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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

sloanreview.mit.edu

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#81

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

paganel wrote: post #54
MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Americans are more optimistic and thus are happier. Someone somewhere said it was America’s super power, that we believe things will always get better and it creates a self fulfilling prophecy.

Not sure about the happier part, I may be wrong as I've never been to the States but it looks like the meth/drugs epidemic is a major issue in much of the US. A happy populace wouldn't need to resort to drugs.

>A happy populace wouldn't need to resort to drugs

How about instead of blaming the population, we pin the opioid addiction to big pharma and their illegal practices of lobbying and bribing their way into doctors prescribing opioids for toothaches and headaches. See Purdue.

Also, Finland is constantly rated as the happiest country in the world yet suicide rates are relatively high and alcohol abuse is rampant, so maybe that's not how happiness works.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#82

Post by vletal »

coldtea wrote: post #43
foo_barrio wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chicken/egg question always irks me. Eggs came first. Eggs have existed far longer than chickens (eg dinosaur eggs). Whatever the first thing we could possibly call a chicken came from an egg.

> Eggs have existed far longer than chickens (eg dinosaur eggs) Which is neither here, nor there, and has little to do with the question, which is based on the paradox that you need a chicken egg to produce a chicken, and a chicken to produce a chicken egg. It's not about whether some other random eggs existed before, but about when the cycle of chicken and chicken egg came to be, and how the vicious circle was resol…

There is a process called evolution going on. It's gradual and at some point there was a first bird which had the right gene combination for us to call it a chicken. It's parents did not have this specific traits and hence it's the egg which came first. Not some random "eggs".

We should come up with a better alternative paradoxes ...

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#83

Post by agumonkey »

cube00 wrote: post #6

> While many — if not most — of us are motivated by genuine caring for the people who power our organizations, we also intuitively know that employee happiness should boost job performance. I have a hard time believing that "many — if not most" people in management are actually motivated by this.

There's an added layer of subtlety IMO.

Like most people we do care, and managers may in general care too, but on the field things become murky and doubt / mixed signals / ambiguity creates more work than people will accept to really care.

It needs to exist in the team spirit already otherwise the will just dries up.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#84

Post by vatican_banker »

robertlagrant wrote: post #44

This paper does seem a little dodgy in its assumptions. We shouldn't dismiss military-based studies? Okay, (ish), but then the study doesn't measure happiness vs performance, it measures "how do you rate yourself" vs "the army's selection process for awarding medals". Given medals at least partly exist to reward extremely optimistic behaviour at the expense of personal safety, shall we say, having an optimistic outlo…

> the study doesn't measure happiness vs performance, it measures "how do you rate yourself" vs "the army's selection process for awarding medals".

The author explains that happiness is subjective:

> The behavioral science literature often refers to happiness as subjective well-being because the meaning of happiness varies in different contexts

...and then proceeds to delineate how psychology defines happiness:

1. a person’s own assessment of their satisfaction with life;

2. how much positive emotion [...] they experience;

3. and how little negative emotion [...] they experience

So yeah, self-rating is an important factor to measuring happiness.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#85

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

NalNezumi wrote: post #33

>You might dismiss these results if you believe that military data somehow doesn’t apply to the business world, but you would be wrong to do so. After all, the U.S. Department of Defense is the single largest employer in the world, dwarfing Walmart by nearly 1 million employees I don't think anyone dismiss the data taken only from the military because of their workforce size & variety of positions (as indicated later…

The DoD's culture is indeed unique. There aren't many corporations where you're enlisted for a set duration, have to go through a very unpleasant Basic Training Bootcamp, and aren't allowed off the premises without permission.

And that's before you get to the sharp end, which is about killing people.

It's certainly going to take a certain kind of personality to be happy in that kind of setting.

Whether you can generalise that to corporate life in general and software development in particularly is very, very debatable.

Of course this is a popular trope with a certain kind of manager - business as sport, business as military command, and so on.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#86

Post by randomsearch »

Happiness is a temporary feeling caused by a gratifying transition between two states. By that definition, no-one can be happy much of the time. This article is silly.

Aim for contentedness and a meaningful life instead. Being content reduces the desire for state change, a major source of unhappiness, and having meaning and purpose in your life will give you a reason to endure the trials of life.

A content person with purpose will have many moments of unhappiness, but they will find such periods easier to cope with.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#87

Post by Cthulhu_ »

benreesman wrote: post #73
ThinkBeat wrote: post #36

Most people, esp. in the US especially and in Western Europe in general fake happiness. esp in public. With true friends less. US: I lost my job. I am so happy. It was time for a change, and I know there are so many better opportunities out there. Russia: I was fired from my job. It sucks. How am I to find a new job in this economy? What am I to do? Followed by vodka with friends. (Stereotypes that may or may not be…

I’m surrounded by a certain type of Christian that I’ve taken to calling an “Ayn Rand Christian”. The MO is: “New Testament for me, Old Testament for thee”. IMHO when someone needs something concrete from you, and quotes one verse from the 33, but when you’re in trouble they’re happy to “pray for you” if you’re lucky, if not break out the weak faith routine you alluded to, what you’re really dealing with is the same…

There's a lot of cherry picking and hypocrisy in organized religion, even with Jesus himself making a tl;dr of the bible by going "love thy neighbour".

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#88

Post by [deleted] »

benreesman wrote: post #73
ThinkBeat wrote: post #36

Most people, esp. in the US especially and in Western Europe in general fake happiness. esp in public. With true friends less. US: I lost my job. I am so happy. It was time for a change, and I know there are so many better opportunities out there. Russia: I was fired from my job. It sucks. How am I to find a new job in this economy? What am I to do? Followed by vodka with friends. (Stereotypes that may or may not be…

I’m surrounded by a certain type of Christian that I’ve taken to calling an “Ayn Rand Christian”. The MO is: “New Testament for me, Old Testament for thee”. IMHO when someone needs something concrete from you, and quotes one verse from the 33, but when you’re in trouble they’re happy to “pray for you” if you’re lucky, if not break out the weak faith routine you alluded to, what you’re really dealing with is the same…

[deleted]

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#89

Post by hathym »

montebicyclelo wrote: post #60

> we suggest that leaders follow the science and take a structured approach to hiring for, promoting, and developing employee happiness > Measure happiness in both employees and job candidates. > we conservatively advocate using measures of happiness and optimism as discriminators, or tiebreakers, because the risks are low and the benefits could be important. Good luck getting a job, unhappy people… I don’t think the…

even if they recruit only happe people, what guarantee they will stay happy? should they fire them once they are not?

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#90

Post by andrelaszlo »

benreesman wrote: post #73
ThinkBeat wrote: post #36

Most people, esp. in the US especially and in Western Europe in general fake happiness. esp in public. With true friends less. US: I lost my job. I am so happy. It was time for a change, and I know there are so many better opportunities out there. Russia: I was fired from my job. It sucks. How am I to find a new job in this economy? What am I to do? Followed by vodka with friends. (Stereotypes that may or may not be…

I’m surrounded by a certain type of Christian that I’ve taken to calling an “Ayn Rand Christian”. The MO is: “New Testament for me, Old Testament for thee”. IMHO when someone needs something concrete from you, and quotes one verse from the 33, but when you’re in trouble they’re happy to “pray for you” if you’re lucky, if not break out the weak faith routine you alluded to, what you’re really dealing with is the same…

I'm curious about Christianity, what does 33/66 mean specifically?
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