Happiness first and then success?
Go deep with the happiness playlist
Emma Seppala is a happiness expert. She’s spent her life studying how we can be happier in life and has all the evidence to prove it. Emma gives a life affirming reminder that happiness at work isn’t a luxury, it’s a prerequisite for success and creativity. Emma’s book The Happiness Track is superb.
Transcript
Bruce Daisley (00:01.55)
This is Eat Sleep Work Repeat, a weekly podcast on happiness and work culture.
Hello everyone, this is Bruce Daisley, this is Eat Sleep Work Repeat. It’s basically a podcast about improving work, making better work cultures. I’ve been wondering over the last few weeks what people’s expectations of a podcast about that are. Because over the next few episodes we’re going to be delving into science and when we’ve logged up some science, data and evidence, I’ll be looking at ways to improve your work and your company. What you can do to make your day-to-day job better. But if you want to skip ahead,
I’ve tweeted the start of that. So if you go to our Twitter account, which is if you search for Eat Sleep Work Repeat, there you’ll find a pinned tweet with the new work manifesto. It’s actually in two threaded tweets. You’ll also find it on our website, which is eatsleepworkrepeat.fm. So if you are interested in improving your day-to-day work, you can find that already. If you’re listening on the swishly improved new Apple podcast app, you can tap on Show More Episodes and leave a star rating. Now I said last week, I said that last week and by God did people take advantage. I got my first one star rating, fair few twos. Look, I’m not being ungrateful but I did say rate me like it’s the Uber for the ears. Let me tell you, I’d not expect a one in an Uber unless there’d been a toilet incident. My Uber is 4.6 and my Apple Podcast is 4.5. Now the 4.6 I completely own.
If you met me, honestly, I’m broadly a 4.7 in life, I think. And my mistake is I let my girlfriend play music through the driver’s aux cable. She’s a 4.4 and honestly, that is genuinely deserved. Anyway, all ratings on Apple podcasts are appreciated. And I think the influx of ratings is what saw the show go to the number one business podcast on Apple for the last two weeks. How about that? Unbelievable. Hasn’t changed me. I still accept all random LinkedIns.
And if you do connect with me on LinkedIn, don’t just connect, say hello. I mean, my LinkedIn says I’ll connect with anyone as long as you don’t ask a favour. And you can ask a favour, but please don’t try and sell to me because I’m not one of those people who can’t say no. I mean, by God, anyone who knows me will tell you that. But it’s often the way I say no that causes the problems. Anyway, on with the show. I’ve really enjoyed revisiting this week’s episode. I interviewed Emma Seppala during the summer.
and I found Emma, I discovered her work, because I kept seeing her name on articles that I liked on the Harvard Business Review. That sounds a bit ostentatious. I’m not often knocking around on the HBR, but I follow a few great culture people on Twitter, and they often send me in that direction. When you listen to Emma, there’s one thing that Emma says that directly contradicts someone from the previous episodes. The difference is that Emma has a PhD from Stanford University who’s just finished a secondment at Yale. Everything she says is based on evidence and data. The other guest was operating on hunch. So I’m not going to say who it was, not even to my LinkedIn buddies, but that’s why Emma’s optimism is so brilliantly infectious because she’s not making this up. This is research. The takeaway from her work is that happiness at work comes before success. She’s not only a total inspiration, but she connected me to several people that you’ll be hearing with in the next month or so.
Emma’s book is The Happiness Track. You can find a link to buy it and the full transcript of this chat on the website. Here’s Emma.
Bruce Daisley (03:35.31)
Emma, thanks so much for joining me. In both the happiness track and your writings in the Harvard Business Review, the day you give a how about how things are going wrong at work is really compelling. Some of the things that really stood out for me, 58 % of Americans claim their stress is rising. Half of all workers say they’re exhausted at work and half of all employees feel unengaged. Everything feels far worse than maybe 20 years ago. I just wonder if you had a sense of why that was.
Emma Seppala
Well, there’s a couple of reasons we can surmise. One is that the speed of life is increasing every year according to some research studies, which is really fascinating, but I think also is something we’re experiencing. Technology is helping our lives, but it’s also making everything happen so much faster. means we’re always on demand. It means we’re always able to work. means the pressure and the expectations are getting higher and higher. And so as a consequence, we sometimes fail to unplug or know how to unplug or feel we don’t have permission to unplug. There’s a permeability between work and life where work flows into your personal life and there’s a sense of overwhelm. There’s no doubt about it. That’s certainly one of the reasons.
