Beth Kuhel | Huffington Post, February 2015 Managers are perpetually searching for new and better ways to increase productivity and engagement of employees. While conventional reward systems for hard work and achievements show appreciation for those who are adding value to your team, these programs may not be enough to inspire people to contribute more…
SUCCESS Magazine, Shawn Achor January 2015 If you saw me on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey, you’ll know that Oprah and I discussed the age-old question: Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Even the positive-minded media mogul admitted to wrestling with the question. “I beat myself up because sometimes I look at it and I…
SUCCESS Magazine, Shawn Achor December 2014 Negative noise is everywhere in our society, but it’s also inside our heads. Worry is the loudest internal noise, and as a new parent, I understand how easy it is to let it creep in. I need to remember that worry is not love, and that in fact giving…
Live Happy, Shawn Achor & Michelle Gielan December 2014 Tips for smart, meaningful giving and receiving this holiday season. Before you go racing out to the mall to pick up a new oversized reindeer sweater for Aunt Sally and a set of drums for your 4-year-old nephew (fun for him, not so much for your…
SUCCESS Magazine, Shawn Achor December 2014 The brilliant Amy Wrzesniewski from Yale University researches how people perceive their jobs. She found that the way a person sees his or her occupation—as a “calling,” as opposed to a “job”—doesn’t depend on the job title or position, but on the meaning he or she perceives in the…
Aisha Sultan | News & Observer, December 2014 There are times when a foggy malaise can settle into a spot. Even when cracks of sunlight break through this vapor, a heaviness lingers. Despite being a reporter – a job where we’re conditioned to notice and document what’s wrong, unfair, tragic and broken – I usually…
Orion Jones | Big Think, November 2014 We all want to be happy. Some have even said that achieving happiness is the goal of life. But we wouldn’t look to a technology company for such wisdom, would we? It seems unlikely, and yet Google has made a real contribution to happiness studies thanks to one of…
Elizabeth Garone, BBC Capital November 2014 Over the course of a year, people spend a lot of time on the job but, that doesn’t necessarily mean they like their work. The French spend an average of 1,480 hours at work annually, Americans, 1,700 hours, and Singaporeans a whopping 2,400 hours, according to the Federal Reserve…
Mark C. Crowley, Fast Company November 2014 By the late 1990s, the number of people diagnosed with depression in the U.S. had increased by nearly 1,000% in just a half-century according to the World Health Organization. Believing that psychological research had been too narrowly focused on finding new treatments for human despair—and not on a…
SUCCESS Magazine, Shawn Achor September 11, 2014 When I was 7, I ran away from home with my 5-year-old sister. Some 7 miles of arduous walking later, we arrived at my dad’s old fishing hole. Thankfully, 15 hours later, our parents and the local police finally found us. They hadn’t thought to look there sooner because…
