PODCASTThe Science of Happiness

Please scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Episode summary:

When the poet and former professor Susan Glass first retired, she stacked her days with so many volunteer gigs and passion projects, she felt like she was working harder than ever before. Now, she wants to prioritize living a life of meaning and enjoyment. Susan tried a lab-tested practice called Job Crafting, where you take stock of the tasks that fill your day, how much time and energy they require, what really lights you up, and what changes you can make to better align your efforts at work (or in your free time) with your genuine strengths and passions. Then we hear from researcher Maria Tims about how Job Crafting doesn’t just benefit your own well-being and help to guard against burnout, it can also boost your whole team’s productivity and morale.

Practice:

1. Create a “before” sketch: List all your regular tasks, and note each one as low, medium, or high in terms of the time and energy you actually devote to them.
2. Reflect on and write down what motivates you, what your strengths are, and what you’re passionate about.
3. Create a more ideal (but still realistic) "after" diagram, shifting draining tasks from “high” to “low” or “medium” if possible, and boosting energizing and enjoyable tasks where you can. 
4. Create an action plan: What are some concrete changes that are in your power to make? Are there places where you need to ask for the support of a colleague or supervisor to make a change? 

Learn more about this practice at Greater Good In Action:

https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/job_crafting

Today’s guests:

Susan Glass is a retired English professor and visually impaired, Bay Area-based poet. She’s the author of the poetry book “The Wild Language of Deer.”

Read Susan’s book: https://pod.link/sleep-with-me

Learn more about Susan’s life and work: https://tinyurl.com/j3pcjn6r

Maria Tims is a professor of Management and Organization at the University of Amsterdam School of Business and Economics. 

Learn more about her work: https://tinyurl.com/mtp7tpy3

Resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

How to Make Life More Meaningful (The Science of Happiness Podcast) https://tinyurl.com/39pth57f

How to Be More Engaged at Work: https://tinyurl.com/2s3t5x2c

How Oxytocin Can Make Your Job More Meaningful: https://tinyurl.com/mrx8458h

Four Keys to a Healthy Workplace Hierarchy: https://tinyurl.com/788m6tme

More Resources for Improving the Job You Have:

HBR - What Job Crafting Looks Like: https://tinyurl.com/453yamac

LSE - Can workers really craft their own happiness in the job? https://tinyurl.com/yjavhda9

TED - The Power of Personalising Our Work: https://tinyurl.com/4cvznn8v

Tell us about your experiences finding meaning in your day-to-day tasks. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Help us share The Science of Happiness!

Leave us a 5-star review and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcription

Susan Glass  I am going to be 68 in a couple months. I have more earthly time behind me than ahead of me. How can I live most gently and most happily? And what would that mean and what would that look like?

After the initial relief of retirement, I was, “Well, I, I've got this bucket list, I've gotta get it all done.”

And so I was looking at, do I wanna go become a harp therapist? Do I wanna go back to school and get a degree? And I also went to every volunteer organization I knew, the California Council of the Blind and others, and I said, “Put me to work. Put me to work, put me to work.” 

And guess what happened? I found myself with 60 hour weeks busier than when I was working, and I was not happy.

It's time to move from the practice of working to the practice of living. And, it's going to be a battle for me always to feel that if I haven't structured everything, I'm in trouble,

because I have little guilt whips. They're everywhere, you know, and they pop out and they become problematic if you're trying to be a happy person.

I want to feel more deeply about everything, and if I can't feel something, I'm not sure I wanna spend my time doing it.

Dacher Keltner Welcome to The Science of Happiness, I’m Dacher Keltner. And our guest today is Susan Glass, a visually impaired poet who is ten years retired from being an English professor. But she’s been treating retirement, like many do, like a job. So for our show, Susan tried a lab-tested practice to make her retirement feel more fulfilling. 

It’s called Job Crafting. And essentially, it gives you prompts to reflect on what would create more meaning and joy in your work. Studies show this practice helps us feel happier, and like our lives have more meaning, both on and off the clock.  

Later in the show, we’ll hear from scientist Maria Tims on how the practice works.

Maria Tims We know from a lot of research that if this fit between the person and the job is good, it really helps you to keep a healthy, motivated team. 

Dacher Keltner But first, my conversation with Susan. After these ads. 

Welcome back to The Science of Happiness, I’m Dacher Keltner. Today, we’re talking about work, and how we can get more meaning and happiness out of it.

Our guest is the poet and retired English professor, Susan Glass. And though Susan hasn’t worked for a paycheck in ten years, she’s packed her days with so many volunteer gigs and passion projects that her days are full of work all the same, and she’s needed some help homing in on what matters most to her right now. 

For our show, Susan tried a Job Crafting practice. To do it, you reflect on how you spend your time, what really matters to you, and then brainstorm what changes you can make, so the tasks you spend your time on feel more meaningful and enjoyable. 

Susan, thanks so much for joining us on The Science of Happiness.

