The IKEA effect

Today is my 600th blog post!  I have really enjoyed reading and writing about leadership.  Looking back to my very first post (entitled, appropriately enough, First blog post!), I mentioned two goals for starting my own blog.  First, I wanted to write more.  I have always enjoyed writing, and I thought that having my own blog would be a great way to continue to develop and refine my writing skills on a subject that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Second, I wanted a place to collect stories, lessons, articles, and good examples of leadership.  I never thought that I would get to 100 posts (I did start slowly, going almost seven months without a post during the first year), let alone six hundred!  It's truly been a great experience for me, and even if no one outside my own family reads this blog, it's been worth it!

My first post was just an introduction and an explanation for why I was starting my own blog.  My second post introduced a favorite personal strategy on learning about leadership ("What can we learn about leadership from a movie?").  I enjoy watching movies, particularly those movies that have important lessons about leadership (see my post "12 O'Clock High" for a list of some of my personal favorites).  Last year, I watched the famous war movie, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" starring Sir Alec Guinness and William Holden as two prisoners of war during the Burma Campaign of World War II.  Guiness stars as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, the senior British officer at the POW camp, who provides a very interesting case study in leadership.  He is all spit and polish and lives 100% by the book.  

The Allied POW's are forced, at least at first, to build a railroad bridge across the River Kwai (hence the name of the movie).  Ultimately, Nicholson leads his men to build the bridge on time, on budget, and according to specification.  The bridge becomes an object of pride and admiration for the men.  Nicholson seems to forget about the bridge's strategic importance, but William Holden's character, Navy Lieutenant Commander Shears does not.  Shears escapes from the camp and leads a band of commandos to destroy the bridge.  

At one point, Nicholson unbelievably tries to prevent Shears and his team from bombing the bridge.  At the last minute, he comes to his senses, uttering "What have I done?"  He is shot, and as he falls, he detonates the bridge just as a Japanese train is crossing it.  The mission ultimately succeeds.  Why was Nicholson so attached to the bridge?  He was either incredibly stupid or deranged to the point where he tried to save the bridge for the Japanese Army Colonel who ran the POW camp.  Actually, there's a simpler explanation.  The bridge was his creation, or at least he saw it that way.

If you have a chance to read anything by the cognitive psychologist and author, Dan Ariely, please do so.  He's authored a number of books and research papers, and he most recently started writing a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal called "Ask Ariely".  A few years ago, he published the results of a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology on something he calls, "The IKEA effect".  After reading this study, I suspect that Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson's behavior in The Bridge Over the River Kwai will make a lot more sense.  Ariely and his team conducted four studies in which study subjects were asked to build IKEA boxes, fold Origami, and build Lego sets.  Subjects were consistently willing to pay significantly more money for their own creations than someone else's creation.  

Ariely's "IKEA effect" (so named to honor the Swedish company whose products require assembly) reminds me of another famous study by the cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler on something known as the "endowment effect".  In this study, subjects who had been given a coffee mug were offered a chance to trade it for some pens or sell it for a certain amount of money.  The price that subjects were willing to sell their mugs was almost twice as much as the price that they were originally willing to pay for it.  Ariely also demonstrated the endowment effect in another study, in which students were willing to sell four NCAA basketball tournament tickets for twice as much as they would have been willing to pay for them.  In other words, once we own something, we tend to want to hold on to it and are reluctant to part with it.

Okay, now that we've introduced the "IKEA effect" and reviewed the "endowment effect", what's the lesson for leadership?  I will suggest that there are two points to be made here - both have to do with change management.  First, according to the "endowment effect", individuals will want to hang on to the "way that we've always done things around here,"  making any significant process or culture change that more difficult.  Leaders should be cognizant of this fact.  Second, according to the "IKEA effect," we place a greater value on things that we have created or built.  Leaders should absolutely leverage this cognitive tendency when it comes to change management.  Individuals and groups will be more receptive and supportive of change when they have a hand in what, how, and when it happens (more on this in a post next month).  

