0:15

Pushkin. Hey,

0:21

it's doctor Laurie Santos here. The science

0:23

says that giving a dollar away can make you feel

0:26

happier than spending on yourself, and if you're

0:28

in the mood to make every dollar you donate count

0:30

this holiday season, the Happiness Lab has

0:32

teamed up with GiveDirectly dot org.

0:34

If we all pull together, we can make a huge

0:37

difference to one African village in twenty

0:39

twenty four.

0:39

Kibobo, I think is a great place if people

0:41

want somewhere to support people there

0:44

are living in really desperate

0:46

situation. They lack almost everything.

0:49

Rory Stewart from GiveDirectly dot org

0:51

says money from Happiness Lab listeners will

0:53

go directly to the people of Kebobo in

0:55

Rwanda, who'll be loved to decide on their own

0:57

how to best spend it to improve their lives.

1:00

Getting a little bit of cash is what will allow

1:02

you to fix your house, buy a cow

1:04

which could provide milk for your family, get

1:06

a relative who's ill to the local

1:08

hospital. These things that are genuinely life

1:11

transforming.

1:12

So if you can spare just a few bucks and want

1:14

to join me and other fans of the show to help

1:16

the folks in Cabobo, then go to this website

1:19

give directly dot org slash happiness.

1:21

That's give directly dot org

1:24

slash happiness. Just a few dollars

1:26

can make a huge difference, Happy

1:28

Giving. I'm

1:33

doctor Laurie.

1:34

Santos and I'm Tim Harford

1:36

and this.

1:37

Is a crossover episode of my podcast

1:39

The Happiness Lab.

1:40

And my podcast Cautionary Tales.

1:43

Laurie, is really great to be working with you on a couple

1:45

of crossover episodes. So what did you want

1:47

to cover on this one?

1:49

I thought it'd be fun to talk about holidays and rest.

1:52

Okay, I better warn you that we're all about

1:54

learning from stories of catastrophe on Cautionary

1:56

Tales, Laurie, So go on do your worst.

1:59

Sure. The Happiness Lab is all about

2:01

the science of happiness and how our minds tend

2:03

to lie to us about the sorts of things that make

2:05

us happy. And one of the biggest ways our

2:07

lying minds fool us is when it comes to our

2:09

free time. The Happiness science is

2:11

super clear about the well being benefits of taking

2:14

a break, but many of us still struggle

2:16

to do that. It's why I pick one day

2:18

each year to surprise the overloaded students

2:21

in my Happiness class at Yale. When

2:23

they arrive at the lecture hall, thinking it's time for class,

2:25

they're handed a permission slip telling them surprise,

2:28

today's rest day, so they need to

2:30

head off and do something fun instead. The

2:32

students often look a little shell shocked when they

2:34

file out of the hall, but many of them report

2:36

back that they've loved their unexpected time off.

2:39

My students wind up hanging out with friends or exploring

2:42

somewhere new on campus with someone they

2:44

met leaving class. Some of them even

2:46

say that this unexpected time affluence

2:48

moment was one of their most memorable days

2:50

at Yale. I think I'm teaching these young

2:52

scholars a valuable life lesson, but

2:55

I've definitely gotten some pushback. Who

2:57

does Laura Santos think she is letting hundreds

2:59

of students skip class they're paying a

3:01

lot for their education.

3:03

Well, I think you're very wise, Laurie, But

3:06

what I'm hearing is a story in which they

3:08

all live happily ever after,

3:11

and that's not quite how we do things here.

3:14

On Cautionary Tales.

3:36

Tim, you promised me a cautionary tale about

3:38

holidays and rest.

3:39

Indeed did you ever hear the sad

3:42

tale of Saint Lubbock's

3:44

Day. Uh

3:46

No, want to be honest, I've

3:48

had I Until recently, Saint Lubbuck's

3:51

Day was a jokey name for public holidays

3:53

in the UK. There is no Saint Lubbock.

3:56

Sir John Lubbock was the politician

3:58

who in the eighteen seventies proposed

4:00

a law closing the banks for

4:03

four mondays a year in spring

4:05

and summer. He knew that on these

4:07

bank holidays other businesses

4:09

would probably close too, and if

4:12

he got his way, the British working

4:14

classes would get an extra day off

4:16

to go to the beach.

4:17

That sounds pretty good to me.

4:18

It sounds great, although of course there were

4:21

all the objections you might expect from commercial

4:23

interests. Victorian Britain, remember,

4:26

also gave us the character of Ebenezer

4:29

Scrooge, the man who grumbled on

4:31

Christmas Eve to his hard working employee

4:33

Bob Cratchett. You'll be wanting

4:36

the whole day off tomorrow, I

4:38

suppose. But the laws

4:40

passed, the new holidays were introduced,

4:43

and for almost a century all

4:45

was well. And then in

4:48

nineteen sixty four Lubbock's

4:50

Bank holidays came back

4:52

to bite the British on their backsides.