Susan Glass It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Dacher Keltner I have to ask you, you retired 10 years ago. What was retirement like for you initially? And why did this practice appeal to you? 

Susan Glass It took me a long time to understand what retirement meant, and I still don't think I understand it.

And what I really want to do is live a life that is focused in the moment. And that is working for joy and I just haven't been able to master that too well on my own. And when I looked at this job crafting and the tasks about figuring out where your time and energy and attention is going versus where you want it to go, I said, “Oh my goodness, this is something that will really help me, I think.”

Dacher Keltner What you do in the practice is you create this before sketch where you think about how you spend your time and you categorize the activities and think about the time and energy that went into it. You know, was it a lot of energy, or a medium amount or low? And what'd you do, what'd you write about in this part of the exercise?

Susan Glass I made lists, instead of diagramming, and I made a list of the things I was doing:

Guide dog care: Do you spend a lot of time with the guide dog? Well, it's medium. And then I had a little note to myself that said, “That's okay because we've been a partnership for seven years, so that's normal,” you know?

I'm spending time on some activities for one of the nonprofits for which I work that are, frankly, are stressing me out a little bit because they're, more of the, you know, make the data work, spin this stuff that, and I'm not as good at that.

Memoir: I wrote low time and energy, and then I wrote “help” next to it because it makes me panicky to think about that.

The poetry practice: Well, I'm supposed to be spending more time on it than I am, but I have to put it as medium and low and it should be high.

So, when I looked at my own lists, they made me panic because there was just stuff everywhere. It's a lot like my drawers, which you don't wanna see. And my kitchen, which you don't wanna see, you know, it's just, there's just this clutter.

I approached it the way I approach everything: This is an assignment I must do. I noticed that my back was hurting and I was, like, breathing the way I breathe when I'm anxious. And I thought, well, this is stupid. Why are you, you know, you were supposed to do this because you wanted to do this. What's going on here? And that was when I kind of skipped down to the last part. 

What are your passions? You know? And as soon as I flipped that outline over, I started to relax and I started to be able to breathe a little better. 

And so, when I stopped doing this practice as homework and started doing it to enjoy myself and just as something to experience, it became open.

It became like a meadow. It became a quieter place and it had sunlight in it, and that  means a lot to me. 

What I discovered was that I really have been trying to make writing a full-time occupation for myself. And what I found is that I'm not spending my maximum time on it. I'm spending a medium and sometimes even low amount of time on it, and then feeling guilty about that. 

So I asked myself, well, why is that? 

And you know, one thing that came out was because there are some other activities that have surfaced that are giving me great joy.

And I realized that what I wanted to do was shift the priority. I do not have to make writing the central practice. I can let writing be part of the scaffolding that guides the activities I am really enjoying, such as being outdoors with the animals, birding, teaching people about ecology, and that’s giving me extreme happiness. 

Dacher Keltner What a shift in focus.

Susan Glass  What a shift in focus, you know? And so I thought, well, okay. I have one book under my belt, a poetry chapter book. If you never wrote another one, would there be an earthquake? 

Well, no, you know, probably not. Nobody— And, and you know, is the planet gonna start spinning backwards?

I don't think so. 

Here's what happened the minute I released that myself from that, “you must,” I'm writing.I've signed up for a month-long, you know, a poem day 'cause it's April Poetry Con—and I'm having a blast.

But it's not driving me crazy. So, I think this is just, you know, letting, letting joy guide the way instead of insisting that projects guide the way.

 I'm starting to have that—I just took a deep breath. I start, I'm starting to have that content place that we get where you say, “Oh, thank God.”

And that's what I'm needing more of.

Dacher Keltner Yeah. The last part of the practice is to make an after diagram where you look at how you've adjusted your time and energy that you spend on things, and I'm curious what this last part of the practice, you know, drawing out this after diagram revealed to you. 

Susan Glass Well, it revealed to me that I'll need to have a couple of hard conversations. I will probably step back from a board on which I'm working, and I'm starting to cross off of the list, the, the pieces that I can let go. It's like taking weight off the horse, you know, bundle by bundle by bundle. And what I wanna do now is each day look at my list and say, is there anything I don't need today? If this doesn't happen today,  is it a big deal? What has, and, and if it never happens, is it a big deal?

So it's a matter of questioning all the time and the action plan for me is: I am going to release. I'm gonna release what isn't working and I'm remembering something my mother told me when I was a child. She said, “Honey, if you let go of something, you give someone else an opportunity to do it. If it's really important, someone else will take it over. And if they don't, maybe it wasn't that important or maybe it was important, but it no longer needs to be.” 

Because everything has a lifecycle, including our interests.

Dacher Keltner Susan now that you’ve done this practice and you’ve thought about what was actually draining and what really matters to you …. Walk us through your perfect day.

