Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's an exciting time here at the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: because the Happiness Lab is having a birthday. Our podcast
Speaker 1: has just turned five years old, and to celebrate, I
Speaker 1: sent my producer Ryan Dilly deep into the archive to
Speaker 1: grab out the five episodes that I've found the most
Speaker 1: memorable from all the hundreds that we've made together. So Ryan,
Speaker 1: which episode is up next?
Speaker 2: So this shows from season two and it's called Working
Speaker 2: Our Way to Happiness. This is one where of a
Speaker 2: slightly humiliating camera appearance. But that's not why you chose it, right.
Speaker 3: Now, That's totally why I chose it.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed your scream in that episode.
Speaker 2: A lot of this show is built around, as listen,
Speaker 2: we'll find out, a lot of this show is built
Speaker 2: around me seeing a rat that'd run into your house.
Speaker 1: Which is the part of the wonderful cameo because we
Speaker 1: get to hear Elisa Vanakmitt of the screen that you
Speaker 1: gave when you saw the rat. But the episode's not
Speaker 1: about Ryan or screaming. It's really about kind of the
Speaker 1: job of someone who has to deal with folks who
Speaker 1: see rats all the time. We interviewed Yale's pest management
Speaker 1: person Marty, and he was the perfect guest for this
Speaker 1: episode because it was an entire episode about what we
Speaker 1: can do to be happier at work and the misconceptions
Speaker 1: we have about happiness at work, like the idea that
Speaker 1: being a pest control person might not be the best
Speaker 1: job when it turns out Marty really adores what he
Speaker 1: does for work.
Speaker 2: And this episode also includes a research backed idea that
Speaker 2: gets more pushback than any other thing we mentioned about
Speaker 2: people get so angry, and that is the amount of
Speaker 2: money that you make doesn't predict how.
Speaker 4: Happy you will be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something that the science has shown us
Speaker 1: for a while with some nuance. Right, if you're not
Speaker 1: making enough money to put food on the table or
Speaker 1: put a roof over you had, definitely more money will
Speaker 1: make you happier at work and beyond. But for folks
Speaker 1: making a reasonable wage, money doesn't seem to be the
Speaker 1: path to happiness that we think at work. It seems
Speaker 1: to be other things. And that's really what Marty was
Speaker 1: so great at teaching us. So this is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I've loved this episode. It features good
Speaker 1: screams from my loved producer Ryan and some really important
Speaker 1: science about what makes us happy at work. I hope
Speaker 1: you'll love this episode two, Working Your Way to Happiness. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was much more like terrified than that.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 1: I'm going through my sound effects library with my friend
Speaker 1: and producer Ryan Dilly. I'm trying to find a very
Speaker 1: specific scream, one that's forever etched into my memory. Ah No,
Speaker 1: that's like way more of a manly, brave scream. I
Speaker 1: think we need it more high pitched and frantic and fearful.
Speaker 1: We're trying to reenact a rather horrifying moment that Ryan
Speaker 1: and I experienced a few months back. We were working
Speaker 1: on our podcast scripts and Ryan needed a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: so he headed into the kitchen, and that was when
Speaker 1: I heard it. I think that that's that's pretty close.
Speaker 1: I think that was it. Ryan emitted the longest, loudest,
Speaker 1: and most terror filled shriek I've ever heard. Apparently a huge,
Speaker 1: terrifying rat had run through the kitchen, a rodent that was,
Speaker 1: at least, according to Ryan's retelling, about the size of
Speaker 1: a large Great Dane or a small horse. I assumed
Speaker 1: he was exaggerating and that it was probably just a
Speaker 1: harmless mouse, the kind we get on college campuses from
Speaker 1: time to time, especially when there's construction outside. A tiny
Speaker 1: mouse that was probably now feeling so terrorized by Ryan's
Speaker 1: scream that it had likely high tailed it out of
Speaker 1: the house, never to be heard from again. But just
Speaker 1: as I was explaining that we had absolutely nothing to
Speaker 1: worry about, the creature that I could now clearly see
Speaker 1: was definitely not a tiny mouse, was back. It raced
Speaker 1: from the kitchen into the study around our feet, and
Speaker 1: then slithered into a heating duct on the wall. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't worried, not because the rat wasn't huge or terrifying.
Speaker 1: It was definitely I just knew it wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be a problem for long because at Yale, when these
Speaker 1: things happen and you need someone to resolve the issue quickly,
Speaker 1: you just call.
Speaker 4: Marty gilorin pest control operator.
Speaker 1: Marty is like the terminator for vermin. Within minutes, he
Speaker 1: was at my house, armed with baits and traps galore.
Speaker 4: I like to get there as soon as I can
Speaker 4: to help people. Yeah, I don't like to leave, you know,
Speaker 4: calls waiting too long. And that was kind of an
Speaker 4: emergency call because it was a rat in a living space.