4:55

The first bank holiday of the year

4:58

was damp and dismal.

5:00

I mean, is that all that unusual in the UK?

5:03

Not really, Lourie, But on this particular

5:05

day the bad weather caused trouble

5:08

in the small coastal town of

5:10

Clacton on Sea. The baby

5:12

boomers were teenagers then, with money

5:15

in their pockets and some worried no

5:17

sense of how to behave. Unable

5:20

to sunbathe on the beach, the

5:22

bank holiday visitors decided instead

5:25

to fight. The battle lines

5:27

were sartorial. The mop topped,

5:30

suit wearing Italian scooter riding

5:32

mods took on the greasy haired,

5:34

leather clad bikers the rockers.

5:37

The clashes fed a paranoia amongst

5:39

grown ups that bed sired a generation

5:42

of hooligans, spoiled,

5:44

entitled and rebellious, and thanks

5:47

to bank holidays, able to descend en

5:49

mass to normally genteel resort

5:51

towns to wreak havoc. On

5:56

subsequent holiday mondays, more

5:58

riots erupted, politicians

6:00

weighed up rushing through new laws,

6:03

were detention camps the answer

6:06

or punishment floggings. The

6:08

news papers were in little doubt that

6:11

the nation was only another bank

6:13

holiday away from

6:15

anarchy. One headline

6:17

almost reddished the prospect,

6:20

saying the break from work had become

6:23

a day of terror. On

6:26

the final bank holiday of the summer, police

6:29

leave was canceled. Officers

6:31

instead gathered by an Air Force

6:33

base outside London, where the Royal

6:36

Air Force would fly them to wherever

6:38

violence flared next to reinforce

6:41

the doubtlessly outnumbered local

6:43

police.

6:44

I love this story, Tim, but is there a lesson

6:46

in there about how to lead more fulfilling lives?

6:49

Uh? Not really, It

6:52

was just this weird moment in history. Everybody

6:55

lost their minds about teenage fashion

6:57

easters fighting on bank holidays, and

7:00

then everything was fine again.

7:02

In that case, the story might be a cautionary

7:05

tale, but it doesn't really work for the Happiness

7:07

Lab. Do you have any other tales of

7:09

disaster that actually teach us something about

7:11

being happier and less stressed?

7:13

Yes, Laurie. Let me take

7:15

you back to a sunday in the nineteen

7:18

twenties in the Soviet Union. If

7:21

you stand outside a factory, peering

7:23

through the window or pressing your ear

7:26

to the door, you see nothing and

7:28

hear nothing. The factories

7:31

are empty, the tools

7:33

lie idle the machines, what few

7:35

machines there are are silent.

7:38

Sunday is a day of rest

7:42

for everyone. But this won't

7:44

do. Russia had been a backward

7:46

nation, a poor agricultural

7:49

economy full of illiterate peasants

7:51

exploited by an inbred nobility.

7:54

But the brave new Soviet Union

7:57

it needed to industrialize fast,

7:59

Like the British and the Americans. Workers

8:02

were cheap, but machines were

8:04

expensive. To let them gather

8:07

dust each Sunday just seem absurd.

8:10

Not that anyone wanted to abolish rest

8:12

days naturally, not the

8:15

brave Soviet laborer, whose

8:17

sweat lubricated the wheels

8:19

of industrial progress, must be

8:21

allowed to regain his strength from time

8:23

to time. So what

8:26

could be done?

8:29

Enter an economist named Yuri

8:31

Laren. In May nineteen

8:34

twenty nine, Laren proposed

8:36

a brilliant, bold, and extremely

8:39

odd plan to reshape

8:41

the calendar. And since Laren

8:43

worked for Joseph Stalin, that

8:45

brilliant, bold and extremely odd plan

8:48

soon became the new reality for

8:51

Soviet workers. When

8:53

the workers arrived at the factory gates,

8:56

each was handed a slip of colored

8:58

paper green, orange,

9:00

purple, red, or yellow what

9:03

did the color signify. It signified

9:06

which day off you'd get to take for

9:08

the rest of your working life.

9:11

September twenty ninth, nineteen

9:13

twenty nine, was scheduled to be the

9:15

Soviet Union's final Sunday.

9:18

After that, a five day working

9:21

week. Everyone would get a day off

9:23

every five days. The green slip

9:25

workers would get one day off together, the

9:28

orange slip workers would get another, and so

9:30

on. And of course that

9:32

meant that on any given day, four

9:35

out of five workers would show up for

9:37

work. The factories and the machines

9:39

could operate three hundred and sixty

9:41

five days a year. Yuri Laren

9:44

system was named near Prevka,

9:46

the continuous work week. Outside

9:50

the Soviet Union, newspapers published

9:52

cartoons depicting Saturday

9:54

and Sunday being shot.

