Remember, only you are responsible for the results of your activities. No one will make yours better or worse for you, since only you are now in this position and this work is your direct responsibility.

Take on more responsibility: expand the field of activity, increase the volume of tasks, make adjustments to the workflow, and then any activity will change, you will understand that a lot depends on you and everything is not in vain.

Happiness is when you go to work with pleasure in the morning, and return home with pleasure in the evening.

Very few people are responsible for their work, whatever it may be: a janitor, a doctor, a salesman, a manager, a programmer. Approach tasks with all seriousness, and your activity will gain meaning.

World Improvement

Imagine that your work is not going to waste: it makes the world a little better, you help people and make your own small contribution to final result or company product.

For example, a salesperson helps people buy good goods, the plumber fixes leaks and restores communications, the bus driver delivers thousands of tired people to the right places, the cleaner makes the premises clean, and you can’t even talk about doctors, teachers, firefighters. You can’t see only the financial component in your work: this does not motivate you to good results.

Now many people suffer from the meaninglessness of their activities, despite the fact that they put money at the forefront, and not what they do and for what.

Look around you: how you can help your colleagues, your manager, what to improve without demanding anything in return. Generate positive impulses and direct them to the work environment, bring creativity to boring everyday life and monotonous activities.

Development of special skills

In each specialty you can purchase, which are sure to be useful to you in life and in the construction future career. Make the most of your position, don't think you won't need it. All experience matters, whatever it may be.

You will be surprised how much useful experience you can gain while in a regular sales position: interacting with people, building dialogues, marketing strategy, window dressing. This is pure practice. And such advantages can be found in any profession. And the sooner you understand this, the better you will work.

Set yourself the goal of becoming the owner of all the professional skills necessary for your work while you are doing it.

More than once, skills from past professions came in handy for me: electrical installation, fiber optic technologies, development and implementation electronic document management, implementation of new technical solutions on a turnkey basis, building computer networks.

Activity optimization

Try to bring something fresh into your daily routine, optimize processes, tasks, add something new to the documents of the organization, draw up a plan for the development of the department, increase the efficiency of your usual activities.

You can come up with a bunch of little additions to the work that will improve it. You will get inner satisfaction, and also learn how to transform the usual process, but the main thing is that the management will definitely notice you and offer you to do more important and interesting tasks.

It's like gamification: set yourself subtasks and solve them. Become better than yourself.

Philosophical approach

Whatever you do in any period of your life, do it conscientiously and with full dedication, because you may not have another job. Remember that some part of the population of the Earth does not have the opportunity to choose their occupation at all: someone has been a fisherman on an island all his life, someone is a miner in a single mine, someone is a road builder in the desert, someone is just a garbage collector in a huge market, and someone does.

Remember the important thing: a big salary does not motivate you for a long time. Sooner or later, it will again seem small and ordinary, and you will be sad again.

Yes, of course, money is important: it allows you to live the life you want, but do not forget about self-realization.

Most people answer the question “Why do you work?” Answer: "Because of the money." And therefore they are unhappy at work: they do not always want to work, climb the career ladder, they are distracted from completing their tasks, they talk a lot,. They do not want to look for new interests and heights in their activities, but are used to just going to work.

How do you approach a job that you don't like?

Do you want your every day at work to be like a holiday? It's not as hard to arrange as you think.

We bring to your attention 10 tricks that practically guarantee you not only a pleasant, but also a more productive working day.

1. Start With a 15 Minute Positive Intro

A day at work will work out if everything goes like clockwork from the very beginning. To do this, you need to have a "library" of positive thoughts in your head. She will help you paint the day the way you want. Start every day by reading (or listening to) worthwhile books. Food for thought has an extremely positive impact.

2. Link your work to your life goals

Answer yourself the question: why every morning you allow the alarm clock to interfere with your sweet dream for the sake of this work? There is a reason much deeper than "so it should be." Maybe here you get good money, have the opportunity to grow both personally and career-wise, gain valuable experience for further heights... Whatever your motivations, remind yourself that this working day - today - is a great opportunity to get closer to your most important dreams and tasks.

3. Use your driving time wisely

Most people on the way to work listen to the news or (worse, especially if they are driving) answer calls, text messages, look through e-mails. In fact, this is the perfect time to recharge yourself. positive mood for all day. And no better way do it than listen to your favorite music. So traffic jams are easier to carry, and time on the road flows much more pleasantly.

4. Smile, gentlemen!

A smile is a very important weapon in any negotiations and a great stimulant of a good mood.

Scientists note that even the most strained smile reduces stress and makes a person happier.

Do you remember how it was in Munchausen: “I understand what your trouble is: you are too serious. A smart face is not yet a sign of intelligence, gentlemen. All stupid things on earth are done with this facial expression.

5. Express a positive mood

We are very often asked at a meeting: "How are you?" This phrase has long become a template in the framework of a social greeting. Few people expect you to start telling in detail how everything is and proceeds with you. We often answer in the same tone: "Everything is fine", "tolerant", sometimes jokingly throw: "the best, but no one is jealous."

So you shouldn't answer. After all, these seemingly automatically spoken words program the brain for failure. Instead, it is better to say: "Great!" or "I'm having a great day!" Believe me, this will help your internal program "register" in a positive way, and your day will actually become wonderful.

6. The most important - in the first place!
Often, already at the very beginning of the day, the working mood is close to zero just because you think how many unresolved tasks you have, and there is simply not enough time to cope with all this, you will have to stay late, take work home, go out on weekends. There is only one secret to solving the problem: time management to the rescue! According to Peretto's rule, 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results, and vice versa. Therefore, make sure that you solve these 20% of the most important tasks in the first place.

7. Avoid negative people

Our environment has a direct impact on us. Of course, you cannot always protect yourself from communicating with unpleasant people (there are different employees, clients, partners), but try to keep communication purely to business matters. Don't let them hit your ears with tirades "Everyone's bad. Everything's wrong!" Grumpy Syndrome is most common in women, so if after your " Good morning"The secretary answers with a sour expression on her face, and the accountant reacted to your compliment with grumbling, try to correctly resolve all your questions quickly and not start a conversation.

8. Don't work too long

Sitting for long hours at a report or presentation without a break even for a cup of tea is tiring and unproductive. Every person needs a break during the day, both short-term (10 minutes for tea or coffee) and long-term (full lunch break). You have to draw strength, energy and inspiration from something.

9. Calm down and relax

As soon as the working day is over, fill the territory of non-working time with what you really love. In short, switch off from all work problems and recharge your batteries with positive energy. Everyone here has their own recipe. The main task: to leave work at the door. After all, the inability to switch from work to something pleasant is a guaranteed "hangover" from fatigue and discontent.

10. Gratitude Point

End the day with a list of all the good things you'd like to write "thank you" for at the end. This will make your sleep sweeter and your mood the next morning better.

But what if...

- What if something really terrible happens during the day?

What is happiness for you? And how is this concept associated with the word "work"? Sometimes the goal of long weeks at the office computer becomes a short vacation somewhere far away from it. Historically, work has been perceived by us as something that exists against our will and certainly not for our pleasure. But we spend a third of our lives, or even more, at work, so why not devote this time to becoming happier?

Happiness is like a dessert
Although the concept of “happiness” seems a little dreamy among scientific terms, modern psychologists take this issue very seriously. According to the research of Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, even America, whose outward well-being is difficult to deny, is gradually being seized by an epidemic of depression. back side extreme individualism - a constant fear of failure, which arises from the discrepancy between too high goals and real achievements. Therefore, for the majority, happiness is, first of all, what allows you to escape from the rigid framework of this very reality with its pressure, instability and constant obstacles. Happy life in the view of most people is full of positive emotions, instant pleasures and entertainment. Simply put, it is like an eternal vacation, preferably under palm trees on the ocean with a glass of mojito and total absence worries.

