Happiness and Productivity

Monday, 19 March, 2012

A great talk from Shawn Achor on TED.com detailing how happiness leads to productivity, rather than the western view of productivity leading to happiness (aka work hard, earn more, be happy). Its a little bit of a sales pitch but the summary of what this all means appears at 11.25.

There is quite a bit of science that goes behind this work….. interestingly Paul Ekman (Emotions Revealed) notes that you feel an emotion by creating the facial expression for it. So as made as it might seem (in our inhibited western society), Laughter Yoga (enforced laughter!) does have relevance in creating feelings of well being which develops in to a positive feedback mechanism. Thats not to say its the only way of doing this, and Shawn Achor has a list of other suggestions. Also worth noting that its a very funny talk!!