10:00

You can see the appeal of Neprevka, especially

10:03

to a Soviet economist in the nineteen twenties.

10:06

It seems like a great idea, as long as

10:08

you see to abstract notions and avoid

10:11

the rather gnarly specifics of real people.

10:14

Before Nipreva, Soviet workers

10:16

would have taken Saturday and Sunday off, but

10:18

many only got to rest on Sundays. Switching

10:21

to the continuous five day week made things more

10:23

equal and gave many workers

10:25

even more rest days and continuous

10:28

work meant those valuable machines and factory

10:30

floors would no longer stand idle

10:32

for days at a time. They could now

10:34

be used all year long. But

10:37

the problem with the idea becomes kind of obvious

10:39

when you take a second to think about real people's

10:41

lives. If everyone was resting

10:44

on different days, how could a sports

10:46

team meet to play a morning game or

10:48

acquire get together to sing. What

10:50

if one person was a yellow and their spouse

10:52

was a green, What is there for

10:54

us to do at home if our wives are in the factory,

10:57

our children at school, and nobody

10:59

can visit us, complained one worker.

11:02

What Indeed, Tim's tale

11:04

of Niprevka has something important

11:06

to teach us about time off today. Yes,

11:08

taking time to rest in play is important, but

11:11

it's also just as important to make sure

11:13

you have time off when everyone else is

11:15

resting and playing warring mods

11:17

and rockers. Notwithstanding, these

11:20

days, we talk a lot about making sure we

11:22

have some me time, But could we be

11:24

undervaluing the importance of having some

11:26

we time. We'll find out

11:29

when the Happiness Lab crossover with cautionary

11:31

tales.

11:31

Comes back from the brink, We're

11:40

Back. Yuri Larin's

11:43

Neprevka project seems like a historical

11:46

curiosity, but modern

11:48

writers have started to pick up on

11:50

the story and to draw lessons from what

11:52

was one of the most extraordinary attempts

11:54

ever made to reform the calendar. Writing

11:58

in The Atlantic in twenty nineteen, Judith

12:01

Shulevitz pointed to the plight

12:03

of low income workers who

12:05

had their hours set unpredictably

12:08

and at short notice by a capricious,

12:10

seeming algorithm. The hours

12:13

might be too short to pay the bills or

12:16

exhaustingly long, but they

12:18

might also be in a prevca hours

12:21

reasonable enough when viewed in isolation,

12:24

but desynchronized. This

12:27

desynchronization makes it impossible

12:30

for people to socialize with friends, to

12:33

join clubs, or participate in community

12:35

activities, or even to

12:37

see their own partners. The

12:40

economist Heather Boushi, in

12:42

her book Finding Time, scrutinizes

12:46

the plight of these workers. Although

12:48

some people are compensated very well for working

12:51

unusual hours, and others

12:53

find that those hours fit perfectly

12:55

with their own needs, that's not

12:58

typical. The majority

13:00

of workers with a non standard schedule,

13:03

are making less money than average.

13:06

They're all so likely to be working in these

13:08

jobs, not by preference, but

13:11

because they couldn't find anything with more

13:13

normal hours, and the experience

13:16

can be grim. You have

13:18

to show up whenever the boss says to

13:20

show up, often at short notice.

13:23

If you say you're not available, that's a mark

13:25

against you, and soon enough you

13:28

might find yourself looking for another job. To

13:31

see an example of just how much trouble

13:33

these capricious schedules can cause,

13:35

let's meet Jeannette Navarro, a

13:38

Starbucks barista. Navarro

13:41

loved being a barista. Upbeat,

13:43

determined, and persistent. Navarro

13:46

had charmed her way into the job,

13:49

was dealing with a three hour commute

13:51

across San Diego on the bus, and

13:53

was looking to provide some stability for her

13:55

four year old son, Gavin. But

13:58

the hours at Starbucks just kept

14:01

changing with just a few days

14:03

notice, thanks to a scheduling

14:05

algorithm design to move staff

14:07

into precisely the right place at

14:10

precisely the right time. From

14:13

the point of view of the business, Particularly

14:16

dreaded was cloapening

14:19

when your shift had you closing the

14:21

Starbucks branch at night and

14:24

also opening it the next morning

14:26

just a few hours later. Tiring

14:29

at the best of times, extremely

14:31

exhausting if you also have a long

14:34

commute, and if you're trying to

14:36

get childcare both for a

14:38

late night and an early morning, a

14:41

nightmare. In a powerful

14:43

article in New York Times, reporter

14:46

Jody Cantor showed the

14:48

unpredictable scheduling playing havoc

14:51

with Jeanette's life. She was

14:53

endlessly trying to find weekend or

14:55

evening childcare for Gavin at

14:58

short notice, which meant calling

15:00

in favors and putting relationships

15:02

under strain. Jeanette was living

15:05

with her aunt, but after

15:07

one too many arguments, she

15:09

moved in with her boyfriend instead. The

15:12

boyfriend had been supportive, but

15:14

he too lost patience. Jeanette's

15:17

need for last minute childcare was

15:19

making it impossible for him to realize

15:21

his own dreams of going back to school.