Bruce Daisley
really love the story that you gave about your internship in the French newspaper and you described the scene where upstairs everyone was sort of in these, I think I’ll get this right, in these sort of, there were these grumpy office workers frowning into computers. Downstairs were happy print workers, sort of happily getting along and enjoying work. And it was interesting that because one of the other things you say is that happiness comes before success, not after it. I if you could give us a sense of why you think that’s the case.
Emma Seppala
Well, we have a misconception that in order to be successful, we need to sacrifice or compromise our happiness. That’s sort of something that’s in our general consciousness. And so see people burning themselves into the ground with this idea of, I’ll retire when I’m X. But there’s a sense of right now I’ve got to pay the price. And I think that that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing such high stress and burnout levels as well. And that’s also actually coupled with a cultural phenomenon that both the US and other countries that are influenced by the Protestant work ethic like the UK and also a lot of the Scandinavian countries, Northern European countries, Germany and so forth are influenced by this Protestant work ethic which at its origin had the idea that you have to prove your self-worth in the eyes of God through your work, through your life’s work as opposed to salvation-based religions which are like Catholicism which is France, Spain and Italy where you also see a very different Attitude towards work. There’s more of an emphasis on also pleasure on life because there’s a sense of you know, They’re already saved so you essentially at its origin. You didn’t have to prove yourself now the Protestant work I think obviously led to a lot of industriousness But we also have gotten to the point where we don’t know how to stop and and we’re seeing people really really burning out And so when I was working in this newspaper this which was actually an in an American international newspaper in Paris
Upstairs were the American editors working really hard, stressed, sweating over their computers, very silent, quiet, it was just sort of an atmosphere, tense atmosphere. And downstairs were the print people, which was the French, you know, blue collar workers. They’re all working toward the same deadline. Everyone’s working toward the same deadline of like 4 a.m. or whatever. Everyone’s got to get the same quality paper out. And yet there’s a very different attitude. Now, of course, you could say some of this has to do with culture and other things have to you know, and it’s a blue collar, white collar, so forth. But there’s also something fundamentally different. And then we know from research that if you are happier, if you’ve taken care of yourself, if you’re joyful, you’re actually going to be more productive, more focused, more charismatic. You’re going to be more effective and much more creative and innovative. We know that from research. And so I wrote the happiness track with this idea that, you know, just to show the data, look, look at how we’re living and look at how we should live in order to to perform at our best. actually taking care of ourselves and our well-being is essential to performing at our best. So the two don’t have to be, you know, one or the other. It should and could and should be both.
Bruce Daisley (07:39.264)
One thing you say is you talk about how we celebrate the culture of overwork, how we celebrate the culture of stress. You know, and actually I was thinking about that. Even the way we greet each other, people say, how are you? The ants are busy. And we’re sort reveling in that busyness, don’t we? And you gave the example of the Lloyds Bank CEO, sort of coming in with this avowed determination to be ceaseless in his work and save the company and how that played out. Can you talk us through that story?
Emma Seppala
Yes, absolutely. And he’s very known, you know, superstar in the field of thinking. And in fact, he’s done great things for Lloyd’s Bank. At the time when he came on board, and there were so many expectations of him, and he was so driven and hardworking and committed, he didn’t sleep for a period of, I believe, seven days, if I recall correctly, which led him to actually have to take an extended leave of absence because he burned himself out. Now, what he did is an extreme example of what we do every day.
We buy into this idea that in order to perform, we need to be stressed, that you can’t have success without stress. We buy into that idea that we have to tap into that fight or flight response, that stress response in order to get motivated, to get through a deadline, to push, push, push. So you see people downing so much coffee every day and waiting till the last minute to get things done, over scheduling themselves with this idea of, when I’m stressed, that’s when I get things done. But the truth is that what you’re doing in that process is you are burning out your body, your physiology, but also
your cognitive skills, memory and attention. So this CEO of Lloyds Bank was one extreme example, but we’re doing this every day. For example, do you come home at five, six PM at night from work and feel exhausted, burned out? Most people do. Most of us haven’t been toiling in construction work or in, we’re not farmers toiling in the field, then we would be legitimately physically tired. But for those of us who are office workers, there’s no reason that we should be so exhausted by that time.
other than we’re tapping into our fight or flight, our body thinks it’s in a life or death situation all the time. That is a sure fire recipe for burnout. And yet everyone buys into it. So it’s like normal to be on adrenaline all the time. And yet if you look at the research, if you’re calmer, your attention is wider, you remember things better and you’re more creative. So all the things that we need and we’re more emotionally intelligent.
