Verified by 
Philosophy
"Be Yourself, But Keep Your Inner Jerk in Check."
A Happiness Interview With Bob Sutton!
Posted September 10, 2010
Happiness interview: Bob Sutton.
I'm a huge, raving fan of Bob Sutton's writing. His blog, Work Matters, is consistently engaging, and I loved his book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.
Bob's new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst, just came out, and it is every bit as good as the last one. Because I work as a writer, I don't really have a boss or act as a boss, but even so, I found it fascinating. Bob has so many interesting things to say about what good bosses do and don't do. There's a lot of information that that is widely applicable, no matter what your job situation.
Because work and happiness are so closely related, I knew Bob thought a lot about happiness, and I was curious to hear what he had to say about his own happiness.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Bob: Going for a bike ride. I go for about a 90 minute ride about 4 times a week in the hills behind Stanford University. I do other kinds of exercise when I don’t have time for that, but it isn’t the same. I have even come to enjoy getting an occasional flat tire – because the process of fixing it with a new tube and all that makes me feel resilient (I only learned to do this a couple years ago – I had had some long walks home before!)
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
I am a pretty emotional guy, I get very enthusiastic about people and events when things are god, and get quite unhappy when things are not going so well. In my old age – I am 56 – I am starting to learn the power of emotional detachment, especially when it comes to dealing with difficult people and situations. I think this is one of the most important pieces of advice in both The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss. If you have a boss who is driving you crazy and can’t escape (at least for now), learning the fine art of not caring so much, of not letting it touch your soul, can be very soothing. The same goes for bosses who are stuck with people they can’t coach to being better people and better performers – and can’t get rid of it, at least for now. Detaching yourself emotionally from that person and instead focusing on the more constructive people that you lead can do wonders for both your team and your well-being. My efforts to improve this ability have helped me enormously. I am not exactly calm, and frankly, still have particular trouble containing myself in the presence of pompous assholes (and there are plenty of them in academia), but I am getting better. Indeed, I sometimes toy with writing a short book called “The Virtues of Not Giving a Shit.”
The other thing is that I have learned that I really am happiest and most civilized to others when I have had long stretches alone. That old saying, Satchel Paige I think, that “The social ramble ain’t restful” applies well to me.
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Taking myself too seriously. Whenever I start feeling too earnest or too self-important, I get dumber, more difficult, and altogether unpleasant. My wife, Marina, does a pretty good of reminding me to stop being a jerk – and so do my kids (especially my youngest, 14 year-old Eve, is very socially adept.)
Also, I find myself getting distracted by the live action of emails, immediate challenges, and other of life’s little emergencies to the point where I can’t think clearly about long-term issues. I think people who know me would say that I am pretty good at ignoring the short term and focusing on books and such – but I don’t think I am good enough, and it makes me feel tired and unsatisfied.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”)
There are three things that I say to myself:
“Think about how others around you feel, not how you feel or what you want.” (This makes me less selfish)
“Focus doing the best you can, not on doing better than others.” (This focuses me on intrinsic qualities and rewards, not social comparison and competition – I am much happier and nicer when I don’t see life as a contest… and as Dan Pink’s book Drive shows, focusing intrinsic rewards might make me creative too).
Also, I use a variation of Be Gretchen, but because I have the capacity to be a jerk (this is certainly a reason I wrote The No Asshole Rule), I say to myself like “Be Yourself, but keep your inner jerk in check.”
If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a “comfort food,” do you have a comfort activity?
Going out to a nice dinner with family or friends. That is something I just love about Europe, especially Italy and Spain. My kids – 14, 18, and 20 -- rush from the dinner table at home, but last Summer they got into the swing of things in Spain, and were more than happy to sit around and talk happily through a two hour lunch and then a three hour dinner… and I am not even sure we were consuming more food or wine, it was just paced differently so none of us gained any weight. I also have some very delightful friends that I am always happy to have long conversations with – although the older I get, the less interested I am in academics as we can be a pretty boring lot (although there are exceptions like my friends Huggy Rao and Jeff Pfeffer). And as I already mentioned, exercise is key for me.
Finally, when I am in a bad mood, very often it is because I just have not had enough sleep – naps are wonderful things (this is an evidence-based statement!). I confess that I recently canceled a series of work meeting because my mental health was going south… instead, I took a nap, then went for a bike ride, and then went out for dinner with my wife and two of my kids. It was splendid idea and I felt better for days.
Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t – or vice versa?
I have had a couple big surprises -- in different directions. This year, I faced the first serious health problem in my life – I had an aortic valve replaced and some related work done at the Cleveland Clinic. It was probably something I was born with that got worse with age. I was lucky in that I was not experiencing signs heart failure and actually spent a year getting shape for surgery. My recovery has gone well, but going into it, I thought that people who talked about such challenges as “a great experience” or the “best thing that ever happened to me” were just trying to reduce cognitive dissonance. Well, perhaps I am now as well, but it was an experience that did help me realize what mattered most in my life and what did not, and I am in much better physical shape than I was a few years ago (although I could still lose some weight) because of concerns about my health. I am also, I think, a bit more patient and understanding when dealing with others. And I do think the experience helped bring my family together at a time when there are plenty of forces pulling us apart – we have two kids in college and a very busy high school freshman, and they have plenty of other things to think about and do other than family stuff.
So, while I don’t recommend major surgery as a mental health treatment, it seems to have worked for me. I was very lucky that, in addition to being very competent doctors, I had great emotional support from my doctor in California, Jeffrey Croke, my cardiologist at Cleveland, William Stewart, and my surgeon at Cleveland, Marc Gillinov. They didn’t agree on everything and have wildly different personalities, but are each delightful and caring human-beings. Having the feeling that your doctors really care about you has, in my opinion, a huge positive effect.
Finally, I honestly thought that being married to the same person for a long time would get impossibly dull. This has turned out to be wrong – my wife and I have been living together since she was 19 and I was 21. Especially in recent years, our relationship seems to be getting better and better. Of course, there are always the daily ups and downs, but I do think that one thing that helps is that we have similar beliefs about what makes us happy – having good experiences and not having stuff, having our kids feel good about themselves, and we both are not overly social and need long stretches of peace and quiet – which isn’t always easy to find.
* Cultivating gratitude is very important for happiness, and a great site to help you do that is Thankfulfor, where you can keep a personal gratitude journal.
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin at gretchenrubin dot com. Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
