by Tom Rath
Most of these alerts are easy to turn off when you want to get things done. Almost every phone has a ringer switch. Messaging programs allow you to turn off instant notifications. Perhaps acknowledging the magnitude of this problem, the newest smartphones include a “do not disturb” setting that prevents all (non-emergency) calls, messages, and notifications from interrupting you.
Take a moment today to tweak your routine to minimize interruption. Set specific times to catch up on news, email, and social networking sites. Keep distractions from buzzing, dinging, vibrating, and flying through your visual field whenever you need to focus on important work or pay attention to other people. It’s fine to check your messages, just don’t let them chase you around all day.
Focus for 45, Break for 15
While I was working on this book, I stumbled across an article written by Tim Walker, an American schoolteacher who moved to Finland in 2014 and began teaching fifth grade at a public school in Helsinki. What grabbed my attention was his skepticism about a nuance of the Finnish educational system.
In Finland, for every 45 minutes in the classroom, students are given a 15-minute break. At first, Walker resisted following this routine and instead kept his students in the classroom. But he eventually decided to test the 45/15 model, and he was astounded by the result. Walker described how kids were no longer dragging their feet in a “zombie-like” state. Instead, they walked into the room with a renewed bounce in their step after each 15-minute break, and they were more focused on learning throughout the day. The more Walker studied this model, which has been in place in Finland since the 1960s, he discovered that it wasn’t about what students did during this break time; instead, simply giving them freedom from structured work gave them renewed energy and focus.
More formal experiments on this topic have found that students are consistently more attentive in class when they have regular breaks. The research also suggests that it is important that these breaks consist of free time, as opposed to activities structured by teachers.
Reading Tim Walker’s story made me wonder if a similar hourly structure could be beneficial for adults as well. The answer to this question may lie in DeskTime, a software application that meticulously tracks employees’ time use throughout the day. When the makers of this software looked at the most productive 10 percent of their 36,000-employee user base, they made some surprising discoveries. What the most productive people have in common is an ability to take effective breaks. These elite 10 percent work for 52 minutes at a time, then take a 17-minute break before diving back into their work.
According to Julia Gifford, who works with DeskTime and wrote the report, the reason this pattern helps productivity is that the top 10 percent treat the periods of working time like a sprint. “They make the most of those 52 minutes by working with intense purpose, but then rest up to be ready for the next burst,” Gifford wrote. She also noted that during the 17 minutes of break, the group was more likely to go for a walk or tune out rather than checking email or Facebook.
While the ideal ratios will vary by profession and occupation, there is a great deal of support for the general notion of working in intense bursts paired with a period of time to recharge. If it is practical for you, try working in highly focused bursts of about 45 minutes, and then take a 15-minute break. Adjust up or down from there to determine what ratio allows you to remain fully charged throughout the workday. Even carving out 5 or 10 minutes for a break should help. In Gifford’s words, short breaks that get you ready for each sprint are the essence of “work with purpose.”
Use Purpose to Prevent Plaque
Serving a higher purpose can prevent mental deterioration and Alzheimer’s disease later in life. It can also help you think better and sharpen your mental acuity. At least, that’s what researchers at Rush University Medical Center found when they studied a group of people as they aged for a decade.
To look at the effect on the brain of having a purpose in life, this team of scientists followed 246 participants who subsequently died. For up to 10 years, the participants were given annual clinical evaluations, which included detailed cognitive testing and neurological exams. They also answered questions about their purpose in life and how they derived meaning from life’s experiences. Then, after the subjects passed away, the scientists conducted autopsies of each person’s brain and quantified the amount of brain plaques and tangles. These plaques and tangles disrupt memory and other cognitive functions and are very common among people who develop Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Patricia Boyle, one of the study’s authors, stated, “These findings suggest that purpose in life protects against the harmful effects of plaques and tangles on memory and other thinking abilities. This is encouraging and suggests that engaging in meaningful and purposeful activities promotes cognitive health in old age.”
Being able to see the purpose of your work also yields benefits for your health and well-being. A 14-year study of more than 6,000 people found that those with a sense of purpose had a 15 percent lower risk of death. What’s more, the research found that this longevity benefit is not dependent on age. So, whether you are 20, 40, or 60, being able to see the purpose of your work gives you a long-term advantage.
Keep Your Mission in Mind
Try to remind yourself why you do what you do every day. Bringing your mission to the forefront keeps you motivated. It could also make you a lot more productive.
Consider what happened when Wharton School of Business professor Adam Grant first studied the motivation of call center workers who spent their days calling the school’s alumni to request donations for future scholarship recipients. Given the job’s degree of difficulty (calling people in the evening and asking them for money) and its high level of turnover, Grant wondered if introducing call center workers to an actual scholarship recipient would provide additional motivation. So Grant and his fellow researchers brought in a scholarship recipient to speak with one group of these workers for a mere five minutes.