Speaker 1: While Ryan continued to stand bravely on the sofa, Marty
Speaker 1: was sprawled on the floor. He checked for the rat
Speaker 1: where we last saw it, face pressed up against the
Speaker 1: air duct. Marty then set his traps like a general
Speaker 1: deploying his armies. He strategized about all aspects of the
Speaker 1: rats moves, like what if the rat retreated here or
Speaker 1: made a break for it over there. Within minutes, all
Speaker 1: the traps were down, and almost as soon as Marty left,
Speaker 1: we heard.
Speaker 4: I got lucky on that one. Sometimes it takes a
Speaker 4: lot longer.
Speaker 1: A vermin afficionado, one of the most skilled professionals I've
Speaker 1: ever met, But few people want a job like Marty's.
Speaker 1: In fact, pest control is usually included in lists of
Speaker 1: the worst possible jobs in America. Some exterminators face low wages,
Speaker 1: deal with dangerous chemicals, and spend their working hours in
Speaker 1: the company of scary critters that can bite, scratch, and sting.
Speaker 4: I usually get stung about once a year. Kind of
Speaker 4: just comes with the territory.
Speaker 1: But Marty, it turns out, is the exact kind of
Speaker 1: person we should emulate if we want to find the
Speaker 1: perfect job, or even just to be happier at work generally, because,
Speaker 1: as you'll hear in this episode, science suggests that our
Speaker 1: intuitions about good jobs and bad jobs are all wrong.
Speaker 1: We think that pay and perks and plush offices are
Speaker 1: what makes us happy in our careers. But as we'll see,
Speaker 1: happiness and human motivation work much differently than our lying minds. Realize.
Speaker 1: Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to
Speaker 1: be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What
Speaker 1: if our minds are lying to us, leading us away
Speaker 1: from what will really make us happy. The good news
Speaker 1: is that understanding the science of the mind can point
Speaker 1: us all back in the right direction. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab. But doctor Laurie Santos, what did you
Speaker 1: want to be when you grew up? I'm going to
Speaker 1: venture a guest that rat exterminator was pretty far down
Speaker 1: the list. It was for Marty two. He grew up
Speaker 1: with the standard career aspirations.
Speaker 4: I mean, like every kid, I guess a fireman or
Speaker 4: a cop or an when you're a kid.
Speaker 1: But Marty never joined the police department or signed on
Speaker 1: at the fire station. After graduating, he drifted into a
Speaker 1: number of different jobs.
Speaker 4: Just like restaurant work and security guard and filling vending machines.
Speaker 4: Things like that.
Speaker 1: They all paid okay, but Marty wasn't exactly filled with
Speaker 1: joy when he clocked in every Monday morning, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't alone. According to a recent Gallup pole from twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: only about a third of American workers report feeling really
Speaker 1: engaged with their jobs. Over fifty percent admit feeling actively
Speaker 1: not engaged, they merely put up with boring work, and
Speaker 1: nearly twenty percent report hating what they do for a living.
Speaker 4: I've had jobs where I've had that problem before. I
Speaker 4: have to go to work. This is not good. It's
Speaker 4: Monday morning.
Speaker 1: It's probably not all that surprising, But hating your job
Speaker 1: isn't that great for your happiness, Which raises an important question.
Speaker 1: What actually makes for a happier job? What could make
Speaker 1: work life better for the nearly one hundred million Americans
Speaker 1: who feel disengaged on the job. Many of us have
Speaker 1: a pretty strong intuition here, we'd be happier if only
Speaker 1: we had a bigger salary. Take one LinkedIn survey from
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. It found that financial compensation was the top
Speaker 1: value that most college students look for when considering a
Speaker 1: new job opportunity, compensation was chosen more often than work
Speaker 1: life balance, having good colleagues, or even career development. And
Speaker 1: our intuition that a bigger pay means a happier career
Speaker 1: isn't just affecting our job choices, It's also affecting how
Speaker 1: we choose to live our lives generally. Consider the results
Speaker 1: of one study which has surveyed the values of incoming
Speaker 1: freshmen for the last half century. In twenty eighteen, more
Speaker 1: than eighty percent of freshmen said that being well off
Speaker 1: financially was really important in life. It was more important
Speaker 1: than raising a family or developing a meaningful philosophy on life.
Speaker 1: And that's a big change compared to the answers their
Speaker 1: parents or grandparents gave. The number of students who think
Speaker 1: big salaries are key has gone up dramatically since the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. But as our growing intuition about a link
Speaker 1: between money and job satisfaction right, can employers really improve
Speaker 1: the well being of the nearly two thirds of people
Speaker 1: who hate their jobs simply by paying them more.
Speaker 5: When you ask people what would make their lives better
Speaker 5: or what would make their jobs better, the first thing
Speaker 5: they point to is my life so good and if
Speaker 5: I only made ten percent more it would be perfect.
Speaker 1: This is Barry Schwarz, Emeritus Professor of Psychology is Worthmore College,
Speaker 1: an author of the book Why We.
