DOES IT REALLY MATTER IF WE'RE HAPPY?

In the recently compiled global “2016 Happiness Index” compiled for the United Nations the UK comes 23rd (we were 21st in 2015 and 18th in 2012 when the report was first published.) No one can be happy to see us sliding down the table but nor can they be surprised. We’ve become a grumbly society dissatisfied with our lot. Denmark on the other hand comes consistently top.

 
Apparently the UK was at its most content in 1957 the year in which Prime Minister Harold McMillan won the election with the slogan which was true for most

“You’ve never had it so good.”

But you can’t keep on saying that (even if it’s true.) Broadly speaking everything, despite newspaper headlines in the Mail and Express, is actually getting better. Yet research in the workplace for instance would say otherwise. FT columnist Lucy Kellaway wonders why. Offices are nicer, with better, cleaner facilities, and bosses are more civilised and attentive, trained in empowerment, delegation and being nice. Despite there being less bullying and harassment people are nonetheless less happy.

We aim to delight our workforce yet that is unlikely to happen. Quite simply their expectations are never quite met and they never have it as good as they’d like. What makes it worse is those at the top of companies are earning disproportionately more and the sense amongst the rest of us of exploitation grows in line with that.

   
So are we pursuing an impossible target? In Julian Barnes collection of short stories, “The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters,” “The Dream” is about his dreaming of heaven. Everything is perfect there. He can do anything and everything, eat as much of what he wants, play impeccable golf, see his favourite football team win the FA cup and yet after a while it becomes boring. Perfection is dull. Beauty relies on slight misalignments to be striking, happiness often happens in adversity rather than when everything is just so. We need rain as well as sunshine, ice as well as warmth, tears as well as laughter.

 What makes our world so fascinating is we still don’t understand the human brain. In his book “Homo Deus” Yuval Noah Harari reflects:

“As long as we have to decipher the mysteries of consciousness we cannot develop a universal measurement of happiness”…

Yes - not just a measurement - nor a way of creating happiness consistently either. Neither more money, nor more leisure nor more anything can be guaranteed to work.
Our life spans seven conditions:

• Rapture
• Happiness 
• Contentment
• Apathy (“whatever” mode)
• Discontentment
• Unhappiness
• Misery

On any given day we could go through several phases and the more we do the richer the first three states will be.

Stop trying to be happy, start trying to be more interested and engaged. Happiness is only ever a phase so trying to be consistently happy is to be consistently disappointed. Sorry about that.

BACK TO WORK - OR A BIT LESS OF IT

What happened in Paris has put a lot of things into a sharper perspective like work/life balance.  It’s a subject on a lot of agendas right now. The debate includes Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, insisting her workforce comes to the office rather than working from home and Lucy Kellaway, the sparking FT writer, advocating the return to the 9-5 working week as a way of increasing productivity, innovation and morale.

In the Harvard Business Review researchers discovered the tipping point of competence was a 56 hour week. After that they remarked darkly not only was the work done no good, it almost certainly had to be redone or reversed. Or worse; it created problems that doing nothing at all would have avoided.

According to the Times on Saturday the number of men working part time is now topping    1 million, up three times since 1992. Quite successful and greasy-pole-climbing men are abandoning their hundreds of thousands of pounds, the Michelin stars and the 70 hour weeks for occasional consultancy, school runs, helping with homework and DIY. Work has for some become a paid hobby. The other side of this equation is that wives can get to work too and fulfil their own ambitions.

Indeed working for yourself as opposed to a big corporate allows you to work when you feel like it. Lunches, shopping when it’s less crowded, reading a book or going to an art gallery begin to be part of a broader education programme rather than being seen as goofing off. Maybe what justifies all this is the brain doesn’t stop thinking when our body isn’t stuck behind an office desk.

But there is a cost and Lucy Kellaway is eloquent on observing that having a real job in a real office allows you to build a much more interesting time between nine and five than working on the kitchen table can ever do.

In the end it comes down to this. Is what you do worthwhile, interesting and inspiring? The best advice on this comes from Netflix that extraordinary, newish company with a market capitalisation of over $40 billion. Only ever hire and work with stunning people they say.

Is this foolishly idealistic? Perhaps but the best memories I have ever had of work has involved brushing up against and interacting with great talent.

Because the conversation about how hard we work is the wrong one; it should be about how good the work we do is.

Quality not quantity always wins.