But not everything is so simple. To live in eternal nirvana is too beautiful a dream, and, fortunately, it rarely comes true. Numerous tests show that pleasure and momentary positive emotions weigh the least when measuring full satisfaction from life in general. They are like those same strawberries with cream: the first portion takes you to the pinnacle of bliss, but on the tenth you no longer feel any taste or smell. Moreover, it turns out that the ability to truly enjoy the rest is inherited and only 50% of people receive it from their parents as a gift at birth. The rest do not always know how to even just how to relax. Therefore, if happiness is like a dessert, then it cannot consist entirely of passive entertainment alone - although they make an excellent cherry for decoration.
What then are the main ingredients of this dessert? Those aspects and situations in your life that allow you to enter the so-called flow. The concept of flow, or maximum involvement in an occupation at a given moment of time, is one of the central concepts in the science of happiness. Have there been moments in your life when you plunged into some business with your head, so deeply that you did not feel either hunger or fatigue, not to mention boredom or a bodiless yearning for another beach vacation in six months? It is after such an “immersion” that a pleasant feeling of realization and memories of an acute moment of pleasure from the very process of life remains. Therefore, for those who are looking for great happiness, a psychologist is more likely to prescribe not a trip to a resort, but a program that will help them learn how to enter the flow. And you can start right from the workplace.

Work as art
What needs to be done to make the work bring maximum pleasure? Start right, as always, with yourself. If in your picture of the world you play the role of a forced laborer who plows solely for the money needed for pleasure (whether it be travel or shopping), then allow yourself to rise to the status of the creator of your own life and happiness. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, an internationally recognized subjective well-being researcher, has spent years trying to understand what unites musicians and climbers, surgeons and chess players, spiritual gurus and successful businessmen. Second wind, inspiration, creativity—there are many ways to describe a professional life in a state of flow. beautiful words, but their essence remains the same for a Nobel laureate and for a simple worker at a factory. In order for the work to bring the maximum return in the form of a feeling of happiness, three basic conditions are necessary: ​​motivation, result and the full implementation of your skill in your business.

Correctly formulated achievable goals are a guarantee that your attention will be maximally focused on what you are doing. Our psychic energy is a tangled tangle of emotions, thoughts and intentions, and in the normal state we have little or no control over our state of mind. Tests show that the mood of people who are left alone with chaos in their minds deteriorates sharply. At the same time, neither passive entertainment (be it a series on TV or hourly sunbathing), nor communication with the next of kin do not have a significant impact on general state happiness. And boredom is completely deadly for your tone. The tasks you have to complete as part of your job are the easiest way to mobilize your mental and emotional state. Therefore, if, sitting at work, you only dream of being home as soon as possible to relax, you are depriving yourself of the opportunity to be happy right here and right now.

Immediate result is the second condition for flow entry. You should be able to evaluate how well you are doing your job. Without visible achievements, it is very difficult to keep yourself in the tension necessary to overcome the obstacles that will arise in the process. The climber sees how each step brings him closer to the top, and the seamstress sees how the future dress takes shape with each stitch. The third parameter is the full implementation of your skills to achieve your goal. Ideally, you should be doing something that you enjoy and enjoy excelling at, and each task should challenge your skill. In this case, both emotional concentration and the application of your knowledge and skills reach their maximum. If the conditions at work do not allow you to fully realize your potential, then you are facing too difficult or, conversely, simple tasks or you are doing something for which your talents are not needed at all - your chances of entering the stream, alas, are minimal.

Life as a constant development
Is it possible to experience the drive of a hunter or a racer while sitting at a computer in an office setting? Psychologists are sure that it is within the power of every person. A few simple steps will get you started on the path to change.

1 Be active in what you love. Find five talents and strengths your character and begin to develop them, including in professional field rebuilding life around them. In the book Finding Flow, Csikszentmihalyi describes a case from his practice: doctors noticed that one of the patients in his clinic liked only one of all possible activities - taking care of her nails. She was placed on manicure courses, and after that her condition improved dramatically - so much so that after a while she was able to start a new independent life outside the clinic.

2 Find something in your work that really fascinates you. If you are generally satisfied with the field of activity, but you do everything without much interest, pay attention to the moments when you at least partially experience a state of flow, immersion in your occupation.

3 Focus on what you are doing. As you know, a genius is 1% of talent and 99% of labor, and only by concentrating on a certain occupation can a person reach heights in his work and feel happiness from what he does. According to research, you can increase the "density" of the flow yourself: the more you focus on something, the more it fascinates you, the more it fascinates you, the more you focus on it.

4 Challenge yourself. If you set yourself too high goals, you will live in a sense of anxiety, fear of failure. But at the same time, too low a bar does not do any good, causing boredom and apathy. The key to continuous development and improvement is the balance between challenges and opportunities. Gradually increasing the difficulty, you will stimulate yourself to increase your professionalism, and vice versa. The practice of positive psychology shows that a few steps separate us from a new dimension of life, more fulfilling and happy.

Sofia Makeeva

Downshifting, or how to work for pleasure, not depend on traffic jams and do what you want

Introduction

This book is fantastic. It's about how to come up with a new one, wonderful life, start living it and become happier. How to spend time doing what you like and get paid for it? How to set up an office on the beach? How to organize a sabbatical without sacrifice? How to live better and work less for less money? How not to work at all and live happily ever after?

The heroes of this book - former office workers, marketers, directors, PR people and many others - once quit their boring jobs and found themselves ... no, not in a landfill surrounded by homeless people, but in Goa, Thailand, Bali and even in Moscow happy and prosperous. You say fantasy? So I about it!

This book can be read in many different ways. For example, study only the stories of heroes - and you will have at your disposal a very thick magazine with essays and interviews, however, without news. Or study advice and practical advice and then carefully complete the tasks of trainings to optimize your life.

Another option: to absorb all this food for the mind and soul entirely. I would do exactly that. I love stories that inspire and I love to take advantage of everything.

Surely the word “downshifting” is already spinning in your head, but this book is not only and not so much about it. It is about people who were able to change themselves and their lives, about ways to optimize being and consciousness, about how to live the way you want, and about the fact that this is possible.

Of course, abroad already wrote about it. They told stories, gave advice to freelancers, downshifters, and everyone else who dreams of freedom from office slavery. But in this book, almost for the first time, stories, problems, and discoveries of “our” people are collected.

The dream is closer and more accessible than we thought.

Whether you are planning a major life change or not, in any case, this book will help you imagine how it could be.

However, do not be surprised if, after reading to the end, you find yourself ... completely happy somewhere in Goa. By-effect. The author is not responsible. I warn you right now.

Who and what is this book about?

Let's try to deal with them. Let's talk about India.

Some of the heroes of the book began their journey in Goa. Of course, they had traveled before, but once in India, they stopped striving for the top. career ladder, see the challenge of fate in solving monotonous work tasks and believe in what is customary to say at interviews. At one time, not only ordinary managers, but also celebrities “disappeared” in Goa. At one time, Pyotr Buslov (the director of Boomer) lived there, intending to make a film about all these wonderful reincarnations during his lifetime. If you are eager to find out which Russian stars are now massively buying houses and having a long rest in Goa, then please visit the websites of tabloid newspapers. If you can’t live without discussing what Indians or Russians are like in India, or what this country still attracts people to - light drugs or special energy, then you are welcome to numerous trolling forums. And for those who remain just readers, X. P. Voodoo will speak.

