Book Review: Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

I can't remember who recommended the book Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design to me, but I'm glad someone did. It's an excellent book about happiness and how our homes, neighborhoods and commuting affect to our lives.

Book introduces really many interesting facts about how other people and the neighborhood affect to our happiness. Happiness have always been interesting topic for me, so I was keen on reading more about the subject. I've always had a hunch about how important your neighbors and the contacts with them are, but this really gave some good statistics about it.

Happy City goes through data and experiments around the world on how cities and streets affect to us. For almost 100 years cities have been build to run by cars and with current population, it has actually made us less free. Many people spend enormous amount of times in cars and are unhappy because of that.

Book also discusses a lot about cars versus other ways to commute. Maybe on that end, book is bit US centric, but many of the things affect to everyone around the world. Commuting affects to us a lot, the way you commute, how long you commute and with whom you commute affect in numerous ways. Book introduces many interesting studies about the subject. One example was a study that said that commuting to work over 45 minutes raises a risk of divorce by 40%. Book is full on nice anecdotes and studies like this.

As with any other book, it's good to have critical eye on the studies and ideas, but those definitely will raise thoughts for everyone. It's an excellent book and quite easy to read. I recommend the book to everyone.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Work Needs to be Fun - Happy people are more Effective

We spend every week around half of our time awake at work or travelling to work. Already from that perspective work needs to be something you are happy on doing. At least in my thinking being happy every day is something I wish from life.

That's still not all. There's research backing up the facts that happier people are more productive at work. Study from University of Warwick showed that happy people are 12 percent more productive than others.  That's of course just one study, but there's more data for similar results. In Gallup's State of the Global Workplace study (over 200 000 respondents) they found that companies which had engaged employees had significantly higher productivity, profitability, and customer ratings.

Even though I believe we need lot of other studies on the subject to be really sure about how the causation goes, there is definitely something in happiness at work place. Happiness at work place also might have a positive effect on company image and that way make it easier to recruit new talented people. On top of the previous one's there's also evidence that happiness has a strong effect on intrinsic motivation. And intrinsic motivation affects productivity.

My purpose wasn't in going to the academic discussion about what is proven and what is not. From personal experience, from my own workplaces and places I've seen as a consultant, this correlation is true. The happier people are, the better results the company will get.

In the State of the Global Workplace study, the engagement level in companies was surprisingly low. Overall in the world in average only 13% of the people were engaged to their jobs and 24% were actively disengaged. That's quite huge. Almost two times more people are disengaged than engaged.

In my interests there's of course the numbers of Finland. Here the numbers where 11% engaged and 14% disengaged. We were almost the worst in Western Europe, only France and Netherlands behind us. Maybe it tells a bit about our overall nature of being unhappy about almost everything, but still it's really worrying and we should do something about it.

I unfortunately don't have a list of "5 things that will improve your work place happiness" in my mind. There are lot of good articles about the subject existing and I recommend to read some of those to get the ideas. What I think is important is first to approve the fact that this actually matters. Happiness and engagement are important in productivity of the company. I believe these are not something that HR can do (at least not most of it), but this is something that operational leaders and other key people in organizations need to take under their radar.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Disease of Being Busy

Increasing interest to movements like Downshifting, Slow Movement and Zen are clear indications, that people are starting to be fed up with their work and living in a busy world. There's too much work, studying, partying or whatever that makes people busy.

I've been lately visiting London and being busy and trying to be highly effective is visible there even in jogging. People run there really fast! I go for a jog there quite often and I'm always the slowest runner on the street. It shouldn't be because of my shape, since I should be in an OK shape with few triathlons done in the past years.

My personal learning from few years ago is that I'm most ineffective when I'm busy. When my calendar is full or I'm trying to tackle it all, that's the point I'm not getting much value done. I do run around doing things, but being busy and being effective are two totally different things. It's easy to be busy, and it's hard to be effective.

Once in a while I notice that I'm lacking time to do all the things I'm planning to. That's the point I get ineffective. I've got better to notice this in myself and I've learned to prioritize. I do have a mission statement written to myself and I like to read that one then, to remind myself about priorities in life and work. After reading those I do go through all my to be done things and always find something to set aside. There are always things you can leave undone and some things you can do later.

It takes courage to say no to someone. To say that I don't believe the thing you are asking from me is more important than the thing I'm working on. Specially when you have a supervisor who is asking. But this one skill, is one of the most important skill you will or will not learn during your career. The most effective people are the ones who can say no and have empty slots in their calendar.

There's also the other side of wanting to be busy. As young kids learn bad habits from older "cool kids", the same way newcomers in organizations learn to admire busyness from their more experienced peers. Being busy is disease in many of the organizations. Being busy is too often thought to be an indication of being important.

Being busy is always a selection. There might be days everyone needs to work in the busy mode, but that should be an exceptional state, not a standard way of working. Being busy is always a selection, always.

The reason why I'm worried about people being busy is that being busy affects to all of us. Busy people are unhappier and unhealthier. Organizations are less effective with busy people. It might sound an overstatement but we all lose money and affect each others happiness by being busy. We ruin our organizations and life environment with being busy. Being busy is a real disease.

I start to sound quite hippy saying all of these, but I can assure that I personal interest behind all of this: I really do hate busy unhappy people.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris

I remember running into the book The 4-Hour Workweek few years ago. First I was really excited and followed Tim Ferriss's blog for some time. Then I started to hate the exaggerating style Tim Ferriss has. I started to hate it so much, I decided never to read this book, but when friend of mine recommend the book,
I decided to give it go.

Book The 4-Hour Workweek is as controversial as Tim Ferriss is. On the other hand he has many brilliant ideas and tips, but then he does present everything as black or white. I try to be open minded to all kind of people, but it is hardest for me with people who only see things as black or white. Things are never that simple as for example Tim Ferriss presents in his book. Neither those are so complex as many believes.

Tim Ferriss is really smart guy. He has achieved a lot and seems to enjoy his life. It's hard to say if he really is so happy as he says he is. In a book like his, when author states close to hundred times how good life and everything is, I start to question, if the case is really so. As an example, based on the books I've read about happiness is, that those who have absolute freedom are not really happy at all. People need to have rules and restriction in order to enjoy life.

About half of the book was something I really enjoyed reading. There wasn't many new things, but some really good ideas. The rest was just total waste. I think with proper editing this version I read could have been cut to 150 pages. Now it was 350.

I don't recommend this book to anyone. It has many good things in it, but the other thoughts and advice's where something I wouldn't want people to think I agree to. So the bad overrides all the good on it. I do appreciate Tim Ferriss and what he is doing, I just don't agree on many things he is saying.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The Happiness Hypothesis

First book for this year was The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. It was awesome book to start with. Basic idea of the book is to compare ancient wisdom to the knowledge of today's psychology. But it is much more, it's a journey to the roots of happiness. What makes people happy and why.

Book starts with basics of mind. It goes through the theories and thoughts about what mind is and how it is supposed to work. Book introduces the elephant and the rider metaphor, where conscious mind is the rider and the elephant is the automatic processes. This works as a good simplification on many of the other things that come up in the book.

Book goes through very comprehensively theories about happiness. Why complete freedom actually isn't a way to happiness and how money could buy happiness. It introduces so many important insights about happiness, that it wouldn't make sense to start going those all through here.

Book talks quite much also about divinity and gods. It goes through religions from many different perspectives. Religions are known to be source of happiness, but the as the book states believing to god isn't all there is. Author Jonathan Haidt is atheist, so the he talks critically about religions, but still explains how and why people need religions.

Book is only around 250 pages, but is still covers so many things. It talks about work life, history, ancient religions, raising kids, philosophy, medicine and so many other things. It is packed in a really good form. It is easy to read, but still I felt there was enough background offered on the facts that were presented.

This goes in my list as the books that should be made mandatory on schools. I didn't agree on all the opinions in the book, but that's not the point. It raises so many thoughts and will definitely make my life better in the future. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Mind wandering and happiness

I watched this nice TED talk about mind wandering and happiness. I actually got bit surprised on it's message. It suggests that people are happier when they are focused and don't let the mind wander.

It is a bit counterintuitive, but then on the other hand books like Flow and Drive tells exactly about those things. And I've noticed the same on myself, I'm lot happier, when I have things to focus on and I keep on doing things. When I start wander, time slows down and I'm bored quite soon.

It's refreshing to watch, so please check it out.

Matt Killingsworth's TED talk:


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book review: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

This time I read book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It was a book that was mentioned as reference in so many different books, that I thought I need to read it myself also. It is a book about psychology, motivation and being happy. 

Main question in the book is, what really makes people enjoy their lives. It looks this subject from so many different points of view, that I can say that it's extensive look on motivation and being happy. It is based on professor Csikszentmihalyi own studies, but it does refer to many other studies as well.

