I’m almost done listening through The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. At the very end of the book he talks about ways to strengthen relationships at your job. One of the things he talks about is expressing gratitude to your colleagues, and how doing so can start a domino effect leading to stronger relationships with those you thanked as well as a feeling of greater cohesiveness within the team as a whole.
This past year was the first year for me to work remotely with the company I’ve been at for three years now, and I’ve definitely found that it can tend to cause you to feel disconnected. Add to that the fact that the company has been going through some stress due to a key person leaving, and I feel like some gratitude could really benefit company morale.
Of course, I’m considering turning the practice into a Beeminder goal. However, I’d like to really think it through before I do so I can start something that’s sustainable. The company has less than 10 employees, which makes me wonder if requiring myself to express gratitude every day might be too much. But maybe not? It sounds intimidating, anyway.
What are your thoughts on this type of go-say-something-to-someone goal? Especially interested in your take if you are introverted, work remotely, and/or have used a similar Beeminder goal.
Any other well-being goals I should be thinking about adding as a remote worker? Would love to hear any stories you all have about using Beeminder in a remote situation. Doesn’t have to be about a remote job—what about remote relationships, etc?
(Jumping in without having read the book, because I like the thread!)
In the Beeminder Slack, we have a karma system. Someone does something awesome? their-name++. One mention++, one karma point. You can do @mention-- as well, but we usually tend not to. It’s a really simple way of showing someone you appreciate them, but it has actually really made a difference for me – I now miss it, in my other work environments! I never thought of beeminding it before, but now you make me wonder about trying it – 1/day would be pretty fair for the amount we interact on the Slack…
Of course, a specific compliment/tying it to an event helps keep it sincere: “That was an awesome way of putting it, thank you! name++” That situation doesn’t necessarily come up every day, but it keeps the simple system meaningful.
Is there anything that speaks against starting off small at first with say at least 1 thank you per week for the first one or two weeks? You can then feel out how intimidating it actually is to do that. Maybe after the first 3 thank you it will feel natural and then you can bump it up to once a day. Or stop beeminding it because you find it easier to do than anticipated.
There’s multiple reasons why I suggest starting easy here, but the main one is that this goal lends itself very well to this I believe. Also I think this is all about getting started. My theory is that once you appreciated your coworkers a few times you’ll do it naturally. But who knows!
You’re like freakin Amelia Bedelia, @zedmango!
To utterly ruin the joke by explaining it (since I suspect that’s going over most people’s heads here)… Doing “zedmango++” is shorthand for “zedmango_cumulative_karma++” which is shorthand for “increase zedmango’s karma number by 1”. Taken literally, “zedmango++” would mean “replace zedmango with whatever 1 greater than zedmango is”. Possibly a version who doesn’t make obtuse programmer jokes?
PS: I see @adamwolf++ posted a more concise version of my response while I was typing it!
