In the last article, we talked about the problems of work itself, which were external factors. We learned about the nature of work based on the mainstream thinking of “human nature is evil”. This article today talks about the subjective level, how we should approach work, and how we should manage our expectations for work.

  • Life and work are not mutually exclusive

1. Many people, including me, fall into the mistaken thinking that life and work are opposite, which constructs the inner order for many graduates to enter the workplace. When I learned the concept of mental entropy, I thought this knot would be solved. Mental entropy is used to refer to the tendency of consciousness to disorder. In physics, entropy stands for a measure of disorder. Relaxation in life is not a bad thing, but once relaxation becomes the main mode of work and leisure, it becomes a habit, and it greatly degrades the life experience. On the other hand, stress at work is not all bad, but when stress becomes the main theme of life, it can greatly reduce the quality of work.

2. The opposite of life is not work. The opposite of work is not life. Life isn’t always easy, and work isn’t always stressful. In terms of mental entropy, we want to create inner harmony.

The goal of work-life balance is to pursue happiness. What kind of person can achieve happiness? From the perspective of biological evolution, on the one hand, natural evolutionary selection is only used to serve survival and reproduction, but does not increase the function of happiness, the goal is a stable natural order; On the other hand, over the course of evolution, our chances for happiness have been fleeting, not linked to long-term happiness. From the perspective of sociology, although the material wealth of human beings has increased greatly, there is no obvious improvement in the improvement of inner experience. Macro social acceptance has no necessary relationship with individual quality of life. So the pursuit of inner harmony, only do their own consciousness of the master, there is happiness at all.

4. Therefore, the individual subjective experience of the best work is the spirit of entropy is exactly the opposite, that is the spirit of the negative entropy, it is such a state, you accept the information is match with stated goals, this time spiritual energy will continuously emerging, you no longer need to worry about, also need not doubt their own ability, so to keep awareness in an orderly way, This kind of positive feedback allows you to pay more attention and take care of the balance between your inner and outer environment.

5. Another name for this optimal experience is flow. This is the direction of personal construction of subjective spiritual world, a positive way of dealing with the world.

  • 1. Clear goals, immediate feedback, and the combination of challenge and competence create a flow experience. 2. Refer to how to achieve flow at work for details.

  • In his book Discovering Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that flow in adult life occurs most of the time at work, not at play. As we mentioned in our last article, 13% of people see work as a challenge and are confident they can complete it. The book also proposes a methodology to turn your work into a game through subjective design. The key is to “play” your work. How does this methodology work?

1. Choose goals independently and create value to make work more meaningful

【 Case 】 The classical teacher who got the subscription column super individual, during the summer vacation, he had 4 classes a day, 10 hours, for 60 consecutive days. He set himself extra mini-goals, assigning lecturers skills such as “telling jokes,” “making people cry,” “talking fast,” “telling stories”… I made a list of 10 items and practiced one every day. Cycle 6 times, happy over a summer vacation.

【 Case 】 There is a “value chain” thread running through the Basic Law of Huawei. It clearly answers how Huawei creates value, which factors participate in value creation, for whom Huawei creates value, and who is the beneficiary of Huawei’s value. Determine the value contribution of each department and each employee to the company; The basis and standard of value distribution. These problems can be summed up as value creation concept, value evaluation concept and value distribution concept.

[Case] Cultivating employees’ enthusiasm for products can also be the meaning of their work. This meaning is to make employees feel very proud of their ability to produce first-class products (or to provide first-class services). Like Huawei, their slogan is: “Quality is our pride.” There was a worker at Honda in Japan who came from work every day and saw a Honda parked on the company’s roadside. If he saw a misplaced windshield wiper, he would stop and straighten it up. He says he sees Honda cars like his own children, and he can’t stand any flaws. Leaders nurture that feeling.

2. Adjust the difficulty of the task by breaking the big goal down into smaller goals that you can control and give yourself feedback on

If you have a personal review to hand in next week, you can break it down into three steps and complete it in stages. Spend the first day thinking about what the summary will include, what benefits your work has brought to the company, and what parts of your summary should be included. Then spend another day collecting, in order to complete the summary, need the data and data of previous work. The last three days were devoted to writing the text. You see, by completing one small task each day, and by receiving positive feedback each day for completing one small task, the goal will feel less stressed out.

3. Turn boring tasks into fun challenges

Klein, an oncologist, loves his job very much, but he hates two things. One is that he often has to wait in the airport because of frequent international conferences. The other is that he often has to write a plan to apply for government funds, which is not difficult but very complicated. So what are some ways to make both of these jobs fun? It occurred to him that if he could write a proposal while waiting for the plane, he could do two things in half the time. Since then, his every flight waiting has become an anticipated mini-challenge to see if he can concentrate on writing a proposal in a noisy airport lobby, how much he can get done, and whether he can keep up with his workload.

【 Case 】 The great physicist Feynman was very fond of playing radio when he was young, and learned to repair the radio technology, when the kind of damage is too serious to repair the machine, others will persuade him, you are just a child, repair it doesn’t matter, but Feynman will never give up. Feynman learned to open a safe while working on the Manhattan Project during World War II. To crack the code, Feynman bought two books on how to pick locks and practiced on his safe. In the end, it can reach an average of four hours to open a cabinet. It took him about a year and a half to open all the safes in the research base, and his lockpicking skills were professional. It was this drive to solve difficult problems that enabled him to keep studying and master new skills when he later encountered various scientific and learning problems.

The above from the flow methodology to think about the subjective expectations of management work, I hope to inspire you.

The author:

Andy Reed Technology founder and CEO

Reed Technology – Guangzhou professional software outsourcing service company

We provide professional services such as wechat mini program, APP application research and development, application UI design, and focus on Internet product consulting, brand design, technology research and development and other fields

Visit www.talkmoney.cn to learn more

Universal manual | early diary Lite | bump wallpaper