The Molecule of More

THE MOLECULE OF MORE

But most people don’t bother to engage in acts of creation, like

drawing pictures, making music, or building model airplanes. There’s

no practical reason to do these things. They’re hard, at least in the

beginning, and they probably won’t earn us money or prestige or guar-

antee us a better future. But they might make us happy.

THE POWER IS IN YOUR HANDS

In  2015, TINYpulse, a  consulting firm that  helps managers increase 
employee engagement, surveyed over 30,000 employees working for
more than five  hundred companies. They asked the  employees about 
their managers, their coworkers, and professional growth. But what the
survey was really about was happiness.
TINYpulse noted that no one had ever performed a survey like this.
Management consultants in general didn’t seem to place much value
on happiness. But TINYpulse believed that happiness was essential to
a company’s success, so they looked at happiness in a broad range of
industries, including the  glamorous fields of technology, finance, and 
biotech. None of them came out on top. The happiest people were
construction workers.
Construction workers take abstract plans and make them real.
They use their minds and their hands. They also enjoy a high degree
of camaraderie. When TINYpulse looked at the reasons construction
workers gave for feeling happy, the most common was, “I work with
great people.” A construction manager said, “One thing that unites
everybody at the end of the day is kicking back for a little bit with a few
beers and  talking stuff  out—the good and  the  bad.” Affiliative relation-
ships in the context of the work environment played a key role: work
and friendship, dopamine and H&N.
The second most important reason for happiness given by con-
struction workers was, “I’m excited about my work and projects,” a
dopaminergic reason. The authors of the report also noted that the
construction industry had enjoyed strong growth in the previous year,
and  this  growth was  reflected in  rising salaries, another dopaminergic