Gretchen Rubin is a very happy person. As the author of several books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project and Happier at Home and podcaster of her popular weekly podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, Ms. Rubin knows more than a thing or two about job satisfaction and being at peace with your work.
An important factor of being happy at work, she insists, is workspace design. Here she cites the example of architect Christopher Alexander’s groundbreaking book, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, which “uses architecture, sociology, psychology, and anthropology to describe the most satisfying environment” to create “patterns” to find your ideal space at work. Fantastical patterns like the Sitting Wall, the Front Door Bench, Child Caves, the Sequence of Sitting Spaces, Sleeping to the East.
A Pattern Language offers many insights about why certain office designs are making people unhappy and decreasing productivity. Like low lighting. Wrong desk size. Too much chatter. It also has great ideas on how to improve your surroundings. Read it, take the quiz and see how your office measures up to it. (image via Turnstone)