The Happy Secret to Better Work Read Online
In this fast-moving and entertaining TED talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that really happiness inspires productivity.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Shawn Achor_ The happy secret to better work
TRANSCRIPT:
When I was vii years one-time and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk bed. I was 2 years older than my sister at the time — I mean, I'one thousand two years older than her now — but at the time it meant she had to exercise everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted to play war.
And then we were up on peak of our bunk beds. And on one side of the bunk bed, I had put out all of my G.I. Joe soldiers and weaponry. And on the other side were all my sister's My Niggling Ponies ready for a cavalry charge.
There are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is not here with us today, permit me tell you the truthful story — which is my sister's a little bit on the impuissant side.
Somehow, without any assist or push from her older brother at all, of a sudden Amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. At present I nervously peered over the side of the bed to encounter what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground.
I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making certain that my sister and I played as safely and as quietly every bit possible. And seeing equally how I had accidentally cleaved Amy's arm merely one week before … heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet, for which I have yet to exist thanked, I was trying as hard every bit I could — she didn't fifty-fifty see information technology coming — I was trying every bit hard as I could to be on my all-time behavior.
And I saw my sister'south face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her rima oris and threatening to wake my parents from the long winter'southward nap for which they had settled. And then I did the simply thing my piddling frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. And if y'all have children, you've seen this hundreds of times before. I said, "Amy, Amy, wait. Don't cry. Don't weep. Did you see how you landed? No human lands on all fours similar that. Amy, I retrieve this means you lot're a unicorn."
Now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sister would desire more than non to be Amy the hurt five year-old little sister, only Amy the special unicorn. Of course, this was an selection that was open up to her brain at no point in the past. And you could see how my poor, manipulated sister faced conflict, as her little encephalon attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she only experienced, or contemplating her new-constitute identity every bit a unicorn. And the latter won out.
Instead of crying, instead of ceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across her face and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn … with i broken leg.
What we stumbled across at this tender age of only five and seven — nosotros had no thought at the time — was something that was going to be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades after in the way that we wait at the human encephalon. What nosotros had stumbled across is something called positive psychology, which is the reason that I'm here today and the reason that I wake upwardly every morning.
When I first started talking virtually this research outside of academia, out with companies and schools, the very start thing they said to never exercise is to starting time your talk with a graph. The very commencement matter I desire to practise is outset my talk with a graph. This graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason I become excited and wake upwardly every morning. And this graph doesn't even mean anything; it's imitation data. What we plant is —
If I got this data back studying yous here in the room, I would exist thrilled, because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there, and that means that I can get published, which is all that really matters. The fact that there's one weird blood-red dot that'south up higher up the bend, there'due south one weirdo in the room — I know who you are, I saw you earlier — that's no trouble. That's no problem, equally near of you lot know, considering I can just delete that dot. I can delete that dot because that'southward conspicuously a measurement error. And we know that's a measurement mistake because it'southward messing up my data.
And so one of the very first things nosotros teach people in economic science and statistics and business organisation and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How exercise we eliminate the outliers so we tin detect the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I'1000 trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking — two. But if I'm interested in potential, if I'yard interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average with science.
If I asked a question like, "How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?" scientists change the respond to "How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?" and and so we tailor the class right towards the average.
Now if y'all fall below the average on this curve, then psychologists go thrilled, considering that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder, or hopefully both. We're hoping for both because our business organization model is, if you come into a therapy session with one trouble, we desire to make sure y'all go out knowing you take ten, so you lot keep coming back over and over again. We'll go back into your babyhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to exercise is make you normal again. But normal is only average.
And what I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if nosotros written report what is merely average, we volition remain only average. And then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what I intentionally practise is come up into a population similar this ane and say, why? Why is it that some of y'all are so high in a higher place the bend in terms of your intellectual ability, able-bodied ability, musical ability, inventiveness, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your sense of humor? Whatever information technology is, instead of deleting you, what I want to exercise is report you. Because perchance we tin can glean information — not just how to motility people up to the average, but how we can move the entire boilerplate up in our companies and schools worldwide.
The reason this graph is important to me is, when I turn on the news, it seems like the majority of the information is not positive, in fact it's negative. Most of it'south about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters. And very quickly, my brain starts to recollect that'south the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the earth. What that's doing is creating something called the medical school syndrome — which, if y'all know people who've been to medical school, during the first yr of medical training, as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen, suddenly you realize you have all of them.
I have a blood brother in-police force named Bobo — which is a whole other story. Bobo married Amy the unicorn. Bobo called me on the phone from Yale Medical Schoolhouse, and Bobo said, "Shawn, I accept leprosy." Which, even at Yale, is extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to panel poor Bobo because he had just gotten over an unabridged week of menopause.
Source: https://singjupost.com/shawn-achor-happy-secret-better-work-transcript/
0 Response to "The Happy Secret to Better Work Read Online"
Enviar um comentário