Perhaps the "IKEA effect" can overcome the "endowment effect" here - remember, at least in the movie "The Bridge Over the River Kwai", the "IKEA effect" was so strong as to overcome patriotism and loyalty to the Allied cause!  At least in my own experience, change is easier to manage when the individuals or groups have at least some input into it.  

As I close this 600th post, I will end, as I frequently do, with a quote.  Going back to one of the main reasons I started this blog - to write - I will leave with a quote by the author Louis L'Amour, "Start writing, no matter what.  The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on."  And one more, from the essayist, Anais Nin, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."  I have enjoyed writing these posts, and I look forward to the next 600 with even greater anticipation.

"Skate to where the puck is going..."

I spent several years of my life in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana.  For those of you who don't know, Indianapolis is actually the state capital, the largest city in the state, and the 16th largest city (by population) in the United States (just behind Charlotte, NC and just ahead of San Francisco, CA).  When I was young, there was only one professional sports team that called Indianapolis home - the Indiana Pacers (the Indianapolis Colts were the Baltimore Colts until 1984).  We also had a World Hockey Association professional hockey team called the Indianapolis Racers from 1974-1978.  I do remember going to a few Racers games at Market Square Arena (which hosted both the Racers and the Pacers), but I will confess that I wasn't a huge hockey fan growing up.

The Racers weren't very good, and they certainly didn't last very long - the World Hockey Association actually folded in 1979, and only four teams (Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques, Winnipeg Jets, and New England Whalers) joined the older and more well-established National Hockey League.  The Racers had a number of players that went on to have successful NHL careers, including Pat Stapleton, David Keon, Mark Messier, and most famously, Wayne Gretsky.  Gretsky was only seventeen years old when he played for the Racers, his first professional major league hockey team, and he only played eight games for the Racers (there is a rumor that he attended my high school's arch-rivals, Carmel High School while playing for the Racers, but I don't know whether that is true or not).  The Racers were losing money and simply could not afford Gretsky's contract (a seven year contract worth $1.75 million at the time).  Gretsky was traded to the Edmonton Oilers, where he played for most of his career.

Gretsky is widely considered the greatest hockey player of all time (his nickname is "The Great One").  He was never the strongest player or the largest player - he relied instead on unrivaled stamina, intelligence, and game-sense.  When asked why he was so much better than everyone else at hockey, he reportedly once said, "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been."  

Gretzky captured nine Hart Trophies as the most valuable player, 10 Art Ross Trophies for the most points scored in a season, two Conn Smythe Trophies as playoff MVP, and five Lester B. Pearson Awards (now called the Ted Lindsay Award) for most outstanding player as judged by his peers. He led the NHL in goal-scoring five times and assists 16 times. He also won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for sportsmanship and performance five times, and often spoke out against fighting in hockey.  When he retired after the 1999 season, he was immediately inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and his number (99) was retired league-wide.

While I like Gretzky's quote above and often use it ("Skate to where the puck is going"), what impresses me most was something he said later on.  Hockey fans used to think that Wayne Gretzky had a "sixth sense" or instinct that he was born with.  He disagrees, "It's all practice.  I got it from my Dad.  Nine out of ten people think it's instinct, and it isn't.  Nobody would ever say a doctor learned his profession by instinct; yet in my own way, I've put in almost as much time studying hockey as a medical student puts in studying medicine."  In other words, Gretzky learned to play the game that he loved to play in a way far better than anyone else ever has or likely ever will, by hard work, practice, and a commitment to studying the game.

I've said it over and over again - great leaders are not born, they are made through study, practice, and good old fashioned hard work.  If you want to be a great leader, read and learn about other great leaders.  If you want to be a great leader, practice your craft.  Great leaders critically self-evaluate every leadership decision they make so that they learn from their successes, as well as their mistakes.  Take advantage of every opportunity to get feedback from those who you lead, from your peers, from your mentors, and from the leaders that you yourself follow.  Leadership is a skill that can only be improved through practice, practice, practice.

It is true that great leaders - like great hockey players - skate to where the puck is going.  But what is also true is that they achieve that level of intuition, vision, and perceptivity through hard work, dedication, commitment, and practice.

The real bridge to nowhere...

