The Road To Happiness In Your Work Lies In The Hooray! Zone

Hooray!

@Daniel Griscom:

You make a strong point, and I see where you are coming from. I think anybody would disagree with lowering your standards etc, so why would saying "No" be okay?

It's the only suggestion there that doesn't give you an Idea of where to go. If anything ,it would push you out of the "Paid to do" circle completely!

The diagram's a bit inconsistent. The bottom center overlap is labeled "Learn to do this better"; doing this would bring these jobs into the "What we do well" area, joining the "Wahoo!" center area. The top left overlap is labeled "Learn to monetize"; doing this would bring these jobs into the "What we can be paid to do" area, again joining the "Wahoo!" area. However, the top right overlap is labeled "Learn to say 'no'". Saying "no" wouldn't change anything about the job's location in the diagram. Wouldn't the corresponding label for this area be "Learn to enjoy"?

An alternative would be to relabel the other two areas, changing "Learn do do this better" to "Lower your standards", and "Learn to monetize" to "Economize".

@hhumbert: That would be Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, he of the nearly unpronounceable name. I recall learning to say his name as "Chicks send me high."

This adds a new dimension to the common "zone" metaphor "Flow", by that one Czech with a weird ass named.

Tough to idealistically find the Hooray! zone in a down economy like this. Some folks are just trying to put food on the table.

hhumbert

Not sure who put this together first, but that Venn diagram is the same as the Hedgehog Concept in Jim Collin's Good to Great. He uses the terms, "What you're passionate about", "What drives your economic engine", and "What you can be the best at."

OakleyBaazo

@amandakerik: Just about any drawing app that handles text should do a respectable job if you only want one for personal display.

FubarGuy

I have to agree that I went: Another key to happiness post, oh boy. But this is really good

There's actually a lot more wisdom in this little diagram than I really thought at first glance. I think more of us live in the "Learn to say No" category than might be immediately obvious; especially those of us who really want to do something else but stick with doing something we can make money at that we generally succeed with because hey, it pays the bills.

I like this a lot.

I don't suppose you know where to get this in a poster, eh?

@~dt~: "at." Curse you, proofreading.

~dt~

So it first, I thought "That's stupid."

But then I thought about it, and I realized that it's a great way to capture the essence of every motivational speech all in one diagram.

So yeah. Cool.

~dt~

@badger500: Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed by this.

WedgeTalon

As an obsessive graph lover, it annoys me that the large white words are DEscriptive ("What is"), while the small white words in the overlaps actions are PREscriptive ("what you should do"). when I began looking at this figure, I assumed the overlap text would also be descriptions. Of course, the word "Hooray!" is again descriptive. It's inconsistent.

@Daniel Griscom: I think it's implying that you should go do something, anything else. If you want do do something, you should strive to make it feasible; otherwise, get out of there as quickly as you can.

Leszek

I have a small concern about the "Learn to say NO" thing...

I don't know the legal situation in each and every country, but if I'm thinking about my own country (France), there laws that forbid professionals to refuse so sell a product or a service if they just "don't want to do it". It's a crime called "sale refusal", which is systematically punishable if the customer was a consumer (B2C), and may be punishable if the customer was a professional (B2B) too only if the refusal was made for discriminatory reasons (it used to be systematically punishable in both cases, but the law changed a few years ago for the B2B). The laws have been made to prevent shops and other professionals to artificially create shortage of goods (especially in the post-war period where there was already shortage in many types of goods...), in order to justify increased prices, or to force their customers to buy luxury goods by refusing to sell them the cheaper ones...

The professionals who are convicted of sale refusal may be sentenced to 3 years of prison, and a 45000€ fine. If the refusal was made in a place that is opened to the public (a shop for example), or by preventing a customer to enter that place, the sanction can be up to 5 years of prison, and a 75000€ fine.

It's still a major problem in France, since many professionals are using false ways to refuse to sell what they don't want to sell... It's especially true in some kind of activities (small home improvement work for example, that may be considered as less interesting for the professional compared to a full home building contract), where the usual way to achieve sell refusal without being too much at risk of a legal complaint from the customer, is to propose to do the job, but for a price that is so high that 99% of the customers will refuse. That way, even if there may be a customer who don't know anything about the "normal" prices for that kind of work, and agrees for the proposed price, then in that case the contract may end up being "interesting" in the end... (another common way to refuse would be to announce that one's planning is already full, and that the work would not be done until several months... however, if the customers has a way to check it and finds that the professional has lied to him - for example, by calling him again with another request that may seem much more interesting... - then the professional may get a lawsuit anyway...)

So I would say, don't forget to CHECK what are your legal obligations depending of the country where you are working.

deltaplan

@Daniel Griscom: "Learning to Enjoy" doesn't fit on this diagram. The diagram is about being happy doing what you enjoy.

"Learning to Say No" is a key component. It fits between "What I do Well" and "What I can be Paid to Do" because you have learn to say "No" to jobs that don't pay, and jobs that don't fit with what you do well.

The diagram is more about actions one should take to be in the "hooray" zone, more so than fitting a certain job into these categories.

in my opinion : )

Brad Coughlin

Hey, Bud Caddell here! Lifehacker readers take their Venn Diagrams seriously. There's some great feedback for my next doodle. Thanks for the post. So many people mentioned wanting this as a poster that I've actually gone ahead and created a hi-res version of the image, and setup a poster at Zazzle - small : http://www.zazzle.com/how_to_be_happy_in_business_poster-228166758988872569 big: http://www.zazzle.com/how_to_be_happy_in_business_poster-228279284218022257 Thanks again!

EarlScaevola

Brilliant. Even if its been said before in other ways. This is a nice, simple to digest diagram to follow.

SurabhiPanda

@Daniel Griscom:

I don't think it's really inconsistent at all - I think that the underlying goal of this diagram is to show that we should be doing what we want to be doing; not necessarily what we can do well. The 'Learn to say no' to me implies that I should find something else I am good at, and also something that I enjoy, and monetize that - if I don't enjoy what I'm doing, but I do it well, I'm not going to be happy. I should learn to say 'No' to doing these types of jobs or what have you and instead find something I do well and something I enjoy, and do THAT for pay.

DMDiller

@Daniel Griscom: I don't think it's really inconsistent at all - I think that the underlying goal of this diagram is to show that we should be doing what we want to be doing; not necessarily what we can do well. The 'Learn to say no' to me implies that I should find something else I am good at, and also something that I enjoy, and monetize that - if I don't enjoy what I'm doing, but I do it well, I'm not going to be happy. I should learn to say 'No' to doing these types of jobs or what have you and instead find something I do well and something I enjoy, and do THAT for pay.

JonathanLaterensis

this is a great diagram but it is being undersold, it doesn't just affect business, it can affect many parts of your personal life, especially "learn to say no"

Yeesh. I hope everybody who thinks the US would be better if it was just more European reads the above post.

pinbot

@deltaplan: I do not think that was the intent here; it is not a selective "no" applied at one time and not another; it is a life choice to not do what you may be good at, and could be paid to do, but really have no interest in doing. I may be good at cutting lawns, and people may pay me to do that, but I really do not like it so I need to say "no".

howardd21

@amandakerik: From your printer.

High Speed Indeed