DJ and promoter Timur Mammadov is called the pioneer of Goa for Russians. He himself did not set such a goal for himself, moreover, he did not want masses of people to come there. But his job is parties, and that in itself couldn't help but draw crowds. So, a long time ago, when the trees were big, and not those who had a lot of money, but those who did not have any money, went to India, he found his spiritual homeland there. Well, then let's go.

“I came to Goa when there were no Russians there. If I had been told then, fifteen years ago, that Goa would be what it is now, I would not have believed it in my life. It was a world-renowned, trans-party haunted place. But there, in principle, there were no conditions for a comfortable stay, and until the year 2000, there was no talk of any development by the Russians of Goa (and Russian tourists fell in love to rest in comfort) ... And I did everything possible so that this mass "development" did not happen. In the nineties, most of my friends, even before going to Goa, went through a month-long training course with me: I explained to them how to communicate with the locals, what was possible and what was not - there were their own unwritten rules. It was not a place for everyone, people learned about Goa by word of mouth.

I remember in those days I lived for a month on the beach - literally on the beach - in a tent. At the end of the month I paid $40 for breakfast, lunch and dinner at a nearby cafe. Now you can live on this amount for two days. But it's not just about money, and it's hard to explain. Imagine: you are eight years old, you are on vacation, you don’t have to do anything, you eat ice cream, next to you is the magical sea and your grandmother who buys you cotton candy… Previously, the atmosphere of childhood reigned in Goa: joy, circus, fairy tales. Now everything is more commercialized. Although, it seems, the sun, sand, sea have remained the same ...

But then people laid out handkerchiefs on the beach and sunbathed naked. Now there are sun loungers, all the amenities, but you can’t even take off your bra. The parties weren't really parties. Before it was a certain kind of madness: a raging sea of ​​heads, old people on the dance floor, amazing freaks around, music from dusk to dawn ... All this made people fall in love with Goa. Plus, we gave Goa a certain halo of mystery, "opening" it not to everyone, but only to the elite. Forbidden fruit is sweet, that children are forbidden, that's what they want ... Mysteriousness began to attract the masses. I'm a party person by trade and in a way I was also promoting Goa, although I really didn't want to do it. In 2004 - after the first arrival of the Moscow club party - everyone learned about Goa.

Ten years ago, when Timur Mamedov had a daughter, he moved to India for permanent residence. Why does he live in Goa even now, when “everything has changed” there? The answer, in his opinion, is obvious: “Compare the climate here - the climate there, the people here - the people there, the prices here - the prices there, the parties here - the parties there. I don't see what would keep me in Moscow. Benefits of civilization? Now they have appeared in Goa, but they are much cheaper. Both me and my daughter - she lives part of the time with me, part of the time with her mother in Italy - it's better here.

Now Timur spends nine months a year in Goa, the rest of the time - like a real Indian guest worker - earns money in other countries. However, he considers his work the most enviable in the world: “You don’t need a lot of mind and strength to put on records and mix music while drinking beer. And given how much they pay for it ... in general, it can hardly be called a job. In India, I organize only two events a year - Russian Christmas and my birthday, the rest of the time I play very rarely, maybe once a month ... Just because I'm lazy. Nine months of the year I do what everyone who travels to Goa does. That is, nothing. I wake up as much as I want (if the child is not taken to school), I do only what I want. You know, people say that they come somewhere, for example, to Baikal or Nepal, and they understand that this is their territory, that they need to live here forever. So I once came to Goa and realized that I belong to this place ... "

According to Mammadov, those who are tired of the dull Moscow routine are not in vain choosing India. And it has nothing to do with downshifting: “Here people open up new perspectives, become better and kinder… This place opens the mind. Especially the consciousness of Russians who are tortured by rules and limits. And in India they are faced with freedom… I can’t call it down… The one who “wears out” is down… And then only up!”

Now that we've cleared up the Indian situation, it's time to deal with downshifting itself. The heroes of this book do not like the word itself, they prefer to call themselves travellers, ushers, upshifters, tayshifters - anything but down.

