Happy Hour is 9 to 5 (23 page)

Don’t sacrifice your own happiness at work to make others happy — find ways to make other people happy that also make you happy.

Make time for happiness

If you want to get happier at work, you need to make time for it. This can be a tough proposition in today’s busy work environment. You may feel that you don’t have the time to spare, but the truth is exactly the opposite: you don’t have the time not to do it.

Chatting with a co-worker, helping someone out, learning a new skill or contributing outside the company may take time, but it’s time well spent, because when you make yourself and others happier, everyone becomes more efficient.

Say you spend 10% of your working week making yourself and others happier, and through this become 20% more efficient. Frankly, you’d be silly not to make the time.

Follow up without pressure

Once a week, say every Monday morning, take a look at your happiness plan.

When you’ve done one or two of the things on your list, add one or two new ones so that you always have five fast, easy, fun things and one challenging thing you want to do towards your happiness at work.

When you follow up, make sure that you:

• Don’t beat yourself up over not having had enough time to do any of the things on your list. There’s no rush.
  
• Remove any pressure to make any of the items on your plan work. They work or they don’t work — either is fine as long as you try.
  

Take all the pressure out of it — you can’t pressure yourself into being happy.

Celebrate

When you reach your goal and become happy at work, or create a happy workplace, you need to celebrate it. There are many ways to do it, but it’s vitally important to mark the occasion and celebrate your victory. You could:

• Get your department together, line everyone up and do a Mexican wave.
  
• Sing happy songs like “We are the champions” or “Always look on the bright side of life”, the louder and more out of tune the better.
  
• Buy a large trophy, cup, or medal and place it in your office, the bigger and uglier the better.
  
• Get people together, announce the results and applaud wildly.
  
• Put on some music and do a victory dance, the wilder and weirder the better.
  
• Have a party, an additional one beside the summer and Christmas parties.
  
• Pass out gifts — nothing fancy or expensive, just creative and fun.
  
• Fill the office with balloons.
  
• Exchange high-fives all around.
  

Share what you do

If you’ve come up with something that works, don’t keep it a secret. Share your great ideas, tips, tools and whatever else you come up with.

Share it inside your company, or even better, share it on my blog where you can tell the whole world and other readers of this book what you’ve done to make yourself and others happy:

 
www.pinetribe.com/alexander/discussion

12. GET TO IT

If this book has done what I intended, you now know what happiness at work is. You have an idea what it does for people, how we achieve it, what typically makes us unhappy at work, and how we can deal with those things.

You’ve also read a lot of stories about happy people and happy companies. You’ve seen the simple, effective things they do, and I hope you have been inspired to try some of these things yourself.

But most of all, I hope you’re as fired up about the idea of happiness at work as I am. Through my work I see companies where people love working, and I see people stepping up and taking charge of their work situation and making a huge difference for themselves and others. I see what it does for them — how it changes people from victims of a bad work situation to architects of a better future.

I’ve seen first hand the energy, creativity, buzz, passion and fun that come from being happy at work. I’ve seen how people grow and learn and become more themselves than ever before. I’ve seen people discovering new talents and skills they never knew they had. I’ve seen the fire in people’s eyes when they are sincerely appreciated for what they do.

I know that happiness is the greatest force in business, and that being happy at work is the best way to fulfil your potential, be successful and make a positive difference. I know that the more of us get together around this vision of making work a great experience, the easier it will be to make this level of happiness the norm, rather than the exception.

I’m totally giddy about a future where almost no one will accept unhappy work, because happy, vibrant, living workplaces will have become the standard. And best of all, I know that this future is coming no matter what. The world of work is on an inevitable path towards more and more happiness. The future belongs to the happy, because the happy are just that damned good.

To make a difference, and to make ourselves and others happier at work, doesn’t take a psychology degree, fancy business concepts or amazing CEO superpowers. It takes just one thing: wide-eyed enthusiasm. It won’t be the MBAs, the management consultants or the business gurus who will change our workplaces for the better. It’s going to be you and me and all the other people who share a complete, total, irrational belief that happiness at work is a great, great thing, and that we should do it. Now!

If you agree with me that happiness at work is a shining and inspiring goal, and want to take an active part in making it happen, there’s a simple way for you to show it: Sign the manifesto! At 
www.pinetribe.com/alexander/manifesto
, you can read the Happy At Work Manifesto, and if you agree with it, sign it to show your commitment to creating happiness at work for yourself and others.

Let’s make this the springboard of a worldwide movement. Let’s learn from each other, support each other, cheer each other on and celebrate our progress towards better, more efficient, more humane and happier workplaces.

Happiness at work comes from the things you and I do, here and now. There are so many things you can do — the important thing is that you do something.

Now get to it! And have great fun on the way…

I wish you the greatest of happiness at work — and outside of it.

Alexander Kjerulf

Chief Happiness Officer

About the Author

ALEXANDER KJERULF 
is one of the world’s leading experts on work- place happiness. Why? “You will spend more of your waking hours at work than anything else. If that time doesn’t make you happy, it’s a huge waste of life.” It all makes sense when he puts it that way, doesn’t it?

Perhaps by now you’re thinking this is some sort of hippie doo-dah. But this is the real deal. Alexander didn’t become the leading expert on workplace happiness without a reason. He is a speaker, consulant, and author.

Alexander’s blog The Chief Happiness Officer is one of the world’s leading blogs about careers and leadership and is read by millions of people.

On the business side, he presents and conducts workshops on workplace happiness at businesses and conferences all over the world including leading organizatons like IBM, Hilton, LEGO, HP, IKEA and many others. Alex has a masters degree in computer science from The University of Southern Denmark, and is the founder of Woohoo Inc., a consultancy firm offering lectures, workshops, and leadership training with focus on happiness at work.

You can reach Alexander at 
www.pinetribe.com/alexander
. 

References

1 Source: 
money.guardian.co.uk/work/story/0,1456,1501125,00.html

2 Source: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

3 Source: 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3652533/

4 Source: 
www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/pixar.html

5 Source: 
The Seven-Day Weekend 
by Ricardo Semler. This is a great book - read it!

6 Source: Ronald Culberson’s newsletter, June 2004, 
www.funsulting.com/h_june_2004_newsletter.html

7 Source: 
hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5492.html

8 Source: 
www.employeesurveys.com/bosses/badboss35.htm

9 Source: 
money.cnn.com/2006/03/02/news/newsmakers/howiwork_for-tune_032006/index.htm

10 Source: 
www.artofthestate.co.uk/Banksy/banksy_coronary_disease.htm

11 Source: 
www.meaningfulworkplace.com/survey/page4.html

12 Source: 
www.bullyonline.org/cases/case12.htm

13 Source: 
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3116678.stm

14 Source: 
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16256-justice-may-be-hard-wired-into-the-human-brain.html