The Joy of Work?: Jobs, Happiness, and You

by Peter Warr, Guy Clapperton

Are you happy at work? Or do you just grin and bear it? We spend an average of 25% of our lives at work, so it’s important to make the best of it. The Joy of Work? looks at happiness and unhappiness from a fresh perspective. It draws on up-to-date research from around the world to present the causes and consequences of low job satisfaction and gives helpful suggestions and strategies for how to get more enjoyment from work. The book includes many interesting case studies about individual work situations, and features simple self-completion questionnaires and procedures to help increase your happiness. Practical suggestions cover how to improve a job without moving out of it, advice about changing jobs, as well as how to alter typical styles of thinking which affect your attitudes. This book is unique. The subject is of major significance to virtually all adults - people in jobs and those who are hoping to get one. It is particularly distinctive in combining two areas that are usually looked at separately – self-help approaches to making yourself happy and issues within organizations that affect well-being. The Joy of Work? has been written in a relaxed and readable style by an exceptional combination of a highly-acclaimed professor of psychology and a widely published business journalist. Bringing together research from business and psychology – including positive psychology – this practical book will make a big difference to your happiness at work – and therefore to your whole life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics

200 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2009

Reviews

[Violeta]

It was not exactly what I was expecting from this book. The authors could have tried more. They have used some elements of cognitive therapy in discussing about work and work reactions, the impact of professional life.
I might have given 3 stars overall but something that bothered me a lot was that in each one or two paragraphs mentioned several other chapters of the book (..In chapter 7 we will speak about, in chapter 3 we mentioned that...) and because they were so often mentioned it made me not be able to focus more on what I was reading and it became tiresome to want to read more.
The book has some basic info on how people should consider work and how their work attitude is throughly impacted by themselves and not necessary by the others.

[J]

made me think about my job and my feelings towards it and what i want in an ideal job, and how people's personalities affect their happiness. written pretty factually, i glossed over a lot and realized i had to reread. it was alright