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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

sloanreview.mit.edu

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#211

Post by nicbou »

hyperman1 wrote: post #128

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…

How can one be more like that person? Is it something inate, or something you develop?

Some people here suggest that privilege helps and I agree, but is there something else? Is there a way to develop this trait?

I think that the 99% Impossible podcast helped me look closer at certain things. I could also name a few YouTube channels. I certainly got a lot about film and literature from dating an art student.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#212

Post by darkerside »

hyperman1 wrote: post #128

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…

Humbled is the word you are looking for

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#214

Post by 0F »

Reading these comments is forehead slap inducing. People think that just because something is mental that it has to do with your mindset, your parents, your this your that.

When a dude can run faster than other people, it’s written off as genetics. When someone is resilient to depression, it’s anything other than genetics. Both cases are the same: it’s just biological.

I’ve been suffering super hard with depression recently and it’s made something clear to me: your mindset is bullshit. It might tip things one way or another but the actual mechanisms of depression will change your life. Everyone will be super humbled when we figure out how to turn off depression, and everyone gets it and everyone experienced on average a 50% boost to their intelligence and productivity. They will be humbled because they will realize that all of that relative suffering was totally pointless and for no other reason than a quirk of evolution. And that some people had it good for absolutely no reason. But it’s exciting to know that this day will come and it can’t come fast enough for me!

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#215

Post by Beefin »

hyperman1 wrote: post #128

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…

i genuinely think curiosity is the most important characteristic anybody can possibility have. it helps with sales and engineering, two of the most important skills to starting a business in any vertical.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#217

Post by arius »

0F wrote: post #214

Reading these comments is forehead slap inducing. People think that just because something is mental that it has to do with your mindset, your parents, your this your that. When a dude can run faster than other people, it’s written off as genetics. When someone is resilient to depression, it’s anything other than genetics. Both cases are the same: it’s just biological. I’ve been suffering super hard with depression r…

Depression, like your sports analogy, is not only rooted in genetics but also in the environment. While you can act on your environment, you can't act on genetics for now. Focusing on what is in one's reach is the only thing one can do. Being certain that the cause is out of our control (while true for parts of it) is in itself something fueling depression.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#218

Post by mensetmanusman »

suction wrote: post #160
pyb wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point. Are people successful because they are happy, or vice versa?

Secure situations make successful people. Children raised in well-off households with no financial worries do better in school and later in their careers, on average. Sure, you get the rich kid wasting their life on parties or drugs, or the poor kid beating the odds by hard work and determination, but those are outliers. That's why there are so many of these characters in literature, movies, and TV - they're not the…

My personality is like the happy math guy above; I grew up in poverty, but I had a ton of loving security from both parents centered around love and commitment.

We used to have to collect change at McDonald’s for lunch. Eventually I graduated from MIT.

I understand it is not the norm… :)

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#219

Post by notahacker »

otikik wrote: post #148
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…

A lot of chronically unhappy people are adept at masking - faking they are happy and/or neurotypical. Especially so when they are aware that they are being tested for it. It's quite possible that a percentage of the top performers referenced on the original article are just doing that.

I think that's an important point. I can believe that happiness is a component of workplace success, but the sort of stuff discussed in the article (self reporting happiness after writing Three Good Things narratives) sounds like it's far stronger evidence of compliance than actual genuine increase in hedonic well being.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#220

Post by goodpoint »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #120
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…

>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.

Rather, it creates attrition, where people leave jobs after 2-3-4 years always hoping the next one will be less bad.

It's so common in the software industry it's seen as normal.

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