A month later, the call center workers who had spoken with the scholarship recipient were remarkably more productive. This group made almost twice as many calls per hour. Before the intervention, each caller raised about $400 per week; afterward, they raised about $2,000 per week.
Since this original research more than a decade ago, Adam Grant has studied these “pro-social” tendencies in several environments. In a technology company’s call center, for example, hearing from internal colleagues who benefited from their work was more meaningful to employees than motivating words from the organization’s CEO. In hospitals, Grant and his colleagues found that signs reading HAND HYGIENE PREVENTS YOU FROM CATCHING DISEASES had no effect, yet signs reading HAND HYGIENE PREVENTS PATIENTS FROM CATCHING DISEASES increased use of soap and hand sanitizer by 45 percent among doctors and nurses.
If, in your job, you have difficulty seeing the direct influence you have on another person, it’s worth taking the time to try to make that connection. General Electric is aware of the value of making this connection. The company brings cancer survivors to visit the men and women who build the large mechanical scanners (MRIs) that help people track and prevent cancer. GE’s videos from these events illuminate how much meaning and purpose everyone on the manufacturing floor experiences upon seeing the very real (and emotional) impact of their work.
As part of one experiment, patient photos were included when radiologists reviewed CT or MRI scans. In most cases, radiologists simply looked at scans and did not see or meet the actual patient. However, when a photograph was included, the radiologists admitted feeling more empathy toward the patient, and they wrote 29 percent longer reports. Most important, when a photo was attached, the radiologists’ accuracy of diagnosis improved by 46 percent.
Other organizations coordinate regular “field trips” so employees who do not typically see the results of their work can make that connection. John Deere invites employees who build tractors to spend time with the farmers who use the company’s pr
oducts. Wells Fargo shows its bankers videos of people describing how low-interest loans saved them from severe debt. Facebook invites software developers to hear from people who made connections with long-lost friends and family members through its vast social network.
Find a way to infuse each day with a reminder of your mission. It can be as simple as keeping a story of the impact of your work on hand or having an image, quote, or statement that brings the “why” of your job to life. If you want to stay motivated about the contribution you make to society, keep the mission at the forefront of your mind.
Make Every Interaction Count
As a young internist on Chicago’s South Side in the 1990s, Dr. Nicholas Christakis would take his leather medical bag and make house calls on the dying. As he visited his patients, a mix of working class African Americans and University of Chicago faculty members, Christakis had a unique view of the impact of dying and death on loved ones. This led him to study the widowhood effect, a phenomenon also referred to as a spouse dying of a broken heart.
The doctor’s perspective was forever changed one day when he received a call on his cell phone. Christakis had just been visiting an elderly woman, dying of dementia, who was being cared for by her daughter. As he was leaving her house, Christakis answered the phone and heard a voice on the line he did not recognize.
The caller turned out to be the best friend of the daughter’s husband. Caring for her mother left the daughter exhausted, and the daughter’s exhaustion had left her husband sick. The man was calling because he was concerned about his best friend. In that moment, Christakis realized the widowhood effect didn’t just affect one person but an entire network of people.
He has since gone on to study how networks of relationships affect everything from obesity and smoking to voting and how nice you are. Through the elaborate mapping of relationships and behaviors over time, Christakis and his colleagues have shown that we are not only influenced by interactions with our friends but also by our friends’ friends — and our friends’ friends’ friends. People we’ve never even met.
Each of our interactions also ripples outward in the network. “When you lose weight, when you act happy, when you act kindly . . . you affect other people and they in turn affect other people. And by our estimates you can affect ten, a hundred, sometimes more, individuals from your actions,” says Christakis, now a professor and co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.
Life is a composite of millions of individual interactions. These moments — which usually involve an exchange with another person — give your days a positive or negative charge. The actions you take throughout every single day accumulate to shape your years, decades, and overall life. However, when you think about a typical day, it’s easy to take these moments for granted.
Even brief interactions count, such as exchanging a smile or greeting while passing someone on the street. If you look at moments as three-second windows, there are 1,200 moments per hour and 19,200 in a day. That equates to roughly 500 million moments over a lifetime. The frequency of these brief experiences, within a given day, is far more important than their intensity, as research on this topic confirms.
For example, a person who has a dozen mildly positive things happen during a day will feel better than someone who has one single truly amazing thing happen. Even in a single day, it is the little things that count. My team’s research found that people who reported having great interactions throughout the day were nearly four times as likely to have very high well-being.
Of course, there are many life-altering events that you cannot change, no matter how hard you try. But you absolutely can control your next interaction with another person. No matter how bad of a mood you are in, you can make a conscious choice to add a positive spin to your next conversation. If you do, it is likely to improve your subsequent interactions. It should also set off a positive charge in the other person, resulting in additional energy for your overall environment.
