Hi, I'm Bruce Daisley. I work at Twitter but in my spare time
I've been studying work culture and how we can be happier at work.
Work has become this sort of colossal game of Jenga where we're trying to add things
on top or still keep everything standing up and stable. I've put together some
thoughts on ways that we can make our lives a lot less stressful.
Half of all people who have checked their emails outside of work hours show signs of high
levels of stress. The very easiest thing you can do to reduce your stress levels
from work is take the number off your email app that single act is the
simplest thing we can do to reduce our stress levels.
The second best change that anyone can make is to take a lunch break. The habit of eating 'al desco' has
become so common now it's contributing to an increase in our stress levels and
I understand when you're sitting at your desk you're thinking you've got a
hundred emails left walking away and taking a break can feel really
counter-intuitive but scientists have found the best way to ensure that you
feel energised is to take that pause. You might want to try a monk mode morning.
More and more of us are finally get hard to get things done because of all the
interruptions. A guy called Cal Newport who's a professor at Georgetown
University in Washington, he wrote a book called Deep Work and one of the ideas he
gave was that we should think about having a monk mode morning.
Well monk mode is where we go somewhere that is silent, there's no interruptions, we maybe
get a block of ninety minutes work done, maybe twice a week, then we go to the
office as normal, added advantages we've missed the commute, and got our emails
and our meetings done.
Some interesting research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
shows that one of the best ways to increase workplace
creativity is to increase the amount of chat, and actually that can be chat about
last night's TV that can be chat about what's happening in sports games because
normally those conversations then lead to work discussions. It's a strange thing
that by encouraging people to have more chats we're actually going to be
achieving more at work. But the research seems to suggest that the most creative
offices are the ones that chat the most. Ben Waber, one of the researchers,
said that one of the best ways to increase creativity in your office is to
move the location of the coffee machine. By having the coffee machine, the kettle,
the water cooler, in a different place you'll actually lead to more people
having discussions, conversations.
Scientists have found that one of the biggest barriers to being creative in our jobs is stress,
and all of us with our phones feel more stressed than ever before.
You need to give yourself permission to have a digital Sabbath, to take time away from your work
at the weekend, for a bit of refreshment, a bit of
renewal. Discourage your boss from emailing at the weekend because it leads
to people feeling anxious when they come back to work on Monday.
Anxious people can't be creative.
I think in the current world we often celebrate overwork and
people working long hours. The magazine profiles we read, the TV profiles we see are
about people who work these enormous long working weeks. And in fact all of
the evidence is starting to point to the fact that maybe that's not the best idea.
Maybe 40 hours of work a week is the right amount. Use our breaks and our
evenings as times to re-energise ourselves so when we come back to our
desks we're full of life. Doing 40 hours of work is probably enough.