Happiness at work

Everyone wants to be happy.

Who wouldn’t?

Feeling good, laughing more, having fun, seeing the glass half full…certainly beats the flip side.

But happiness at work? For many of us, that concept’s just a little far-fetched.

The Work of Shawn Achor on Happiness at Work

Shawn Achor is a Harvard-educated researcher, author and public speaker known for his advocacy of positive psychology and how being happy at work leads to measurable improvements in business performance.

Shawn contests the traditional formula of “if you work harder, you’ll be more successful and if you’re more successful, you’ll be happier”, is flawed.

This pathway, widely taught and accepted even at the most prestigious business schools, is, according to Shawn, broken and backward.

He argues that happiness at work fuels success; not the other way around. If you can find a way to get your brain to become positive, your success rate will increase.

As a result, work will become more productive, enjoyable and rewarding.

Much of Shawn’s work focuses on how our brains are hardwired and how we can maximise our potential to increase our happiness and performance.

Unlike a lot of academic theory, his concepts are logical, backed up by numbers and don’t require investing a bucketload of money in traditional workplace happiness infrastructure like foosball tables, indoor rainforest gardens and quinoa kale smoothies.

There are a number of Shawn’s presentations available on YouTube.

One titled “The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance” provides a good starting point and I’d encourage you to invest 12 minutes of your day to check this out.

In the interests of saving a little time so you get a head start in rejigging your happiness at work formula, why not check out the two-minute version below: