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Arthur Brooks is a professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School and the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the weekly How to Build a Life column. The author of 14 books (one of which he coauthored with Oprah Winfrey), he is known as one of the worlds leading experts on the science of happiness. Whats the big idea? Happiness is really all about the business of life. Your life is like a startup business, and you should manage it as such. Youre the founder, and you need to be able to take risks and know what the currency is of the fortune youre trying to accumulate. The Happiness Files shows how to become more successful in getting what you truly want by seeing your life in this way. Below, Arthur shares five key insights from his new book, The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life. Listen to the audio versionread by Brooksbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Manage yourself In the startup of your life, youre the most important employeeso you better manage yourself. Self-management is a skill that successful people have. More importantly, its a skill that happy people have. Some people are very successful in managing their professional lives, but managing their personal lives is a different kettle of fish. In the first section of my book, you will learn why these things are different and why some people find self-management more difficult than professional management. This section also talks about philosophy and religious faith, friendships, family, romantic relationships, and how these dont have to feel different than getting ahead at work. You can treat them in much the same way with a few basic ideas that are taken from neuroscience and behavioral science. This section also deals with burnout. Are you spending time at work on boring or inconsequential things? Do you feel unappreciated? What do you do about that? You need to understand yourself and why youre stuck in unproductive patterns. This section walks you through each problem that blurs the line between personal and professional in such a way that you can resolve some of these issues without feeling burnout. By the way, what is happening in your brain during burnout? Youll find out, and this will help you put on your own oxygen mask first so that youll be more successful in your job and in your life. Then we can move on to how do you build your career once youre able to be a great employee to yourself. 2. How to build your career A lot of people think of their twenties as the building phase of their career, but the truth of the matter is that in the business of your life, building is an ongoing operation. A career is always a process of exploration and discovery. Youre probably different than other people, and this part of the book will tell you how to identify yourself. Do you have the kind of linear career where you go from one thing to the next, where everything that you do is bigger and better and grander than the last? Maybe youre more of a spiral, where your career is a set of mini-careers of 7 to 12 years, and sometimes you make more money and sometimes less, but youre setting it up as an adventure of your own making. This section will also help identify when the right time is to switch jobs. A lot of people struggle with this. Theyre afraid of these kinds of changes. I dont like my job, but will I be happier? The data says you probably will be. I hope that this part of the book will give you the courage. If youre considering a career change, well discuss how to trust your instincts. As a matter of fact, I will give you a rubrica tool that explores what you should be listening to in your own feelings. 3. How to communicate and connect with others One of the most important skills to develop is the ability to deal with other people. Communication and connection, at both work and home, are about managing the enterprise of your life and having an enterprise that gets better and better as the years go by. This is the third section, where youll learn how to give and receive criticism, based on the best communication literature and social psychology. What does good criticism look like? Also, how do you give a great compliment? How do you talk to people that you dont know? If youre an introvert, how can you sometimes act as if youre an extrovert? Another thing youll learn in this section is where you should not connect and communicate with other people, if possible. The answer is meetings. Im going to arm you with data that shows you should eliminate as many meetings as possible. Want to be happier? Stay away from meetings and avoid making calls whenever possible. 4. How to balance work, life, and relationships I hate the expression work-life balance because it sounds like you have to balance two separate things. The truth is, if you want to be happy in the enterprise of your life, your work and your life are part of the same phenomenon. Work should be part of your life. That being said, it shouldnt be all of ityou should have other things in life that are not involved with your job, such as family and friendship. Instead of work-life balance, I talk about work-life integration. We want work and life to work together. As it says in The Good Book, iron sharpens iron. Your work and the rest of your life should be the iron that sharpens each other. In this section, youll find out how successful people do it, but more importantly, how happy people do this. What are the boundaries? Where does work stop and life start in a way that actually makes both work and life better? Whats the best way to work with people that dont understand this? What do you do about colleagues that might make life a bit worse? 