What's your happiness score? | Dominic Price

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, I'm Elise Hugh.

The year 2020, it's hard to even think back on it, right?

It was so full of uncertainty and tragedy around the world.

But that year at TEDx Sydney, the work futurist, dominant price, gave a timely and still

relevant talk, in which he asks, where does happiness actually come from?

And how do we find it even with death and destruction all around?

It's hard to talk on what really matters is coming up after the break.

Hello, my name's Dom Price and I'm a work futurist, which is a made up job that no one's

called me out on yet, but it's got me here on this stage today.

My jobs all about predicting the future, the future of work, society, the economy and education,

which is you can show you can imagine this year of all the years has been pretty fascinating.

Now there's this huge amount of self help literature out there that will help you be happier

over time.

But today I want to talk to you specifically about being happy in a year like 2020.

It's a year like no other.

It's a year where many of us haven't felt as much happiness, or our happy days have

been reduced to happy minutes and moments.

And the uncertainty of the future has quite rightly weighed heavily on our minds.

But to talk to you about a year like 2020, and to talk to you about how she's been,

first of all, I have to tell you how shit my years been.

You see, my sister's my best friend, and a few years ago I got the call that no brother wants

to get, truly been diagnosed with stage full breath cancer.

And given that she lived a 24 hour flight away in Manchester, England is a single mother

of two boys.

I'm sure you can imagine how I felt.

She's stubborn as an ox and six years later at the start of 2020 she's still with us.

Then February rolled in and I got another call.

This time it was my doctor telling me that I had early stage bowel cancer.

A week later, I had a subtitle collect to me and I had my colon removed.

Strangely the same day my sister went to see her specialist in the UK who confirmed

that they were ceasing or treatment.

She had a matter of months left to live.

Now post surgery, I wasn't officially allowed to travel due to COVID travel restrictions,

but it might as to get an exemption from the government and I was on one of very few flights

out to Manchester in April to look after my sister and her two boys.

A few weeks later, on Tuesday, May 19th, truly collapsed suddenly at home.

Despite trying CPR, she doubted my arms before the ambulance arrived.

She was 45.

After some very emotional goodbye to family, the only thing certain in my immediate future

was 14 days in quarantine.

But before I got on that plane, I gave my nephews an extra special and called Tom Hugg.

And in this 14 days in quarantine, you kind of left alone with your own thoughts and it

got me thinking, where does that happiness?

Actually come from, how can a year the shit make anyone happy?

And the problem with those thoughts is when you've got 14 days, you really do get to invest

in them and it got me thinking, how can we find that happiness?

And as is with death sometimes, I actually started thinking with renewed clarity about life

and work and COVID and all the things that matters.

In bodywear's book, the top five regrets of the dying, body will tell you the second

biggest regret is I wish I hadn't spent so much time in the office.

But you don't need me to tell you that.

You know what's important on your deathbed, the love of friends and family, the legacy

you're leaving behind, knowing that you've done things that made you happy, knowing

that you've done great things.

And yet few of us can honestly say, this is how we're living our lives today.

Take work for example, work today stems from the Industrial Revolution 300 years ago.

That's when we were the machines, we were the robots, it was all about presentism, we worked

on the production line, we were measured by speed and efficiency, it's about how much

work you could get done in one day.

Let's be honest, it's about making your boss richer.

In that time, we had these measures of success, economic growth and productivity.

With 300 years later, and it's simply not working, productivity growth has stagnated.

Australia is one of the worst performing countries in terms of longer working hours, and

this idea of productivity that governments and business in speak about all the time, it

measures $10 million invested in a hospital, the same as $10 million spent on a cold

fire, power plant.

And our most precious resource, the planet, is dying, and we have no planet B. So we're

not happy at work, and we're not productive.

And oddly, in the time of the pandemic, when we're touting mental health and wellness

and the importance of people, studies show we've actually extended the average working day

by 40 minutes since March this year, all in the pursuit of productivity.

And I think it's because we first thought that COVID was a fleeting moment.

You see, COVID's like a snowstorm.

After years of what seemed like endless sunshine outside, we looked out and we saw snow.

So we did the right thing, we closed the windows and doors, and we said inside.

For a few weeks later, we looked out and it was still snowing and we were like, ah, it's

not a snowstorm.

It's winter.

So we did the right thing, we went online, bought a new jumper, jacket, and a scarf,

but by the time they were delivered to our door, we realized it wasn't winter.

It was the ice age.

What was the moment when you realized that this was the ice age?

Think about it.

That moment when you sat there and thought, it's kind of not an eight week thing anymore, this is it.

It's been here for a while, in fact, maybe it's here forever.

And how did that moment of realization make you feel about work?

Something that you spend about a third of your time doing by the way.

I can tell you how it made 5,000 people feel across Australia, the US, Japan, France, and

Germany in a recent study commissioned by Atlassian.

Despite the fact that people weren't commuting to work and therefore saving that time, nearly half

of respondents said they had less time for personal pursuits.

Personal pursuits, the things that actually make you happy are the number one complaint

of this time, work life balance.

Me personally, I've bought a 5 kilo since March, I'm drinking more and I'm sleeping less.

That's COVID's fault, right?

Or is it simply that I'm just not happy that in my relentless pursuit of productivity,

I've lost sight of what's really important?