Speaker 5: Work People are wrong. This is not the case. Money
Speaker 5: does buy a little bit of happiness, but it doesn't
Speaker 5: buy a lot of happiness.
Speaker 1: We covered this in an earlier episode called The Unhappy Millionaire,
Speaker 1: but it's worth repeating here. If you're not making a
Speaker 1: living wage, more money will definitely improve your overall wellbeing.
Speaker 1: But if you currently earn one hundred thousand dollars or
Speaker 1: more a year, doubling or even tripling your salary won't
Speaker 1: have any effect on your emotions or your stress levels.
Speaker 1: Even the super rich can lead sad and lonely lives.
Speaker 5: For the most part, doing what you do in order
Speaker 5: to earn a little bit more is putting your energy
Speaker 5: in the wrong direction, and it can have perverse effects
Speaker 5: in that if the amount of money you make starts
Speaker 5: to be the metric you use to evaluate whether you're
Speaker 5: successful or not and whether you're getting anything out of
Speaker 5: your work, it's the wrong metric.
Speaker 1: I've seen so many of my Yale students head in
Speaker 1: exactly this wrong direction. After graduation, they pick a job
Speaker 1: based only on salary. Sometimes they even choose careers they
Speaker 1: kind of know they're going to hate just because it
Speaker 1: comes with a great paycheck. But they soon end up
Speaker 1: experiencing what's come to be known as the golden handcuffs,
Speaker 1: that feeling of being stuck in a high paying job
Speaker 1: that you absolutely hate. And that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that professions we often think of as good jobs, the
Speaker 1: most prestigious ones with the highest salaries think doctor, lawyer,
Speaker 1: Wall Street investor. The people who have these prestigious jobs
Speaker 1: have suicide rates that are one and a half times
Speaker 1: those of the average population. Higher paychecks are simply not
Speaker 1: having the positive effect on our mental health that we think.
Speaker 1: But why are our intuitions about money and job satisfaction
Speaker 1: so messed up? How did we come to think of
Speaker 1: more money as the answer to all our work woes?
Speaker 1: And if a huge paycheck doesn't make a job better,
Speaker 1: then what does To get to the bottom of all
Speaker 1: these questions, we need to turn back to the very
Speaker 1: critter we started the show with. That's right, the rat,
Speaker 1: the happiness lab. We'll be back in a moment, back
Speaker 1: in the seventeen hundreds, a famous Scottish philosopher visited an
Speaker 1: innovative manufacturing operation, a pin factory. Now you might not
Speaker 1: think pin making would require that much innovation. I mean,
Speaker 1: at first glance, it doesn't seem all that complicated to
Speaker 1: make a simple pin. And we're not even talking about
Speaker 1: safety pins here, just the really, really simple straight kind.
Speaker 1: But back in the eighteenth century, creating each pin was tough.
Speaker 1: It took eighteen individual steps. First, you needed to measure
Speaker 1: and clip the length of wire, then straight in. After
Speaker 1: that you carefully sharpened one end. Once that point was set,
Speaker 1: you prepared the other end to attach the head, which
Speaker 1: in several steps, like grinding the top to make sure
Speaker 1: it was the right texture. Finally, the pinheads needed to
Speaker 1: be a fixed and after that they had to be
Speaker 1: placed in a perfect row onto a little sheet of
Speaker 1: cardboard that holds them. Pin manufacturer was a time consuming business.
Speaker 1: A worker on his own who did all of those
Speaker 1: steps one after another would only be able to make
Speaker 1: about twenty pins per day. But the management of the
Speaker 1: factory figured out how to speed things up. They broke
Speaker 1: the work up so that each employee only did one
Speaker 1: or two steps over and over again. It was this
Speaker 1: innovation that especially impressed that visiting philosopher, a scholar who
Speaker 1: later became known as the father of economics, Adam Smith.
Speaker 1: Smith began his famous book The Wealth of Nations with
Speaker 1: a story of this humble enterprise. He realized that the
Speaker 1: factory's assembly line didn't just allow production to go a
Speaker 1: little faster. On the day he visited, ten workers were
Speaker 1: able to make twelve pounds of pins, so forty eight
Speaker 1: thousand in total. That's a rate that's fifty times faster
Speaker 1: than the traditional method. By splitting up the complex task,
Speaker 1: Smith argued, management could create way, way way more pins
Speaker 1: at a much, much, much lower cost, and that meant
Speaker 1: that customers could buy pins more cheaply, and they might
Speaker 1: even think of new ways to use pins since they
Speaker 1: were now so cheap, which might increase the overall market
Speaker 1: for pins, making the factory even more money. In the end,
Speaker 1: this simple pin factory inspired Smith's principle of the assembly line,
Speaker 1: or what he called division of labor. It was an
Speaker 1: idea that completely changed the Industrial Revolution and paved the
Speaker 1: way for modern capitalist manufacturing. But as psychologist Barry Schwartz
Speaker 1: argues in his book Why We work. There was a
Speaker 1: big downside to division of labor, at least for the pinworkers.
