Love what you do: 4 things that will make you happier at work

Sometimes your work can be a hard chore - but it’s not always possible to leave it. So what to do to become happier at your job ? In this article, we will describe the results of research that will help to perceive the work more meaningful and make you happier in the office.

Change your job description

Cleaning the floors in the hospital is hardly someone's dream job. Emptying waste baskets in hospital wards does not feel like some sort of special or important activity.
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But what if you had the same responsibilities and could look at your work in a wider context?

"I help this hospital function better, and my work allows patients to recover and return to their families."

The study compared workers who saw only salary checks in their work with those who looked deeper.

And those who saw in their cleaning contribution to the health of patients, felt their work as more meaningful.

From the book Choose the Life You Want: A Mindful Way to Happiness :

Rezneski and Dutton followed a group of hospital cleaners and found that some of them only perceived their work as salary work and described it as boring and meaningless. Another group perceived the same work as a vocation, and the hours spent at work were interesting and significant for them. This second group of cleaners did everything differently from the first group. They interacted more with nurses, patients, visitors, trying to make the people with whom they came in contact feel better. In general, they saw their work in its wider context. They didn’t just clean the wards and scavenge, but they contributed to the health of the patients and the hospital.

How do you see your work? Can you see something better in her, though without self-deception that would make you happier?

Pay attention to the results

Working in a call center can be ungrateful and tedious. What can help people feel better in the process of endless dialing and frequent complaints?

Professor of the Wharton School of Business, Adam Grant, conducted a study trying to motivate the staff of the university call center. He managed to dramatically raise the motivation of employees without promotions, promotions, bonuses and salary increases. How?

He showed them letters written by grateful students who received scholarships through the efforts of the call center team. (We recommend reading a useful article on why great accomplishments will not make you happier .)

What spurred their motivation? Talk with those students.

From the book “ Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success ” ( Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success ):

When the call center staff communicated personally with the scholarship recipient, they showed even more enthusiasm. On average, the employee doubled the numbers for calls and minutes of calls a week. Due to more diligent work, the staff embraced more graduates, resulting in 144% more donations from graduates for each week. Even more striking, revenues increased fivefold: on average, it was $ 412 before the meeting with the scholarship recipient and more than $ 2000 after.

Are you cut off from the results of your work? Is there a better way for you to keep track of exactly how work helps clients?

Use your strengths

You are likely to perform a variety of activities at work, and some of these responsibilities could be shared with other team members.

Do you have the opportunity to choose which tasks you decide and which ones your colleagues can undertake? If so, you can be much happier.

Do not choose tasks that are done quickly or easily. Grasp all that you are good at.

Research shows: doing what you are good at is the key to happiness:

Americans experience the more positive emotions, the more they use their strengths. The more hours a day adults use their strengths, the more often they are energetic, feel rested, contented, smiling, learning something interesting and feeling respectful towards themselves.

The work that allows you to use your talents makes you stably happier in the office:

The more personal effort was made in the workplace, the greater the positive work experience. The study showed that strength of character means a lot in any professional environment.

Daily use of your strengths can make you noticeably happier for a long time.

From the book “The Advantage of Happiness: Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Spurs Success and Efficiency at Work” ( The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology ):

When 577 volunteers offered to use one of their strengths in a new way every day during the week, they became much happier and less depressed than the control groups. And these advantages were long: even after the end of the experiment, a month later, their level of happiness remained high.

What responsibilities in which you are weak could someone else take on? What could you do to make good use of your strengths?

Invest

You can learn a lot about loving your work by looking at furniture from Ikea. Seriously.

Why is this furniture so popular? Studies show that we love things more when we invest part of ourselves in them.

You have assembled the side table with your own hands. This is your creation.

That is the mysterious power of Swedish furniture.

In my interview with Professor Dan Ariely, the author of the book “ Predictable Irrationality: The Hidden Forces That Determine Our Decisions” ( Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions ), he explained:

“This is a great example of something irrational, but wonderful. We discovered that at the moment when you put a part of yourself into something, you begin to overestimate it. My personal experience began with Ikea furniture, so we called it the Ikea effect. It turned out that I was not particularly good at assembling furniture, and it took me a long time. I made all the possible mistakes. But I found that after finishing the assembly of a piece of furniture of rather mediocre quality, I was incredibly proud and continued to carry it with me from city to city, although objectively this was not justified. ”

If I bring a random child to your home and tell you to keep it, you will not agree.

If this were your child, you would contain him, and moreover, your happiness would depend on his well-being.

As Dan explained, by investing in something, we care more about it.

Invest more in your career and you will find that you love your work.

PS We recommend another article on the topic - How to stop distractions in the workplace: 6 effective ways.

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult