Top 5: Finding Joy in Any Job

Summary

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Episode: Top 5: Finding Joy in Any Job
Release Date: November 15, 2024

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Introduction: Celebrating Five Years of Happiness

In this milestone episode, Dr. Laurie Santos celebrates the fifth anniversary of The Happiness Lab podcast by revisiting one of her most memorable episodes: "Working Our Way to Happiness." To mark the occasion, she collaborates with her producer, Ryan Dilley, to highlight key insights and stories that have resonated with listeners over the years.

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Featured Episode: Working Our Way to Happiness

Meet Marty Gilloran: The Joyful Exterminator

The episode centers around Marty Gilloran, a pest control operator whose passion for his seemingly mundane job reveals profound truths about workplace happiness. Marty exemplifies how finding joy and meaning in any occupation transcends the traditional pursuit of higher salaries or prestigious titles.

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The Money-Happiness Paradox

Challenging Common Beliefs

Dr. Santos engages in a thought-provoking discussion with Barry Schwartz, emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of Why We Work. They delve into the prevalent misconception that higher income directly correlates with increased job satisfaction.

• Barry Schwartz ([10:29]):
  "People are wrong. This is not the case. Money does buy a little bit of happiness, but it doesn't buy a lot of happiness."

Schwartz emphasizes that while adequate compensation is essential for meeting basic needs, beyond a certain threshold, additional income fails to significantly enhance emotional well-being or reduce stress levels. This notion challenges the widespread belief that pursuing higher pay is the primary pathway to a fulfilling career.

• Dr. Laurie Santos ([03:20]):
  "Money doesn't seem to be the path to happiness that we think at work. It seems to be other things."

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Adam Smith and the Division of Labor

Historical Perspectives on Human Motivation

The episode traces the origins of the money-centric view of work back to Adam Smith's observations of the 18th-century pin factory. Smith proposed that dividing labor into repetitive, simple tasks maximizes efficiency but overlooks the intrinsic motivations that drive human satisfaction.

• Barry Schwartz ([17:34]):
  "No one likes working on an assembly line, but Smith's point is that nobody likes doing any kind of work. So break the work up into as efficient and meaningless chunks as you can."

This approach, while economically advantageous, fosters environments where employees are disengaged and derive little personal satisfaction from their tasks.

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Psychological Insights: Beyond Paychecks

B.F. Skinner’s Experiments and Human Behavior

Barry Schwartz connects Adam Smith's theories to B.F. Skinner's behavioral experiments with rats, illustrating how external rewards shape behavior. Skinner's work suggested that both animals and humans are primarily motivated by incentives, a view that underpins many modern workplace practices focused on financial rewards.

• Barry Schwartz ([20:20]):
  "People won't work if they don't get paid, and they need to make enough money to support themselves and their family. But once that's done, that's not really what motivates people."

Schwartz advocates for recognizing intrinsic motivators—such as meaningful work, autonomy, and opportunities for creativity—as critical components of job satisfaction.

• Dr. Laurie Santos ([24:28]):
  "Making people feel trusted and important in the work that they do can make reasonably unattractive work attractive."

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Amy Wrzesnieski’s Research on Job Crafting

Transforming Work Through Personal Engagement

Amy Wrzesnieski, a professor at Yale School of Management, explores how individuals can reshape their job roles to align with personal strengths and values, a concept known as job crafting. Her research focuses on how even roles traditionally viewed as low-status, such as hospital custodial staff, can become sources of profound satisfaction and purpose.

• Amy Wrzesnieski ([31:35]):
  "People who see their work as a calling are primarily focused on the work itself. They see the work as an end in itself."

Case Studies:

1. Janitor with a Creative Touch
   A janitor cleans a hospital unit for coma patients and takes the initiative to rearrange artwork in rooms, aiming to create a more stimulating environment that might aid patient healing.

   • Amy Wrzesnieski ([35:20]):
     "Even though these patients were not conscious, she hoped that maybe by changing something in their environment, maybe it would stimulate or spark something."

2. Humorous Cleanup Specialist
   Another janitor working in the cancer ward uses humor to comfort patients, transforming an embarrassing situation into a moment of levity.

   • Amy Wrzesnieski ([35:52]):
     "She would show up and say, I want to thank you for getting sick... It's the more you get sick, the more job security I have."

These examples illustrate how job crafting enables individuals to find deeper meaning and satisfaction in their work by integrating personal values and creativity into their roles.

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Marty Gilloran: Embodying Job Crafting

Finding Joy in Pest Control

Marty Gilloran serves as a living testament to the power of job crafting. Despite the stigma attached to pest control, Marty derives immense satisfaction from his work by focusing on problem-solving, variety, and making a positive impact on his clients' lives.

• Marty Gilloran ([25:00]):
  "I love the variety. I never know where I'm going to be from one day to the next."

By embracing the challenges and unpredictability of his job, Marty transforms it into a source of personal fulfillment and joy, exemplifying how any job can be meaningful when approached with the right mindset.

• Dr. Laurie Santos ([26:31]):
  "Human beings aren't lab rats in a Skinner box. We're motivated not just by monetary rewards, but by variety, challenge, and having a positive impact on other people's lives."

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Overcoming Barriers to Job Crafting

Empowering Employees and Changing Workplace Cultures

Dr. Santos and Wrzesnieski discuss the obstacles that prevent widespread adoption of job crafting, including managerial resistance and rigid organizational structures. They advocate for granting employees more autonomy and encouraging environments where individuals feel trusted to redesign their roles meaningfully.

• Amy Wrzesnieski ([37:15]):
  "We'd all be better off if we just granted people more autonomy to bring their strengths into the work that they're doing while trusting them that they will keep in mind the things that they're responsible to do."

Managers often fear that job crafting will lead to chaos, but Wrzesnieski argues that such concerns are unfounded, as employees are likely already engaging in job crafting discreetly.

• Amy Wrzesnieski ([38:28]):
  "If this is how you see it, they are already job crafting because this is happening everywhere. They're just hiding it from you."

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Conclusion: The Path to a Fulfilling Career

The episode culminates with a powerful message: job crafting can transform any job into a source of happiness and fulfillment, provided that individuals approach their work with intentionality and creativity. By focusing on intrinsic motivators and aligning job roles with personal values, employees can overcome the lack of inherent meaning in their tasks.

• Dr. Laurie Santos ([40:21]):
  "The research shows that any job can turn into a calling if you bring the right attitude and maybe a few science-backed tips from the Happiness Lab with me."

Marty Gilloran's enduring passion for his work underscores the episode's central thesis: true job satisfaction stems not from external rewards but from the meaningful engagement and positive impact individuals cultivate within their roles.

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Key Takeaways

1. Money Isn't the Sole Predictor of Job Happiness: While essential for meeting basic needs, higher salaries do not significantly enhance long-term job satisfaction once a reasonable income threshold is met.

2. Intrinsic Motivators Matter: Meaningful work, autonomy, variety, and the ability to make a positive impact are crucial for sustained job happiness.

3. Job Crafting as a Solution: Employees can redesign their job roles to better align with personal strengths and values, transforming even the most mundane tasks into fulfilling endeavors.

4. Organizational Support is Essential: Employers play a pivotal role in fostering environments that encourage job crafting by granting autonomy and recognizing intrinsic motivators.

5. Marty Gilloran’s Example: Demonstrates how embracing job crafting leads to enduring job satisfaction and a sense of purpose, regardless of societal perceptions of the profession.

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Notable Quotes:

• Barry Schwartz ([10:29]):
  "People are wrong. This is not the case. Money does buy a little bit of happiness, but it doesn't buy a lot of happiness."

• Amy Wrzesnieski ([37:15]):
  "We'd all be better off if we just granted people more autonomy to bring their strengths into the work that they're doing while trusting them that they will keep in mind the things that they're responsible to do."

• Dr. Laurie Santos ([40:21]):
  "The research shows that any job can turn into a calling if you bring the right attitude and maybe a few science-backed tips from the Happiness Lab with me."

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Take Action: If you're feeling disengaged at work, consider adopting job crafting strategies to infuse your role with greater meaning and satisfaction. Explore ways to align your tasks with your personal strengths and values, and seek opportunities to make a positive impact in your workplace.

Stay Tuned: Join Dr. Laurie Santos on her next episode of The Happiness Lab as she delves deeper into evidence-based strategies for enriching your work life, no matter your job description.

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This summary was crafted based on the transcript provided for the episode "Top 5: Finding Joy in Any Job" from The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos.

Transcript

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[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Medical presents Painful Thoughts I could catch anything sitting in this doctor's waiting room. Okay, just wiped his runny nose on.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

My jacket and the guy next to.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Me sitting in a pool of perspiration insists on sharing my armrest. Next time, make an appointment with an Amazon One medical provider. There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

[Marty Gilloran]

It has the biggest display ever.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black.

[Marty Gilloran]

Aluminum compared to previous generations.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

IPhone XS are later required charge time and actual results will vary. Pushkin it's an exciting time here at the Happiness Lab because the Happiness Lab is having a birthday. Our podcast has just turned five years old, and to celebrate, I sent my producer, Ryan Dilley, deep into the archive to grab out the five episodes that I found the most memorable from all the hundreds that we've made together. So, Ryan, which episode is up next?

[Barry Schwartz]

So this show's from season two, and it's called Working Our Way to Happiness.

[Marty Gilloran]

This is one where I have a.

[Barry Schwartz]

Slightly humiliating cameo appearance. But that's not why you chose it, right?

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

No, it's totally why I chose it. I really enjoyed your scream in that episode.

[Barry Schwartz]

A lot of this show is built around, as listeners will find out, a lot of this show is built around me seeing a rat that had run.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Into a house, which is the part of the wonderful cameo because we get to hear at least a reenactment of the the scream that you gave when you saw the rat. But the episode's not about Ryan or screaming. It's really about kind of the job of someone who has to deal with folks who see rats all the time. We interviewed Yale's pest management person, Marty, and he was the perfect guest for this episode because it was an entire episode about what we can do to be happier at work and the misconceptions we have about happiness at work, like the idea that being a pest control person might not be the best job when it turns out Marty really adores what he does for work.

[Barry Schwartz]

And this episode also includes a research backed idea that gets more pushback than any other thing that we mention about people get so angry. And that is the amount of money that you make doesn't predict how happy you will be.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Yeah, this is something that the science has shown us for a while with some nuance. Right. If you're not making enough money to put food on the table or put a roof over your head, definitely more money will make you happier at work and beyond. But for folks making a reasonable wage, money doesn't seem to be the path to happiness that we think at work. It seems to be other things. And that's really what Marty was so great at teaching us. So this is one of the reasons that I've loved this episode. It features good screams from my beloved producer Ryan and some really important science about what makes us happy at work. I hope you'll love this episode too. Working your way to happiness. No, no, no. It was much more like terrified than that. I'm going through my sound effects library with my friend and producer, Ryan Dilley. I'm trying to find a very specific scream, one that forever etched into my memory. No, that's like way more of a manly, brave scream. I think we need it more high pitched and frantic and fearful. We're trying to reenact a rather horrifying moment that Ryan and I experienced a few months back. We were working on our podcast scripts and Ryan needed a cup of coffee, so he headed into the kitchen and that was when I heard it. I think that's pretty close. I think that was it. Ryan emitted the longest, loudest, and most terror filled shriek I've ever heard. Apparently, a huge, terrifying rat had run through the kitchen. A rodent that was, at least according to Ryan's retelling, about the size of a large Great Dane or a small horse. I assumed he was exaggerating and that it was probably just a harmless mouse, the kind we get on college campuses from time to time, especially when there's construction outside. A tiny mouse that was probably now feeling so terrorized by Ryan's scream that it had likely hightailed it out of the house. Never to be heard from again. But just as I was explaining that we had absolutely nothing to worry about, the creature that I could now clearly see was definitely not a tiny mouse was back. It raced from the kitchen into the study around our feet, and then slithered into a heating duct on the wall. But I wasn't worried. Not because the rat wasn't huge or terrifying. It was definitely both. I just knew it wasn't going to be a problem for long, because at Yale, when these things happen and you need someone to resolve the issue quickly.

[Marty Gilloran]

You just call Marty Gilloran, pest control operator.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Marty is like the Terminator for vermin. Within minutes, he was at my house, armed with baits and traps galore.

[Marty Gilloran]

I like to get there as soon as I can to help people. Yeah, I don't like to leave, you know, calls waiting too long. And that was kind of an emergency call because it was a rat in a living space.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

While Ryan continued to stand bravely on the sofa, Marty was sprawled on the floor. He checked for the rat where we last saw it, face pressed up against the air duct. Marty then set his traps like a general deploying his armies. He strategized about all aspects of the rat's moves, like, what if the rat retreated here or made a break for it over there? Within minutes, all the traps were down. And almost as soon as Marty left.

[Marty Gilloran]

We heard, oh, I got lucky on that one. Sometimes it takes a lot longer.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Marty is a vermin aficionado, one of the most skilled professionals I've ever met. But few people want a job like Marty's. In fact, pest control is usually included in lists of the worst possible jobs in America. Some exterminators face low wages, deal with dangerous chemicals, and spend their working hours in the company of scary critters that can bite, scratch, and sting.

[Marty Gilloran]

I usually get stung about once a year. Kind of just comes with the territory.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

But Marty, it turns out, is the exact kind of person we should emulate if we want to find the perfect job or even just to be happier at work generally. Because, as you'll hear in this episode, science suggests that our intuitions about good jobs and bad jobs are all wrong. We think that pay and perks and plush offices are what makes us happy in our careers. But as we'll see, happiness and human motivation work much differently than our lying minds realize. Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news Is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. What did you want to be when you grew up? I'm going to venture a guess. That rat exterminator was pretty far down the list. It was for Marty, too. He grew up with the standard career aspirations.

[Marty Gilloran]

I mean, like every kid, I guess, a fireman or a cop or, you know, when you're a kid.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

But Marty never joined the police department or signed on at the fire station. After graduating, he drifted into a number of different jobs.

[Marty Gilloran]

Just like restaurant work and, you know, security guard and filling vending machines, things like that.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

They all paid okay, But Marty wasn't exactly filled with joy when he clocked in every Monday morning. And he wasn't alone. According to a recent Gallup poll from 2018, only about a third of American workers were report feeling really engaged with their jobs. Over 50% admit feeling actively not engaged. They merely put up with boring work. And nearly 20% report hating what they do for a living.

[Marty Gilloran]

I've had jobs where I've had that problem before. Like I have to go to work. This is not good. It's Monday morning.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

It's probably not all that surprising. But hating your job isn't that great for your happiness. Which raises an important question. What actually makes for a happier job? What could make work life better for the nearly hundred million Americans who feel disengaged on the job? Many of us have a pretty strong intuition here. We'd be happier if only we had a bigger salary. Take one LinkedIn survey from 2014. It found that financial compensation was the top value that most college students look for when considering a new job opportunity. Compensation was chosen more often than than work, life balance, having good colleagues or even career development. And our intuition that a bigger paycheck means a happier career isn't just affecting our job choices. It's also affecting how we choose to live our lives generally. Consider the results of one study which has surveyed the values of incoming freshmen for the last half century. In 2018, more than 80% of freshmen said that being well off financially was really important in life. It was more important than raising a family or developing a meaningful philosophy on life. And that's a big change compared to the answers their parents or grandparents gave. The number of students who think big salaries are key has gone up dramatically since the 1960s. But is our growing intuition about a link between money and job satisfaction? Right? Can employers really improve the well being of the nearly 2/3 of people who hate their jobs simply by paying them more.

[Barry Schwartz]

When you ask people what would make their lives better or what would make their jobs better, the first thing they point to is my life so good, and if I only made 10% more, it would be perfect.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

This is Barry Schwartz, emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of the book why We Work.

[Barry Schwartz]

People are wrong. This is not the case. Money does buy a little bit of happiness, but it doesn't buy a lot of happiness.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

We covered this in an earlier episode called the Unhappy Millionaire, but it's worth repeating here. If you're not making a living wage, more money will definitely improve your overall well being. But if you currently earn $100,000 or more a year, doubling or even tripling your salary won't have any effect on your emotions or your stress levels. Even the super rich can lead sad and lonely lives.

[Barry Schwartz]

For the most part, doing what you do in order to earn a little bit more is putting your energy in the wrong direction. And it can have perverse effects in that if the amount of money you make starts to be the metric you use to evaluate whether you're successful or not and whether you're getting anything out of your work, it's the wrong metric.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

I've seen so many of my Yale students head in exactly this wrong direction. After graduation, they pick a job based only on salary. Sometimes they even choose careers they kind of know they're going to hate just because it comes with a great paycheck. But they soon end up experiencing what's come to be known as the golden handcuffs, that feeling of being stuck in a high paying job that you absolutely hate. And that's one of the reasons that professions we often think of as good jobs, the most prestigious ones with the highest salariest think doctor, lawyer, Wall street investor. The people who have these prestigious jobs have suicide rates that are one and a half times those of the average population. Higher paychecks are simply not having the positive effect on our mental health that we think. But why are our intuitions about money and job satisfaction so messed up? How did we come to think of more money as the answer to all our work woes? And if a huge paycheck doesn't make a job better, then what does? To get to the bottom of all these questions, we need to turn back to the very critter we started the show with. That's right, the rat. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This year at Pushkin, we've been able to work with some of the world's biggest brands on creating bespoke content. Whether it's a custom episode in partnership with a brand or a creative ad campaign, we we want to be sure that our content reaches people, but the ad space is incredibly noisy. How do we ensure our content reaches the right audience? That's where LinkedIn ads come in. With LinkedIn ads, you can precisely reach professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. As you will have direct access to a billion members, 130 million decision makers and 10 million C level executives, you can target your audience by job title, industry, company and more, ensuring your ads reach the right people for your business. Start building the right relationships and reach your audience in a respectful environment with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next LinkedIn ads campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com Malcolm to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com Malcolm Terms and conditions apply.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

I'm Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab. Intuit QuickBooks wants you to achieve your dreams of starting your own business and working for yourself. And if you're a small business owner launching a company, then you'll want to check out Mind the small business success stories from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio and Intuit QuickBooks. Season one and two are out now and season three is launching Thursday, January 9, with new episodes coming out every other Thursday after that. So make sure you catch up and listen as hosts Austin Hankwitz and Janice Torres talk to small business owners about how they've grown and maintained their businesses and tackled the hurdles and challenges that come with being your own boss. From tracking money in and out to cutting through day to day management with an all encompassing platform like Intuit QuickBooks, you don't want to miss these inspiring stories of small business journeys. Listen to Mind the Business small business success stories on the Iheart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in the 1700s, a famous Scottish philosopher visited an innovative manufacturing operation, a pin factory. Now, you might not think pin making would require that much innovation. I mean, at first glance it doesn't seem all that complicated to make a simple pin. And we're not even talking about safety pins here, just the really, really simple straight kind. But back in the 18th century, creating each pin was tough. It took 18 individual steps. First you needed to measure and clip a length of wire, then straighten. After that you carefully sharpened one end. Once that point was set, you prepared the other end to attach the head, which involved several steps like grinding the top to make sure it Was the right texture. Finally, the pinheads needed to be affixed. And after that, they had to be placed in a perfect row onto a little sheet of cardboard that holds them. Pin manufacture was a time consuming business. A worker on his own who did all of those steps one after another, Would only be able to make about 20 pins per day. But the management of the factory figured out how to speed things up. They broke the work up so that each employee only did one or two steps over and over again. It was this innovation that especially impressed that visiting philosopher, A scholar who later became known as the father of economics, Adam Smith. Smith began his famous book, the wealth of Nations, With a story of this humble enterprise. He realized that the factory's assembly line didn't just allow production to go a little faster. On the day he visited, 10 workers were able to make 12 pounds of pins. So 48,000 in total. That's a rate that's 50 times faster than the traditional method. By splitting up the complex task, Smith argued, management could create way, way, way more pins at a much, much, much lower cost. And that meant that customers could buy pins more cheaply. And they might even think of new ways to use pins, since they were now so cheap, which might increase the overall market for pins, making the factory even more money. In the end, this simple pin factory inspired Smith's principle of the assembly line, or what he called division of labor. It was an idea that completely changed the industrial revolution and paved the way for modern capitalist manufacturing. But as psychologist Barry Schwartz argues in his book why we Work, There was a big downside to division of labor, at least for the pin workers.

[Barry Schwartz]

So you're just taking a pliers and straightening wire and handing it off to the next guy. Why would you show up at this job? There's only one possible reason to do this work, and that's for the paycheck.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

The idea that people need to get paid in return for their labor Was central to some of Smith's deeper ideas about human nature.

[Barry Schwartz]

His view was that people were basically lazy, and if they didn't have to work, they wouldn't. And so the optimal life is lying on a couch, eating doritos and watching Netflix. So how do you get people off their asses? You have to make it worth their while for them to do things, and they will work as hard as you make them work to get the payoff. What they do doesn't matter, since they'd rather be doing nothing than something. As long as you have the incentives right, you can get them to do anything. Nobody likes working on an assembly line, but Smith's point is that nobody likes doing any kind of work. So break the work up into as efficient and meaningless chunks as you can so that people can do the same thing over and over and over again as fast as possible. And as long as you pay them, they'll do it.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Smith's view of humans as lazy paycheck seekers pervaded the entire Industrial revolution. But it would take more than 100 years before Smith's concepts were tested scientifically. And that's where we turn back to the humble rat. Seventeen decades after the publication of the wealth of Nations, a bunch of rats would finally give Smith's ideas of human nature the scientific veneer they needed.

[Barry Schwartz]

My training as a psychologist began in the framework developed by a guy named B.F. skinner, who at the time was probably the most famous and most influential living psychologist. Skinner invented the famous Skinner box, where you would take a rat and put him in a box, and they'd be hungry or thirsty and they'd run down an alley, or they'd push on a bar and they'd get food or they'd get water. And he thought that by understanding how payoffs influenced the behavior of rats, you would understand what governed all the voluntary behavior of all living things. He didn't care about rats. He cared about people. But he thought that in this little simple environment, you basically were capturing why people work hard in the workplace. Because they want a paycheck or a bonus or a promotion. And that's the nature of human motivation, is we do things to get things. This is very much in the spirit of Adam Smith, the father of the Industrial Revolution.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Skinner's work finally gave Smith's ideas the scientific validation they needed. His rats provided proof that organisms are, in fact, lazy, that they needed a reward for getting off their butts, and that they'd probably never find work to be inherently worth doing or fun. Which means if you want to get people to work, you gotta give them a reward. But Barry argues that there's a problem with this. People are so lazy, you gotta pay them. View the problem is it's flat out wrong.

[Barry Schwartz]

People won't work if they don't get paid, and they need to make enough money to support themselves and their family. But once that's done, that's not really what motivates people. What motivates people is they want to be working on something that matters, which for most of the time, means has an impact on the lives of other people, not curing cancer. Impact. It could be a small Impact. They want work that engages them, that forces them to think, to be active. They want work that's varied, not the same thing over and over again. They want work that's challenging. And all those things make jobs good. Given a constant pay.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

These sorts of intrinsic rewards, feeling engaged, finding meaning, getting creative, they make work worth doing. And allowing workers to experience these internal rewards, it turns out, would be a smarter thing for employers to focus on than a paycheck. Because a growing body of research shows that if you want good work done, you might want to try making your employees jobs a little happier.

[Barry Schwartz]

You want people who show up in the office every day because they want to be in the office every day and who leave every day feeling like somebody's life has been made better because of what they did.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

But if that's the case, why do so many careers lack things like meaning or engagement? Why do so many people hate their jobs? The reason, according to Barry, is that employers bought into a self fulfilling prophecy. They're working with the same wrong theory of human motivation that Smith had hundreds of years that people are lazy and that money is the only way to motivate them.

[Barry Schwartz]

So you create a world in which Smith's vision is true. You create a world in which meaning, engagement, autonomy, control and challenge have all been eliminated. And then you look at, you point to people working in this world and you say, see, I told you, people just do it for the pay.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

And as Skinner showed, rewards do work. People will do mind nummy jobs like sticking heads on pins over and over and over. But they won't do it because of the normal human motivations for meaning or passion or any of the important things that make us want to get up in the morning. And that worries Barry. The pin factory division of labor still reigns in lots and lots of modern jobs. From boring data entry work to tedious telephone sales, to the workers who have to put buns on fast food hamburgers over and over and over.