I guess it's not really a spoiler to tell, that flow is the state that makes people enjoy what they do and at the end also enjoy their lives more. This book explains what the flow state really is and how people often achieve it. I'm not even going to try to explain how flow state could be achieved, but I want to quote one line from this book to give some hint on it: "However, enjoyment, as we have seen, does not depend on what you, but rather on how you do it."

Style of the book is bit on scientific paper side. Even though reference markings have been wisely centralized to pages at the end of the book, book explains things so thoroughly that I at least sometimes got bit bored on all the background information. I bet the writing style comes from long and successful career and many publications in university research. Or then this book is more to fellow researches and not casual psychology readers as I am.

It isn't an entertaining book as such and also it's not really easy to read. However, it's a book explaining important aspects of enjoying one's life and motivating yourself to any situations and challenges ahead. So it's an important and interesting book. 

I read the book mainly in trains and buses when traveling to work and I recommend this not to be read like I did. This book requires concentration and longer reading sessions. Maybe long flight or rainy Sunday would be perfect moments for this book.

If you just want to understand motivation better, maybe you could read Daniel Pink's Drive, but if you want to understand why you love the things you love, and why some people enjoy their doings more than others, read this book. It's bit like flow, it requires work and concentration, but it rewards with enjoyment when you just get started.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Everybody appreciates a thank you

I've always believed that we are all just humans. I've believed that even the most successful company leaders, successful athletes and popular writers, they are all just humans and appreciate a feedback and thanks for their work. Now in the times you can quite easily to get hold on basically all the people in the planet, I've really got the proof that all the people are just people.

I've blogged about, tweeted and emailed a bunch of people who I think have done a great job in something I care about. I haven't actually been expecting any feedback from these people, but I've just thought that I'll spread the good word or give the feedback to them directly. As a pleasant surprise I've got an answer from many of these people saying that they appreciate it.

That's just so nice. I take it as a proof that they are really normal people, who connect with other normal people. Small thing to understand, but yet so powerful.  
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Adults should be entitled to play

I've noticed that when I'm sledding with kids, most of parents out there are really excited to get to play. Under two years old kids are brought to sledding with snow-racers and couple of sleds, just that there would enough equipment for all the adults who come with. Many adults really seem to enjoy that time out there.

Playing really refreshes mind. That's something all adults should be doing once in awhile. Sad thing is that it often requires kids before people for example go out to sled or play with snow. Too rarely you see people without kids having real fun outdoors.

Great thing about being parent that you can go out with your kids and really play. You can free yourself to the play state of mind and go play in parks and everywhere else.

I guess one reason that game consoles have come so popular nowadays is that those give the right to play. Everyone loves to play and game consoles like Wii and Xbox with Kinetic gives the right to play and look like a fool.

I don't know what I'm going to do when kids grow older and won't want to come to sledding in winter or creating sand castles in a sandbox in summer. Maybe that time I need to buy one of those game consoles myself too. For now, I'm just enjoying all the playing I can.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Interesting video of using practical wisdom

How conveniently I ran into this TED video from Barry Schwartz about using practical wisdom. I see this to go actually really closely with thoughts there are about motivation in Dan Pink's Drive I recently read and reviewed.

Both talk about what moves people. This video talks about when the smartest ones out there know when to bend the rules and improvise to make good things happen in world and eventually change the system to serve all of us better.

The connective factor here is the purpose. Having an understanding of the whole and vision how something or some things could be better in the future is driving force (a.k.a the motivation) for behavior.

It's a longish talk, but it is worth of all of it.



If you don't have the time to check the whole video, go to 20:20 where he talks about what makes people happy. There's a lesson for all of us. "Research has shown there are two things that make people happy, love and work..".

The more I check these Ted talks, the more I love those.

Music, my day saver

Didn't get that much sleep last night due to my newborn baby and FIFA 2010. This morning I was in this bad mood which happens easily when I don't sleep enough. After surviving breakfast and other, I finally got in to my car.

I stopped for a second to think that this shouldn't be the way to start the day. There must be a way to turn the day around. I plugged my phone to car stereos and started go through my music collection to find something to cheer me up. I picked upped something that I know has made me smile previously (new Katy Perry) and started the way to work.

It really works. Music has lot of impact to mood. I bet there are studies about this, but at least my own experience is that this works. When I'm heading to play some sports, I have music to get to me prepared, when I want to concentrate at work, there's a music for that also.

I'm just happy that I was able to turn my morning around. Maybe the Finnish morning sun had some effect too..