goals based on more external pressures.
• Ask yourself why you are working on a particular project, or even in the line of work you’re pursuing. If you aren’t doing it because you are passionate about it or feel it aligns with who you truly are, sooner or later, the work will become a slog.
It’s Not About the Paycheck
Whatever meaning you are drawing from your job, one thing is for certain: Doing it for money won’t bring you happiness. Numerous studies have found no correlation between higher salaries and higher levels of happiness. Surveys of the wealthiest Americans find their happiness scores on par with the Amish. A survey of thousands of twins found that income accounted for less than 2 percent of the difference in their respective levels of well-being.
A good rule of thumb: $80K is enough. Researchers have found that once a person earns an average of $75,000 per year, they experience a “happiness plateau.” Those making millions may be able to buy nice things, but they don’t enjoy a higher level of happiness commensurate with the higher salary.
When happiness does relate to a person’s paycheck, it’s usually in how it compares to other workers in that person’s peer group. A pair of researchers drawing on data from 5,000 British workers found that their reported satisfaction levels were higher when they compared themselves to people making less than they did.
One other point they found: While absolute pay did not predict a person’s sense of satisfaction, their education did—as in, the higher their education level, the lower their sense of life satisfaction. The researchers suggested that this was because of the higher aspirations that education creates.
• Stop putting so much importance on making more at work. A fatter paycheck is not going to make your smile any wider.
It’s Not Even About a Really Big Paycheck
A separate study of the Forbes 400 richest Americans found them just slightly happier than the Maasai people of East Africa—hunter-gatherers who live in mud huts without electricity or running water.
Track Your Progress
Viewing your activities as part of a long-term goal improves your mood—on a chemical level. Participants in a study were asked about personal and family goals, rated their mood, and assessed the relevance of their current activity to these goals during the day, every three hours over a week. At each check-in, subjects also provided saliva samples so their levels of cortisol—informally known as the “stress hormone”—could be measured.
Activities that participants identified as furthering their goals correlated with more positive mood ratings and lower levels of cortisol in their saliva, suggesting that goal-oriented behavior is important to mood and stress management.
• Make a daily goal chart and track how each step forward is moving you toward accomplishing a long-term goal.
Demonstrating happiness—a “positive affect,” as psychologists call it—can provide a wide range of benefits. A study from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley found that expressing positive emotions brings three distinct benefits to the workplace:
1 It improves your own job performance (with enhanced cognitive functioning and greater persistence in working on tasks).
2 It improves others’ responses to you (with greater interpersonal attraction and making them more prone to responding favorably to your “social influence attempts,” i.e., they are more likely to like you and do what you want them to do).
3 It improves your response to others (you are more likely to help others).
In the Berkeley study, workers who displayed positive emotions at their job received more favorable supervisor evaluations and greater pay eighteen months later. The happier employees also had greater support from supervisors and coworkers.
• Smile at work, and don’t be afraid to show when you’re feeling happy—it can create a range of positive side effects.
Encourage Autonomy
Researchers have found that freely choosing to take on a task maintains or even increases your energy level, while feeling controlled tends to make your energy flag. A pair of researchers looked at samples from a pain treatment center and a weight-loss clinic. They found that those who reported more autonomy in their reasons for treatment showed more vitality, and “less vitality when they perceived themselves as controlled by external forces,” as the researchers put it.
These findings can be extended to work: Even those who do not enjoy the work they are engaged in, or see it as a necessary evil, are likely to go about it with more energy if given some control or autonomy over how it’s done or their reason for doing it.
• If you’re a supervisor, give your staff the autonomy to choose their own tasks, or at least to schedule them at times of their choosing.
Know Who You Are Working For
“It’s often easier to answer the why you are doing a job with who. If you care about who you work for, it’s a lot easier to go the extra mile. We spoke with a pharmaceutical company that wanted to improve the motivation and job satisfaction in their company. They would show video clips of patients who used their medication and a patient might say, ‘This medicine allows me to stay up one more hour to go on a date night with my husband,’ or, ‘This medicine allows me to play on the playground with my children.’ It had a huge impact on the employees. It became very obvious to them not only why it was important, but who it was important for. They weren’t producing pills, they were changing lives.”