And we make better decisions. When you’re stressed, you probably won’t even notice how someone else is doing or whether your communication is coming across well or not. So we need those skills of observation. We need of self-awareness that can only come from a calmer state of mind.
Bruce
Your book actually gives a lot of practical tips of how to achieve calmness and I know you’re a big yoga practitioner and you’ve got sort of all those things. Tell me, you mentioned burnout there and that for me has got a fascination for me because you give a of a list of a depressing list of stats about half of all doctors are burnt out, half of all teachers are burnt out. The thing I’m really interested in is can you come back from burnout? Can people take restorative action to try and get their mojo back?
Emma Seppala
Absolutely. mean, one of the things is really learned to tap into the opposite of fight or flight, which is your rest and digest. So going from the sympathetic activation of your nervous system to the parasympathetic. If you look at an animal in the wild, they’ll get chased by a predator and then boom, the predator is gone. They’re right back to grazing as if nothing happened. What would happen to us? We’d be freaking out for the rest of our lives that that predator is coming back to get us and our kids, you know? And so the animals and kids too, you’ll see this, have this ability to quickly come back to a state of calm.
which the body needs in order to restore itself and to be resilient. But we, if we’re always tapping into our stress response, whether it’s through caffeine or through the speed at which we choose to live our lives, we’re, our body literally is, is no longer able to go back to that parasympathetic nervous system. So many people have sleep problems. So, you know, people will be jacking up on caffeine in the morning and then in the evening they’ll be drinking alcohol or taking sleep meds in order to rest.
What are we doing? What are we doing with our nervous system, which is already so finely attuned, so perfectly put together so that we can come back to a state of calm and rest. We just need to tap into it. So I do think you can come back from burnout and you just need to learn how to tap back into that. And one of the things I talk about in the book a lot is something very easy you can do is use your breathing, which I’ve successfully worked with some of the most stressed individuals in the United States, which are veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with trauma. And it works for them. So it could certainly work for us.
Bruce Daisley (12:00.76)
my notes, as I was reading through your book, I wrote down that you’re a champion for idleness. I think that’s probably an unfair label. One of the things that you really reveled in though, is you say that, you know, take time to sort of have quiet. You say that if you’re in the car, turn the radio off. Sometimes if you’re doing nothing, sort of sit in silence and enjoy it. One of reasons you give is, it’s not necessarily that lounging and relaxing and solitude are more enjoyable in themselves, although they can be, because we get more ideas then. get our best ideas when we’re sort of in these moments of quiet. Could you explain that?
Emma Seppala
Yes. So our brain, when we are doing nothing or relaxing or daydreaming, our brain is actually an active problem solving mode. And we’ve all experienced this. You’re working on a problem, whether it’s personal or professional, you don’t know what to do about it. You’re in the shower and all of a sudden, boom, an idea comes because your mind at that moment is not focused, not stressed, not trying desperately to find a solution. The solutions of creativity, those moments come when we’re at rest and we know this, you know, artists and, and, and scientists who have had major findings have really all tapped into this. It’s something, that’s just the way it is. But it’s very interesting because we’re in a time and age where people don’t feel comfortable being idle anymore. If you put people in a room and tell them just sit there and do nothing or you can give yourself electric shocks over there, and by the way you previously rated these as highly aversive, what do people do? They give themselves electric shocks. mean is it any surprise that people are addicted to their mobile phone and just cannot be alone doing nothing and yet it’s in those moments you’re going to have your greatest creativity. Look at your kids. Look at how creative they are. They are like that all the time because they’re able to be present. They’re able to daydream so forth.
Bruce Daisley (13:42.562)
Yeah, I think that championing of daydreaming and reminding us that sometimes not having something to do is healthy. Like you say, we’re all so bewitched with our phones and so consumed with the idea of being busy that the sense of just sitting doing nothing, reflecting, looking out the windows has disappeared. There was one thing that really stopped me in my tracks actually when I was reading through your stuff and you showed research that said that if people laugh at work, they show greater willingness to cooperate. And I discussed it on a previous episode how one person has observed in their time working
The workplace chat disappeared and the advent of headphones at work and people trying to escape distraction, which open plan offices bring. I wondered, yeah, gosh, are we losing workplace laughter? And also, the other thing that you said that I thought was so powerful, you said that loneliness at work had gone up. People are feeling more lonely as a consequence of stress. I was interested in how you felt we could cultivate laughter at work. It’s just so good to read someone talk about that as a positive thing.
