Psychology is a fascinating subject.  Which, I suppose, is why I’ve spent the better part of 15 years studying it.  Even before I began officially studying psychology I was intrigued by how the brain works.  Take my ability to write this paragraph: How does my brain process information?  How does it retrieve it?  How am I able to write these thoughts onto a computer screen while also realizing how hot it is and that my keyboard is slowly dying?

The sheer amount of information the brain processes is amazing.

But we rarely take time to think about that.  In fact, most of us don’t spend much time at all thinking about how we process information.  The truth is, we are influenced in large part by psychology.  It impacts our decisions, our perceptions, and even what actions we’re willing to take.  Shock a dog enough times and he’ll quickly realize that crossing an invisible line in the yard is a bad idea.  He could still do it, but he knows it’s not a good decision.  Eventually you can take the collar off and the dog still won’t cross that invisible line.  You’ve restricted his decisions through basic psychology.

Surprisingly we aren’t so much different from our dog friends.  Much of our work involves psychology.  Some of it is simple, other parts of it are complex.  But in the end, psychology impacts how we interact with our surroundings.  How we perceive our coworkers.  And how well we perform on the job.

Not on board yet?  Well consider this: Msot pelope can raed tihs snetnece eevn tohugh  the ltteres are mxid up.  Tihs is bcaeuse we raed wrods not ltteres.  It shwos you jsut how pwoerufl pschoylgoy can be.

We work on the assumption that what we see on the surface is what’s actually happening.  But so often that’s not the case.  That’s not to make psychology sound ominous.  There’s nothing wrong with applied psychology and improving your work.

This is the approach Meaning To Work takes.  We look at psychology as just one part of how we process information.  If you’re expecting a bigger salary to make you happy, I’ve got some bad news for you, it won’t work.  If you think that having a “better” boss will make your work more enjoyable, again, I’ve got some bad news for you.  While those things can help, they won’t solve your problems if the real issue is something deeper. For many of us, the issues aren’t that we need a better work environment, it’s that we need to find a work environment that matches who we are.

If order to bring meaning to work, you first need to know what motivates you.

Photo provided by flickr

Study: brain reads word by word, not letter by letter