MTTR ARCHITEKTEN+ STADTPLANER

Titel The Healthy Office

Publisher Messe Frankfurt Exhibition GmbH

Paperworld, Ludwig-Erhard-Anlage 1, 60327 Frankfurt am Main

Concept André Schmidt, MATTER Büro für Architektur und Städtebau

Design Luciana Siggel

Editorial/Text Ludwig Engel, André Schmidt

Interview Ludwig Engel, Interview mit Mazda Adli

Translation Alan Connor

Print Messe Frankfurt Medien und Service GmbH

What makes a good office? And what about a healthy workplace? Sometimes it helps to examine the opposite to find the answers to such questions. So what makes a bad office? Is it the overflowing desk, where you sit on an old office chair for far too long? Is it the bad air and the too low lighting that make you tired, despite gallons of coffee? Is it all your colleagues on the phone permanently causing you to lose concentration, or the feeling that the work is meaningless anyway, which is why you've already mentally resigned? There are a multitude of reasons that make us stressed, suffer psychologically, or cause head or back ache. One way or another, this leads to a decline in our productivity and a diminished sense of well-being. In the worst case, it even makes us ill. To prevent this happening, we present the most important aspects below, and provide food for thought on how to improve our personal office world.

The good, the Bad + the Healthy

We’re all familiar with work-related sayings like "The impossible gets done at once, but miracles take a little longer!" There are countless other examples. Some say their boss has it in for them, or complain about their workload and the tasks they are given, others whinge about their colleagues.

At the heart of all of this is the stress which comes from being under or over-challenged at work, from hierarchical structures, from how work is organised, and how teams work with or against each other. If this stress is perceived as negative, it can make you ill. This in turn leads to burnout and depression.

However, stress is not the only factor that can make us sick at work. This emerged during the course of our preliminary considerations for the design of the special exhibition "The Healthy Office", at the Paperworld trade fair. We first asked ourselves what actually makes us sick. After extensive research, we identified areas that could either contribute to a healthy or a poor office climate. In addition, these six areas: "office space", "furniture", "nutrition", "work methods", "colleagues and tasks" and the "work per se", can be characterised as "soft" or "hard".

Soft factors include work methods, colleagues, employee and hierarchical structures as well as the actual tasks one is responsible for. The hard factors include the office space itself and how it is furnished in both the narrow and broad sense, as well as the nutritional options available for employees. An appreciation of these hard and soft factors, and the six areas outlined above, can lead to the design of new office landscapes or the targeted improvement of existing ones.

On the subject of office space, for example, the aspects essential for establishing a good working environment are room acoustics, air quality, lighting and/or natural lighting as well as the use of plants. The clever division of space to deal with the work which requires either concentration or communication is also essential.

What began in the office landscapes planned by the Quickborner team in the 1960s and continues in today's open-plan or cubicle offices requires thorough planning. Today, it is a matter of skilfully merging the advantages of individual and open-plan offices. The goal is to create individual zones instead of one large space. By creating a range of workplaces of differing qualities such as informal meeting areas, acoustically-protected telephone cells, meeting lounges, reading zones and team kitchens, employees can select the workplace most suited to their current task. Ideally, they would change their workplace several times a day.

This would mean the employee avoids permanently sitting at the same place. Although pure standing workplaces also have drawbacks, they do make it easier to get up and approach colleagues to discuss something or go to another office area. This is not done so readily from a seated workplace. That’s why it is important to create as many inducements as possible to ensure sitting doesn’t become too convenient an option.

This leads us to the second area, office furnishing. Ergonomic design is a factor which almost all major office furniture manufacturers incorporate into their products. That is borne out by the fact that many of them produce seating which either positions the body correctly or incorporates specific instability into seats to force the user to sit actively. Since the advantages of working standing up have been accepted, the choice of tables ranging from simple, mechanically-adjustable models to electrically-controllable models that can store individual height profiles has increased. In addition to classical office furniture, alternative seating and standing opportunities are increasingly being introduced to modern offices. This development supports the concept of zoning, which is based on the premise that furnishings in the office should be sufficiently varied.

In the broadest sense, the keyboard, mouse and screen are also part of the office furnishing. A lot of technical advancements have been made here. One example is the use of meeting room walls with interactive projection surfaces. The coupling of digital input with direct projection is leading to a more progressive and seamless fusion of the real, haptic world and the digital interface. The use of digital pens shows that this development is already underway.