Emma Seppala
Yeah, so we know that after food and shelter, our greatest need is in life is for social connection. It predicts our mental health and our physical health. It even predicts our longevity. We are we’re mammals. We’re meant to be together. We’re meant to connect in positive ways. That is fundamentally nurturing to us. And yet in this time and age of high stress, stress we know also can make us very self-focused, focused on ourselves. So we’re less able to connect. And if everyone is stressed and in their own bubble, nobody’s connecting, there is of course loneliness.
And we’re not being nurtured by that sense of belonging that’s very much in need that we have. know, laughter, humor is a great way to create that. Any way that you can connect. Another way is empathy and altruism, compassion, kindness. Look at the people you’re working with. How are they doing? Ask about their kids. If they come in looking stressed, rather than just jumping in right into work just saying, are you okay? What’s wrong? What’s going on? Let me know.
supporting people, that also has been shown to be tremendously beneficial, not just for the workplace culture, but for both people involved benefit. It’s a way of connecting. There are many ways of forming human bonds, but laughter is certainly one and the other is compassion, empathy, asking someone how they are rather than just acting with them as we sometimes do. Workplace is a place of transaction, but it is and it’s a place of interaction first and foremost. And so it might need, you know, with technology getting in the way, might need more effort to get out and go out of your way to create those bonds, those relationships that everyone will, everyone will benefit.
Bruce Daisley
what you would do then. So if you’ve got someone who’s running a workplace, some of the things that I’ve been most inspired by are the sort of simple, heuristic changes Tony Swartz talks about, take back your lunch. Really simple things about personal renewal and freshness that anyone can do. And so I’m wondering on those things, things like empathy and connecting with other individuals, are there simple hacks that people could do? Are there simple actions that any of us could do? Or are there things that organisations could espouse?
Emma Seppala
for one, really think leadership has to the tone. For example, there’s one company in the Bay Area where there’s just one of the policies is if anybody in the company has some severe news of death in the family or some illness that’s the CEO gets informed within 15 minutes. He calls that person on their cell phone. This is a major company with hundreds and hundreds of people. And this is just a policy. That’s a policy of empathy right there. And it’s setting the tone for everybody else, for all the other managers and so forth.
Now, if you’re not in a leadership position, but you want to create that environment, you can do so in your team. You can do so on your floor through your interactions. Find out everybody’s name, find out everybody’s family situation, ask about their children. If you look at, we’re wired to connect with each other. You can see in someone else’s face if they’re not doing well. It is something we all have the ability to do. It’s the skill for empathy is something that’s built into our physiology. If you see someone who’s cringing, who looks stressed, who looks tired, you yourself, are feeling that way for a microsecond. You’re reading them. This is something that’s automatic and that we all do. With that ability, you can reach out to people and say, hey, how are you? What’s going on? You seem little tired. Can I take something off your plate today? Reaching out.
Bruce Daisley (17:41.706)
The interesting thing is we find ourselves falling into the trap of thinking empathy and performance are like these opposites. You trade one for another. In fact, actually I chatted to Patti McCord who helped write the Netflix culture document and I made the point of saying that one of the things that correlates with happiness at work is having a friend at work and I know you’ve written on that very subject. I don’t think I’d be paraphrasing her too much but she said that Netflix don’t care about friends at work. Largely because I think she was trying to say that we’re a performance organisation. And what you’re effectively saying in your work is they’re not opposites. You can have a performance organisation and people have friends at work. They’re sort of interrelated in an ecosystem.
They’re very important. If you want to have lower turnover, if you want to have a greater, a better workplace culture, if you want to have a better performance, greater customer service and more loyalty, which at the end of the day is the most important thing. One turnover of one employee costs you 30 % of that person’s yearly salary. That’s huge. and if you want that loyalty, you want to have human values in your workplace. And research is showing that now and people don’t know they’re still thinking about the old carrot and stick approach that only works so far. For example, loyalty, right?
If people are only loyal to a paycheck, then the guy next door can hire them. That’s not loyalty. Loyalty is when you’re devoted to a person because you have a human connection to them. They have been kind to you. They have supported you. They have wanted to see you grow. They have been there for you. Your colleagues have been there for you. They feel like a family. That is true loyalty. That is true worker engagement. And that’s something that research is now showing, but that people still don’t know about. And they’re still buy into this old model. But I tell you these empathic work. cultures are going to be taking over. Those companies are doing better. They are doing better.
Bruce Daisley (19:27.662)
I think you’re exactly right. What’s really pleased me is my experience has always been like you in that newspaper environment. Being around people laughing for me is like one of the biggest motivators of work. It’s always felt like an indulgence or something that came as a consequence of success. You had to earn laughter. And so what I’ve been really thrilled by and the sources and research in your book are like this treasure trove of delight. Because time and time again, you give evidence for all these things that… actually are really enjoyable for work. I love the work of Barbara Fredrickson and time and time again you sort of prove that these things lead to better results. But when you look at some of the big cultural stories of 2017, the business cultural stories, they don’t necessarily speak of empathy being the cultural norm, do they?