15:24

As for Jeannette's hopes of completing her

15:27

own degree, it was simply

15:29

impossible.

15:30

Canter's piece was published in twenty fourteen.

15:33

It made a huge splash and immediately

15:35

prompted Starbucks to change its scheduling

15:37

policy. But, as Kanter explained

15:39

in her article, almost every major retailer

15:42

and restaurant gene uses some variant

15:44

of the same scheduling software. Today's

15:48

low income workers all over the Western world

15:50

are coping with scheduling that's so antisocial

15:53

it makes Naprevka seem positively

15:56

humane in comparison. But what's

15:58

even stranger is that today there's

16:00

also a group of privileged people, folks

16:02

with more autonomy over their time than ever before,

16:05

who are somehow managing to inflict a kind

16:08

of Napreevka on themselves.

16:11

Yes, a couple of years after

16:13

Judith Schulevitz published her reflections

16:15

on Neprivka in The Atlantic, Oliver

16:18

Berkman's book Four Thousand

16:20

Weeks pointed out that people

16:23

at the other end of the economic ladder

16:25

might be trapped in an apprevca of their own,

16:27

making the hybrid workers,

16:30

the freelancers, and above

16:32

all the digital nomads

16:34

of Instagram, possibly

16:36

people like you, certainly

16:39

people like me. These

16:41

people all had unprecedented

16:43

control over where and when they worked.

16:47

They could write code in a Bermuda beach

16:49

cottage, they could handle their emails

16:51

from a summer house near Walden Pond,

16:54

or on a mundane level, they could take

16:56

a yoga class instead of hitting the

16:58

morning commute. All

17:01

very pleasant, but, as Berkman

17:03

pointed out, if you insist on

17:05

absolute freedom over when and

17:08

where you work, you risk

17:10

exercising that freedom all

17:12

by yourself. When we all

17:14

worked nine to five at the office, we could

17:17

all bond together in the canteen, meet

17:19

up for a drink after work on Friday, and

17:22

feel confident that not only would we be

17:24

free on Sunday, but that all our

17:26

friends would be too. Now

17:29

our schedule is out of step with everyone

17:31

else's. You can do what you want, but

17:34

good luck finding someone who happens

17:36

to be free to do it with you. But

17:39

maybe that's fine. After all,

17:41

the digital nomad can dodge the lines

17:43

for everything from the dentist to

17:46

Disneyland, avoiding the

17:48

rush hour traffic and the peak

17:50

priced airfares. There's

17:53

a certain luxury in avoiding the

17:55

crowds. Half

17:58

a century after Yurilarian's

18:00

Niaprevka was introduced, a

18:03

very different economist in a very

18:05

different setting started

18:07

musing this question. The

18:09

economist's name was Thomas

18:12

Shelling. Shelling

18:14

puzzled over topics ranging from

18:16

how to quit smoking to how

18:18

to make nuclear deterrence credible.

18:21

Stanley Kubrick asked Shelling

18:23

for advice before directing Doctor

18:25

Strangelove, a comedy about

18:28

nuclear armageddon. Shelling

18:31

was that sort of thinker. So

18:33

what did Shelling have to say about scheduling

18:36

the weekend. Well Over the course

18:38

of the twentieth century, Americans

18:41

were working gradually shorter hours.

18:44

By the late nineteen seventies, it

18:46

seemed that a four day work week

18:49

might one day be commonplace. Maybe

18:52

maybe not, said Shelling. But

18:54

if it did become commonplace, here's

18:57

a question, which day

18:59

off should we take? Should

19:02

everyone take Friday off, or

19:04

maybe Wednesday? Or maybe

19:07

we should all choose our own day.

