by Emilie West

Created on: November 15, 2009

Sometimes, it's certainly true that a happy person is more productive. Happy thoughts can work as a motivator, worries can keep the mind from usefulness completely. But taking myself as an example at this very moment, my happy thoughts are making me extremely unproductive. How do I know this? Simple; I am supposed to be studying really hard right now.

Last Friday, I went to a rock concert in my home-town. It was one of those crazy concerts, where everyone was out-of-their-minds happy and excited and going crazy for the music. I had the time of my life. Yesterday, I decided it was time to start studying for an important Spanish test, but I couldn't help but turn on the music again. And I was more distracted than ever. Not necessarily because of the music, but because of the fact that I was so much filled with happiness from the previous Friday, my mind wouldn't think about anything else. Trying to cram about 400 words in to that isolated mind was a lost cause.

My point is made on the bad choice of words in this issue. Would the title have read 'Happy people are MORE productive people', I would absolutely have agreed. An unhappy person, or rather a 'worried' person, has more trouble focusing. And concentration is easier to attain when you're feeling upbeat and carefree. But to say that a happy person IS a productive person, makes for the assumption that all happy people are productive and all productive people are happy, neither of which is true.

The example for the first fault I have already given. I could be very productive right now, but I'm not, because my mind won't allow my almost euphoric thoughts to be pushed aside, making room for the spanish language and the eight different types of past-tenses it contains.

As far as productive people go; how many times have you heard someone complain about all the work they have to do? Exclaim unhappiness, for no other reason than needing to be productive? Being productive, or in other words working hard, can often be the cause of annoyance and tiredness. Having a lot of work to do is, for many people, not a pleasant prospect.

Happy people are people whose works pays off in the end, not meaning that the work itself was a source of joy. Happy people are productive when the work itself is what they're so happy about. And whether someone is really happy, or really angry, or really sad, doesn't influence productivity in any other way than distraction, because any strong emotion in any state of mind keeps people from being productive and me from knowing about the Preterito Perfecto y Indefinido

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