Speaker 5: So you've just taking appliers and straightening wire and handing
Speaker 5: off to the next guy. Why would you show up
Speaker 5: at this job. There's only one possible reason to do
Speaker 5: this work, and that's for the paycheck.
Speaker 1: The idea that people need to get paid in return
Speaker 1: for their labor was central to some of Smith's deeper
Speaker 1: ideas about human nature.
Speaker 5: His view was that people were basically lazy, and if
Speaker 5: they didn't have to work, they wouldn't and so the
Speaker 5: optimal life is lying on a couch eating Doritos and
Speaker 5: watching Netflix. So how do you get people off their asses?
Speaker 5: You have to make it worth their while for them
Speaker 5: to do things, and they will work as hard as
Speaker 5: you make them work to get the payoff. What they
Speaker 5: do doesn't matter, since they'd rather be doing nothing than something.
Speaker 5: As long as you have the incentives right, you can
Speaker 5: get them to do anything. Nobody likes working on an
Speaker 5: assembly line, but Smith's point is that nobody likes doing
Speaker 5: any kind of work. So break the work up into
Speaker 5: as efficient and meaningless chunks as you can so that
Speaker 5: people can do the same thing over and over and
Speaker 5: over again, as fast as possible. As long as you
Speaker 5: pay them, they'll do it.
Speaker 1: Smith's view of humans is lazy. Paycheck seekers pervaded the
Speaker 1: entire Industrial Revolution, but it would take more than one
Speaker 1: hundred years before Smith's concepts were tested scientifically, and that's
Speaker 1: where we turned back to the humble rat. Seventeen decades
Speaker 1: after the publication of the Wealth of Nations, a bunch
Speaker 1: of rats would finally give Smith's ideas of human nature
Speaker 1: the scientific veneer they needed.
Speaker 5: My training as a psychologist began in the framework developed
Speaker 5: by a guy named BF Skinner, who at the time
Speaker 5: was probably the most famous and most influential living psychologists.
Speaker 5: Skinner invented the famous Skinner box, where you would take
Speaker 5: a rat and put them in a box, and they'd
Speaker 5: be hungry and or thirsty, and they'd run down on
Speaker 5: an alley, or they'd push on a bar and they'd
Speaker 5: get food, or they'd get water. And he thought that
Speaker 5: by understanding how payoffs influenced the behavior of rats, you
Speaker 5: would understand what governed all the voluntary behavior of all
Speaker 5: living things. He didn't care about rats, He cared about people.
Speaker 5: But he thought that in this little, simple environment, you
Speaker 5: basically were capturing why people work hard in the workplace
Speaker 5: because they want a paycheck or bonus or promotion. And
Speaker 5: that's the nature of human motivation is we do things
Speaker 5: to get things. This is very much in the spirit
Speaker 5: of Adam Smith, the father of the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 1: Skinner's work finally gave Smith's ideas the scientific validation they needed.
Speaker 1: His rats provided proof that organisms are in fact lazy,
Speaker 1: that they needed a reward for getting off their butts,
Speaker 1: and that they'd probably never find work to be inherently
Speaker 1: worth doing or fun, which means if you want to
Speaker 1: get people to work, you got to give him a reward.
Speaker 1: But Barry argues that there's a problem with this. People
Speaker 1: are so leasy you've got to pay them. View the
Speaker 1: problem is it's flat out wrong.
Speaker 5: People won't work if they don't get paid, and they
Speaker 5: need to make enough money to support themselves in their family.
Speaker 5: But once that's done, that's not really what motivates people.
Speaker 5: What motivates people is they want to be working on
Speaker 5: something that matters, which from most of the time means
Speaker 5: has an impact on the lives of other people, not
Speaker 5: curing cancer impact, it could be a small impact. They
Speaker 5: want work that engages them, that forces them to think,
Speaker 5: to be active. They want work that's vary, not the
Speaker 5: same thing over and over again. They want work that's challenging.
Speaker 5: And all those things make jobs good. Given a constant.
Speaker 1: Pay These sorts of intrinsic rewards, feeling engaged, finding meaning,
Speaker 1: getting creative, they make work worth doing and allowing workers
Speaker 1: to experience these internal rewards, it turns out be a
Speaker 1: smarter thing for employers to focus on than a paycheck,
Speaker 1: because a growing body of research shows that if you
Speaker 1: want good work done, you might want to try making
Speaker 1: your employee's jobs a little happier.
Speaker 5: You want people who show up in the office every
Speaker 5: day because they want to be in the office every day,
Speaker 5: and who leave every day feeling like somebody's life has
Speaker 5: been made better because of what they did.
