BLOG TOUR: Eat Sleep Work Repeat by Bruce Daisley @brucedaisley @harperone @tlcbooktours #eatsleepworkrepeat

“Let’s start enjoying our jobs again. It’s time to rediscover the joy of work.”

I am thrilled to be able to talk today about a recent book I read by Bruce Daisley called Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat: 10 Hacks for Bringing Joy to Your Job. For those who don’t know (which is probably most of you, since I focus much more on the books than on my life), I work doing organizational development and talent assessment for a Fortune 100 company and I’m currently finishing my PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Why do I bring this up? Because my job and my academic studies are both about understanding how people are doing at work—are they a good match for their role, are they ready for a promotion, is training and development helping, do we have high performing teams, how is their leader impacting their work, are they engaged and happy? The list of questions I spend my life thinking about just goes on and on. And the things is—I went into this line of work because I care!

Seriously.

We spend so much of our lives at work, and as someone who is happiest when I’m working, I want to do everything I can to make things better for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of people I work with or who are impacted by the output of those employees.

I was so excited by the great book Daisley wrote, because this is what it all comes down to: work isn’t everything in life, but if you are going to do it, shouldn’t you have joy while you are at it?

So, let’s talk about the big buzz-word in all organizations: burnout. People are burnt out. We all know it, we’ve all experienced it at some point, but do we really understand why it happens? I used to feel confused by my personal burnout because I didn’t understand how I could have so much energy and enthusiasm for work, only to plummet over a single setback.

Here is something most people don’t know…highly engaged employees—those ones who love coming to work and are your best go-getters—can actually be some of the most susceptible to burnout. There is a link between high engagement and passion for what someone does and burnout. And while that may sound like a bad thing (are you wondering if might be better to just not care?), it isn’t! Because here is the great, massive silver lining to that—if you’re pushed to burnout, you can rebalance yourself and reclaim that joy you get from work.

Enter, Eat Sleep Work Repeat. Daisley writes about this in much more depth than I can or should write about it. He talks about the power of recharging and why we should do it. He talks about what you can do to build a more motivated, energized, happier team or work culture. He talks about what leaders can do to help their teams feel happier and re-energized. And these are important and simple things!

He talks about, for instance, being ok with turning those notifications off. Seriously, have you ever turned off email notification on vacation? My shoulders drop about two inches closer to where they are supposed to sit instantly. What about instituting a work culture where emails outside of work that aren’t emergencies aren’t tolerated? Imagine if you could use the precious time you have not at work to truly relax, have fun, separate, and then be able to truly return to work the next day energized and excited to be there—doesn’t that sound incredible?

If you are like me, you’ll get your copy, leave yourself notes all over the margins, mark tips or adapt them to work for you and your job. And you’ll find that maybe not immediately, but over time each small tip builds, and the more you implement the more joy you’ll find. Then, maybe you’ll have more days where work doesn’t feel like work. Where you don’t wake up in the morning dreading going into your job. Where you are energized and excited by what you do and the people around you.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and HarperOne for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Book

How does a lunch break spark a burst of productivity? Can a team’s performance be improved simply by moving the location of the coffee maker? Why are meetings so often a waste of time, and how can a walking meeting actually get decisions made?

As an executive with decades of management experience at top Silicon Valley companies including YouTube, Google, and Twitter, Bruce Daisley has given a lot of thought to what makes a workforce productive and what factors can improve the workplace to benefit a company’s employees, customers, and bottom line. In his debut book, he shares what he’s discovered, offering practical, often counterintuitive, insights and solutions for reinvigorating work to give us more meaning, productivity, and joy at the office.

A Gallup survey of global workers revealed shocking news: only 13% of employees are engaged in their jobs. This means that burn out and unhappiness at work are a reality for the vast majority of workers. Managers—and employees themselves—can make work better. Eat Sleep Work Repeat shows them how, offering more than two dozen research-backed, user-friendly strategies, including:

Go to Lunch (it makes you less tired over the weekend)
Suggest a Tea Break (it increases team cohesiveness and productivity)
Conduct a Pre-Mortem (foreseeing possible issues can prevent problems and creates a spirit of curiosity and inquisitiveness)

“Let’s start enjoying our jobs again,” Daisley insists. “It’s time to rediscover the joy of work.”

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Bruce Daisley is the European Vice-President for Twitter and host of top business podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat. He has worked for some of the world’s biggest media companies, including Google and YouTube, and is dedicated to making work better and using evidence to devise creative solutions. He lives in London.

Find out more at the website eatsleepworkrepeat.com, and follow Bruce on Instagram and Twitter.