19:09

Let me quote from his nineteen seventy

19:12

eight book Micro Motives

19:14

and Macro Behavior. The

19:17

day you'd prefer to have off may

19:19

depend on what days other people have

19:21

off. A weekday is great for

19:24

going to the dentist, unless the dentist

19:26

takes the same day off. Friday

19:28

is a great day to head for the country, avoiding

19:31

Saturday traffic unless everyone

19:33

has Friday off. Tuesday

19:35

is no good for going to the beach if Wednesday

19:37

is the day the children have no school. Staggered

19:41

days are great for relieving the golf courses

19:43

and the shopping centers, but it may demoralize

19:46

teachers and classes to have a fifth

19:48

of the children officially absent

19:50

from school each day of the week, and

19:53

may confuse families if the fourth grader

19:55

is home on Tuesday and the fifth

19:57

grader on Wednesday, and

19:59

the children cannot very well go to school

20:02

the day that the teacher isn't there, nor

20:04

can the teacher go to the dentist on the day

20:06

the dentist takes off to go to the beach with his

20:09

children. And in

20:11

fact, Shelling had some of

20:13

the same concerns as Yury Larin,

20:16

even though he didn't have the same affection

20:18

for central planning. While

20:21

the poor workers of the Soviet Union

20:23

were upset that they all had different

20:25

rest days, Shelling was

20:27

worried that in an affluent society,

20:30

we might all end up taking the same

20:32

day off, probably Friday, even

20:34

though it would ease congestion if

20:37

we were able to spread those breaks

20:39

around. Where's Uri

20:41

Laren when you need him? And actually

20:44

there's some evidence that Shelling had

20:46

a point. After the pandemic,

20:48

many office workers are working from home

20:50

a couple of days a week, and

20:53

they're usually choosing Friday as

20:55

the homeworking day rather than say

20:58

Wednesday.

20:59

Bah.

20:59

Wait, Tim, doesn't that make sense?

21:02

Well, in some ways it makes perfect sense, Laurie. But

21:04

Ury Larin would be tearing his hair out.

21:07

Now we have these expensive blocks,

21:09

expensive public transit, expensive

21:12

roads, and rather than spreading out

21:14

our use of them, office workers are generally

21:16

coming into work on Wednesday and staying

21:19

home on Friday, which is exactly

21:21

what Shelling was talking about in the nineteen

21:23

seventies. So, Laurie, I have

21:25

a question for you. What does the science

21:27

of well being tell us about

21:29

taking a break? Should we be

21:31

trying to coordinate with everyone else or is

21:34

there a particular pleasure in taking a vacation

21:37

while everyone else is still at work.

21:39

Well, I have a lot of thoughts about that, Tim, and

21:41

you can hear all about them after the break.

21:54

We're back.

21:54

I'm doctor Laurie Santos of the Happiness Lab, and

21:57

this is a crossover episode with Cautionary

21:59

Tales with Tim Hartford. So, Tim,

22:01

you wanted to know what the evidence tells us about rest,

22:03

holidays and happiness.

22:05

I did. I did, And in particular this

22:07

idea of whether we should be taking a break

22:09

at the same time.

22:11

Well, sadly, there's not much research on that,

22:13

but there is a little bit. One of my favorite

22:15

studies on this came out of Terry Hartigg's lab.

22:17

He's a psychologist in Sweden and

22:19

he was super interested in this question of whether or not

22:22

Swedes are happier on holidays when

22:24

everyone's taking a holiday. Sweden

22:26

is an awesome spot to study this because they get

22:28

five weeks of holiday, something that folks

22:30

like me in the United States would kill for. The

22:33

government allows them to take it whenever they want. They're

22:35

not sort of scheduling it so that people have to

22:37

take it at certain times. And because

22:39

Sweden's super cold, many Swedes tend to take

22:41

the holidays during the summer months. And

22:43

what's cool about that is that lots of Swedes

22:45

are on holiday at the same time. They're

22:47

all taking their vacation time like in the same

22:49

few months together, and so Hardigg was interested

22:52

in whether or not that affected the Swedes' mental health,

22:54

and he decided to study this using a pretty

22:56

funny measure. He actually looked at

22:58

the government's distribution of SSRIs,

23:01

these antidepression medications, during

23:04

different times of the year, and he tried to look

23:06

at the correlation between the release of SSRIs

23:08

and people's vacation time.

23:10

So what do they find.

23:11

Well, what he found is that there's this huge correlation

23:14

between when people are taking SSRIs

23:16

and when they're on vacation. Namely, they take

23:18

less SSRIs when they're on vacation.

23:20

The lowest month of SSRI use is during

23:23

July, when everyone's kind of taking holiday.

23:25

And their interpretation was this idea

23:28

that when everybody's on holiday together that

23:30

forms this buffer against stress. We get

23:32

a lot of social connection, we get to hang out with the

23:34

people we care about, and we're just kind of feeling less

23:37

depressed.

23:37

It makes sense, of course, you

23:40

do wander. You know, July in

23:42

Sweden is a lot more pleasant than January in

23:44

Sweden. I'm sure they tried

23:46

to adjust for that, but I wonder whether there

23:48

are other countries that have lessons to teach us as

23:51

well.

23:51

Yeah, another one of my favorites is the lessons

23:53

that come out of Denmark. Danes have this

23:55

interesting story where over time they've

23:58

developed this much shorter work week, but

24:00

it's actually pretty recent. It started after

24:02

World War Two, around the time that

24:04

the Danes were getting more into like

24:06

industry rather than agriculture,

24:09

actually wanted to employ more people. But

24:11

to do that they had to start employing

24:13

more women, who, at least historically,

24:15

were the ones doing a lot more of the childcare. And

24:18

so the Danish government said, okay,

24:20

okay, we'll make the work week

24:22

much shorter so that women and men

24:25

can get home and do more childcare. Will

24:27

kind of cut off time around four o'clock so everyone

24:29

can go home early, and that

24:31

led to this really interesting situation where

24:33

the Danes wound up getting more free time

24:35

off, but importantly more free time

24:38

off when everyone else was having the same free

24:40

time off. Everyone was off in the afternoons,

24:43

and what seemed to happen over time is that the Danes wound

24:45

up taking much more time to be social.

24:48

Historically, Danes have many more social clubs

24:50

and kind of like athletic groups than most other

24:53

countries, and that's in part because they have time

24:55

to get together around four o'clock where everybody's

24:57

off of work, so you can set up your choir,

24:59

you can set up your soccer club, you can kind of hang out

25:01

with one another because everybody has free time

25:03

at the same time.

25:05

And do we know how

25:07

happy the Danes are compared to other com is

25:09

if those comparisons make sense.

25:11

Well, the research seems to show that the Deans overall

25:13

are pretty happy. Historically, they're often at

25:15

the top of the so called World Happiness Report.

25:17

Sometimes they get beat out by Finland, but most of

25:19

the time Denmark is pretty high at the top, and

25:22

many folks have sort of looked to Denmark as one

25:24

of the happiest countries in part because of their social

25:26

practices. So I think they might be onto

25:28

something with this time off together sort

25:30

of situation.

25:31

Yeah, very interesting. Of course, the

25:34

problem always with this sort of thing is that

25:36

there are all kinds of systematic differences

25:38

between countries, not just their

25:41

vacation rules, but all sorts of other things. So

25:44

maybe we should be looking at companies

25:46

within the United States that have different

25:49

vacation policies. Your professor

25:51

at Yale, Laurie, I don't know it. Yale,

25:53

the undergraduates go home for the summer, so

25:56

you're all kind of taking the same kind of break

25:58

at the same moment. And I know different corporations

26:00

are experimenting with this idea of a

26:02

company holiday. Do we know anything about whether that

26:04

works?

26:05

Well, this is the kind of thing that I think economists

26:07

are looking at a lot more days.

26:10

In fact, in twenty twenty one was listed

26:12

as the Year of the company wide

26:14

Vacation. It's the year that many of these huge tech

26:16

companies decided to try an experiment

26:18

where they gave everybody at the company time

26:20

off together. So this was places like LinkedIn

26:23

and Bumble, a few very big healthcare companies,

26:26

And what people have reported so

26:28

far is that this experiment went pretty well.

26:30

Employees really like the fact that when

26:32

they're not working, nobody else is working.

26:34

Their boss isn't working, their team isn't working,

26:37

and that means when they get back from holiday, they don't

26:39

come back to a whole inbox

26:41

flooded with messages telling them the stuff

26:43

that happened when they were out. They're not getting these sort

26:46

of team messages and emails while they're

26:48

on holiday, so there's no real temptation to kind

26:50

of check. And so from the employee's perspective,

26:52

they really liked being off when everybody

26:55

else at the company was off at the same time.

26:57

I really like that. It makes perfect

26:59

sense. I suppose. The other thing about it

27:01

is that if you are going to say everybody

27:04

in the company is going to take the

27:06

first week of August off like everybody

27:09

the company really has to plan ahead to make

27:12

that work, whereas if you just say, oh,

27:14

you know, you can take you can take some time off, and

27:16

everyone can just go, oh, well, we'll sort of

27:18

figure it out, and they kind of don't figure it out,

27:20

and in fact, what happens is people log in

27:22

to their email from the beach

27:25

and they don't take a proper holiday and they're not doing their

27:27

job right. So maybe part

27:29

of what's going on here is just this forward

27:31

planning to actually organize to make it work.

27:34

Yeah. I think that's a big part of it. I mean, I think when you

27:36

leave and you know that that project is done,

27:38

you know because the final date that you submitted

27:40

it is there. When you know there's no chance

27:43

that somebody really needs you for something, I

27:45

think it means that people can kind of let their hair down

27:47

and relax a lot more. You're not worried that something's

27:49

happening at work that really needs your attention

27:52

because everybody's gone.

27:53

And I suppose this tells us something about

27:55

this time of year as well, that we

27:57

have in the winter, Thanksgiving

27:59

in the US, Christmas in

28:01

many parts of the world, and these are

28:04

holidays where part of The point of the holiday

28:07

is everyone's doing it at the same time.

28:10

You know, it's not just a day off or

28:12

week off. It is this shared

28:14

ritual, this shared experience. I

28:17

love Christmas. I know economists are not supposed to really

28:19

like Christmas. I personally, I really I'm

28:21

really into Christmas. I love it. And it's

28:23

partly just like everyone's into Christmas.