Far removed from the digital world, the office plant is also undergoing something of a revival. An increasing number of offices are taking on jungle-like qualities, thus improving the room climate, albeit slightly, and creating a soothing optical oasis for stressed screen eyes.

Diet is a third important factor which contributes to the healthy office. Endless cups of coffee with cream and sweetened soft drinks often accompany the office workday. In a clichéd world, these coffees are then replaced by wine and beer on Friday evenings. Poor eating habits also play a role. The right diet can have an effective and positive effect on your wellbeing. Those who arrive at the office after a balanced breakfast, largely forgo coffee and sugar, and eat a light lunch remain fitter and more alert for longer.

To do this, however, people have to change their routines, which can be very difficult. Transforming the office kitchen, which was always a place for socialising, can support this change. The kitchen is a perfect space for communicating and for ad-hoc meetings.

In addition, office food stations offering fruit, healthy snacks and water, should ideally be close to workplaces. These stations should also be seen as temporary and informal meeting points, which in turn are part of the zone concept. They should fulfil several functions simultaneously to make their usage as flexible as possible and increase acceptance. In addition to the three "hard" - in the sense of physical – factors, which contribute to healthy work, it is necessary to look carefully at the "soft" - in this case, psychological – factors, i.e. those involving people and mindset. These are the things that "stress" us, and can lead to a whole range of physical problems. This applies particularly to how the company or the office is organised. Working hours, the home office, team size, decision transparency, employee participation, workload, being overworked or underworked, and personal work discipline – these are all potential stress factors.

This results in a broad scope for training staff and managers with a view to improving their own work and team organisation, but also with a view to promoting communication among the employees. Transparent decision-making and the feeling of being involved are of great importance for the well-being of the team. In addition to clear direct or written communication, the use of wall surfaces for project presentations and flexible workplace design also enables teams to communicate informally.

Additional stress factors can also emerge in the team itself if the chemistry between colleagues or between boss and co-workers is not right. The popular saying that "people leave managers, not companies" speaks volumes. Studies show how one single person can trigger stress in the workplace. It is therefore not surprising that, in many cases, managers with particular leadership qualities who have either low or high staff sickness rates in one job will have the same rates when they lead a new and different team.

Team-building measures and coaching courses for managers help prevent this. They should be combined with a rethink of hierarchical structures. It is also important to allow people to make mistakes and learn to express appreciation. This applies to both superiors and team members. A casual get-together on Friday afternoons also improves the climate, as does a team dinner or an office trip. This allows colleagues to get to know each other better on a personal level, which in turn helps to reduce conflict. The office ping-pong table, almost a cliché now, not only helps prevent mouse arm, but also brings people together in a relaxed fashion.

Even if all of these aspects are taken into consideration and appropriate steps are taken to create a good working atmosphere, they become irrelevant if one important factor is absent: a love for work, the actual task, the calling, as it were. If the soft factors are not taken seriously and personal drive is missing, inner resignation soon follows.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. Employees can be motivated through training. If their individual career goals are supported, it is easy to dismantle negative work practices and develop new perspectives. When work is fun again, shortcomings are perceived as less of a burden, and stress may even be considered a positive thing. Interpersonal relationships are approached in a more collegial and less serious and dogged manner. This is noticeable when people smile or even laugh in the office. The health value of a happy and relaxed working atmosphere should not, therefore, be underestimated.

1 Zone in / zone out
For his "Nationalgalerie" exhibition, artist Thomas Demand divided up the great glass hall of the new national gallery in Berlin with dark, heavy velvet curtains, thus creating an intimacy and a sense of security in this otherwise exposed urban space that lent each of his exhibited photographic works an aura and reverence that was hardly imaginable in the exhibition hall. The architect Arno Brandlhuber also used curtains to divide the large areas of his "Antivilla" into smaller climate zones according to season and weather. Although the curtains weren't able to create an acoustic barrier in either case, let alone a wall-like structure, they function in both cases as visual and therefore also mental barriers, which create zones of privacy in highly public spaces. Modern offices, with their transparency, their spacious rooms and glass façades, are places that today hardly allow any moments of privacy. But here, as in open-plan offices too, it is worth experimenting with curtains. For a short time at least, it is possible to create airy meeting rooms with just a few simple steps. When you need to concentrate, you can briefly retreat into a temporary private office, yet still stay in touch with colleagues. The best of both worlds. Thanks to curtains.