Susan Glass An ideal day is opening my ears and, and hearing the first bird of the day.  And, I recognize them. So I go, oh wow. King Lit was first this morning. A morning. Dove was first. This morning, a Goldfinch was first this morning. I want that to be the first register besides, “Hey, I'm alive. I'm here.”

Which is good. Then comes the cup of coffee. Gotta have that. Take the dog out because when we're out walking. The poetry starts moving and I start getting a sense of what the day will be like. A reflective longer walk with her brings me home, and then I can sit down if I want to write something and work on that. 

A perfect day will involve a visit to the stable at least five days a week to get some time with Travis, the Welsh pony. Because when I'm there, I'm a very free child again, and it's really good for me. 

A good day involves a couple of conversations with friends, new friends, old friends. “Hey, how are you doing?” “Hey, I, I, you got sick. How are you feeling now?” You know, just, just those reaching-out things.

A good day has as much outdoor activity as, as it possibly can, even if it's bringing the indoor work out.

 And, yeah, that's, that's kind of what it looks like.

Dacher Keltner Susan, I so appreciate you being on the show. And I wanna wish you the best in the crafting of the rest of your retirement and can't wait to see where it takes you. 

Susan Glass Yeah, me too. And thank you very much. 

Dacher Keltner Who would be a part of your perfect day? Share this episode with them, let them know how much you care, and help us grow the conversation around these practices that can add so much meaning to our lives.

Up next, we’ll explain the job-crafting practice in more detail — and why it’s worth our while, no matter what our job is.

Maria Tims It's about decreasing demands that are not helping us, that are actually creating stress. There are also demands that we really enjoy, they make us grow, so how do you get more of those.

Dacher Keltner How and why to job-craft, after these ads.

Dacher Keltner Welcome back to The Science of Happiness, I’m Dacher Keltner. We’ve been talking about the research-tested practice of job-crafting … something we can all do, whether we work in a school, a hospital, an office or at a university, like I do. We can even apply this practice to retired life, like our guest did today.

Dacher Keltner  The first step in the practice is to get out a pen and a piece of paper and diagram your day. List and then categorize each thing you do as low, medium or high in terms of the time and energy they require.

Next, ask yourself what you’re most passionate about, what motivates you, and what you’re really good at. In other words – what do you want more of in your days?

Then, craft an “after” diagram.  How would you ideally like to spend your time? Are there high-energy tasks you’d like to de-emphasize. Are there things that really inspire or uplift you, and you’d like to give them more of your attention?

Finally, Make an action plan. Your job won’t change overnight, but when you look now at your before and after sketches, notice where you can start to implement small changes. And then start doing it. 

Maria Tims if you cannot afford to change your job, then job crafting becomes even more important because you can just improve the one that you have and get a bit closer to your ideal job so that you can find this meaning in work. 

Dacher Keltner Maria Tims is a professor of Management and Organization at The University of Amsterdam. 

She wanted to know … when people take it upon themselves to make little changes to their jobs, do they feel better suited to the work they’re doing, like they’re really in the right job for them? … And in turn, would that help them feel like their work is more meaningful?

Maria Tims We know from a lot of research that if this fit between the person and the job is good, then the person has a better attitude towards work. So there's higher job satisfaction, higher commitment to the organization or the team.

Dacher Keltner So he did an experiment where 114 people filled out an online survey about their job. Once a week, for three weeks. 

Maria Tims We asked things like last week I tried to learn new things at work, there was a good fit this week between what my job offers me and what I'm looking for in a job. I understand how my work contributes to my life's meaning.

Dacher Keltner She found that when people did things to craft their jobs in the first week, they felt better suited to their job the second week.

Maria Tims And then again the next week we saw that meaningfulness, this experience of meaningfulness was also increased.

Dacher Keltner When we feel like our work has meaning …. and we have the things we need to do our work well …  it frees up our energy to job-craft even more. But if we’re burned out, that’s when we need the support of our boss or colleagues. 

And when each person can find a balance of doing what needs to be done, while still feeling motivated and happy overall, the whole team wins.

Maria Tims then the person has a better attitude towards work. They're less likely to leave the organization and more likely to feel motivated. And those are the employees that you really value that really help you To keep a healthy, motivated team that can perform well. And sometimes it's small changes, but in other times, I’ve seen people realizing that they needed big changes and they had to involve supervisors. But yeah, overall, I would recommend everybody to see if they can craft their jobs.

Dacher Keltner Next time on The Science of Happiness ….  What happens when we take time to listen to the sounds of birds?

Emil Stobbe If it was just the two species of birds singing together or eight different species of birds singing together, all clinical symptoms of depression, anxiety, and paranoia were alleviated after six minutes of listening to this.

Dacher Keltner Thanks for listening to The Science of Happiness, I’m Dacher Keltner.

Our executive producer of Audio is Shuka Kalantari. Our producer is Haley Gray. Sound design is from Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios and our associate producer is Maarya Zafar. And our executive director is Jason Marsh. The Science of Happiness is a co-production of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and PRX.