Speaker 1: But if that's the case, why do so many careers
Speaker 1: lack things like meaning or engagement. Why do so many
Speaker 1: people hate their jobs? The reason, according to Barry, is
Speaker 1: that employers bought into a self fulfilling prophecy. They're working
Speaker 1: with the same wrong theory of human motivation that Smith
Speaker 1: had hundreds of years ago, that people are lazy and
Speaker 1: that money is the only way to motivate them.
Speaker 5: So you create a world in which Smith's vision is true.
Speaker 5: You create a world in which meaning, engagement, autonomy, control,
Speaker 5: and challenge have all been eliminated. And then you look
Speaker 5: at you point to people working in this world, and
Speaker 5: you say, see, I told you people just do it for.
Speaker 1: The pay, and as Skinner showed, rewards do work. People
Speaker 1: will do my nummy jobs like sticking heads on pins
Speaker 1: over and over and over. But they won't do it
Speaker 1: because of the normal human motivations for meaning or passion
Speaker 1: or any of the important things that make us want
Speaker 1: to get up in the morning. And that worries Barry.
Speaker 1: The pin factory division of labor still reigns in lots
Speaker 1: and lots of modern jobs, from boring data entry work
Speaker 1: to tedious telephone sales to the workers who have to
Speaker 1: put buns on fast food hamburgers over and over and over.
Speaker 5: Essentially, you've created a Skinner box. You've created an environment
Speaker 5: in which Smith's view is correct because you've eliminated every
Speaker 5: other factor that might influence people.
Speaker 1: Barry has also seen this trend emerging in careers that
Speaker 1: are often considered to be much higher status and more skilled.
Speaker 1: They are now also filled with the sorts of carrots
Speaker 1: and sticks you need when people's hearts and minds aren't
Speaker 1: into what they're doing. Law firms that force attorneys to
Speaker 1: clock there every second with clients, HMOs that regulate doctor's
Speaker 1: interactions with patients, lots and lots of jobs are starting
Speaker 1: to feel more like a rat race because they're specifically
Speaker 1: designed to treat us like Skinner's rodents. The biggest irony
Speaker 1: of this, though, is that by removing meaning from work,
Speaker 1: you inadvertently make people more miserable, and that means you
Speaker 1: get less productive, less motivated, and less conscientious workers. Removing
Speaker 1: meaning can jeopardize a business's profits, and.
Speaker 5: It makes you wonder why it is that people who
Speaker 5: want to make money are leaving money on the table
Speaker 5: by creating workplaces that drive productivity out of their workforce.
Speaker 5: No effort is put into creating workplaces where people want
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 1: The good news, though, is that there is another path
Speaker 1: to follow.
Speaker 5: You can make reasonably unattractive work attractive if you make
Speaker 5: people feel trusted and important in the work that they do.
Speaker 1: And that's why I want to turn back to Marty.
Speaker 1: I mean, what his job seems to fit the definition
Speaker 1: of reasonably unattractive work.
Speaker 4: We had calls a lot for just to pick up
Speaker 4: a debty animal or something, and some of that can
Speaker 4: be pretty, uh, not very pleasant.
Speaker 1: In fact, when Marty first got into exterminating, he was
Speaker 1: focused on the same external rewards that many of us
Speaker 1: used to pick a new career.
Speaker 4: I was doing a maintenance work at a local newspaper
Speaker 4: and I saw an ad pest control company vehicle take
Speaker 4: That was really cool to me. I was like twenty
Speaker 4: years old, and they're going to give me a company
Speaker 4: vehicle to take home. Wow.
Speaker 1: But if you ask Marty what he loves about this
Speaker 1: career forty years later, that company car has little to
Speaker 1: do with it.
Speaker 4: I just love the variety. I love that you never
Speaker 4: know where you're going to be from one day to
Speaker 4: the next. Just yesterday, I was taking a possum off
Speaker 4: of a roof. I don't know how it got up
Speaker 4: on a roof. It's I don't know, it's just it's fun.
Speaker 1: When Marty gets talking about what he loves about his job,
Speaker 1: you're in for a really long conversation, because pest control
Speaker 1: gives him lots and lots of the internal rewards that
Speaker 1: science shows us makes his job worth doing. Like variety
Speaker 1: and mental challenge.
Speaker 4: It's about solving problems more or less. I remember chasing
Speaker 4: a bat out of one of the libraries actually here
Speaker 4: at Yale. Oh really, and it was it was rather
Speaker 4: difficult before, and we had to bring an extension ladder
Speaker 4: in and all the way up to the top of
Speaker 4: the ladder with a net, and it flew away and
Speaker 4: it just went into event and never never was heard
Speaker 4: from again. You just never know what you're gonna get
Speaker 4: and one day to the next.
Speaker 1: Marty's job also gives him a sense of meaning beyond
Speaker 1: just working through creative solutions to problems. He also gets
Speaker 1: to help some very scared people.
Speaker 4: They had a student once that woke up and saw
Speaker 4: a cockroach on her bedroom door, which was about six
Speaker 4: feet across the room, totally terrified in tears, wouldn't get
Speaker 4: out of bed until it was solved. So going there
Speaker 4: and solving something like that, really, yeah, you know, it
Speaker 4: makes you. It makes you feel good. I get a
Speaker 4: lot of thank you from the kids.
