First off, let me say that this blog isn’t about religion. It’s about juggling work with the pursuit of happiness. People wonder how they could possibly maximize their happiness, while working a stressful job as many of us do. How can you maintain a state of happiness when you’re charged with more work than you can handle, need to complete something that your client wants done yesterday, or are getting reemed out by your boss. Alternatively, if you are career oriented, and want to deliver above and beyond expectations, how can you not be stressed out?
Well, I believe that it’s possible to brave through the trenches that are the corporate environment, and yet maintain a level of happiness throughout the day. This is done by keeping a certain frame of mind and approach when at work. I believe that a lot of people are unhappy at their jobs because of high levels of stress, but there are ways to work whereby you’re minimizing stress. A lot of the work methods I currently employ are derived from David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, which provides a great method for being productive and organized at work and in your personal life. However, I have tweaked some of his methods to suit my needs, and I also have a bunch of my own tactics, which I think make me a happier person at work.
The objective of this blog is to create a community, share ideas, and help each other out. Perhaps we can all become happier people in the end.
Just a word on my blogging habits - I’m a big proponent of efficiency, and that said, I don’t like posting multiple times a day, or for that matter, week. I’d rather have each post be thought-out with the proper time dedicated to them, so that I waste less of my readers’ time.
My other personal blogs are The Ad Agency Blog and Leveraged Credit.
I believe that workplace unhappiness is generally caused by one of two things: anger and stress. When I find myself to be unhappy at work, I try to decipher whether it’s due to anger or stress.
Stress happens because you feel overwhelmed. It’s a matter of managing your projects and workload. Everyone has their own way of working, and I have a lot of processes in place to keep me organized. I’ll get into these at length later. Basically, the more on top of things you are, the less stressed out you�ll be, and there are a bunch of ways of ensuring that you�re on top of it.
Anger results when people you work with do things that you think are irrational, and which have an impact on you. You might think, how can you not get angry when someone asks you to do something where it would be simpler if they did it themselves, or when someone places the blame for an error on you when they were the ones who made the mistake. Well, these sorts of things are inevitable when you work in the corporate world, so should you let it anger you every time it happens? The answer is no. Why let these occurrences make you unhappy? Is the day-to-day of your job so important to you that it should affect your state of happiness?
I think that it’s immensely important to learn to manage these two culprits. Otherwise, you’re bound to spend at least a portion of the time you’re at work in discontent. Over the next month or so, I will try to focus mostly on being organized and as a result, being less stressed, or perhaps even being devoid of stress altogether while at work.
So many people are unhappy because of their job. Either their job makes their entire life miserable, or they’re just unhappy while they’re at work. They may find their job to be boring, work with people they don’t get along with, feel underpaid or underappreciated; they may feel that they aren’t given enough responsibility, or don’t find their line of work to be meaningful to them.
Any of these things can make someone unhappy at their job, and if you spend half of your awake hours either at work or commuting, this unhappiness can easily carry over to your personal life. However, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. As a matter of fact, I think that people should strive for workplace happiness, and not give up in this pursuit. There are some people who are able to just ‘leave work at work’ and not carry any of their workplace stress with them when they leave. However, I think that since it’s possible to achieve happiness at work, we should aim for that.
I think that the key is in how you approach work. It’s different for each person, and different things motivate each person.
Here’s a list of things that have irked me in the past and they still bother me sometimes when it happens
- Someone who isn’t my boss trying to delegate their work to me (i.e. colleagues who are at the same level as me, but think that they’re entitled to have me ‘help them’ because they’re ‘busy’)
- Getting blamed for something which isn’t my fault. I led a meeting with clients once, and my boss’ boss didn’t think it went well. I personally thought that it could’ve gone better, but the results were the same. What bothered me is that although I led the meeting, my boss should be partially responsible for work that I do. He didn’t assume any responsibility.
- Creation of unnecessary work. I’ve worked with some people who had the authority to mandate firedrills that clearly would achieve nothing and just create more work for the rest of us.
- Lack of common courtesy
- When someone asks me to do something, when it would take the same amount of time for them to do it themselves as it does to explain what needs to be done. I currently work with someone who does that, and it pisses me off to no end.
- People who are reactionary and don’t think things through before acting on them. I’ve come to accept that this is more or less the norm.
I wanted a place where I could share my thoughts and provide a platform for discussion, and learn from other people’s opinions. I haven’t been able to find a good site to discuss this subject matter, and it is something that I am very intrigued by, and really feel that I could grow considerably by interacting with others.
Another reason why I’m starting this site is that I would like to help other people strike a balance between work and their pursuit of happiness. I enjoy giving advice when asked for it, and I think that helping others is a good step towards being a happier person. Helping people results from being compassionate, right? And the importance of compassion is one of the main tenets the Dalai Lama talks about in “The Art of Happiness”.
So, I’m quite excited about this new blog, and I hope that other people will find value in it.
