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Transcript of this talk: Cure for the ‘Monday’ Disease
My talk is about another disease – bigger than cancer, much – much bigger than cancer. It’s actually probably the biggest disease in the world and you don’t know anything about it. Actually it’s a widespread disease. It’s chronic – you, we all suffer from it probably but we don’t know about it and I’m going to give you a few clues and ask you to think about what that disease could be that. I don’t know which is the world’s biggest disease.
So, here are a few clues. It’s been there for about 200 years – 200 years as we’ve been suffering from it. Close to 3 billion people suffer from this disease – 3 billion people how big is that! It kind of comes in when you are about 22 and stays with you till you turn 60 or 62 or 65. 40 years of suffering from this particular disease. Now it’s not sexually transmitted but it is psychologically transmitted from one individual to the other in close proximity. If got completely untreated so in fact it’s got worse. As time has gone by it got completely untreated so far no prevention no cure and if it’s not treated now in the next decade or so will probably cause the doom of humanity. I mean that’s as big as it is now. What could that disease be?
Depression? Okay.
Lethargy? Mmm… interesting!
Okay I’m going to make it even more complex for you. Here are a few symptoms of that disease. It creates a bit of numbness especially two days every week it creates a lot of anxiety in – in – in that person it creates. In some cases creates faster heart rate, rashes in extreme cases, now here’s the most prominent symptom of them all. It creates a sense of this ease on a Sunday post lunch.
The disease is called Monday. That is the disease.
It’s probably the biggest disease we Monday equals suffering and you know we, we live through the suffering through five days and then till on Friday it gets so suffocating that we have to sort of invoke the guard saying thank God it’s Friday you know and, and then there’s a hole of course, there’s a restaurant chain link based on this sort of gospel. Now the other day I was in a taxi and this taxi driver said on a Thursday evening, ‘is it oh sir you must be very happy, it’s Friday Eve’ yeah! So that’s now there’s it’s not just about thank God it’s Friday, thank God it’s Friday Eve so that’s how big this disease is called Monday. We can’t face Mondays anymore and there’s a huge cost of Monday for the person who’s suffering from it. There’s depression, there’s alcoholism, there’s loss of self-esteem, huge loss of confidence we kind of feel empty inside and it’s not a thorn in the flesh it’s actually emptiness and psychology has a word for it called eugenic neurosis, kind of existential frustration. The funny thing is people who actually cause it are the sufferers of it the most and the other businesses and if, if given a choice about 87% people won’t come to work at all given a choice.
Gallup survey of 142 countries told us this that’s how disengaged they are from their work on a Monday. These are the batteries, just supposed to run our economy and they’re discharged now what is the cost of this discharged Mondayfide workforce. Economy estimates tell us, the human capital Institute tells us that just the American economy loses 350 million billion dollars a year on loss of productivity because of disengaged workforce that’s how big the loss is only for the US.
Now you can add up for the rest of the world and you know what the size of that loss is cost of Monday is, yet, what our organizations are doing about it? What are they doing to solve? They are the creators of the Monday problem, what are you doing to solve the Monday problem for all these 3 billion people who walk into offices to work nothing at all absolutely nothing? And that’s the sad part of the story but what is it for you to solve the problem, you must first find the root of the problem and the root of the problem is this. There’s a loss of meaning and purpose in life you know we have, we have some where transitioned from a machine economy to an industrial economy to a human economy and we would not recognize a shift in the workforce. We still refer to them as unit of labour whereas actually they are a unit of emotion now, they’re a unit of meaning, they’re a unit of sentiment now and we need to recognize that shift and the future is only going to be more human as there’s more artificial intelligence, as they’re more – more – more automation you will become more human you’ll search for your humaneness more. Every day you will search for that element of meaning in your life and in that human economy meaning is the hierarchy of them. In the hierarchy of the pyramid meaning is the topmost need of a human economy. It’s not me talking about it. Dan Harris who did and which does a lot of work in the area of motivation and, and labor he recognizes it saying experiment about after experiment. He sees that when you create meaning at work, people are motivated, people want to come to work, is that a cure for this – this disease called Monday? Yes there is, and actually this guy found a cure for it close to 65 years back.