Now we could spend the rest of this talk sharing story about what we are, all we can actually

flip the tables and talk about what we can do, I'm choosing to do the latter.

I'd like to close your eyes for a second.

Are we to imagine a world where our measure of success is not productivity?

Are we to imagine a world where instead of thinking about busyness and titles and bank

balances, we think about our impact on the world?

I want you to imagine a world where status isn't the reason for our existence.

Open your eyes.

I'd now like to introduce you to the personal moral inventory.

The personal moral inventory is inspired by two pieces of work.

The first, the work from the world of finance, something called the quadruple bottom line,

only getting businesses to report in a more rounded fashion.

The second, an exercise that elites military personnel go through to self assessed themselves

and their teammates before going into battle.

I believe that these four things, productivity and profit, people, deployments and our purpose

are the secret to our happiness.

And what's important in the time of the ice age, the time we're in right now, is not

to get distracted by the things we can't do, but to find the things that we can do.

It's on us to take ownership and control of our own happiness.

Let's do the exercise together.

What I'm going to do is rate each area, minus one, zero or one.

One is your nailing it, high finds all around, good on you.

Zero is your getting by, not awesome, not awful.

And minus one is your struggling.

His mind for this year, for productivity and profit, I'm a one.

I have a good job, I have a good salary, I have a refoe of my head, I can pay the bills.

But here's the thing, you can't score more than a one, so it becomes impossible to pack

all your happiness into one category.

And yet it's like we're all trying to get to a two on productivity, but to what extent.

The next day is people.

One is about how you think about your personal, mental and physical health.

You have to start with yourself.

You have to put your own oxygen mask on before you can help others.

This is also about how you impact family, friends, society.

It's about being human and having a positive impact on humanity.

For this, I score myself a zero.

Planet, let's just say I took over a hundred flights last year, so I'm going to score

myself a minus one.

And finally, purpose, purpose is about the impact you want to have and the legacy you

want to leave behind.

It's the why you do, what you do.

For this, I score myself a zero.

Now I can already tell the keen beans in the room and online I try to add this up on

net this off, that is not how it works.

Your positive impact in one category doesn't mitigate your negative impact in another

category.

For me, the fact that I'm financially well off doesn't make up for the fact that

I'm killing the planet.

It wasn't this realization though, they got me thinking something had to change.

Shortly after my sister passed away, I did the sex size on her behalf and it got me

thinking.

For productivity and profit, she was a zero.

She struggled financially and her final few years she couldn't work, but she got by.

For people, she was a definite one. She leading you her own identity. She invested in

her life. She had a lot of fun.

You're all remember the part of your out with Trudy and she invested in local school,

community friends and family.

For planet, she was also a one. She had a very low carbon footprint. She's very rarely

flew anywhere. She didn't own a car. She was avid and reduced reuse recycle. And if

in winter, she would make you put a jumper on before she'd let you turn the heating on.

And on purpose, she was also a strong one. She knew the legacy she wanted to leave behind.

She knew exactly why she was on this planet.

Purpose isn't about being a superhero. It's not about wearing a cape or single handedly

saving the world. Trudy's purpose was to give those two boys the best up bringing in

this small time that she had available. I learned two things doing this exercise for her.

Firstly, I learned that happiness is contextual. For Trudy, the fact that she was financially

struggling, she didn't let that dictate her happiness. She didn't put all her legs in that

basket and shut up shop. But the second realization hit me a lot harder. Despite everything,

Trudy was happier than me. Here's what we get to take our happiness into our own hands.

What I want you to do is to think about the areas where you would score zero or minus one

and commit to doing something to improve. So whatever you commit to do, I want you to give it a

red hot go in the next summer. Why? Well, the best time to plan to tree was 20 years ago.

The second best time is today. So we're going to do this right now. For me, my worst score was

planning. I want to commit to going meet free for three days a week and then I'll reassess.

I've already changed my energy provider to one that's carbon neutral and I've invested in

the company that's trying to save our oceans. Small steps, but then I can reassess.

On people, I'm going to commit to be more present with the people I care about.

For the last four years, I've essentially been single. If I'm really honest,

I was emotionally unavailable. But I've actually been very fortunate to meet someone amazing.

So what I'm going to do is commit to investing in a relationship with openness,

authenticity and vulnerability and a little bit of cheekiness.

And on purpose, a year ago, I was actually a one on purpose.

My purpose is twofold. It was the impact I was having on people through my public speaking

and it was the precious time I got to spend my sister. But in a few short weeks at the start of

2020, both of those disappeared. And in the months since, I've been really trying to rediscover

my purpose and I'll be honest, I've really struggled to find it and I think that's okay.

But then I realize that I have this today, this moment. This is me rediscovering my purpose.

What are you going to do? What action are you going to take?

Whatever action you do take, you suddenly realize that you can stop hinging or your happiness

on one category of the personal moral inventory. Instead, you invest in taking control of your own

happiness. Our future is not predetermined. Our future is not written and our future is not waiting

for us. I'm building mine and I believe you are building yours. And how happy we are in our future

will be based solely on an action or inaction across all facets of life, not just the working week.

I am the key to unleashing my own happiness and I believe you are the key to unleashing your

own happiness. I can safely say that truly didn't have any regrets, but she did have one wish

to see me on stage, live presenting at TEDx. Thank you very much.

P.R.X.