The term "downshifting" was born in America in the early nineties - then in Russia, unlike the same America, the pursuit of success and money was more than original idea. Washington Post correspondent Sarah Ben Breatna, in one of the first articles on the topic of downshifting, suggested looking at “slowing down life” (and this is the translation from English) as a new version of success. However, over time, in England and the United States, the term simple living ("voluntary simplicity") took root, and in Australia - sea change ("dramatic change"). And the word "downshifting", as some researchers assure, remained with the Europeans and Russians.

One of the first Russian journalists who told us in detail about downshifting is Andrey Loshak. A few years ago, he made a TV movie "Escape Plan", in which Timur Mammadov, Pyotr Buslov, and many others (including some of the heroes of this book) took part. Then the media repeatedly delighted us with stories of the rich and famous who moved from the office to the beach. The attitude towards the word “downshifting” and towards the heroes themselves was appropriate for the mass audience - envious-suspicious-condescending. Like, our people don't go to the bakery by taxi.

Absolute majority life problems(if not all at once) arise for one simple reason. Because of lying to myself. And for real strong man- this is the one who has the courage to admit to himself a lie. Admit to yourself that "my work (my business) does not bring me any satisfaction, nor real, genuine pleasure and joy." If you succeeded, then this is very cool, then your chances of starting to live a different life have greatly increased!

The most important thing is to decide!

Many people, even though the work or business does not bring them any pleasure or satisfaction, will continue to do it. The reasons are banal - the old familiar is better than the new excellent. Work gives money or the illusion of stability. But it takes away the most precious thing - health.

Scientists from the Australian national university After a four-year study, they found that unloved work negatively affects the psyche, and since the body and psyche are a single whole, it also affects physical health.

After interviewing more than seven thousand people, scientists noticed that people who, for one reason or another, worked in an uninteresting, unloved and simply hated job, many times more often than others suffered from depression and other severe mental disorders, and also had problems with physical health.

The cost of treating such physical and mental problems can be from 100 thousand rubles a year and more. The amount is not that big, but not small either. Ready to part with it for a job that does not bring you satisfaction?

How to find a job (business) that brings pleasure?

And yet, I do not urge you to immediately quit your job or close (sell) the business. Before burning bridges behind you, it would not hurt to build a strong foundation in a new place. Or at least, accurately determine the work that will bring joy and pleasure.

Perhaps this is the most difficult. Understand what you really would like to do, what would be a thrill. , your life's work. And to do it until the very old age. For many, this is an almost unattainable height. And I also thought so, rushing for many years from one direction to another. He was a security guard, journalist, legal adviser, human rights activist. So far, having gone through a series of internal crises, I have not formulated for myself “What do I really want to do?”

There is no big secret here, but there is a huge inner work. Your life's work must be "in sync" with your true goals, your values, your desires and aspirations. It should be consonant with what you believe in and what you consider the most important and valuable in life. Well, of course, such a case should be based on your real talents and genetic characteristics. Then you do not have to break yourself and try to turn from a mouse into a hedgehog.

Serial entrepreneur and investor James Altucher writes in his Cheat Sheet that it can take at least 3 years. And some have even more. However, you can do it this way.

Before the jump

When you realized what would be your life's work. When you clearly realize that you can give the world and this product is in your hands and the impatient hands of customers are already reaching out to it, then you can throw the hell out of a job / business that you are tired of. You can, of course, even earlier, if you are not burdened with a family and know how to feed yourself without wasting your time and energy too much. At the time, I went for the second option. And I did it.

Having jumped into the raging waters of a new life, begin to actively work with your hands and feet. It was at your old job that you could do nothing (do not consider the matter as a banal performance of routine duties). When you are engaged in the business of life, you will have to do a lot and often be creative. True, this is exactly what you will enjoy and what your eyes will burn from. And as soon as you wake up, you will rush into battle.