[Barry Schwartz]

Essentially, you've created a Skinner box. You've created an environment in which Smith's view is correct because you've eliminated every other factor that might influence people.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Barry has also seen this trend emerging in careers that are often considered to be much higher status and more skilled. They are now also filled with the sorts of carrots and sticks you need when people's hearts and minds aren't into what they're doing. Law firms that force attorneys to clock their every second with clients, HMOs that regulate doctors interactions with patients. Lots and lots of jobs are starting to feel More like a rat race, because they're specifically designed to treat us like Skinner's rodents. The biggest irony of this, though, is that by removing meaning from work, you inadvertently make people more miserable. And that means you get less productive, less motivated, and less conscientious workers. Removing meaning can jeopardize a business's profits.

[Barry Schwartz]

And it makes you wonder why it is that people who want to make money are leaving money on the table by creating workplaces that drive productivity out of their workforce. No effort is put into creating workplaces where people want to be.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

The good news, though, is that there is another path to follow.

[Barry Schwartz]

You can make reasonably unattractive work attractive if you make people feel trusted and important in the work that they do.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

And that's why I want to turn back to Marty. I mean, Marty's job seems to fit the definition of reasonably unattractive work.

[Marty Gilloran]

We get calls a lot for just to pick up a dead animal or something. And some of that can be pretty, not very pleasant.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

In fact, when Marty first got into exterminating, he was focused on the same external rewards that many of us used to pick a new career.

[Marty Gilloran]

I was doing maintenance work at a local newspaper and I saw an ad pest control company vehicle take that was really cool to me. I was like 20 years old and they're gonna give me a company vehicle to take home. Wow.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

But if you ask Marty what he loves about this career, 40 years later, that company car has little to do with it.

[Marty Gilloran]

I just love the variety. I love the. You never know where you're going to be from one day to the next. Just yesterday, I was taking opossum off of a roof. I don't know how it got up on a roof. It's. I don't know. It's just. It's fun.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

When Marty gets talking about what he loves about his job, you're in for a really long conversation because pest control gives him lots and lots of the internal rewards that science shows us makes his job worth doing. Like variety and mental challenge.

[Marty Gilloran]

It's about solving problems, more or less. I remember chasing a bat out of one of the libraries, actually, here at Yale.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Oh, really?

[Marty Gilloran]

And it was. It was rather difficult. We had to bring an extension ladder in and go all the way up to the top of the ladder with a net and it flew away and it just went into a vent and never, never was heard from again. You just never know what you're going to get one day to the next.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Marty's job also gives him a sense of meaning beyond just working through creative solutions to problems. He also gets to help some very scared people.

[Marty Gilloran]

I had a student once that woke up and saw a cockroach on her bedroom door, which was about six feet across the room. Totally terrified, in tears, wouldn't get out of bed until it was solved. So going there and solving something like that, really? Yeah, you know, it makes you feel good. I get a lot of thank yous from the kids.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Marty also gets to help his clients overcome the feelings of shame they have about requiring his services in the first place.

[Marty Gilloran]

I try to explain to him that any. It can happen to anybody. People get bugs, people get cockroaches, the cleanest environments. It calms them down a bit, calms their fears and, you know, they, they're less embarrassed.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Do you think you'd do it if they didn't pay you?

[Marty Gilloran]

I mean, helping people? Yeah, because, you know, a neighbor or something comes over, hey, I have a bee's nest or something like that. And you've had the, you know, the experience in taking care of it or how do I get rid of the squirrels in my attic? Or yeah, I think I'd still do it. There's really no other job like it. It's such a unique position, meeting different people, different problems. Every day is different. I do feel grateful and lucky that I'm doing this.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Human beings aren't lab rats in a Skinner box. We're motivated not just by monetary rewards, but by variety, challenge, and having a positive impact on other people's lives. These are the things that get workers like Marty out of bed on a Monday morning. The problem is that a lot of us don't experience the same joy that Marty finds in his work. But you don't need to quit your job to find the happiness that he enjoys. There are evidence based strategies you can use to enrich your work, no matter what your actual job description. We'll learn about all those strategies when the Happiness Lab returns. In a moment.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This year at Pushkin, we've been able to work with some of the world's biggest brands on creating bespoke content. Whether it's a custom episode in partnership with a brand or a creative ad campaign, we want to be sure that our content reaches people. But the ad space is incredibly noisy. How do we ensure our content reaches the right audience? That's where LinkedIn ads come in. With LinkedIn ads, you can precisely reach professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. As you will have direct access to a billion members, 130 million decision makers, and 10 million C level executives. You can target your audience by job title, industry, company and more, ensuring your ads reach the right people for your business. Start building the right relationships and reach your audience in a respectful environment with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next LinkedIn ads campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com Malcolm to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com Malcolm Terms and conditions apply.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

I'm Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab. Intuit QuickBooks wants you to achieve your dreams of starting your own business and working for yourself. And if you're a small business owner launching a company, then you'll want to check out Mind the Business Small business success stories from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio and Intuit QuickBooks. Season one and two are out now and season three is launching Thursday, January 9, with new episodes coming out every other Thursday after that. So make sure you catch up and listen as host Austin Henkiewicz and Janice Torres talk to small business owners about how they've grown and maintained their businesses and tackled the hurdles and challenges that come with being your own boss. From tracking money in and out to cutting through day to day management with an all encompassing platform like Intuit QuickBooks, you don't want to miss these inspiring stories of small business journeys. Listen to Mind the Business Small business success Stories on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Most teenage obsessions revolve around bands or sports or political causes. Amy Wrzesneski found herself drawn to something very different, a topic she turned over and over in her young mind.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

It has taken me a really long time to figure out why it's sort of weird for a teenager to become interested in something like this.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

What was the thing that had Amy so puzzled? Well, she looked around at the people in her life, people in her family, her neighborhood, in stores and offices, and she saw a vivid and troubling divide.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

Seeing people who were working incredibly hard but feeling at the end of the day kind of maybe empty, maybe not too strong a word about what it all meant versus people who felt like they bounded out of work every day to come home feeling as though they had done something that really mattered and they had done it well and it had changed people's lives. And the thing that's been for me, the most fascinating part of this puzzle is that it's not necessarily contingent on the kind of work people are doing. And I think that's a very cool puzzle to try to unpack and think about.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Figuring that puzzle out brought Amy here To Yale, where she's now a professor at the School of Management.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

There's a whole research literature that analyzes kind of what's a good job and what's a bad job. And it just looks at the job like, what is it that the person's doing? And as psychologists, we knew there might be actually more going on here in terms of how people really experience this work and think about this work.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Research back in the 1980s had shown that people tend to take one of three orientations towards their work. They either think of it as a job, a career, or a calling.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

So people who view their work primarily as a job see the work as a means to a financial end. People who view their work with a career orientation see the work as primarily a means to advance within the field or the work or the occupation they're in. It's a stepping stone to the next thing that's going to come. Whereas people who see the work as a calling are not focused on financial outcomes primarily or career advancement primarily, but instead are primarily focused on the work itself. They see the work as an end in itself. These are people who, again, if they hit the lottery or something like that, feel so deeply about the work that they're doing, feel fulfilled by it, feel like it's a contribution that they would be more likely to want to stay involved in it. And interestingly, they see the work, regardless of what the job is, as contributing to the world in a meaningful way to make it a better place.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

But the question that fascinated Amy was how a person comes to consider their work a calling. You might think the way to test this question would be to study professionals that we typically think of as, well, respected surgeons, concert pianists, podcast hosts, that kind of thing. But Amy did something different. She studied how positive work orientations develop in seemingly not so great jobs.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

We were really interested in understanding the experience of people who clean in hospitals. So hospital custodial staff.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

The duties of a hospital janitor are easy to sum up. Mop the floors, sweep up, wash soiled bed linens, dispose of garbage bins filled with hazardous waste. It's not fun stuff. These sorts of positions don't require much previous experience or formal education. Becoming a hospital janitor is considered neither glamorous nor nor all that skilled. But Amy wasn't interested in what the typical person thought of this work. She was interested in how the cleaning staff themselves described their roles. So she just asked a group of hospital workers, how skilled do you think your job is?

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

It's a simple question, except it yielded two really different answers. We had one set of participants who said it's not very skilled at all. And we had another set of participants who reported the work was really quite skilled.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Amy figured she must have inadvertently tested two kinds of staff members, ones with different duties. Maybe one group had more senior janitors or more specialist roles, but that turned out not to be the case.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

Nothing about the structure of their job explained this difference.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

So Amy dug a little deeper. Those who considered themselves unskilled were generally dissatisfied with their jobs. They were part of that two thirds of Americans who were disengaged from their work. But the staff members who saw their job as requiring skill absolutely loved what they did for a living. Many of them even saw it as a calling and acted accordingly.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

They were meant to be kind of wafting in and out of spaces and making sure that those spaces were clean. They were instructed to not interact with patients. And what we were finding was they were engaging in enormous amounts of patient care and attentiveness to what was happening with patients and their families, what it was people might need. They really engaged the job sort of quite differently and saw and described what it was that they were doing there as helping patients to heal.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Amy calls this technique job crafting, the art of redesigning the specific work you do to match your personal strengths and values and thus amplify the sense of meaning you get from your job. One of Amy's favorite examples of job crafting came from a janitor who worked on a unit caring for coma patients, people who were severely ill, fully unconscious, and in need of a miracle. That staff member did the usual duties, mopping and tidying. But she also did one additional task that wasn't strictly part of her job description and that no one had told her to do.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