28:25

Everyone's doing Christmas at the same time, and that's fun.

28:28

I don't know whether there's any research on this. You

28:30

know, we're all trying to do our shopping at the same time,

28:33

we're all trying to book flights to go home for Thanksgiving

28:35

at the same time. That causes

28:38

a problem, Like I kind of feel

28:40

it's worth it.

28:41

This is a domain where I think it's really hard to get

28:43

at the happiness benefits from taking time

28:45

off together because Christmas is a complicated

28:47

time for people's mental health, right. It's a time

28:49

when people are processing grief. It's a time

28:51

when we're supposed to be happy. So I'm kind of

28:53

not feeling great. It makes me feel especially bad.

28:56

I love that you love Christmas, team, but Christmas

28:58

is not necessarily one of my favorite holidays.

29:00

In fact, it's one of the times that makes me think that Shelling

29:02

might have been right. Then maybe we should all

29:04

be flying that same week together, especially

29:06

when it's sort of cold and snowy in the US. But maybe

29:09

that's just me.

29:10

Well, I suppose one of the overarching

29:13

conclusions that we've got to draw

29:15

from the research on happiness

29:17

is that there are big individual

29:19

differences, and you can have a look at averages

29:22

and say, oh, this kind of thing often makes people

29:24

happy, But in the end you also have to

29:26

understand yourself and understand what works for you as

29:28

an individual.

29:29

I think that's exactly right. Although that said,

29:31

I think there are some domains in which we

29:33

really know there are certain kinds of things that, at least

29:36

based on the data, seems to make most people happy.

29:38

And one of the big ones is social connection, right,

29:41

just feeling that you're not exactly that

29:43

lonely.

29:44

So tell me about that. I see a lot of dramatic

29:46

claims about loneliness. What does the

29:48

research tell us about that?

29:50

Well, some of those dramatic claims is that loneliness

29:52

is really bad for our health. Some

29:54

folks like the Surgeon General and the US have quoted

29:56

statistics like being lonely is as

29:59

bad as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day,

30:01

that it's twice as risky as obesity for

30:03

your overall health. Some of those claims

30:05

are a little bit overblown, but my sense is that

30:08

pretty much every available study in the

30:10

field of positive psychology suggests

30:12

that being social is pretty good for your happiness.

30:14

The more you spend time with other people, and the

30:16

more you spend time, especially with people you care

30:19

about, the happier and more satisfied

30:21

with your life you tend to be.

30:22

I'm really enjoying this conversation, Laurie. I

30:24

like the fact that I can just ask any crazy old

30:26

question and you've got You've got the ansection.

30:29

Let me let me throw another one at you. Okay. So digital nomads,

30:31

Okay, they can work wherever they like. They can

30:33

work whenever they like. Any clues as

30:35

to whether that's actually good for their mental health or

30:37

whether they're kind of fooling themselves.

30:39

Well, this too, I think, is another domain where there's relatively

30:42

little work, but the work that's out there suggests

30:44

an interesting conclusion. I think this is some lovely

30:46

stuff by Rog Chowdery at Harvard

30:48

Business School, and he's been making this distinction

30:50

between working whenever you

30:53

want versus working wherever you

30:55

want. You know, when we think of digital nomads,

30:57

we think often of both together. Right,

30:59

you know, you're off working at a beach, and you can do so

31:02

at any time you'd like. But Chowdery

31:04

is basically finding that really the thing that seems

31:06

to matter for happiness is the wherever

31:08

part, not the whenever part. Why

31:11

is that the case. Well, if you get to choose where

31:13

you want to work, that means you can make

31:15

sure that you're living close to family members

31:17

or you're living close to friends. If you get to

31:19

choose where you work, you can cut down on

31:22

your commute time. Often these days, when people

31:24

report that they're working from home, they're saving on average

31:26

four point five hours a week just in commuting

31:29

time. And if you then use those hours to

31:31

do something social. You hang out with your kids, you hang

31:33

out with your friends, or if you exercise, that

31:35

can be a huge boon for people's well being. And

31:37

so I think when we start to think about the benefits

31:40

of being a digital nomad, we're really

31:42

thinking about location, location, location,

31:44

and not timing.

31:46

Okay, so let's talk about the control

31:49

that people have over their

31:51

time. The autonomy. One of my favorite

31:53

psychological studies is about office design.

31:56

Should you have a messy desk, a tidy desk,

31:58

a really minimalist office, or

32:01

lots of pot plants and pictures and so on, and

32:03

what the researchers who did that study found

32:05

it was basically a trick. None of it matters.

32:08

What matters is whether you feel

32:10

you've got control, So like who

32:13

actually decides whether that's a pot plant. If

32:15

you get to decide, you feel good

32:17

about the pot plants, and if someone else is imposing

32:19

this pot plant on you, you hate the pot plant.

