112 - Two Parts Work, One Part Happiness

Let's talk a little bit about happiness. Music and links from this episode Travelling between the Ancient Empires by Ars Sonor & Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt Park Bench Afternoons by MindsEye Tides by MindsEye A curious thing by J Hacha de Zola Line-by-line notes INTRO In our work focused culture And because work is all about, well working We often forget that work could be fun, if we wanted it to be Because work is driven by profits, timesheets and getting paid We sometimes forget one of the most important parts of our life Happiness Let’s talk a bit about happiness This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess PLAY MID SONG James Deb It’s probably not a name your familiar with If you you are Congratulations, you read Wikipedia like me James Deb is often cited as one of the inventors of the 8 hour work day Or the 40 hour work movement, that its apparently known as Previous to this idea, 10-16 hour work days 6 days a week were common It was actually Robert Owen though A Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of the utopian socialism movement That really branded the 8 hour work day well He came up with the slogan 8 hours labour, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours rest This was seen as revolutionary at the time That suddenly were going to start working less hours And looking after our health And it’s funny, now, we live in a freer society than ever One that, with the help of the internet pretty much lets you do whatever you want Whenever you want And we voluntarily choose to work longer hours Do more things for our bosses And put our happiness on hold for the sake of the corporation In the design industry, we value worker heroes The people who turn up an hour before everybody else And leave an hour after everybody else It’s common in the design industry to work long hours And work weekends, and in your spare time Because we enjoy our jobs so much It’s not like this feels like work, and we might still think we feel happy Those worker heroes, the people who work the longest? They’re not heroes It’s not big or clever working ridiculous hours It grates on your happiness Slowly and methodically And it's something you don't even realise Trust me, I’ve been there and worn out the t-shirt I realised, years ago now, that working the longest doesn’t make you the best It just becomes habit, then you expand every task to fill the available time You become less efficient, because you’ve got more hours available to you Then that means you end up working longer hours, because things are taking you longer to do Then the cycle repeats all over again And, it just doesn’t make you happy Design makes me happy I love it But I don’t love doing it for 16 hours a day That’s not an efficient use of my design brain I can’t come up with good ideas for that long during the day And I shouldn’t try, but some people do I’m at my happiest when I’m designing things But that doesn’t mean I stay happy for very long when I’ve been doing it for too long Even the things you love make you less happy when you do them for too long And if you’re not even in a job that makes you happy Quit tomorrow It’s...