—Isabella Arendt, analyst at the Happiness Research Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark
Ditch Contracts
While “get it in writing” is conventional wisdom in business, whether securing someone’s services or buying a product, it turns out that it can actually hurt the level of trust between those involved. A pair of experiments found that binding contracts tended to inhibit levels of trust when they were in effect, since those involved tended to attribute the other person’s cooperation not to their own decision, but to the “constraints imposed by the contract.”
By contrast, the researchers found that nonbinding contracts did less to impede the development of interpersonal trust than binding contracts—and didn’t hurt trust as much when removed. The researchers concluded that contracts not only get in the way of developing a trusting relationship in the first place, but hurt the trust between people that has already been built.
• Unless you are striking a deal where big money is on the line, it’s better for all involved to go with your gut rather than what a piece of paper requires.
Personalize Your Space
While taking long personal calls at work to speak with your spouse or cat psychic might not be a great way to win over your boss, bringing your personal life into your workspace has been found to have very positive results. A pair of psychologists from the University of Exeter in England found that workers were more productive when their desks were “decorated rather than lean”—that is, when their desks included additions such as plants or art. In two experiments conducted by the researchers, one at a university psychology department, the other at a commercial city office, the performance of subjects (attention to detail, management of information, processing of information, and so on) was measured in four different conditions: an undecorated or “lean” workspace; one that had been decorated with plants and art by the experimenter; self-decorated; and self-decorated, then redecorated by the experimenter.
The results consistently showed that those with decorated spaces were more productive than those with lean ones. When participants had input into the decoration of their spaces, the researchers noted, it “increased participants’ feelings of autonomy and decisional involvement and this led to increases in comfort, job satisfaction, and productivity.” This feeling of empowerment led to an increase in productivity by as much as 32 percent.
• Add some artwork or plants to your desk, or make some other addition that enhances it in a way that’s personal for you. Throw in a lava lamp and disco ball if you’re into that sort of thing.
Get Plants
In a separate study by the same lead researchers, they compared lean to “green” workspaces. In a trio of experiments, workers in places where plants had been added reported higher levels of job satisfaction, concentration, and perceived air quality. The researchers concluded that workers who put household plants on their desks were 15 percent more productive than those who did not. An eighteen-month study on this phenomenon published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied found that call center workers who had plants on their desks had better memory retention and performed better at their tasks.
Walk to Work, or Get a Bike
When it comes to commutes, it may not be the length that matters. While some research has found that longer commutes tend to correlate with lower job satisfaction, a study of 3,400 people by scientists at McGill University in Montreal examined six different modes of transportation for getting to work and respondents’ relative satisfaction. Subjects were interviewed in both the summer and winter to get an average satisfaction score that accounted for changing weather conditions (biking in a blizzard isn’t satisfactory, you’d assume). They found that while the commute length did not correlate with satisfaction, the mode of transportation did. Specifically, the study returned the following percentages of satisfaction:
• Walkers: 85 percent
• Rail travelers: 84 percent
• Cyclists: 82 percent
• Drivers: 77 percent
• Metro/subway riders: 76 percent
• Bus riders: 75.5 percent
Revisit Why You Took the Job
“If you aren’t satisfied with your job, ask yourself, ‘Why did you take this job in the first place?’ Somewhere down the line you applied for this job and convinced someone to pay you to do it. Either you are really good at lying to yourself, or you were motivated to do this at the time. You may realize the job has changed: now you work with a completely different customer or a product you don’t really support or a different division. You may be able to reignite your motivation for the job again, or it may be time to find another job.”
—Isabella Arendt
Write Down Meaningful Moments
Researcher and happiness expert Shawn Achor found that when workers spent two minutes to take four quick actions, it improved their happiness over the long term. Those four actions are:
1 Write down a meaningful experience you had in the past twenty-four hours.
2 Jot down three things you are grateful for.
3 Write a positive message to someone on Facebook or another social media site.
4 Meditate.
Participants took a well-being survey before commencing the experiment, scoring an average of 22.96 on a 35-point scale. After three weeks of doing these actions every day, this score rose to 27.23.
A separate Harvard study found that workers who made daily notes of their successes from the day in a journal enjoyed a higher level of creativity and motivation.
