Live data from Hacker News

Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

sloanreview.mit.edu

201–210 of 477 posts

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so what do I win if I disprove your 'I see'?

Brownie points, of course. Were you happier when you were homeless and needed to rely on other people's pity to survive than when you could buy your own food due to your job? I would find it rather surprising if you were. I supposed it could be that you're from one of these places where workers' rights aren't really a thing or that you can survive on your own without monies, however.

I have certainly been happier in situations of no work than in some situations of work and happier in some conditions of being homeless than in some having a home, but then happiness is a relative thing and I have never had what one generally refers to as a happy life. It is true that having a home was in itself not the cause of my unhappiness, whereas being homeless was the exact cause.

As far as being unhappy when poor, when I spent my days in the library reading and writing poetry, but did not have any money and would dumpster dive later to get food and would have to walk through the cold Salt Lake City streets in winter to find an apartment building I could sneak into the storage area of and sleep for the night I was unhappy when I was hungry, and I was unhappy when I was very cold, so for perhaps 2 hours a day, but when I was working a job I was miserable at but could not quit for various reasons I was unhappy for at least 8 hours a day, and probably more than that as my unhappiness also affected my family after work, whereas starving and living on the street affected nobody but myself.

I hope my explanation on this matter meets with your moral approval.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#202

I 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…

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

I can confirm. Stepping off the treadmill - or just slowing it down - gives you so much more space to be curious.

It's not just a matter of precariousness. You just have a lot more time and energy for these things. You can always sleep a bit longer, or delay work to follow an impulse with your full energy. There's always time for projects, even if they're not part of some hustle. It's an incredible privilege.

Forget about the American dream. The Victorian dream is where it's at. I want to spend my days being a gentleman scientist and a student of the arts. I want my best work to follow my morning tea in the garden, and I want to join a Society of Likeminded Nerds to talk about it.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good luck getting a job, unhappy people… Since employment is one of the main sources of unhappiness I assume this will create an oscillating state of happy unemployed - unhappy employed people perpectually in and out of jobs as their happiness dips below a certain threshold.

“I was looking for a job, and then I found a job And heaven knows I'm miserable now“

right, it does seem people complain about employment a lot.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#204

I 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, di…

Relativise is also an English word, although I'm not sure if people use it a lot.

I don't think that travelling necessarily helps. Only having the time and resources to travel also means you probably have some leeway to pursue hobbies and follow your curiosity.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#205
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you're entitled to your own opinion, I can safely say this study matches my own observations 100%. Having hired and led over a hundred engineers, I wasn't surprised of the magnitude of this finding at all. Yes, happy people get easily worn down in bureaucratical organizations. Some of them adapt and get cynical. Some of them quit and join organizations where they can be happy and effective. It's the best part o…

I've worked for a couple of businesses where bullying, spitefulness and a generally unpleasant atmosphere were the norm and where it was clear from the outset that no one was happy and happiness in others was not to be tolerated. I would describe myself as 'optimistic' rather than 'happy' but, in both cases, these businesses sucked the life out of me and the happiest days were when I left. Both times to my initial fi…

> happiness in others was not to be tolerated

This is something that worries me on occasion. Certainly very few would intentionally do it, but I fear there could be some alligator-brain crab bucket game going on in the subconscious where some team members will be inclined to "even out" any happiness deltas across the team.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#206

> 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… However, is not the military a vastly different environment from normal civilian workplaces?

It’s not vastly different from other professions except software. Source: I have been in the U.S. Army for 25 years and I have been a corporate software developer for 16 years.

The only valid question is not what makes the military unique but instead what makes software unique. The answer: a complete absence of professionalism. I wrote about this here:

https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/Leadership_...

Edit: corrected the hyperlink.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

I think that's the best argument for UBI. If people aren't constantly worried about being homeless and not having food, they are happier, healthier, more productive and live more fulfilling lives.

No, that's an argument for a proper social safety net, as implemented in many European countries. Most fulltime jobs pay better than a UBI ever could, so if you have a job,

a) either your standard of living is so high that a change to UBI-only would be very disruptive and you'd still be worried about losing your job,

b) or your standard of living is so low that you'd quickly accumulate enough of a financial buffer that you wouldn't have to worry about losing your job.

Therefore, a UBI wouldn't be better than a social safety net in this regard. In both cases you wouldn't have to worry about starving, but you'd still have to worry about losing your income.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#208

> 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…

Soon to be launched on leet code : Coaching sessions on how to convey (fake) happiness effectively. How do the authors separate out the causation part? May be the top performers are happy because they are performing well? Will they retain their happiness if lets say, they are thrown in something with stack ranking like Amazon. How about something like on calls? How happy are they going to be if their nights are conti…

Followed by "how to fool the happiness detector built into your cubicle."

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#209

I 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…

Cannot really confirm this from my experience. Have worked with a lot of very unhappy geniuses. Perhaps not really unhappy, but not particularly happy either. But performance can mean something different.

I think the study source is questionable as well. Perhaps the soldiers were happier because they got acknowledgement for their work?

Most intellectuals don't get noticed because they are positively beaming, even if that is a likable truth for management... Or is it just to get management to make people happier?

That said, people that are always happy are often not the brightest in my experience. But maybe they do perform well.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#210
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you choose whether to be happy. In fact, it is the ONLY thing you have control over. But it's the key to everything. It's the one choice you have to make in every living moment. Keep making this right choice, and life is a song. Choose to look the wrong way and life becomes hard work. There is nothing more to it. This is all anyone ever needs to know about life.

Sure, it's a choice in the same way that the outcome of an if-branch is a "choice". You have control over it in the same way a computer program has control over its own output. Which is to say: no actual control at all. Free will/choice isn't a coherent concept philosophically and I find it almost impossible to take anyone seriously when they propose "just change your mind" as a solution to anything. I am already str…

Not sure where you are going with the free will thing unless you are going for the genetics answer to happiness which I find lacking.

Are some people happy? Yes. Are there people who were not happy who now are? Yes. How? Lots and lots of anecdotes are around changing how they approached life, not how they changed their genetics.

Looking at your linked article, they are going off of a wellness questionnaire first developed 40 years ago. Looking at the broad areas of questions, I feel they also miss what it means to be happy in many cases.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidimensional_Personality...

Some questions are orthogonal to happiness include living interesting, exciting lives; enjoying being noticed, being the center of attention; being perfectionistic; being victims of false and nasty rumors; having been betrayed and deceived; enjoying scenes of violence (fights, violent movies); liking to plan activities in detail; and more.

Post reply on HN