No generic advice. Only what has been tested in practice.
Only what we have applied with teams and what research backs. Every article ends with one question: what can you do with this on Monday?
Latest articles
- The Happiness Quartet: the science behind the map of the day – dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins, and how we design a day around them. Read →
- PERMA at work: what HR can do in 30 days – a week-by-week plan, no extra budget. Read →
- Psychological safety in small teams: why the founder sets the tone – and what to change from Monday. Read →
- A burnt-out team: what nature does in two days – an anonymised case from practice. Read →
- Why successful people are tired – habituation, looking in the wrong place, and time as a resource. Read →
We do not invent psychology.
We take what has been researched and tested, and turn it into the order of a day.
Flow – when challenge and skill fit in the same boat
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying the moments when people are fully absorbed in what they do and lose track of time. He called that state flow. It appears when the challenge is slightly above the skill, the goal is clear and feedback is immediate. So we design programmes where the challenge is just right: not so easy it bores, not so hard it frightens.
Source: Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.
PERMA – five ingredients of well-being
Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, described well-being through five elements: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. Every programme we run passes through those five points, and the post-programme questionnaire measures exactly them.
Source: Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish. Free Press.
Psychological safety – permission to speak
Amy Edmondson at Harvard showed that teams learn faster when people can admit a mistake or ask a “stupid” question without fear. That does not come from a poster on the wall. It comes from experiencing it. So we build trust first, and only then ask for an honest conversation.
Sources: Edmondson, A. (1999). Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383; Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization. Wiley.
A map of the day, not magic
Dopamine tracks achievement and the expectation of reward. Oxytocin goes with trust and closeness. Serotonin rises with daylight, movement and calm. Endorphins come with physical effort. We do not promise chemistry – we use it as a map, so every day has the right order.
Sources: Schultz (1998); Kosfeld et al. (2005); Young (2007); Boecker et al. (2008). Full list on the Happiness Quartet page.
Books our work is based on
- Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization – psychological safety, first-hand.
- Martin Seligman, Flourish – the basis of the PERMA model.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow – the state of complete engagement.
- Yoshifumi Miyazaki, Shinrin-yoku – the effect of the forest on the body, with measurements.
- Daniel Pink, Drive – what motivates people besides pay.
- Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code – how a team that withstands pressure comes about.
When reading is not enough
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