2 Chill out
In recent years, there has been a marked increase of business people in planes and trains wearing large headphones, which were previously more common among teenagers listening to hip hop. These business travellers look comical, staring at their computers in their suits - and even more amusing if you imagine a gangsta rap track bellowing into their ears. But in truth, these oversized Mickey Mouse ears more resemble the neon yellow hearing protection that construction workers put on when operating a jackhammer: since the likelihood that their travelling companions are noise cancelling headphones is pretty high. These headsets have microphones on the outside, which pick up the ambient noise level and transmit the measured sound signal to the headphones - but with a wave that is exactly the opposite phasing of the ambient sound, thus cancelling out both noises (noise outside / counter-signal inside). This creates silence in the phones, which can be filled with music but doesn't have to be. Anyone used to travelling with such headphones finds it hard to enter an aircraft or a train without them again. Because it is particularly the lower frequencies generated by airplane motors and railway tracks that disappear almost completely. Unfortunately, their impact in everyday office life is less spectacular: Noise emanating from colleagues is certainly muffled, but current noise cancelling technology is not able to transform higher-frequency sound waves into complete silence. So in the office, rather than new tech, the old-school solution still applies: Simply turn up the hip hop really loud.

3 LUXury

As soon as summer ends and we have to turn back first our timepieces, and then our inner clock, we become painfully aware of our own biorhythm again: Getting up is a torture, our body and the environment are no longer in tune with each other. Like with minor jetlag, most of us manage to adapt relatively quickly every year. There are some exceptions, though. People who organise their everyday life completely in accordance with their time-displaced circadian rhythm - sleeping longer doesn't mean working less in this case, but working night shifts voluntarily without getting tired. For the normal person, however, the daily routine, and with it the daylight temperature, is coupled with physical reactions. Correspondingly, melatonin secretion stops in the morning, alertness increases in the course of the morning, and the best cardiovascular efficiency is reached late in the afternoon. This rhythm is increasingly disturbed by ever-constant screen light, which leads to physical problems. Help is at hand meanwhile with smart lighting fixtures or apps for computers and mobile phones - or at least with our device's dead battery, which for once mean our screen falls asleep before we do.

4 Biotopia
Now that the city slickers have turned every inch of free space into elevated flower beds and spend the weekends on their farm estates in the surrounding countryside indulging their newly discovered "land lust", they are now cultivating their green fingers in their offices as well: If you surf a bit on lifestyle blogs, Instagram and Pinterest, you'll see that hip urbanites are increasingly transforming their working environments into botanical gardens. While it was sufficient in the past for agencies, creative firms and consultancies to place a few strategically placed indoor plants and cactuses on their sideboards, desks and kitchen counters, these days no trendy company or lifestyle shop can get by without at least a fully-fledged green wall and a mini cultivated jungle of ferns, rubber plants and dwarf palms. It might be questionable if the workers in these stylish offices are as dedicated to the long-term care of the plants as they are to posting their green co-workers on social media, but: As well as the aesthetic component, the indoor climate certainly undergoes a health-relevant update.

5 New perspectives

When we close the numerous windows on our screens, some computers reveal a distant view: Until recently on a Microsoft PC, it was a gently sloping hilly landscape, on a Mac, we can marvel at the ridges of the Lone Pine Peak. While the windows on the screen can also be understood as a proverbial window into the digital world, the preinstalled background images once again took the place of the real view from the office window. Maybe because only a dreary, grey urban backdrop awaits us there. The choice of natural images as a place for our eyes to rest and recover by switching from near to distant vision is no coincidence. Letting your eyes and thoughts wander while looking out the window of a train or plane is a form of concentration that works just as well when looking out the office window. Researchers from the University of Melbourne claim to have proven that just looking at a natural environment for 40 seconds is enough to jump-start the brain again. However, for the regenerative value of the view to be effective, it must be into the greenery and not a concrete jungle.

6 Office Rodeo
Office chairs are really not renowned for their good looks. See for yourself and put an office chair in your living room. No matter how expensive and elaborately designed it may be, there is no item of furniture in the office world that looks so out of place in any other setting as this ergonomically shaped fabric cover on wheels. But the office chair can become a source of endless fun in its natural habitat when it is transformed into a highly diverse toy for games with colleagues that help to shorten a long working day. It is, for example, an excellent means of crossing the entire office floor without putting a foot on the ground, ideally suited for racing through corridors, and perfect for those wishing to relive their youth in Oxford or Cambridge by traversing the office landscape in a rowing boat (four-man boat with helmsman).

