Best Possible Future: A Story Adam was about eight months into his new job and about halfway through his main project (a new app). It was going pretty well. Despite many challenges, Adam and his boss, Chris, were both doing a good job of keeping the team focused and on track. But despite that, Adam read more…
Is it possible to find happiness during unemployment? Science can help us answer this tough question. For most of us, unemployment is not fun at all. I recently found myself out of a full-time job because of “business reasons.” Don’t get me wrong, I understood why I had to be let go–but it still didn’t read more…
Exciting, innovative, helpful, incomplete, frustrating, and thought-provoking: all these words describe Daniel Siegel’s audiobook The Neurobiology of ‘We’: How Relationships, the Mind, and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. I usually try to boil down my book reviews to one helpful sentence for readers who are short on time. But as you can read more…
Why should you read this review of The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath? Because as Vicki Corona said, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” The Heath brothers would definitely agree with that quote. This pair of professors turned their attention read more…
A story illustrating the science of choice Juan needed Chris’s approval to choose a new software package. Chris asked Juan to come with several options. She wanted the advantages and disadvantages of each. Wanting to be thorough, Juan created a table with thirteen different packages. Chris felt overwhelmed. She struggled to hold the options in read more…
Brad Stevens’ coaching style works. As I type this, my beloved Celtics are up 2-0 against the Cleveland Caveliers in the NBA Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Virtually nobody predicted this, especially after Boston lost not one, but two of their top stars (and suffered other injuries) before the playoffs. How does Stevens do it? Can the read more…
The world is in constant change, and the pace of change is getting faster. What’s a person–or group of people in an organization–to do? Cope effectively with all the change. Reading either of two books on transitions by William Bridges is a great place to start! Two great books on transitions by William Bridges, both read more…
Autonomy at Work: A Story Kim assigned a crucial project to Juan, and really wanted it to go well. So she asked him to prepare 24 milestones along the way, starting with an extremely detailed concept approval document. She scheduled a two hour meeting to review the concept approval, and was asking about–and then changing–many read more…
This Wednesday’s blog is actually from a guest author: the president of Gross National Happiness USA (GNHUSA), Ginny Sassaman,. GNHUSA strives to make happiness our new bottom line in America. They work to increase personal happiness and our collective wellbeing by changing how we measure progress and success. At Happy Brain Science we are delighted to read more…
One way to boost happiness and therefore effectiveness at work is to do more savoring.