His name is Viktor Frankl and he wrote a book, very famous book called ‘Man’s search for Meaning’ and the cure was very interesting. He was stuck in a concentration camp, Jewish concentration camp and he said, the stimulus of torture being the same, how come some people give up and some people don’t? Same stuff, same torture, some people give up, some – some inmates give up, some people don’t and why does that happen and he discovered the power of storytelling because they live up to the story. They said this is nothing in contrast to that that I’m living for whether that’s a mythical story of love – something they want to do in the future, they want to change the world. That story changes the way they live that life and storytelling and we are in the concentration camp called a cubicle. These days this is a new concentration camp and we have to tell ourselves stories to find meaning in our workplaces now I encourage organizations to get into storytelling because through stories you will find meaning and you will find purpose and there are two kinds of story- two different kinds of storytelling that happens there. The first one is who am I, that’s one kind of story that is spoken about what am I doing here? What am I passionate about? What is the essence of myself? What gets me happy what gets me sad? All of that is the who my question the other is the first question saying why are we here? What am I building here? Am I building you know, am I building a… that’s famous story, they’re saying I’m a bricklayer am I building a building or am I building a cathedral? Is that what- what do I wake up with every morning?
There is a Japanese word called do Ikigai. Ikigai translates into a long phrase says what do you wake up to every morning? What is your Ikigai? Are you there to earn money or you are there to change the world? And so that’s the story of purpose and organizations when employees walking, they should engage them in storytelling in the space of meaning and in the story of purpose. Now we have left some cards on your – on your chairs. If you take a card that’s it’s my autobiography you pick up that card and I’m going to talk to you about how storytelling happens in the meaning space.
Take a pen if you have one and say if you could write your autobiography right now – right now, if you could write your autobiography, what would be the title of the autobiography? What would you name it? Who do you dedicate it? Doesn’t come easy, does it? Because we are not used to storytelling. We don’t introspect, we don’t tell stories to ourselves.
Think about it – very important question. It’s not a stupid question. If your life is your business what’s this mission statement? You will keep writing mission statements for our offices, write for our brands. What is your mission statement of life? Write or write it in one sentence now flip the card. I want you to flip the card if I were to lock you up in a room called the your happiness room if I could lock you up, for a year you are there but the room promises to offer you happiness and you are allowed six objects inside. What objects would you put in your happiness room? You can’t take in your TV or your internet. You are supposed to take six objects what would you carry? Think about it, you can’t leave the room for a year. It’s a lot of interesting things. I would take my- my Bible, I would take my music iPod, I will take, I will keep a little plant there, I’ll keep my guitar there, I’ll keep the picture of my family there. You know a lot of people say beautiful things which make them happy.
Now here’s a question if an organization knows what your stories are you please your workplace can be happiness room. You can create that atmosphere of happiness in your workplace. That’s how meaning is created in workplaces. That’s how Monday problems are solved.
Now if you move to the other card you could write your company’s epitaph saying what my company left behind. Now if you had to make your CEO or if you are the CEO of your company if you could write this now you are all CEOs of your company. It’s called me.com. You are the CEO of your company so what would be what would you leave behind. Think about it now that’s storytelling on purpose.
If you’ve flipped to the other card saying here’s a lottery that my business is one. Usually, they went lottery so if you win a lottery of hundred million dollars you are forced to spend it in one day to make the world a better place where would your organization spend that money in what cause? And I’m not talking about corporate social responsibility here. Where it’s you know put a fraction of your money in to make someone’s life better but I’m talking about serious investment in making the world a better place where would you your organization put that money. Now that’s storytelling on purpose. Now, if an organization engages with you in this kind of storytelling who are you? What are you doing here? Where are we going together? What do you want to build in your life? I mean can I show you the big picture, then that storytelling will create meaning and you create purpose in your life. It requires introspections thinking it’s not complicated at all like I showed you it’s just a little conversation that goes on between the employee and the organization and the employer and the employee himself or herself so if you get into the simple act of storytelling with organizations with ourselves we will probably start finding meaning and purpose.
With that we will hopefully find a little motivation in ourselves and with that hopefully we wake up on a Monday morning and say thank God it’s Monday. Thank you so much!
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