7 Get up, stand up

Today's office employee stands while working. Or rather: Thanks to a height-adjustable desk, he or she at least has the option to work standing up. And yes, there is a lot to be said for not working in a sitting position, as you can read in the book "Sitting is the new smoking" by physiotherapist Dr Kelly Starrett: You move more, shift your weight from one leg to the other which in turn benefits the spine, are more likely to walk about, and it encourages you to interrupt long spells of immobility staring at the monitor more often to grab a coffee or visit your colleagues... in theory. Because in actual office practice these over-motorized height-adjustable table machines are hardly distinguishable from their immovable predecessors: They remain at sitting height despite their mobile capabilities - just like their modern owners. "Standing is simply not a credible working posture and is much too strenuous." And that's pretty much what the modern office worker thinks in the bar in the evening - where smoking has also already been banned for some time - while leaning against the bar and taking a moment to relieve the back after a tiring day at the office.

8 Swipe and swoosh
It took a lot of convincing by the inventors of the computer before we accepted the concept of staring at a monitor and controlling the activities there with a mouse and keyboard - two completely unnatural and non-ergonomic motion sequences. How did they persuade us? By transferring everyday logic into so-called human-machine interaction. Without the analogies of sending letters and surfing, we would have long ago turned our back on the controls in disappointment, but with these mental images we accepted this new way of accessing the world. To this day, however, the trinity of screen, mouse and keyboard has remained alien to us. Silicon Valley is working flat out on its abolition. We can hardly wait to at last be able to control our world with natural gestures. But one question remains: What can we consider natural today? When we watch a toddler trying desperately to change the TV channel by swiping or touching the screen, who can say anymore...

9 An apple a day

Blueberries, green cabbage, quinoa, goji berries, cocoa, chia seeds - we know all of them as 'superfoods'. There is no doubt that these foods are healthy, but not necessarily as good as the name suggests. This is an attempt by the food industry to circumvent the EU health claims directive, which forbids making baseless promises about health benefits. The term "super", namely, implies a general superiority without making a concrete statement about how it comes about. So it is no surprise that, in a comparison with these so-called superfruits, the good old apple is left on the shelf - even though it contains pectin, which reduces blood pressure and glucose levels, or boron, which is good for bones and the brain. At the same time, it also cleans the teeth while being eaten and kills bacteria in the mouth. What's more, an apple contains few calories and sodium, is rich in fibre and vitamin C, and retains its nutrients for a very long time - up to 200 days. The apple should, therefore, definitely have a place in your office fruit bowl - along with other fruits, of course, because the most important thing is a well-balanced diet.

10 Filling station

That odd gurgling sound, washing across the office from somewhere in a distant corridor, has almost completely disappeared. And with it, its cause, too - the water dispenser. This fixture was not so much appreciated in the traditional office environment for the (sometimes dubious) quality of its product as for its social component - so much so that an informal exchange between colleagues at the dispenser became known as a "water cooler talk" in everyday office parlance. But then the age of branded water dawned and refrigerators in modern offices were stocked with water bottles: First "Evian", then "Fiji" or "Voss" and countless other brands drove up prices to unimagined heights and established water drinking as a lifestyle decision. In the meantime, the hype around water has died down a little again, and even in the coolest offices, down-to-earth Brita water filter systems, which remove some of the limestone in tap water but are otherwise completely lacking in excitement, are making a comeback. However, the next trend already has a foot in the (office) door: Leogant, a Berlin-based company, has dedicated itself to the task of transforming conventional tap water into refreshing spring water with ingenious filtering processes because, as they write on their website, "clean water is not healthy water by a long stretch". So get used to the thought that in the near future you and your colleagues will gather around the sink in the kitchen to partake in "Water Cooler Talk 2.0" with a glass of fresh spring water.