Emma Seppala
No, but we’re also seeing these high burn, this high burnout levels. We’re seeing huge healthcare costs from work-related stress. And so we’re going to have to face the truth. The thing is that this older model, I don’t want to stereotype, but it was sort of an older, more male establishment from the model of, that didn’t really value softer skills, is going to be uprooted and bringing in a workplace culture that is puppy that is fulfilled, where there’s a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, kindness, and a feeling of family really. Those companies are going to take over because those are going to have less turnover, they’re going to have greater loyalty, and they’re going to have much higher performing. fact, research shows it’s better for the bottom line. mean, one study I’m thinking of in particular was actually a healthcare organization where the culture was that of a loving, what do they call it, companionate love.
sort of like a family. The staff there just treated each other really well. And they saw that as a consequence, patients were less likely to return to the emergency room for the same illness or same condition. you’re actually seeing results with your customers, even if they’re not the ones you’re trying to necessarily directly impact, if that makes sense.
Bruce Daisley (21:31.042)
You gave a brilliant example of a study which said, if you take email out of people’s jobs, then the stress reduced and people felt more able to get on with work. And I thought, yeah, damn right, but how do you take the email out of people’s jobs? It’s sort of asking the impossible. Is there solution to this email problem we’ve got?
Emma Seppala
You know, I ask myself that every day as I face my inbox. We need to hack desperately. But certainly it’s often a waste of time. Something could have been resolved over a phone call. On the other hand, since we have to deal with it, then compartmentalizing it so it’s not interrupting your flow of work all day long is going to help you be much more productive. Because every time you’re interrupted, you’re set back a few steps. I think we’ve all experienced that. But certainly, I’m praying for a hack, honestly.
Unfortunately, all the things you hear about these productivity tools, they’re actually, things like Slack, they’re actually more interruptive and they’re more real-time. And I get it, Slack’s rapid and discursive, but they take advantage and they reward immediacy rather than reflection, don’t they?
This is also true. Exactly. And you’re probably better able to come up with a solution if you’re given some time to think than immediately put on the.
Emma Seppala
Absolutely. checked it. Absolutely. I checked Jason Fried, who runs a business called Basecamp, and he’s written a couple of books about changing work culture. And one of the things he says is he gives this statement, which I guess Cal Newport sort of reflects, saying 40 hours is enough if you focus your attention in the right places and you focus on 40 hours of work. 40 hours is more than enough to do your job. But we celebrate people who work hard. We celebrate people who work weekends. Work cultures often become polluted with weekend emails.
So it’s so rare to get someone to actually say 40 hours is enough.
Emma Seppala
No, it definitely is. And research shows that when you really unplug from work, when you’re not working, you come back more engaged. And we’re looking at these really low levels of engagement in workers. So tell them to take time off. Tell them to be off email in the evening, off email at night, off email on the weekends. Let them unplug. They’re going to come back more engaged and more creative, more innovative. That’s what we want. The number one trait that CEOs want in their incoming workforce is creativity.
What are we doing to people’s creativity? We’re facing a creativity crisis. We’re seeing that in the research. People’s creativity scores are dropping. So let’s stop interrupting and stressing people out.
That’s all I had to ask. I’m so immensely grateful. I loved your work. I sat on a flight reading the book and then all the footnotes. I’ve literally gone to Barbara Fredrickson’s studies. I’ve read all of that. First, your work was so brilliant for directing me there, but it’s also delightful because it’s back to you in that newspaper environment. You just want this to be a true version of what work is. You want happy people to be more productive. And the unfortunate thing is we’ve been taught along the way that no, no, no, no.
Emma Seppala (24:24.502)
And if you think about it, like a happier workplace means happier families. These people go home to their families. In what condition do they face their kids? know? And it’s just, it can permeate throughout society if this message is heard.
That’s it, I’ve always thought if you’re happy at work, the rest of your life is happy. So I’m so glad that you’ve sort of taken this effort to prove it and give research to make that case. Thank you so much.
Bruce Daisley (24:52.056)
Thank you for Emma. I’m totally in awe of the science that Emma’s put behind the art of improving happiness. Full stop, but mainly at work. Next week is one of my favourite interviews I’ve ever done. It’s with Professor Dan Cable at London Business School and he’s the author of forthcoming book that’s honestly blown me away. See you next time.