Speaker 1: Marty also gets to help his clients overcome the feelings
Speaker 1: of shame they have about requiring his services in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 4: I try to explain to him that any it can
Speaker 4: happen to anybody. People get bugs, people get cockroaches. The
Speaker 4: cleanest environments that calms them down a bit, calms their fairs,
Speaker 4: and you know they're less embarrassed. Do you think you'd
Speaker 4: do it if they didn't pay you, I mean helping people? Yeah,
Speaker 4: because you know a neighbor or something and that comes over. Hey,
Speaker 4: I have a bee's nest or something like that and
Speaker 4: you've had, you know, the experience in taking care of it,
Speaker 4: Or how do I get rid of the squirrels in
Speaker 4: my attic? Or Yeah, I think I'd still do it.
Speaker 4: There's really no other job like it. It's such a
Speaker 4: unique position. Meeting different people, different problems. Every day is different.
Speaker 4: I do feel grateful and lucky that I'm doing this.
Speaker 1: Human beings aren't lab rats in a skinner box. We're
Speaker 1: motivated not just by monetary rewards, but by variety, challenge,
Speaker 1: and having a positive impact on other people's lives. These
Speaker 1: are the things that get workers like Marty out of
Speaker 1: bed on a Monday morning. The problem is that a
Speaker 1: lot of us don't experience the same joy that Marty
Speaker 1: finds in his work. But you don't need to quit
Speaker 1: your job to find the happiness that he enjoys. There
Speaker 1: are evidence based strategies you can use to enricher work,
Speaker 1: no matter what your actual job description. Will learn about
Speaker 1: all those strategies when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 1: Most teenage obsessions revolve around bands, or sports or political causes.
Speaker 1: Amy Rizneski found herself drawn to something very different, a
Speaker 1: topic she turned over and over in her young mind.
Speaker 3: It has taken me a really long time to figure
Speaker 3: out why it's sort of weird for a teenager to
Speaker 3: become interested in something like this.
Speaker 1: What was the thing that had Amy so puzzled Well,
Speaker 1: She looked around at the people in her life, people
Speaker 1: in her family, her neighborhood, in stores and offices, and
Speaker 1: she saw a vivid and troubling divide and.
Speaker 3: Seeing people who were working incredibly hard but feeling at
Speaker 3: the end of the day kind of maybe empty, maybe
Speaker 3: not too strong a word about what it all meant,
Speaker 3: Versus people who felt like they bounded out of work
Speaker 3: every day to come home feeling as though they had
Speaker 3: done something that really mattered and they had done it
Speaker 3: well and it had changed people's lives. And the thing
Speaker 3: that's been for me the most fascinating part of this
Speaker 3: puzzle is that it's not necessarily contingent on the kind
Speaker 3: of work people are doing. And I think that's a
Speaker 3: very cool puzzle to try to unpack and think.
Speaker 1: About figuring that puzzle out. Row Amy here to Yale,
Speaker 1: where she's now a professor at the School of Management.
Speaker 3: There's a whole research literature that analyzes of what's a
Speaker 3: good job and what's a bad job, and it just
Speaker 3: looks at the job like what is that the person's doing,
Speaker 3: And as psychologists, we knew there might be actually more
Speaker 3: going on here in terms of how people really experience
Speaker 3: this work and think about this work.
Speaker 1: Research back in the nineteen eighties had shown that people
Speaker 1: tend to take one of three orientations towards their work.
Speaker 1: They either think of it as a job, a career,
Speaker 1: or a calling.
Speaker 3: So people who view their work primarily as a job
Speaker 3: see the work as a means to a financial end.
Speaker 3: People who've either worked with a career orientation see the
Speaker 3: work as prime merely a means to advance within the
Speaker 3: field or the work or the occupation they're in, to
Speaker 3: stepping stone to the next thing that's going to come.
Speaker 3: Whereas people who see the work as a calling are
Speaker 3: not focused on financial outcomes primarily or career advancement primarily,
Speaker 3: but instead are primarily focused on the work itself. They
Speaker 3: see the work as an end in itself. These are
Speaker 3: people who, again if they hit the lottery or something
Speaker 3: like that, feel so deeply about the work that they're doing,
Speaker 3: feel fulfilled by it, feel like it's a contribution that
Speaker 3: they would be more likely to want to stay involved
Speaker 3: in it. And interestingly, they see the work, regardless of
Speaker 3: what the job is, as contributing to the world in
Speaker 3: a meaningful way to make it a better place.
Speaker 1: But the question that fascinated Amy was how a person
Speaker 1: comes to consider their work a calling. You might think
Speaker 1: the way to test this question would be to study
Speaker 1: professionals that we typically think of as well respected surgeons,
Speaker 1: concert pianists, podcast hosts, that kind of thing. But Amy
Speaker 1: did something different. She studied how positive work orientations develop
Speaker 1: and seemingly not so great jobs.