5. How to define success Success is what you want. At the end of the day, with any kind of startup, youd better know what the end goal is and youd better keep it in mind. If youre starting a little company, you might say success is getting bought by some bigger company or getting to the initial public offering. Well, how do you define success for the startup of your life? What does success mean to you? Hint: dont denominate it in dollars if you want to be a happy person. This is not to say that money is unimportant. Quite the contrary. Its very important for doing all kinds of things, but it is not a great metric for understanding our own personal success. Success can lead to misery if youre only focused on money, power, pleasure, fame, prestige, titles, or positions. Those things are intermediate goods to what we really want, which are things like love, satisfaction, or faith. How do we define that kind of success? How do we measure that kind of success? Picking a meaningful metric will not make you lose your edge. On the contrary, when you know the success that youre shooting for and how to measure it, boy does that make you want to show up for work and do your very best every day. Then, it makes you want to go home and do your very best at home as well. For the business of your life, you need to always be making progress. How? Ill talk an awful lot about that in the book. Its been useful to me because my life, like yours, is a startup, and I want you to be able to make yours the most gloriously successful startupyou can possibly imagine. Thats the job of this book. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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E-Commerce
On Danones factory floors, where frontline workers make products like Dannon and Activia yogurts and Evian water, smart sensors detect vibrations and temperature changes to signal potential machine malfunctions. AI-powered vision systems find quality defects well before the human eye. AI even helps streamline processes like spray drying powdered baby formula. These systems arent meant to replace human workers. Rather, says Danones chief operating officer Vikram Agarwal, Machines will be our colleagues, and we will be theirs. In this piece, paid subscribers will learn: Why manufacturing companies are focused on reskilling rather than replacing workers How Danone uses AI “digital twins” Which skills employees are learning to become “more agile, more responsive” THE RISE OF THE ROBOT COLLEAGUE Were already seeing this happen: in Amazon warehouses theres nearly one robot per human. While employers generally want factory workers to learn how to work with robots rather than get replaced by them, taking employees off the factory floor for digital training can increase labor costs, as employers must cover posts left unmanned by someone participating in a classroom-style session. Most frontline employees dont have access to flexible, job-embedded learning opportunities, says Matthew Daniel, senior principal for talent strategy at workforce training organization Guild. As a result, theyre often being left out of the first wave of AI enablement strategies. Yet he points out these employees may need AI training the most. Forty percent of advanced manufacturing skills will evolve in the coming years, he says. A 2023 Boston Consulting Group study found that just 14% of frontline workers, including factory workers, have received AI training, compared to 44% of business leaders. Thats why companies like Danone have created in-house academies that upskill employees on technologies like AI and automation. Danones Industry 5.0 Academy aims to equip more than 20,000 of its manufacturing workers, from China to Brazil, with what Agarwal calls practical AI skills, like using the tech to test products, map out production processes, and detect defects. A few other major manufacturers, like Bosch, have taken similar paths, mixing on-the-job learning (to prevent disruption on factory floors) with instructional sessions led by vendors and even apprenticeships. Physical work by operators will increasingly be replaced with operators [training] AI models to do the physical work, Agarwal says. The aim of Danones academy is to make those operators roles more agile, more responsive, and more focused on problem-solving. AI academies meet the moment of need In-house AI academies train employees on how AI and increased automation can reduce downtime and up efficiency with factory worker assistance. At engineering company Bosch, which has an AI Academy that had trained more than 65,000 associates as of January 2025, factory floor workers engage in classroom-style sessions with in-house AI experts focused on real projects taking place at the plants where they work, says Caroline Bird, digital officer for Bosch Mobility, Americas. That way, they can take what theyve learned from the class immediately back to manufacturing frontlines. In factories where AI is being applied, its typically embedded directly into the tools workers already use, making it a natural extension of their workflow, says Eddy Azad, CEO of Parsec, an organization that works with thousands of manufacturing companies to help incorporate AI into their operations. He cites companies that use AI-powered assistants in manufacturing systems to bring quality issues to employees as soon as theyre detected, like at Danone. The company also uses AI for predicting when problems might arise, so frontline workers can solve them before they get too serious. AI assistants at other companies help with tasks like logging performance events, Azad says, or initiating shift changes, performing services that cut out busywork. Danone also uses digital twins, or AI simulations that let production team members test new products or processes virtually so as not to waste energy or ingredients by testing with physical models. We can model emissions outcomes before changes are made, Agarwal says, and create production lines that are more sustainable. At Bosch, U.S.