Several years ago, members of the Alaskan congressional delegation helped secure federal funding for a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska (the state's southeasternmost major city) to Gravina Island.  At the time, there were only 50 Alaskans who lived on Gravina Island.  So why, do you ask, would anyone propose to build a bridge (with projected costs around $398 million) to an island with a population that small?  The Ketchikan International Airport is also located on Gravina Island.  Before the proposed bridge, passengers would have to travel to Gravina Island to reach home - or the airport - by ferry.  The proposed spending bill encountered significant opposition and became a symbol for so-called "pork barrel" spending.  The "Bridge to Nowhere" even found its way into the 2008 Presidential election campaign, when the Republican nominee for Vice President, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, told a crowd on August 29, 2008,"I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere!"  Interestingly enough, the Alaskan government continued work on the Gravina Island Highway, which would have connected with the proposed bridge, at a cost of over $25 million.  The road has now become known locally as the "road to nowhere."

There is a perhaps less famous "Bridge to Nowhere" that I find more interesting.  There is an old bridge in the city of Choluteca, Honduras that was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1935 and 1937 that was considered one of the greatest works of architecture in all of Honduras.  The bridge was modeled after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.  The bridge is part of a major thoroughfare that controls traffic flow from Guatemela to Panama.  At some point in the early 1990's, the Honduran government recognized that a second bridge was necessary to help accomodate the increasing amount of traffic in the city of Choluteca along this major thoroughfare.  The new Choluteca Bridge, known as the "Bridge of Rising Sun" was built by a Japanese construction company beginning in 1996 and was completed in 1998.  

Hurricane Mitch is the second deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record, causing over 11,000 deaths in 1998, both from the storm itself and the floods that occurred in its aftermath.  Seven thousand people died in Honduras, where much of the flooding occurred.  Aside from the catatrophic number of deaths, the President of Honduras claimed that the storm's damage set the economic development in Honduras back at least fifty years.  The storm wrecked about 35,000 houses and damaged another 50,000, leaving up to 1.5 million people homeless (about 20 percent of the country's population).

The storm and flooding caused over $6 billion in damages across Latin America.  The country of Honduras was hit particularly hard, with just over $2 billion in damages alone, most of which was due to ruined crops and damage to transportation infrastructure.  Many of the roads and bridges across the country were either heavily damaged or destroyed, including the Old Choluteca Bridge above.  However, the new "Bridge of Rising Sun" survived the storm completely intact.  Unfortunately, while the bridge itself was in near perfect condition, the roads on either end of the bridge were completely destroyed.  As a matter of fact, the roads had completely vanished without a trace.  The Choluteca River, which was over 100 meters at the bridge, had carved itself a new channel during the massive flooding caused by the hurricane and completely re-routed itself.  The bridge no longer crossed the river!  Here is a picture of the bridge in the aftermath of the hurricane:

As you can see, the new Choluteca Bridge had truly become a "Bridge to Nowhere."  The bridge has become a perfect metaphor  for dealing with the constantly changing dynamics of the world we live in today.  Admittedly, the fact that the bridge withstood a category V hurricane and a "once in a generation" flood of biblical proportions is an impressive feat of engineering, particularly when so many other bridges and structures collapsed.  Moreover, I would bet that most engineers don't factor in such a rare occurence as a river completely changing its path - it is a completely unexpected kind of event!

High Reliability Organizations are perfectly positioned to manage these rare, unexpected, "Black Swan" kinds of events.  Just consider the title of one of the earliest and by far the best book on High Reliability Organizations HROs) - at least in my opinion - by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe - Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World.  I have written a number of blog posts in the past on HRO's, so I won't go in too much detail here.  Suffice it to say that HROs are perfectly positioned to deal with "Bridge to Nowhere" kinds of events because they are:

1. Preoccupied with failure

2. Reluctant to simplify

3. Sensitive to operations

4. Committed to resilience

5. Defer to the experts

Organizations may never have to deal with an incident even remotely close to what the city of Choluteca had to deal with following Hurricane Mitch.  Regardless, learning how other organizations have dealt with similar issues, or better yet, adopting many of the principles that these organizations followed, will help position your organization to deal with any variety of these unexpected, rare events.  I will end this post, as I frequently do, with a quote, this one from Senator Elizabeth Warren.  She said, "Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected."  Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts said, "A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens."  Herein lies the essence of high reliability.

"What makes a champion?"

While I have never listened to him in person, I suspect that P.J. Fleck, currently the Head Football Coach at the University of Minnesota would be a great motivational speaker.  Coach Fleck has developed an entire philosophy around "elite performance" (see my previous posts, "Row the Boat" and "Golden Gopher Leadership 101" for more on his philosophy).  He really likes to use the word "elite" A LOT!  He suggests that when it comes to level of performance, there are five kinds of people in this world - Bad, Average, Good, Excellent, and Elite.  He distinguishes between "excellent performance" and "elite performance" (he is clearly pushing his football players towards more of the latter than the former).

Can we really distinguish between "excellent" and "elite" performance in sports?  I believe so.  As an example, the Kenyan runner Lawrence Cherono won the 2019 Boston Marathon with a finishing time of 2:07:57.  The second place finisher, Ethiopian runner Lelisa Desisa finished right behind him with a time of 2:07:59.  In other words, just 2 seconds separated the top two finishers.  Ok, great.  What about the rest of the runners?  Apparently, Cherono was approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes (almost a full two hours) faster than the average finishing time of the rest of runners in the field.  That's even more impressive when you consider that runners have to qualify for the Boston Marathon, so the "average" runner in this highly selective field is still fairly fast.  

What about other sporting events?  Can we similarly distinguish between "excellent" and "elite" in other events as well?  Someone determined that the odds of a master-level chess player (in other words, an excellent chess player) beating the currently #1 ranked chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, is about 1 in 1,000,000,000!  

It's not as easy to quantify performance in other domains, such as music, art, writing, science, or even leadership.  However, what is true for sports performance is likely true for these other domains as well - there is a clear separation between "excellent" and "elite."  Assuming we can agree on this point, the more interesting question is how does someone become an "elite" performer versus simply just being an "excellent" one.  The age-old "Nature versus Nurture" debate is certainly relevant here.  Are elite performers born with incredible abilities or are these abilities developed over time?  Similarly, we can ask (and many have), "Are leaders born or made?"

There have been a number of books that have attempted to answer this very question.  See, for example, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code, Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated, David Epstein's The Sports Gene and Range, and Anders Ericsson's and Robert Pool's Peak.  All of these are FANTASTIC books, and I would highly recommend each one..  I think that when it comes to sports performance, these authors would suggest that both "Nature" and "Nurture" are important to success in sports (and certainly some of the other domains too).  At least when it comes to "elite" level performance in sports, having good genes (i.e. the "Nature" side of the debate) is definitely important.  However, there is no question that having good genes is not sufficient - "elite" athletes achieve "elite-level" performance through training (i.e. the "Nurture" side of the debate).

Okay, so both nature and nurture are important.  But how much nurture?  If training is important, should athletes begin training in their chosen sport as early as possible?  Everyone knows how successful athletes like Tiger Woods, Venus Williams, and Serena Williams were at an incredibly early age.  Similarly, they focused on their chosen sports (golf and tennis, respectively) at an incredibly early age.  Conversely, it's also well known that basketball superstar, Michael Jordan, was cut from his high school basketball team.  He developed his superhuman basketball skills much later in life.

It is this latter question that Arne Gullich, Brooke Mcnamara, and David Hambrick addressed in their recently published meta-analysis, "What makes a champion? Early multidisciplinary practice, not early specialization, predicts world-class performance".  Essentially, is it better to focus on just one sport early in an athlete's life, or should athletes spend time developing general athletic skills and abilities through participating in multiple sports?  The meta-analysis analyzed the results of 51 different studies (this is a popular topic!) from 14 different countries and involving over 6,000 athletes published between 1998 and 2018.  The outcome of interest was the ultimate performance level achieved (world class versus national class).  

There's no argument from these investigators (or these studies) that the more time an athlete spends practicing in a specific sport, the greater the chance of elite-level performance (more time, more coaching, and more practice leads to improved performance).  Aside from this point, there were three major findings of interest from the meta-analysis.  First, the amount of multisport practice discriminated between athletes who achieved world-class levels of performance (world championships, Olympic medals, etc) compared to those who achieved national-class performance (e.g., U.S. championships).  Elite, world-class athletes generally spent more time playing several different sports early in life, switched to a singular focus later on, and reached performance milestones at a slower rate than national-class athletes.  In other words, world class superstars like Tiger Woods or Serena Williams who started early in life are the exception and not the rule.

Second, athletes who found success in early-stage competitions, such as the Junior Olympics typically started their singular focus on a specific sport early in life.  That sort of makes sense, right?  If you want to peak early in life (e.g. Junior Olympics), you should start focusing on a specific sport early in life.  However, if you want to compete on an elite, world-class level in senior-level competition, you are better off playing multiple sports.  The third finding, which is perhaps not as relevant to the present discussion, was that time spent in non-organized, general play (participating in a pick-up basketball game, for example) had negligible effects on both junior-level and senior-level elite performance.

Whether these findings can be universally applied to domains outside of sports is a reasonable question.  If so, it seems logical to suggest that acquisition of generalized knowledge in a wide variety of domains should occur before the acquisition of domain-specific knowledge.  By extension then, perhaps we should be training general leadership skills in the early career stages before focusing on more technical, domain-specific leadership skills.  These questions will certainly require further study.  As David Epstein writes in his book, Range, "Everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines."  He goes on, "In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous."

"Too much time on my hands?"

I was driving back to Chicago the other day and saw a billboard advertising an upcoming concert by the rock band Styx.  They were really popular in the 1970's and early 1980's, and at one time, I owned a number of albums by the band.  One of their best-selling albums was a concept album called Paradise Theatre.  The album told a fictional account of the story of the real Paradise Theatre in Chicago, which was a metaphor for the changing times in America from the 1970's to the 1980's.  The album was released in 1981 and was certified triple-platinum, reaching #1 on the album charts for about three weeks.  There were four singles released from the album, and two of these singles made it into the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 ("The Best of Times", which made it to #3 and "Too Much Time on My Hands", which made it to #9).

Notably, the second hit single ("Too Much Time on My Hands") doesn't really have anything to do with the Paradise Theatre story.  It's still a good song that talks about a guy who spends all day at a local bar because he has too much free time.  The following lines sums up the rest of the song perfectly:

Well I'm so tired of losing

I've got nothing to do and all day to do it.

Well I'd go out cruising, but I've no place

To go and all night to get there.

Now that you see how a billboard advertisement can trigger a fond memory from my adolescence, let's get to the topic at hand, which actually, is about having too much free time (see, there's a method to my madness).  I want to talk about a recently published study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  The study received a lot of attention in the lay media, and I actually think I first heard about it via a Twitter post by Adam Grant.  The study's main objective was to determine the relationship between discretionary (i.e. "free") time and subjective well-being.  In other words, how do Americans feel when they have "too little" or "too much time" on their hands?  I suspect that there would be few to dispute the point that having "too little" time on our hands is not good for our state of well-being.  

What's unique about this study is that the investigators (Marissa Sharif, Cassie Mogilner, and Hal Hershfield) are proposing that there is an inverted U-shaped curve between discretionary time (on the X-axis) and well-being (on the Y-axis).  Think about the inverted U-shape curve as following the "Goldilocks principle" - too little or too much discretionary time is associated with lower subjective well-being, with an optimal point somewhere in the middle where the amount of discretionary time is "just right" for subjective well-being.  

The first portion of the study utilized a large pre-existing data-set (National Study of the Changing Workforce), in which 13,639 American workers were surveyed between 1992 and 2008.  Study participants were asked to rate, among many other things, their subjective well-being, as well as the average amount of discretionary time per day.  While they were unable to demonstrate a U-shaped curve here, there was a significant negative quadratic (i.e. curved) relationship between discretionary time and subjective well-being.  In other words, as the amount of discretionary time increased, subjective well-being decreased (at least after a certain point).

The second portion of the study utilized another pre-existing data-set (American Time Use Survey, or ATUS), which included survey data from 21,736 Americans (both working and non-working).  This particular survey was a little more detailed, in that individuals were asked to provide a detailed account of all the activities that filled the 24 hours before completing the survey (among several other questions, including of course subjective well-being).  Sharif, Mogilner, and Hershfield conducted a second survey of 500 individuals to classify the various activities listed in the ATUS as discretionary or non-discretionary.  With this second data-set, the investigators showed that there is an inverted U-shape relationship between discretionary time and subjective well-being.  As a matter of fact, they found that overall, subjective well-being increases as discretionary time increases from zero to two hours per day, peaks between two to five hours per day, and then decreases after five hours per day!

Sharif, Mogilner, and Hershfield took their analysis one step further.  They were able to drill down and determine that (1) when individuals spend their discretionary time in social (as opposed to solitary) activities, more discretionary time is better (there is no peak, where a further increase in discretionary time leads to lower subjective well-being) and (2) when individuals felt that their discretionary time was productive (the time is not "wasted"), more discretionary time is better (again, no peak).  

The last two portions of the study were simulated experiments, in which individuals were asked to mentally simulate having a certain level of discretionary time per day over the course of six months.  Study subjects were randomized to different amounts of discretionary time.  The results of these last two portions of the study were consistent with the second data-set analysis, in that there was an inverted U-shape relationship between discretionary time and subjective well-being.

I can imagine what all of you are thinking right now.  The last several months have been incredibly disruptive, and there is a national labor shortage in a number of industries, including health care.  It's difficult to imagine that having more free time could actually worsen our subjective well-being.  That was my feeling too, when I first heard about this study.  However, as I think about it more and reflect on my professional life before the pandemic, I start to understand (and agree with) the results of this study more.  Think about a time when you had plenty of down time at work.  Did you feel "bored out of your mind"?  

We all need down time in our lives, both our professional ones as well as our personal ones.  What these investigators have shown (and perhaps what we've know all along) is that having too much down time is not necessarily a good thing.  The sense of being unproductive when we have too much down time causes a level of stress that actually lowers our sense of well-being.  Shifting that down time towards either productive (think of spending time exercising or doing an outdoor activity as productive free time versus watching television, which is unproductive, at least according to this study) or social activities may help alleviate this negative effect on well-being and lead us back to eudaimonia!

Languishing and Flourishing

Earlier this year, the Wharton School organizational psychologist, Adam Grant wrote an article for The New York Times that was as timely and important as it was interesting ("There's a name for the blah you're feeling: It's called languishing").  Corey Keyes, a sociologist and psychologist at Emory University initially described the concept that mental health lies along a continuum from languishing to flourishing.  I particularly like this model, as I think it perfectly describes what I think everyone would agree with - mental wellness cannot be measured using a binary (yes/no, present/absent) approach.  Mental wellbeing is not simply the absence of mental illness, just as it is not simply the presence of high levels of wellbeing.  As Keyes describes the two opposite ends of the mental health continuum, individuals with complete mental health are "flourishing" - they have high levels of physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.  Some psychologists call it "flow".  Conversely, those individuals who are not flourishing have lower levels of physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.  

Languishing is not the same as burn-out or depression, but individuals who are languishing are at risk for both.  These individuals are not functioning at full capacity.  Languishing is characterized by apathy, as well as a feeling of being unsettled or unfulfilled.  Individuals who are languishing aren't necessarily interested in the things that typically bring them joy.  They are simply "going through the motions" - the complete opposite of "being in the zone" or "firing on all cylinders" (both commonly used idioms for "flourishing").

While the COVID-19 pandemic certainly increased the number of individuals who were languishing, this is not a new phenomenon.  For example, The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard developed a Flourishing Index (also published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) to measure the degree of flourishing.  The index consists of two questions from each of five domains: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships.  While there is no single threshold score to indicate whether someone is flourishing or not, higher scores are better.  Of interest, the national average for this score (it's been used in a number of large studies and by a number of organizations, including Harvard) was 70 before the pandemic.  By June, 2020, the national average had decreased to 65.  Unfortunately, I am not aware of a specific "Languishing Index" (though there are a number of tools to assess burn-out, including the Maslach Burnout Inventory.

