Getting to Yes, And

Bruce Daisley: Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat.

Guest

Bruce Daisley

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Kelly has a fascinating conversation with former Twitter and YouTube executive Bruce Daisley about his new book, Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat: 30 Hacks for Bringing Joy to Your Job.

You write early in the book, “Work is the lie we tell ourselves.” How so?

“I think we find ourselves - and maybe we only confess the truth to our partners or to our mums or to our friends over a drink - but we often find ourselves in a situation where there are parts of our job that we find deeply rewarding. But there are many parts that we find immensely frustrating. And so, you know, one example might be that the average American worker spends two days a week in meetings. And I think if we were to be honest about what we think in those meetings and how we feel in those meetings, we often feel like the meetings are unnecessary, go on too long, and are boring. They sap our energy and we leave those meetings and we trudge back to our desks and these 200 emails waiting for us and we find ourselves strangely sort of feeling like we've got all this inactivity at work.”

You cite this great study that speaks to how belongingness is as important to human beings as food and shelter.

“Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary set about trying to evaluate the hierarchy of needs - and you might remember the hierarchy of needs: food and shelter at the bottom. And then in the next stage up, this sort of next elevation is belongingness. And what these two gentlemen discovered is that they found that by looking into the data, they couldn't actually find anything to back up the case that belongingness came after food and shelter. They found that it actually came the same.”

You title one of the chapters ‘The Evil Millowner Who Lives Inside You.” Explain.

“What happened was someone told me a story that was so vivid and connected with me about a guy who runs a business in the UK. He said, “When it comes to matters in the workplace, I feel like I'm one of the good guys. But quite often inside of me, when I look around the office at 9:30 in the morning, an evil millowner inside me comes out - because I look around and I see a sea of empty desks, and immediately I think no one's working.” It evokes the sense of him being a 19th century millowner because he immediately believes that everyone is somehow trying to exploit him and take advantage of his niceness.  And it was a really vivid thing to hear because I definitely know that there's moments where I look around and think where is everyone? And it reminded me that sometimes I need to hold the inner millowner inside of me, inside.”

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