Bodynsoul's List: Good Ideas

• Shawn did a study of bankers right after the huge banking crisis hit. Most of them were incredibly stressed. But a few were happy and resilient.

   

  What did those guys have in common? They didn’t see problems as threats; they saw them as challenges to overcome.
• Twice As Much Work Means You Need Friends Twice As Much

• Here’s what we can all learn from Shawn:

   
   
  1. Success doesn’t bring happiness. Happiness brings success.
   
  2. See problems as challenges, not threats.
   
  3. More work means you need more social support. And giving support is better than receiving.
   
  4. Send a 2-minute “thank you” email every morning.
   
  5. Use the 20-second rule to build the habit.

• We all chase success hoping it will make us happy:

   
   
  1. I’ll be happy once I get that promotion.
   
  2. I’ll be happy once I get that raise.
   
  3. I’ll be happy once I lose 15 pounds.
   
   

  But the research shows that isn’t true. You achieve a goal and you’re briefly happier… but then you’re looking toward the next big thing.

   

  What Shawn’s research showed was when you flip the formula and focus on increasing happiness, you end up increasing success.

• You might think happiness only comes from big wins or big achievements. You’re wrong. Research shows little things are more important.

   

  So Shawn believes rather than focusing on big boosts like vacations, it’s smarter to build little, consistent habits akin to brushing your teeth.
• What little habit gives a big happiness boost over time? Send a 2-minute “thank you” email or text as soon as you get into the office.
• If you reduce the amount of activation energy required, tough things become easy. So make new habits 20 seconds easier to start.

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• Its plan to snag the best twenty-somethings out there is convincing young people that Marriott is a fun, cool place to work—through pictures of its staff having fun on the job.

  • a strategy of likes attract likes, smart people want to work with other smart people.
• In addition to the usual rote explanations of required expertise and what jobs entail, the site posts pictures of actual employees in Marriott hotels looking happy to be doing whatever they're doing,
• The images also have share buttons, ostensibly to appeal to a sharing-obsessed generation.

  • The Share Button is the one most important Pointer of connection to a mobile connected generation.

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• My family is enjoying some pizza around the dinner table. I post our happy moment on Instagram. Moments later I get a tweet from the national pizza chain thanking me for buying their pizza and offering a coupon for a future purchase.
• Using sophisticated application programming interfaces (APIs), developers have made it possible for users to take a picture of an object or person, and immediately learn where to buy the object shown, or where to connect with the person photographed.
• Consider how the hospitality industry could improve customer service if they knew who was checking in—knew them from their online presence, as opposed to just their photo ID.
• Macy’s launched an app in September of this year that enables shoppers to take photos of outfits they like. The app then searches Macy’s inventory for a match.
• Less than two months after Macy’s launched its image search app, Neiman Marcus debuted a similar app, through a partnership with Slyce. “Snap. Find. Shop.” enables users to take pictures of shoes or handbags that catch their eye.
• The app then compares the pictures with Neiman Marcus’ inventory of shoes and handbags, and returns a list of offerings that present the closest match.
• Consequently, if you’re out for a run and someone’s interested in knowing more about you, they can take a picture of you on their phone, run it through an app like NameTag and immediately gain access to your public social profiles and online photos.
• But even setting all of your social profiles to private won’t entirely insulate you from the prying eyes of strangers: your friends can always upload and photos of you online, too.
• For marketers who manage to avoid coming across as creepy, this data goldmine can help to inform product development, channel selection, content marketing, mobile behavior, and more.

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