So, now that we have at least defined "flourishing" and "languishing" (and we've even provided a way to objectively measure "flourishing"), what can we do to shift our mental state so that we are flourishing instead of languishing?  Dani Blum, writing for The New York Times ("The Other Side of Languishing is Flourishing.  Here's How to Get There."), provides some suggestions.  Adam Grant also has a TED talk on how to stop languishing.  

First, assess yourself.  Determine where you are on the Flourishing Index scale.  Knowing and recognizing where you are and where you need to go is the first, but most important step.  Second, make sure that you take the time to celebrate and savor the small things in life.  Appreciate even the tiniest of victories.  Notice all of the good things happening in your life.  My wife used to have us all give one example of something positive that happened to us during the day at the family dinner table.  It worked wonders and helped us all focus more on the positives and less on the negatives that particular day.  As it turns out, there is some really great evidence for this technique (see "Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life").  Third, do five good deeds a day.  Call them good deeds, random acts of kindness, or "paying it forward" - it doesn't matter what you call them, the evidence (see one study here) strongly suggests that doing a good deed increases our own wellbeing!  Fourth, look for communities or connection.  Finding connections again, particularly after the pandemic, is something we should all be doing both in our personal and professional lives.  Finally, find purpose in your everyday routines.  Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning (literally, one of the best books that I have ever read) said, "The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing."  For many of us, we lost some of that sense of purpose during the pandemic.  Finding it again will help us flourish again.

The ancient Greeks had a name for flourishing - Eudaimonia.  In his Nicomachean Ethics, the philosopher Aristotle defined Eudaimonia as "the condition of human flourishing or living well."  Importantly - and this is absolutely crucial - the Ancient Greeks did not believe that the purpose of life was to be happy.  Rather, they proposed that the purpose in life was to achieve Eudaimonia.  As the writer Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."  Purpose is the key to unlock the door to flourishing.

Happy Veterans Day 2021

On November 11, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson issued a message to all Americans on the one-year anniversary of Armistice Day, which marked the end of major hostilities in World War I at the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918.  Following that tradition, the anniversary of the end of World War I was unofficially celebrated every year on November 11th, until Congress passed a resolution to officially honor and observe November 11th every year as Armistice Day in 1938.  

Later on, a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks petitioned General Dwight Eisenhower to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just those who died or served in World War I.  General Eisenhower, of course, supported the recommendation until he signed the bill that officially named November 11th as Veterans Day in 1954.  Incidentally, Weeks was later honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan and was recognized as the “Father of Veterans Day."

Today, we celebrate Veterans Day, which honors all military veterans, those individuals who have served in one of the branches of the United States Armed Forces (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Space Force, and the National Guard).  Veterans Day coincides with other holidays that are celebrated in other countries (Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries, for example), though it is distinct from Memorial Day, a U.S. holiday honoring those who died while in military service and Armed Forces Day honoring those individuals who currently serve in the military.

While most calendars print November 11^th as “Veteran’s Day” (with an apostrophe), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs states that the apostrophe is not necessary, “because it is not a day that ‘belongs’ to veterans, it is a day for honoring all veterans.”  The U.S. government also recommends that we honor all veterans at 2:11 PM Eastern Time with two minutes of silence.

If you have read my blog in the past, you will know that one of my favorite television mini-series of all time is the HBO show Band of Brothers, based on the book of the same name by the historian and author Stephen E. Ambrose.  There is a scene towards the end of the show, when a General in the Wehrmacht (German Army), now a prisoner of war, asks to speak to his men.  His speech (in German, of course) is translated by a member of Easy Company into English.  The men of Easy Company and listen that the words apply to them as well.  It's a powerful reminder, I think, of what it means to serve, even if not in times of war:

Men, it's been a long war. It's been a tough war. You've fought bravely, proudly for your country. You're a special group. You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat, among brothers. You've shared foxholes, held each other in dire moments. You've seen death and suffered together. I'm proud to have served with each and every one of you. You all deserve long and happy lives in peace.

If you are a veteran, today, we celebrate and honor you.  Thank you for your dedication and commitment to our country and thank you for your service!  You all deserve long and happy lives in peace.