How We Work

Live Your Purpose, Reclaim Your Sanity, and Embrace the Daily Grind

By: Leah Weiss

Narrated by: Caroline Slaughter

“I have long thought that what the Buddha taught can be seen as a highly developed science of mind which, if made more accessible to a lay audience, could benefit many people. I believe that Dr. Weiss’s book, in combining such insights with science and good business practice, offers an effective mindfulness based program that many will find helpful.” --His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

A practical guide to bringing our whole selves to our professional work, based on the author’s overwhelmingly popular course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In today’s workplace, the traditional boundaries between ""work"" and ""personal"" are neither realistic nor relevant. From millennials seeking employment in the sharing economy to Gen Xers telecommuting to Baby Boomers creating a meaningful second act, the line that separates who we are from the work we do is blurrier than ever.

The truth is, we don’t show up for our jobs as a portion of ourselves—by necessity, we bring both our hearts and our minds to everything we do. In How We Work, mindfulness expert and creator of the perennially-waitlisted Stanford Business School course ""Leading with Mindfulness and Compassion"" Dr. Leah Weiss explains why this false dichotomy can be destructive to both our mental health and our professional success.

The bad news, says Weiss, is that nothing provides more opportunities for negative emotions—anxiety, anger, envy, fear, and paranoia, to name a few—than the dynamics of the workplace. But the good news is that these feelings matter. How we feel at and about work matters—to ourselves, to the quality of our work, and ultimately to the success of the organizations for which we work.

The path to productivity and success, says Weiss, is not to change jobs, to compartmentalize our feelings, or to create a false ""professional"" identity—but rather to listen to the wisdom our feelings offer. Using mindfulness techniques, we can learn how to attend to difficult feelings without becoming subsumed by them; we can develop an awareness of our bigger picture goals that orients us and allows us to see purpose in even the most menial tasks. In How We Work, Weiss offers a set of practical, evidence-based strategies for practicing mindfulness in the real world, showing readers not just how to survive another day, but how to use ancient wisdom traditions to sharpen their abilities, enhance their leadership and interpersonal skills, and improve their satisfaction.

Is Caroline Slaughter a computer?

Book was interesting but I couldn't get over the inflection and tone of Caroline Slaughter. It is read in a very robotic way, I'm still not convinced it's not just a text to speech algorithm.

How We Work Doesn't Really Work

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

While some of the text waxes towards mindfulness, the need to incorporate mindfulness into work in particular sometimes tends to pigeon-hole the process and unnecessarily constrain her ideas making them seem a bit trivial. Weiss joins a growing group of authors, speakers and teachers who are trying to remind us that by re-infusing our lives with a sense of purpose and meaning, we will be better for it in every aspect of our lives. And collectively, that can make us better as a society.

Would you ever listen to anything by Leah Weiss again?

Yes. She is clearly a well-versed student of her discipline.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Caroline Slaughter?

I can't be too harsh on anyone who undertakes the demanding job of the narration of a book however, this narrator may have been better in a less scholarly setting than Weiss's book. She didn't seem to know the material well enough to impart the right tone oftentimes and the editor and producer who left the reference to a future page in the book "blank", should be reassigned.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Some very good viewpoints helped me want to continue to read the book, however in the end, I didn't finish it.