The beatings (unemployability, no investment for entrepreneurs who aren't 'upbeat') will continue until morale improves.
Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
131–140 of 477 posts
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#132Was anyone in a position when they had everything: good job, good wife, good health and still were deeply unhappy, without purpose? What did you do to solve it?
um....depression? or pre marriage ptsd? you should have a talk with my ex ..
Not a depression, just an absence of a deeper meaning for life, general „drive“ for it
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#133Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#134> 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…
Their entire argument for this also applying outside the military domain seems to be that the military is a very large employer…
That seemed a bit shaky to me as well. You could just as well argue that people who are happy to go to war end up earning more medals. Happiness inside of the military is not the same as happiness in the workplace in general.
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#135Most 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…
Really interesting you say that.
In Melbourne, where I am (~10% church attendance rates, most left-wing/liberal city in Australia), I see the same thing from liberal atheists.
As soon as these arbiters of morality see a friend or colleague in need, they have nothing but platitudes about mental health or mindfulness followed by a rapidly-constructed mental wall.
It wasn't until two coworkers from Brisbane experienced this, one of whom was very open about how her experience her differed to tough times back home, that I realised how fucked up it all is.
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#136I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…
That sounds like someone that has confidence and curiosity.
In Dutch we have a word "relativeren" which I think loosely translates to "being able to put things in perspective". I think that is a really important super power. It has helped me immensely whenever things got bad, or I got into a depressing mood.
I'm not sure how you can "grow" these attributes, but I'm willing to say that travelling, seeing the world, discovering other people, other cultures, other habits probably contributes a great deal. Having open-minded parents and an education that doesn't stigmatise helps a lot too.
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#137Most posters on Hacker News doesn't strike me as particularly happy, yet I know they are among the most brilliant hackers in the world.
> Retain employees who are happy. The pandemic has reminded us of some tough realities, namely that organizations can contract in turbulent times just as fast as they expand when the economy is booming.
In other words, fire those that are unhappy. The bottom line is more important. Compassion is apparently not a useful trait among business executives. People say there is a stigma around depression. I wonder why...
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#138> 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…
This is literally just emotional labor: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5ea9f140-f722-4214-bb...
> we conservatively advocate using measures of happiness and optimism as discriminators
So the job goes to the people who, in the eyes of the interviewer, can best fake happiness. The more desperate you are for the job for economic reasons, the more pressure on you to fake it convincingly. Big bright but not desperate smile. Right set of inspirational stories. No complaints or demands.
From article:
>> Here are three examples of simple exercises, each backed by rigorous evidence of effectiveness. In the first, the Gratitude Visit, participants prepare and present a 300-word testimony of gratitude to someone who changed their life for the better. In the second, Three Good Things, participants write down three things that went well each day and what caused those things to go well, for one week. The third, Using Signature Strengths in a New Way, calls on participants to complete an online strengths survey and then use one of their top strengths in a new way each day for at least a week
I don't know whether it's because I'm not American or just really cynical, but I absolutely hate this kind of mandatory public performance of fake emotions. It's also more work for the employees to do; presumably this essay-writing is on the clock, in addition to other duties? I wonder if there will be an essay mill you can go to for the right set of inspirational stories to feed to your manager?
Note that none of this stuff ever touches real concerns. Are the employees unhappy about the process? The breakroom snacks? The pay and pensions? Casualisation? Sexual harassment? (Obviously if someone gets groped at work, their happiness factor will go down, and that can be used against them in performance improvement)
All of this has already been seen with the Bradford factor, a means of measuring employee sickness and targeting them for firing.
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#139I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…
> The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. I would add: and the ability to share that enthusiasm with others. I consider myself a very average person, but from time to time I do experience what I have highlighted from your paragraph. Most often than not, I keep that enthusiasm to myself. I don't have the ability to share it with others, and when I try, it's not like you have described it…
Yes. It's a performance; you can never quite be sure of their real emotional state, but they're doing a great job of giving entertainment to people. Usually a combination of being naturally good at it and being rewarded for this kind of performance as kids. It can get discouraged in a lot of people for being "attention seeking".
Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Really interesting you say that. In Melbourne, where I am (~10% church attendance rates, most left-wing/liberal city in Australia), I see the same thing from liberal atheists. As soon as these arbiters of morality see a friend or colleague in need, they have nothing but platitudes about mental health or mindfulness followed by a rapidly-constructed mental wall. It wasn't until two coworkers from Brisbane experienced…
Well I guess I should apologize on behalf of Liberals, Atheists, and Christians at least: I’ve been some version of all of those things if we go back enough decades.
Few of even my critics would call me a fair-weather friend. And I’ve grown ever-more impatient with fair-weather friends. There’s another word for that, but everyone knows it and so I do to spend it.
Real Christianity, in my opinion, is a lot like FDR-liberalism: compassion, love, and second chances.
I don’t know what that philosophy is even called these days. I want to join that movement.