• Pick up a journal and jot down your successes and meaningful experiences, and express gratitude.
Focus on Strengths
Some people are detail oriented; others are much better at the big picture. Some are great collaborating with groups; others thrive in isolation. A manager who wants to get the most out of her team will learn to recognize the strengths of her workers. Research from Gallup backs up the value of doing work or filling roles based on personal strengths and natural talents. In a survey of just over 1,000 US employees, the organization found a strong connection between those who felt their supervisor focused on their strengths and active engagement in their work. By contrast, of the one quarter of workers who felt their supervisor ignored their strengths, 40 percent were actively disengaged. Interestingly, when supervisors focused on workers’ weaknesses, their disengagement was just 22 percent. Apparently, even negative attention is better than no attention at all.
• Try to figure out your employees’ biggest strengths—sometimes even they don’t know what those are—and ensure that they are doing work that taps into those talents.
Don’t just do your job; craft it. That’s the insight from a team of researchers who urge employees to reframe their worklife in terms of their own personal strengths and passions. Called “job crafting,” the exercise directs a person to “visualize the job, map its elements, and reorganize them to better suit you.” Drawing on their research with companies of a wide range of sizes, they found that workers who practice this exercise grow more engaged in their work and deliver a stronger performance.
Job crafting involves a series of steps:
1 Create a “before diagram” of what your job consists of, with larger squares representing tasks that require the most time, and smaller squares for those jobs that take less time.
2 Review the diagram and identify areas of greatest importance—such as professional development or revenue-generating tasks—where more time should be applied.
3 Identify your own motives, strengths, and passions—the things that inspire you to work hard or get you excited about your work.
4 Use these to create an “after diagram” with a new set of task blocks that align with these drives, and frame your roles in a way most meaningful to you.
Cut Down Roles
“When people have many different self-identities, they don’t seem to fare as well at work. When you have too many roles you can get stretched too thin and it’s hard to master them all. Whether self-esteem or depression or stress-related illnesses, when people have many different self-identities they tend to suffer because they are juggling too much and not sticking the landing on any of them. The main thing is to say ‘no’ and pare down.”
—Allen McConnell, University Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology, Miami University (Oxford, OH)
Long live the coffee break! Researchers at the University of Toronto found that frequent breaks improve creativity. John Trougakos, associate professor of organizational behavior and HR management who coauthored the study, pointed out that our brains have a limited amount of energy, requiring them to be frequently recharged. But the researchers emphasized that just taking a break is not the solution—it’s what you do with it. Specifically, to recover from work, you need to use your break to do activities that “stop the demands associated with work.” That means engaging in what they defined as “respite activities”—involving either low effort (napping, relaxing, or sitting quietly) or a preferred choice (reading a book, spending time with friends). But they distinguished these respites from “chores” like running errands or tidying a desk, which don’t allow you to fully recharge.
• Avoid filling your breaks with more work (even if it’s different from the work you are paid to do). Use your respite to fully recover and get your energy back for when you return to the desk.
. . . For 17 Minutes Off, 52 Minutes On
Time-tracking productivity app DeskTime isolated the top 10 percent of the most productive employees, analyzing their computer use over a workday. Those who did the most productive work took an average break of 17 minutes, and worked straight through for 52 minutes.
. . . Or for 5 Minutes Off, 25 Minutes On
An alternate strategy is the Pomodoro Technique, in which one breaks up the workday into 30-minute sections, working for 25 minutes (1 Pomodoro, so named because the technique’s inventor timed these sections on his tomato-shaped timer) at a time and breaking for 5.
Don’t Eat Lunch at Your Desk
Put down that sad desk salad! However long your break runs, the key is to make it a true break, getting out of the office and fully relaxing during the time off. So stay away from business lunches when at all possible.
Maybe it’s all those lawyer jokes, but those who practice law have been found to be particularly unhappy. Researchers point to three main causes of lawyer unhappiness. First, prudence is one of the main qualifications for lawyers, which can often translate into skepticism or pessimism. Second, the high pressure put on and low influence given to young associates are the sort of work conditions that result in low morale in other workplaces. Third, the work—at least in the United States—is often a zero-sum game where your win is someone else’s loss, creating a hypercompetitiveness that also drains one’s sense of workplace satisfaction.
