Eat Sleep Work Repeat: 30 Hacks for Bringing Joy to Your Job

by Bruce Daisley

Today, 83 percent of American workers report that far from making them happy, their jobs are causing them stress.1 Two-fifths of us have gone further and actually quit our firms to escape a stressful job.2 And this anxiety isn’t just a nuisance frustration of our occupations; a 2015 analysis of over three hundred different surveys concluded that the health toll of workplace stress was comparable to that of secondhand smoke—stress is shortening our lives.

A national survey of the workforce conducted by the survey company Gallup suggested that only 32 percent of employees were “engaged” in their jobs, meaning that they were highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace.

Answering the question why is certainly important—as we’ll go on to see, when we are driven by a sense of purpose, motivation isn’t hard to find. But finding purpose alone doesn’t seem to be the answer to making work a happier place.

To some extent, while answering the question why can get us up in the morning, we need to answer how for us to feel we can work sustainably in (and feel rewarded by) our jobs.