32:22

So autonomy actually turns out to be much

32:24

more important than the things that we think are important.

32:27

And I couldn't help but think of that study

32:30

when hearing the story of Jeanette Navarro

32:33

and her absolute lack of control

32:35

over her scheduling.

32:37

Well, the science is pretty clear on this. I mean,

32:39

I think this is really almost like a basic fact of

32:41

human psychology, which is that we like

32:43

having control over what's happening

32:45

to us, and our perception of control

32:47

seems to matter a lot. Their study is,

32:49

you know, from the nineties and so many different domains,

32:52

whether it's control over what's happening in the workplace,

32:54

which is what we're talking about, but also control

32:56

over your treatment and medical context.

32:59

Kids control over things in schools

33:01

makes them happier and more productive at schools.

33:03

Our perceived control seems to matter a

33:05

ton when it comes to both our satisfaction

33:08

but also in some cases are productivity. And

33:10

I think that that's something that bosses and employers

33:13

need to be paying attention to. Just giving

33:15

people a little bit more perceived control isn't

33:17

just going to make them happier and more satisfied, maybe

33:19

even healthier. It's probably going to make them

33:22

work better and faster too.

33:24

Starbucks and these other companies who are using

33:26

these scheduling algorithms, they're not really

33:28

thinking through the costs they're

33:30

imposing on their employees. And

33:32

I wonder now post

33:34

pandemic labor markets are a lot tighter.

33:36

It's actually quite difficult to get people to do a lot of

33:39

jobs, and companies are struggling to figure out

33:41

how do we recruit people, how do we minimize turnover?

33:43

And I something tells me they're

33:45

going to start to figure this out, that

33:47

hey, maybe our algorithm should

33:51

take the brunt of interruptions

33:53

and uncertainties, and it shouldn't be the employees

33:56

because the company can actually absorb those costs

33:58

more easily than the individuals.

33:59

And I think companies don't realize how beneficial

34:02

it might be just to their bottom line to absorb

34:04

some of those unhappiness costs that come up

34:06

with unpredictable scheduling. There's this lovely

34:08

paper that came out of the University of Oxford

34:10

from Jan Emmanuel Deneb's group that

34:12

shows that happier workers wind

34:15

up not just being more productive, but companies

34:17

that have happier workers wind up earning

34:19

more. They're very bottom line, you know, how much

34:21

you know they're kind of giving back in the stock market.

34:24

That winds up being determined at least

34:26

in part by how happy workers are. And

34:28

so I think this is a time when companies

34:30

are going to start paying more attention to the happiness

34:33

of their workers. They're going to start realizing it matters

34:35

for their bottom line. And I think this is something

34:37

that not just companies have to start paying attention

34:39

to. I think governments should also start getting

34:41

involved in this unpredictable scheduling.

34:44

These days in the US, we have all these conversations

34:46

about minimum wage and making sure people have

34:49

a living wage, but there are studies that

34:51

show that unpredictable hours have a worse

34:53

impact on mental health than low wages.

34:56

I'd love to see the same conversations that are happening

34:58

about minimum wage start happening about

35:00

unpredictable scheduling and the mental health

35:03

costs that comes from that as well.

35:04

Thank you so much, Lourie. You have been extremely

35:07

patient with all of my questions holidays

35:10

and rest and well being.

35:11

But wait, Tim, I still have a question for you. What

35:14

happened to Neprevka in the end?

35:16

Ah, Now, that is a good question.

35:18

It's unclear whether the Soviet

35:21

authorities realized quite how

35:23

disruptive Npreevka would be, and

35:25

if they did, it's not clear whether they thought the disruption

35:28

was a bug or a feature, because, after all,

35:31

families were a bourgeois institution.

35:33

But it wasn't long before the

35:35

problems with the system became overwhelming,

35:38

and on the first of December nineteen

35:41

thirty one, a sixth day

35:43

of rest common to all was

35:45

introduced, and in the summer of nineteen

35:48

forty the seven day week, including Sunday,

35:51

was resurrected. So even Stalin could

35:53

change his mind, and I wonder whether we

35:55

can change ours lri Santos,

35:57

thank you so much for joining me, and.

35:59

Thanks for joining me.

36:00

Tim.

36:00

Let's do this again soon. In fact,

36:03

I have an idea I want to discuss with you, and I'm

36:05

pretty sure you probably have a cautionary tale

36:07

for me on the subject.

36:09

Well, I usually do have a cautionary tale

36:11

on any subject. Dr Laurie

36:13

Santos hosts The Happiness

36:15

Lab.

36:15

And Tim Hartford hosts Cautionary Tales.

36:18

Both podcasts are productions of Pushkin

36:20

Industries and are available wherever you get

36:22

your podcasts.