Assume Good Intent
With each interaction comes a choice. When you run into someone who is filled with rage or hostility or who flat-out ignores you, that negativity can cancel out any positive exchanges that might have followed.
Let’s say you are standing outside a coffee shop talking to friends when a guy walks by in a hurry and bumps you, causing you to spill your coffee. In this moment, it is crucial to do everything you can to turn this mishap into a positive situation, even if the other person is at fault and nowhere nearly as apologetic as he should be. Especially when you are dealing with a stranger, there is no way you can put yourself precisely in his shoes.
In many cases, I am the one accidentally bumping into other people. As I mentioned in the first chapter, I lost all vision in my left eye to cancer many years ago. I now wear a prosthetic shell, which looks almost identical to my good eye. As a result, when someone approaches me from the left side, they think I see them . . . but I don’t.
Each time my partial blindness leads to a collision, it gives me a little window into what’s going on in the other person’s life at that moment. Most people follow my (well-rehearsed) lead of smiling, apologizing profusely, and shaking it off. However, some people are quick to assign blame and express clear agitation through their voice and body language.
It didn’t take me long to realize that the other person’s reaction is more important for their subsequent well-being than it is for mine. Those who assume bad intent are doing a disservice to themselves. As Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi described it, “When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed . . . [You] don’t get defensive. You don’t scream. You are trying to understand and listen.”
Even when faced with obvious bad intent — which is rare — it is still in your best interest to try to turn the situation into something positive. Then you avoid getting worked up and dwelling on it for the rest of the day. As you go through each day interacting with friends and strangers, make it your mission to ensure that as many exchanges as possible turn out a little bit better than they started.
Focus on the Frequency
All relationships are formed through a series of interac- tions. If you meet someone new today and have a negative experience with that person, you are less likely to seek him out in the future. If you have a positive exchange, you have a much better chance of building a healthy relationship. This part of the equation is pretty obvious. What many people take for granted is that existing relationships require regular and frequent interactions to thrive.
As Nicholas Christakis first discovered in the 1990s, the people you interact with throughout the day have an enormous influence on your well-being. In 2008, when Christakis and his colleague James Fowler studied the way relationships affect happiness levels, physical proximity mattered much more than I would have guessed. If a friend in one of the participants’ social networks lived within half a mile of that participant (and was happy), the probability of the participant’s happiness increased by more than 40 percent.
If a friend in someone’s network lived within two miles of the participant, this influence was cut in half to about 20 percent. When a friend in a participant’s social network lived more than three miles away, the effect went down to about 10 percent. This influence continued to decrease with additional distance. Christakis and Fowler noted, “The spread of happiness might depend more on frequent social contact than deep social connections.”
That being said, close relationships can have a profound effect over time, even when those in the relationship live in a different city or country. It is certainly worth investing time in maintaining and nurturing distant connections — an undertaking that is now much easier thanks to technology and social networks.
A controversial 2013 study conducted by a team of Princeton researchers found what they described as “massive-scale emotional contagion through networks.” To test whether emotions spread through brief online inter- actions, the resear
chers altered the Facebook news feed of 689,003 users (this was the controversial part of the study, as it was not clear whether these users had opted into an experiment). When positive expressions in the news feed were deliberately reduced, people generated fewer positive posts and instead wrote more negative posts. When negative expressions were deliberately reduced, the opposite occurred, and users were more positive in their subsequent posts.
All of this research makes it clear that people greatly underestimate how everyday interactions influence their daily experience. Everyone you communicate with on a daily or weekly basis, whether you consider them friends or even know their name, influences your well-being. This also means that you have the ability to add a positive charge to every conversation throughout your day.
Be 80 Percent Positive
When someone is positive all the time, I often struggle to wrestle the conversation into reality. Being blindly positive has more in common with perpetual negativity than I would have guessed. Both conditions cause others to be frustrated or annoyed or to simply tune out.
This is why some of the best research on daily experience is rooted in ratios of positive and negative interactions. Over the last two decades, scientists have made remarkable predictions simply by watching people interact with one another and then scoring the conversations based on the ratio of positive and negative interactions. Researchers have used the findings to predict everything from the likelihood a couple will divorce to the odds of a work team having high customer satisfaction and productivity levels.
More recent research helps explain why these brief exchanges matter so much. When you experience negative emotions as a result of criticism or rejection, for example, your body produces higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which shuts down much of your thinking and activates conflict and defense mechanisms. You perceive situations as being worse than they actually are when you are in this fight-or-flight mode. The release of cortisol is also a sustained response, so it lasts for a while, especially if you dwell on the negative event.