-based factories use AI to plug up inefficiencies. For instance, if one manufacturing line goes down, the AI can tell workers from that line where theyd be most productive elsewhere in the factory during that shift. Importantly, in-house AI upskilling academies dont require workers to come into trainings with technical backgrounds. Instead, as at Bosch, they focus on setting a strong foundation so associates understand how AI works, says Bird. At Boschs South Carolina manufacturing facility, for example, the company held a session about engineering AI prompts to increase efficiencies on the factory floor, using real examples from the facilitys operations. Weve seen the best results when training is delivered in small, focused increments through embedded work instructions, guided prompts, or short, role-specific video walkthroughs, says Azad of advanced technology trainings. Its not about formal seminars. Its about targeted support at the moment of need. AI is foundational, not optional Ultimately, AI and automation upskilling, or reskilling, programs aim to keep workers valuable. Per a study published in the Harvard Business Review in 2023, a large, unnamed auto manufacturer straight up told some of its engineers that their skills were becoming obsoletethey would have to learn how to use smart technology in their work to maintain job security. When executives come to Parsec, Azad says the questions they ask are pragmatichow can AI help us reduce downtime, improve quality, or run more efficiently? Azad adds that one question they tend not to ask is, Should we replace people? Instead, they ask about how to train their teams. Danones Agarwal has called AI reskilling a company priority. Now that Industry 5.0 Academy is up and running, Danones begun working on a new network of 10 factories to pilot disruptive models, Agarwal says, that will focus on human-machine collaboration. Meanwhile, Bird says Bosch sees AI driving so much growth that the company plans to invest more than $2.7 billion in the technology by 2027. Despite this explosion in AI and automation on factory floors, formal academies like Danones are still not very common, says Azad. But he sees it as a burgeoning trend, he adds: A standard part of manufacturing workforce development in the years ahead. After all, soon, these skill sets wont be optional, says Daniel. Theyll be foundational for factory workers, as technicians roles increasingly shift from manual labor to digital. When machines go down, he sas, it takes more than a wrench to bring them back online.
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E-Commerce
AI makes it easier than ever to lean on technology to do our thinking and some research says it may even be making us dumber. However, researchers have found that studying philosophy may help sharpen your thinking skills. In a new study published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, researchers found that majoring in philosophy can improve thinking more than other majors. While the results may seem self-serving, the researchers did draw upon a huge dataset collected by Higher Education Research Institute with records from over a half a million U.S. undergraduates spanning 800 institutions. The data included results from standardized tests such as the SAT, LSAT, and GRE and two surveys. The first survey, Habits of Mind, measured traits such as curiosity, intellectual rigor, and intellectual humility. The second, Pluralistic Orientation, measured open-mindedness. First, the researcher found that students who are already strong thinkers may be more inclined to take philosophy classes to begin with. They found that a one standard deviation increase in SAT verbal corresponded with a 57% increased chance of majoring in philosophy. Similarly, a one standard deviation increase in freshman year scores for Habits of Mind and Pluralistic Orientation was associated with a 34% and 13% (respectively) increased chance of majoring in philosophy. However, this relationship did not extend to quantitative thinkingthere was no statistically significant correlation between the SAT math score and majoring in philosophy. Second, the researchers examined senior year exam scores for philosophy and non-philosophy majors (a group that included 57 different majors). When the researchers controlled for SAT results and freshman year scores, they still found that philosophy majors scored significantly higher than non-philosophy majors on the GRE verbal and LSAT. Philosophy majors scored an average of 33 points higher on the GRE verbal than non-philosophy majors, and two points higher on the LSAT. They also came in first for the Habits of Mind survey, and sixth for the Pluralistic Orientation survey. However, philosophy students didn’t stand out in the GRE Quantitative: they placed 30th out of 57. Overall, the research found that those who majored in philosophy outperformed every other major when it came to verbal and logical reasoning on standardized tests. They also had higher levels of traits like “curiosity, intellectual rigor, intellectual humility, and open-mindedness,” than non-philosophy majors. While researchers say the study is pivotal, they also believe there is a long way to go in terms of learning the most important consequence of the major: how philosophy students actually use their knowledge out in the world. They noted, “it is one thing to form sharp, analytical thinkers, and quite another to cultivate intellectually virtuous citizens inclined to use their minds responsibly in service of the common good.”
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