11 Snack attack

A snack is as dangerous a between-meals morsel as it is popular. Dangerous, because the snack suggests that it can be simply enjoyed without costing any time, which is just why it is so popular - especially in stressful everyday office life where the lunch break is the first thing to be sacrificed when all hell breaks loose. The history of snacks reads like the success story of an underdog: The first of their kind - peanuts, pretzel nibbles, popcorn - were frowned upon by the middle class in the US in the late 19^th century because of their unhygienic production and street sale, and were considered "food for riffraff ". But by the economic miracle years of the 1950s at the latest, the middle classes could no longer escape the attraction of the in-between meals, and rewarded themselves for every hour spent watching TV with popcorn, crisps and all kinds of other treats. The working world also reacted long ago: From the snack box to the fruit bowl, the afternoon urge for an intermediate meal is satisfied in many offices with small offerings. And one thing is as valid today as ever: The more sugary and unhealthy, the more popular, because even though healthy snacks such as nuts and fruit provide a longer lasting increase in concentration, it is still the chocolate bar that sweetens the afternoon.

11 To do or not to do
How nice it was in the past when you took a freshly sharpened pencil, hardness grade HB, and crossed out the corresponding item from your handwritten task list once it had been completed. Even in its crossed-out state, the work remained visible as a witness of the accomplished task and was therefore a constant source of satisfaction - long after its completion! In an age of digital to-do lists, available in myriad varieties in app stores, completed tasks simply evaporate for eternity into an online nirvana. And even if the programmer decided not to rob us of the feeling of having achieved something and kept the crossed-out tasks in view, the probability of their disappearing in one of the numerous parallel to-do lists we maintain is still very high. Or it leads a lonely existence there together with other tasks that will likely never be completed. Ever more and ever longer lists - ideally synchronized and shared with others - are increasingly defeating the very purpose of their existence. Therefore, all that really remains is returning to the simple, handwritten list, valid for one day only. Because what you don't get done is still there to greet you the very next day as a reminder, instead of disappearing unobtrusively in the countless other digital (never-) to-do lists.

12 Take a deep breath!
"Stop! First take a deep breath..." Whenever we hear these words, we can be sure that something is not going at all as it should. The stress of the situation is directly tangible and the tenseness makes us want to hold our breath. The interesting part here is not so much the cause or the possible consequences, but the recommendation to control our breathing in order to once again become master - or mistress - of the situation. Because breathing deeply is the exact opposite of the rapid shallow breathing that we know in stress conditions or panic situations. The principle of cause and effect is reversed here. It isn't the stress causing the rapid breathing, but the other way around. That's also why it is possible to counteract the body's stress in a targeted way by inhaling and exhaling deeply. This is also why, with yoga, the right breathing technique is a central part of every exercise. And also why regular meditation can contribute to improved concentration. However, deep breathing in itself is already enough to work more efficiently and maintain your inner calm.

13 Buffering

Our contemporary life is being measured by a new form of timer: The buffering icon – the colourful wheel that always starts turning when alleged loading processes prevent playback of the current digital content. The loading icon is meant to relax us, give us the opportunity to lean back and experience a moment of passivity while our attention remains fixated on the small rotating wheel, unable to stray elsewhere. Instead, however, the little wheel has mutated from an office hypnotist to a scaremonger. Oh, no! Have I saved my work? Is it even progressing? Is a meltdown approaching? A system crash? But in truth we should be grateful for these little moments and allow ourselves to be swept away by the certainty that, somewhere out there fully isolated from us in the sea of time, something is happening that grants us a momentary breather. Buffering is life quality! The next time we are forced to wait, we should see it as an opportunity for a mini meditation and sit back and relax. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in...

14 Fail better
Writer Samuel Beckett is often quoted with the aphorism: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." This "fail better" might also describe the credo of today's US-inspired start-up culture, which now sets up incubators in big cities all over the world to try out one idea after another in pursuit of the "unicorn" - the one big idea like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat - and then to drop it. In the meantime, there are so many failed young entrepreneurs that a company has been founded to offer them a platform: The fast-growing "Fuck-up Nights" organizes evenings throughout the world where nothing but failures are presented - entertainingly and loudly accompanied by a whooping crowd. Maybe it would also be a good idea for a company's internal team-building measures. Instead of reporting on their successes to each other, reward those with a pat on the back that can present their own failure most impressively. Then they can also learn to "fail better" in passing.