Speaker 3: We were really interested in understanding the experience of people
Speaker 3: who clean in hospitals, so hospital custodial staff.
Speaker 1: The duties of a hospital janitor are easy to sum up.
Speaker 1: Mop the floors, sweep up wash, soiled bed linens, dispose
Speaker 1: of garbage bins filled with hazardous waste. It's not fun stuff.
Speaker 1: These sorts of positions don't require much previous experience or
Speaker 1: formal education. Becoming a hospital janitor is considered neither glamorous
Speaker 1: nor all that skilled. But Amy wasn't interested in what
Speaker 1: the typical person thought of this work. She was interested
Speaker 1: in how the cleaning staff themselves described their rules. So
Speaker 1: she just asked a group of hospital workers, how skilled
Speaker 1: do you think your job is?
Speaker 3: Simple question, except it yielded two really different answers. We
Speaker 3: had one set of participants who said it's not very
Speaker 3: skilled at all, and we had another set of participants
Speaker 3: who reported the work was really quite skilled.
Speaker 1: Amy figured she must have inadvertently tested two kinds of
Speaker 1: staff members once with different duties. Maybe one group had
Speaker 1: more senior janitors or more specialist roles, But that turned
Speaker 1: out not to.
Speaker 3: Be the case. Nothing about the structure of their job
Speaker 3: explained this difference.
Speaker 1: So Amy dug a little deeper. Those who considered themselves
Speaker 1: unskilled were generally dissatisfied with their jobs. They were part
Speaker 1: of that two thirds of Americans who were disengaged from
Speaker 1: their work. But the staff members who saw their job
Speaker 1: as requiring skill absolutely loved what they did for a living.
Speaker 1: Many of them even saw it as a calling and
Speaker 1: acted accordingly.
Speaker 3: They were meant to be kind of wafting in and
Speaker 3: out of spaces and making sure that those spaces were clean.
Speaker 3: They were instructed to not interact with patients, and what
Speaker 3: we were finding was they were engaging in enormous amounts
Speaker 3: of patient care and attentiveness to what was happening with
Speaker 3: patients and their families, what it was people might need.
Speaker 3: They really engaged the job quite differently and saw and
Speaker 3: described what it was that they were doing there as
Speaker 3: helping patients to heal.
Speaker 1: Amy calls this technique job crafting, the art of redesigning
Speaker 1: the specific work you do to match your personal strengths
Speaker 1: and values and thus amplify the sense of meaning you
Speaker 1: get from your job. One of Amy's favorite examples of
Speaker 1: job crafting came from a janitor who worked on a
Speaker 1: unit caring for Koma patients, people who were severely ill,
Speaker 1: fully unconscious, and in need of a miracle. That staff
Speaker 1: member did the usual duties mopping and tidying, but she
Speaker 1: also did one additional task that wasn't strictly part of
Speaker 1: her job description and that no one had told her
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: She would take the artwork off the walls of the
Speaker 3: hospital rooms in this unit and switch it around to
Speaker 3: just sort of mix things up. Even though these patients
Speaker 3: were not conscious. She hoped that maybe by changing something
Speaker 3: in their environment that even if it seemed like they
Speaker 3: weren't aware of what was going on, maybe it would
Speaker 3: stimulate something or spark something, as it was a change
Speaker 3: that could help promote their healing and speed them along
Speaker 3: whatever journey they would take.
Speaker 1: Editor Amy Encountered was assigned to a particularly depressing set
Speaker 1: of duties. She had to clean up after patients on
Speaker 1: the cancer ward.
Speaker 3: Given that chemotherapy makes people very sick to their stomach,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of throwing up to contend with,
Speaker 3: and so this cleaning staff member, who again remember by
Speaker 3: the structure of the job, not really supposed to be
Speaker 3: interacting with the patients. You're just supposed to go and
Speaker 3: clean things up instead, turn this into an opportunity to
Speaker 3: really bring comfort and humor to the patients, because imagine
Speaker 3: you're an adult, you've just been sick all over yourself
Speaker 3: and all over the floor. It's embarrassing. Now somebody has
Speaker 3: to come and clean this up. You feel awful, right,
Speaker 3: this is not a good moment. And so this cleaning
Speaker 3: staff member would show up and say, I want to
Speaker 3: thank you for getting sick. I have a car, I
Speaker 3: have car payments to make. The more you get sick,
Speaker 3: the more job security I have. And so you have
Speaker 3: someone who's now laughing in the context of this awful
Speaker 3: situation by this transformative set of moves done by someone
Speaker 3: who has gotten any training and patient care or patient interaction,
Speaker 3: but who has taken upon herself to think about, how
Speaker 3: can I still do the clean up, still do the
Speaker 3: work that's required of me, but do it in a
Speaker 3: way that's transformative of the relationships that she has with
Speaker 3: her patients.