She would take the artwork off the walls of the hospital rooms in this unit and switch it around to just sort of mix things up. Even though these patients were not conscious, she hoped that maybe by changing something in their environment, that even if it seemed like they weren't aware of what was going on, maybe it would stimulate or spark something, as it was a change that could help promote their healing and speed them along whatever journey they would take.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Another janitor Amy encountered was assigned to a particularly depressing set of duties. She had to clean up after patients on the cancer ward.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

Given that chemotherapy makes people very sick to their stomach, there was a lot of throwing up to contend with. And so this cleaning staff member, who, again, remember, by the structure of the job, not really supposed to be interacting with patients, you're just supposed to sort of go and, you know, clean things up instead, turn this into an opportunity to really bring comfort and humor to the patients. Because imagine you're an adult. You've just been sick all over yourself and all over the floor. It's embarrassing. Now somebody has to come clean this up. You feel awful, right? This is not a good moment. And so this cleaning staff member would show up and say, I want to thank you for getting sick. I have a car. I have car payments to make. The more you get sick, the more job security I have. And so you have someone who's now laughing in the context of this awful situation, by this transformative set of moves done by someone who has gotten not any training in patient care or patient interaction, but who has taken it upon herself to think about, how can I still do the cleanup, still do the work that's required of me, but do it in a way that's transformative of the relationships that she has with her patients.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Getting to know happy hospital cleaners convinced Amy that job crafting can have a transformative effect on people's happiness at work. She hypothesized that the third of Americans who feel engaged with their jobs probably feel that way, in part because they too, job craft.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

I think this happens all the time. It happens in all kinds of jobs. But I think it's important to recognize that it happens in jobs where people don't have permission to do it or they're not encouraged to do it. They might actually be forbidden from doing it. We'd all be better off if we just granted people more autonomy to bring their strengths into the work that they're doing while trusting them that they will keep in mind the things that they're responsible to do, sort of for the organization.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Now that Amy has answered the question that's bugged her for decades, her research has shifted to address a more practical how can we get more people to jobcraft?

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

Are there interventions that can be done that can help people connect more deeply with what it is that makes their work meaningful, not just by thinking about it, but by encouraging people to redesign the job, still accomplish what it is they're responsible to the organization for accomplishing in the work, but do it in such a way that it's tapping the things that they care most about and the ways in which they most want to contribute?

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

It's worth mentioning here, though, that deciding to pep up your job doesn't mean you can ignore the tasks you were hired to do.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

Job crafting isn't deciding, you know, I'd really love to be the company guitarist. So I'm just going to bring my guitar in and play. And I think everybody will appreciate that because I'm being, being my best, you know, my best self.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

The other barrier to crafting your job might be your boss. Just like Adam Smith watching those pin makers. Your manager might still fall for the lie that giving a big paycheck is the only way to get the job done.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

I sometimes hear from managers who feel very nervous about this because it means giving up control. We can't possibly allow our employees to do this. It would be a mess. You know, people would be, you know, freestyling and off roading and, you know, doing things that would be, you know, really problematic in the organization. And my response to that is, well, actually, if this is how you see it, what I can tell you is they're already job crafting because this is happening everywhere. It's just that they're hiding it from you. And so you have a choice. Is this something that you want to help facilitate and encourage and what have you, or you want to continue to sort of drive this underground with employees who will still take the degrees of freedom they can find to derive more meaning and more of the kind of identity they want to enact in the work in any way they can and how they're doing the work.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

While I'm certainly not praying that my house gets infested with rats, bats or possums or mice, hornets, termites or roaches, I do enjoy Marty's infrequent visits. His job is to set up traps and put down poison. But I now realize that he does all the things that Amy studies in her job crafting work. He genuinely enjoys the puzzles that pests bring. He concentrates on the people who need his help, and he works quickly and calmly to reassure his jittery clients. It's mixing metaphors, but if exterminators had a bedside manner, Marty has perfected it. Sure, he kills bugs, but his real focus seems to be eradicating the stress and worry of the people who need his help. I asked Marty if during the 40 years in this job he's ever daydreamed about doing something else. Becoming a copy or a firefighter, maybe.

[Marty Gilloran]

I've thought about it in the past, honestly, but I've always come back to this and I do, yeah, I do.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Feel grateful if you really hate your job, if it's making you ill, or if there's a bad workplace culture or discrimination, or if you're not even making a living wage, then you should quit as soon as you can and search for something better. But if you're simply feeling kind of disengaged from your daily work, then give job crafting a try. Because that dream job that you fantasize about, it doesn't really exist. The research shows that any job can turn into a calling if you bring the right attitude and maybe a few science backed tips from the Happiness lab with me. Dr. Laurie Santos.

[Marty Gilloran]

Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful.

[Barry Schwartz]

Thoughts the guy in front of me.

[Amy Wrzesnieski]

In the pharmacy line is halfway through.

[Barry Schwartz]

An incredibly detailed 17 minute story about his gout.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

A story likely more painful than the gout itself. Next time, save yourself the pain and let Amazon Pharmacy deliver your meds right to your door.

[Marty Gilloran]

Amazon Pharmacy Healthcare just got less painful.