A study by Johns Hopkins University found that lawyers were 3.6 times more likely than nonlawyers to suffer from depression, and other research connected the legal profession to higher levels of substance abuse.
. . . Unless You Take a Pay Cut
An exception: Lawyers in public service jobs. Public defenders, legal aid attorneys, and others in similarly low-paying but personally rewarding lines of work were most likely to report feeling happy in a survey of 6,200 lawyers. No correlation between happiness and high income or prestigious positions was found, and junior partners reported identical levels of well-being as senior associates who made 62 percent more than them.
CareerBliss analyzed tens of thousands of employees’ self-reports about their satisfaction on the job, evaluating a huge list of different job titles, and determined these were the ten happiest of 2017:
1 Marketing specialist
2 Recruiter
3 Graduate teaching assistant
4 .NET developer
5 Director of marketing
6 Directional driller
7 QA analyst
8 Technical lead
9 Senior engineer
10 Network administrator
What Are the Unhappiest Jobs?
The same report determined these were the least happy jobs one could have:
1 Customer service representative
2 Retail cashier
3 Retail salesperson
4 Registered nurse
5 Sales account manager
6 General manager
7 Field service engineer
8 Data analyst
9 Project engineer
10 Administrative assistant
Listen to Your Teammates
“Teams that listen to each other are happier. Leaders can model good listening and keep interruptions to a minimum during discussions. Doing these small things creates a more inclusive culture that engenders a sense of being respected and belonging.”
—Kathryn Stanley, chair, Organizational and Leadership Psychology Department, William James College (Newton, MA)
Working Less Won’t Make You Happier
You’ve probably thought now and then that maybe the root of your frustration with work is that you are working too many hours. The Happiness Research Institute, based in Denmark, looked into this claim and found mixed results, at best. In its annual survey of almost 8,000 Danes, the organization found lower job satisfaction levels among those who worked fewer hours. The researchers suggested this may be due to the fact that the respondents actually want to work more hours, or that they work fewer hours because there is less to do and their job is less stimulating than something more demanding of their time.
Several studies of working people found that those who are employed for a full forty hours a week feel higher levels of satisfaction in their lives than those who work part-time. A reduction in hours is generally accompanied by a drop in happiness, while a shift from part-time to full-time employment increases happiness (though if you’re already working full-time, taking on an eighty-hour week will almost certainly not double your level of happiness). Even those out of work will find a greater sense of happiness by putting a full day’s work into finding a new job.
• If you find your workweek is dragging, it’s probably the job, rather than the schedule, that needs to change.
Don’t Retire Early
Retiring early may be the dream for many: Who wouldn’t want to cut out the nine-to-five existence by the age of fifty—or thirty? But before withdrawing from the working world to spend your days sipping piña coladas, consider that early retirement might not be great for your mind or happiness. Cross-sectional studies find workers who retire early to be less happy than those who stay in the workforce through age sixty-five.
Additional studies find a connection between retirement and memory—what a pair of economists call “mental retirement.” Drawing on memory-test data from the United States, England, and eleven European countries, they found that the earlier people retired, the more their cognitive abilities declined.
Though the research does not indicate the specific elements of work that might help maintain one’s mental sharpness, the study’s coauthor, Robert J. Willis, told The New York Times that even if the work itself is not stimulating, “There is evidence that social skills and personality skills—getting up in the morning, dealing with people, knowing the value of being prompt and trustworthy—are also important.”
Meditate
One of the most consistent findings of positive psychologists has been the benefits of meditation on one’s ability to focus and produce good work. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that meditation can quiet fear and anxiety throughout the day. A study at Leiden University in the Netherlands showed that subjects who practiced “open-monitoring meditation” came up with a wider range of ideas and put themselves in a more creative state of mind.
• Set aside a few minutes each day to meditate. While researchers suggest a twenty-minute meditation session is ideal, even just taking five minutes to stop and focus on breathing has been found to make a significant impact on your ability to work.
Take Up Yoga
Alternatively, if your job is stressing you out, break out that downward-facing dog. A study of workers in the UK found that those who practiced weekly fifty-minute sessions of yoga for eight weeks reported lower stress levels and less back pain than those who did not do yoga.