Apr 20, 2022 03:41 PM
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-b...ity-myths/
EXCERPTS: . . . You should be happy in your work. According to many people, productivity is linked to happiness. As in, the happier you are, the more productive you’ll be.
Again, there’s logic to this. We’re often instinctively motivated to do things we find rewarding and make us happy, and avoid those we find unpleasant. Also, scientific studies reveal that happy workers are around 12 per cent more productive. So, if you’ve got a workforce of 100 employees, and they’re all happy, you’ll get the productivity of 112 employees, at no extra cost! It’s therefore unsurprising that so many organisations are fixated on employee happiness.
However, the simple yet persistent idea that ‘happiness = productivity’ overlooks considerable evidence to the contrary...
[...] Hard work always pays off. If you want to be productive, to achieve something, you just need to work hard, and you’ll get it. Because hard work always pays off.
That’s the mantra adopted by many. Unfortunately, reality is rarely as formulaic. As much as we might want to believe otherwise, when countless people are working equally hard for the same goals the most important factor is actually going to be… plain old luck. Unfortunately, you can’t tell people to ‘be lucky’ in the same way you can cajole them to work hard.
In fact, telling people that hard work inevitably leads to productivity and the outcomes they want is unhelpful. Our brains are sensitive to the balance between effort and reward. Our subconscious systems are constantly assessing how much work a task will involve and the likely outcome from putting that effort in, and asking ‘is it worth it?’ And when the effort we put in is not rewarded as expected, it causes stress and negative emotions. This is believed to be a key factor in workplace stress, because modern jobs often mean the person putting the effort in to something is far removed from the eventual outcome.
Given all this, why do people still believe that hard work always pays off? Possibly because of the ‘just-world hypothesis’, the cognitive bias where we assume that the world is a fair place, that good work is rewarded, and bad deeds are punished... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . You should be happy in your work. According to many people, productivity is linked to happiness. As in, the happier you are, the more productive you’ll be.
Again, there’s logic to this. We’re often instinctively motivated to do things we find rewarding and make us happy, and avoid those we find unpleasant. Also, scientific studies reveal that happy workers are around 12 per cent more productive. So, if you’ve got a workforce of 100 employees, and they’re all happy, you’ll get the productivity of 112 employees, at no extra cost! It’s therefore unsurprising that so many organisations are fixated on employee happiness.
However, the simple yet persistent idea that ‘happiness = productivity’ overlooks considerable evidence to the contrary...
[...] Hard work always pays off. If you want to be productive, to achieve something, you just need to work hard, and you’ll get it. Because hard work always pays off.
That’s the mantra adopted by many. Unfortunately, reality is rarely as formulaic. As much as we might want to believe otherwise, when countless people are working equally hard for the same goals the most important factor is actually going to be… plain old luck. Unfortunately, you can’t tell people to ‘be lucky’ in the same way you can cajole them to work hard.
In fact, telling people that hard work inevitably leads to productivity and the outcomes they want is unhelpful. Our brains are sensitive to the balance between effort and reward. Our subconscious systems are constantly assessing how much work a task will involve and the likely outcome from putting that effort in, and asking ‘is it worth it?’ And when the effort we put in is not rewarded as expected, it causes stress and negative emotions. This is believed to be a key factor in workplace stress, because modern jobs often mean the person putting the effort in to something is far removed from the eventual outcome.
Given all this, why do people still believe that hard work always pays off? Possibly because of the ‘just-world hypothesis’, the cognitive bias where we assume that the world is a fair place, that good work is rewarded, and bad deeds are punished... (MORE - missing details)