Impact Impression Blog

Since most of us spend a great deal of our lives working, it is inevitable that work plays a key role in shaping our levels of happiness. In a recent chapter of the World Happiness Report — published annually to coincide with the United Nation’s International Day of Happiness — we look more closely at the relationship between work and happiness. We draw largely upon the Gallup World Poll, which has been surveying people in over 150 countries around the world since 2006. These efforts allow us to analyze data from hundreds of thousands of individuals across the globe and investigate the ways in which elements of people’s working lives drive their wellbeing. Subjective wellbeing – often loosely referred to as happiness – can be measured along multiple dimensions. We look primarily at how people evaluate the quality of their lives overall, something Gallup measures according to the Cantril Ladder, an 11-point scale where the top step is your best possible life and the bottom step is...

"Push Back When Your Team Is Given Unrealistic Targets" You might feel helpless when your superiors hand you an astronomically high target for your team. But don’t just surrender and agree to take it on. Instead, share your concerns with your manager. Calmly and rationally, explain why the target feels unattainable, and use numbers to back up your argument whenever possible. For example, you could say: “I saw the $2 million target for our team. That’s a 23% increase over last year. Each team member would have to improve their year-over-year performance by 38%, but the best improvement we’ve ever achieved is 11%. I’m concerned that attempting to achieve those targets will encourage short-term thinking that will hurt customer satisfaction and ultimately constrain our growth. Are there opportunities to revisit this target?” This kind of reasoning might not work, but you should try. Your team will be grateful that you’re advocating on their behalf.

Down here, very few care about the steps or strategies that you take to get something done. All they see and care about is the result (which must be physical). This world ain't your maths class where your teacher can award you points for every good step taken in your calculation. I repeat; this life is not a maths class where you can get marks even if you arrive at the wrong answer. Nope.

In her last address as the United States Of America's first lady, Michelle Obama kept reiterating the need for good education. In all her speeches to the young people, she never descended the podium without telling them the importance of good  and sound  education. I can't forget her last speech where she said that with good education, you can aspire to be anything in the world, even the President of the USA.  This touched me. In my school days, my lecturers, in their bid to encourage (and threaten) us to study beyond the school syllables, always told us that the school can only give us 30% of the education we need. The remaining 70%, we have to get ourselves through ardent reading, studying, researches, observing and of course, experience.

What motivates people to change the way they work? When organizations introduce new processes or systems, or when they want to stimulate performance for certain business practices, they often assemble dedicated task forces, assign them specific goals, and identify deadlines and financial rewards. But once the initiative is completed and the bonus cashed, a question always arises: will behaviors and business practices stick around, or will people drift back to their old ways of working? In a recent study conducted in a California hospital, I found that that the type of incentive matters. In particular, peer pressure appears to go a longer way than money does.

"Pursue your happiness, nothing matters more!" This is the most soul lifting - and selfish - sentence that has spread across the cyber space. Even motivational speakers have adopted this meme. They tell you that nothing else matters except your happiness. Well, being happy is a good thing. In fact, everyone owes themselves a duty to always live in this state. But pursuing happiness at all cost? Now, this is creepy. When you get to a stage in life where nothing matters to you; where you can do anything to satisfy yourself in order to be happy,  then I can tell you that you are a time bomb waiting to explode! And there is a name for it - SELFISHNESS!

Just last month, the insanely prolific John Grisham announced that he will publish a brand new thriller, Camino Island, this summer. Camino Island follows a young novelist in search of a story, a popular Florida bookseller who deals rare books (and occasionally dabbles in the literary black market), and a collection of rare F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts—insured for $25 million—stolen from Princeton University.