Speaker 1: Getting to know happy hospital cleaners convinced Amy that job
Speaker 1: crafting can have a transformative effect on people's happiness at work.
Speaker 1: She hypothesized that the third of Americans who feel engaged
Speaker 1: with their jobs probably feel that way in part because
Speaker 1: they too jobft.
Speaker 3: I think this happens all the time. It happens in
Speaker 3: all kinds of jobs, but I think it's important to
Speaker 3: recognize that it happens in jobs where people don't have
Speaker 3: permission to do it, or they're not encouraged to do it.
Speaker 3: They might actually be forbidden from doing it. We'd all
Speaker 3: be better off if we just granted people more autonomy
Speaker 3: to bring their strength into the work that they're doing,
Speaker 3: while trusting them that they will keep in mind the
Speaker 3: things that they're responsible to do for the organization.
Speaker 1: Now that Amy has answered the question that's bugged her
Speaker 1: for decades, her research has shift to address a more
Speaker 1: practical question, how can we get more people to job craft?
Speaker 3: Are there interventions that can be done that can help
Speaker 3: people connect more deeply with what it is that makes
Speaker 3: their work meaningful, not just by thinking about it, but
Speaker 3: by encouraging people to redesign the job, still accomplish what
Speaker 3: it is they're responsible to the organization for accomplishing in
Speaker 3: the work, but do it in such a way that
Speaker 3: it's tapping the things that they care most about in
Speaker 3: the ways in which they most want to contribute.
Speaker 1: It's worth mentioning here, though, that deciding to pep up
Speaker 1: your job doesn't mean you can ignore the task as
Speaker 1: you were hired to do.
Speaker 3: Job crafting isn't deciding, you know, I'd really love to
Speaker 3: be the company guitarist. So I'm just going to bring
Speaker 3: my guitar in and play, and I think everybody will
Speaker 3: appreciate that because I'm being my best, you know, my
Speaker 3: best self.
Speaker 1: The other barrier to crafting your job might be your boss.
Speaker 1: Just like Adam Smith watching those pinmakers, your manager might
Speaker 1: still fall for the lie that giving a big paycheck
Speaker 1: is the only way to get the job done.
Speaker 3: I sometimes hear from managers who feel very nervous about
Speaker 3: this because it means giving up control. We can't possibly
Speaker 3: allow our employees to do this.
Speaker 4: It would be a mess.
Speaker 3: You know, people would be you know, freestyling and off roading,
Speaker 3: you know, doing things that would be really problematic in
Speaker 3: the organization. And my response to that is, well, actually,
Speaker 3: if this is how you see it, what I can
Speaker 3: tell you is they're already job crafting because this is
Speaker 3: happening everywhere. It's just that they're hiding it from you.
Speaker 3: And so you have a choice. Is this something that
Speaker 3: you want to help facilitate and encourage and what have you,
Speaker 3: or you want to continue to sort of drive this
Speaker 3: underground with employees who will still take the degrees of
Speaker 3: freedom they can find to derive more meaning and more
Speaker 3: of the kind of identity they want to enact in
Speaker 3: the work in any way they can, and how they're
Speaker 3: doing the work.
Speaker 1: While I'm certainly not praying that my house gets infested
Speaker 1: with rats, bats, or possums or mice, hornets, termites, or roaches,
Speaker 1: I do enjoy Marty's in frequent visits. His job is
Speaker 1: to set up traps and put down poison, but I
Speaker 1: now realize that he does all the things that Amy
Speaker 1: studies in her job crafting work. He genuinely enjoys the
Speaker 1: puzzles that past spring. He concentrates on the people who
Speaker 1: need his help, and he works quickly and calmly to
Speaker 1: reassure his jittery clients. It's mixing metaphors, but if exterminators
Speaker 1: had a bedside manner, Marty has perfected it. Sure he
Speaker 1: kills bugs, but his real focus seems to be eradicating
Speaker 1: the stress and worry of the people who need his help.
Speaker 1: I asked Marty if during the forty years in this job,
Speaker 1: he's ever daydreamed about doing something else, becoming a cop
Speaker 1: or a firefighter.
Speaker 4: Maybe I've thought about it in the past, honestly, but
Speaker 4: I've always come back to this, and I do. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I do feel grateful.
Speaker 1: If you really hate your job, if it's making you ill,
Speaker 1: or if there's a bad workplace culture or discrimination, or
Speaker 1: if you're not even making a living wage, then you
Speaker 1: should quit as soon as you can and search for
Speaker 1: something better. But if you're simply feeling kind of disengaged
Speaker 1: from your daily work, then give job crafting a try,
Speaker 1: because that dream job that you fantasize about it doesn't
Speaker 1: really exist. The research shows that any job can turn
Speaker 1: into a calling if you bring the right attitude and
Speaker 1: maybe a few science back tips from the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me Doctor Laurie Santos