Managing Yourself: The Secret to Life Satisfaction is Finding Joy (Part 2)

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This is part two of how the busiest people find joy, five research-backed strategies. So if you have not listened to the first one, obviously, that's important. Go back and listen to that. We talked about the first one was engaging with other people. It's important to our joy progress if we do things with other people. It's also important to avoid passive pursuits. That was number two. Two, things that we do that we're not moving, we're not engaged physically, tend to bring a lot less joy.

You know, you can sit on a couch or you can go for a walk. And going for a walk brings a lot more joy to your life. So think about that one. And then number three was follow your passion. and really dig into what brings you joy. Not what brings the vast majority of human beings joy, but what you specifically find joyful. You know, I collect modern strategic board games. That's my thing. Not a lot of people like modern strategic board games.

They find sitting down for two or three hours playing a very complicated game, they find that unbelievably boring. whereas it is one of the most enjoyable things that I can do. And so that's the idea.

Find things that you love, right? So number four, the fourth strategy here is to diversify your activities. Now, while I love board games, I also have many, many, many other pursuits as well. And so I really, I'm glad I was finding myself agreeing with this particular one quite vehemently as I was reading it, given the importance of following your passion, you might think that you should devote all of your free time to a single, deeply satisfying activity like board gaming. However.

The study shows that there's actually a negative link between intense dedication to hobbies and success in many domains of life, such as work and relationships with family. Their findings take that insight one step farther, suggesting that the more time someone dedicates to one leisure pursuit, the less joy it delivers. In fact, there's a tipping point. spending too many hours on an activity every week can start to diminish its benefit altogether.

So it's a variety, not depth, that boosts happiness, perhaps because it prevents monotony. It keeps experiences fresh, more exciting. In fact, they even call it a very interesting name. They call it hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation. That's the process by which repeated exposure to the same stimulus reduces its impact over time. In fact, there's a graph here. I wish I could show you this graph, but it looks at hours spent per week on a single free time activity. And it's an arch, basically.

And the arch occurs, it starts going down at seven hours. So the point is after you do your favorite hobby for about seven hours a week, even if you have that much time, there is a turning point or a tipping point where the satisfaction from that activity will start to dwindle over time. So that's the fourth one, diversify your activities.

Fifth, protect time, protect the time. Because work is a source of meaning and achievement, at least a little bit for some people, for most ambitious professionals, they often let it bleed into their free time. And this is what the strategy is trying to protect, to protect your boundary there. Research has long underscored the risks of overworking, showing that it's linked to increased health problems, reduced well-being.

Studies have also found that psychological detachment from work or the ability to mentally disconnect from professional demands during the off hours really improves your well-being, even increases job engagement. And in this study here, they saw that for every additional hour people devoted to work each week, their sense of joy in life decreased.

Whereas when they used that hour for leisure activities like hobbies or exercise or catching up with friends or eating or drinking with family or friends, they experienced much greater happiness. So that hour extra of work doesn't do you any good. In fact, it can hurt. Spend that time doing something else. The old adage, no one ever thinks about work on their deathbed.

That's the point here. In this study, they also found that participants who reported more joyful free time found greater value, found greater purpose and success in their jobs. So that hour will make you much more effective during the boundaries in which you've decided to work, further enhancing life expectation and life satisfaction. They created a virtuous cycle, right, where, you know, that time off really regenerates you and allows you to come back to work in a much better state.

So free time is scarce for many working professionals, but it's still possible to maximize the happiness you get from it by protecting it, following personal passions while prioritizing variety, seeking social and active experiences. You don't need to find more hours in the day or sacrifice your drive for meaning and achievement. Because remember, it's not the number of hours that you spend doing these strategies. It's the quality of the hours that you spend.

So to create a more satisfying life, you just need to find more sparks of joy in the limited leisure time you already have. Hope that helps. I hope that you find much joy in your pursuit of these strategies. And until next time we meet in the Manager Lab. Music.