15 Well done!

Much has already been written about the so-called Millennials' idiosyncrasies and, in particular, about their idea of the ideal office: More meaningful work is necessary, as is a good work-life balance and, of course, a flat hierarchy: If there has to be one at all, then certainly not the traditional model. But whether it's flat or not, if leadership is perceived as an activity and not just a rank, an important fundamental step has already been taken - away from hierarchical thinking, which directly connects rank and leadership and only too often lacks leadership skills. And it is precisely these that are still very much in demand. Flat hierarchies are popular precisely because these structures require excellent leaders. Leadership demands total commitment, passion, focus and skill. If the latter is missing, it isn't easy to hide the fact behind a title. Setting a good example, not considering certain tasks to be beneath one, knowing what to do and, above all, what will have to be done, as well as being able to explain all of this is what constitutes good leadership. This is the only way to gain respect, regardless of rank or title, millennial or not.

16 My desk is my castle

Density, crowdedness and lack of space stress us. We have an innate sensitivity in this respect. Animals that are packed together in a cramped space also suffer and show increased susceptibility to all kinds of illnesses as well as a higher mortality rate. This is well known in agriculture and livestock breeding. We humans are also characterised by our aversion to overly restrictive situations. In general, we feel happiest with an arm's length distance between us and our neighbour. Depending on our familiarity to a fellow human being, how formal the contact situation is, and also on our culture, we prefer different distances. The result of what happens when, in addition to the aspect of cultural acceptance, prevailing property prices affect the employee density in offices, can be experienced first-hand in offices in Hong Kong. Staff density there can be double or triple the accepted level in Europe. But no matter whether you are in an office in Hong Kong or New York, or in one of the newly popular co-working spaces in Berlin-Mitte, what counts at the end of the day are the possibilities you have to avoid too much proximity, like working from home, or in a meeting room and, of course, respectful relationships between colleagues. Mutual thoughtfulness can be the greatest reliever of stress!

17 Hang loose

A life without stress is not possible. It wouldn't be a good thing either, because it is stress that inspires us, impels us to try new things, and move forward. The same applies for stress at work: Intermittent stress that comes and goes is good for our productivity and creativity. It only becomes a problem when it creeps into our daily work routines and becomes a permanent fixture. Then it leads to stress-induced illnesses that can also be of a physical nature: Our energy metabolism, immune system and hormonal balance go haywire. Once we are caught up in this constant stress, even the car or train journey home from work can become a source of stress, the negative effects increase. How do we escape? The obvious but simple solution: With physical activity. If you jog or cycle regularly, you can often break out of the spiral of constant stress. At the same time it makes you happy, and the brain thanks you for the extra oxygen with ideas, memories of almost forgotten appointments, or the revival of unfinished trains of thought.

18 Sit and be fit

When the affluent population of the Federal Republic of Germany felt the full impact of the consequences of the economic miracle in the 1970s in the form of obesity and heart attacks, the "trimm-dich" (keep-fit) movement was launched. "Trimmy", the movement's mascot, advised slouchers to: Get moving again! Jogging trails with a variety of activities lining the path shot up like mushrooms to lure people off their sofas into the woods. A similar movement is currently looming in the modern office world. Office furniture manufacturers offer an ever-wider range of ergonomic chairs and tables to encourage increased movement among sedentary office workers. But you don't necessarily need the latest chair or standing desk to do something good for your body. Just like the instructions on how to avoid thrombosis on a long-distance flight, there are plenty of exercises that can easily be done in the smallest of spaces in any office environment. But just like jogging in the "trimm-dich" fitness tracks in the woods, you still have to overcome your "inner couch potato" and do the office exercises regularly. A simple app can also help in this respect - so no pleading tiredness as an excuse!

19 Employee of the month
McDonalds shows us how it's done: Here we see who is "Employee of the Month" directly when ordering our Happy Meals. Whether the commended employee is happy about it or not has a lot to do with how honest the award really is. Was it just a question of the time until it was his or her turn, or did he or she really do an excellent job? On top of the annual bonus and a pay rise, recognition at work is a major driving force for good performance. Everyone wants to be appreciated, and at work this depends on the quality of performance. If appreciation is lacking, disillusionment and inner resignation often follow, the worst-case scenario for any employer. This basic need doesn't stop short of management either - even if the media shower praise on managers, a lack of respect from professional colleagues can lead to signs of deficiency despite fame and wealth. This is known as "peer recognition", and really hits the mark. True appreciation for the essence of what one does, that's what most people seek. Nevertheless, a bit of praise between the major stage victories never harmed anyone.

20 Dream on!

Profession or vocation? What is the difference between a profession and work? Put simply, our profession is what we have learned or studied. The work itself, however, soon turns out to be the concrete daily activity in the office for which we are paid. This may match our profession, but it doesn't have to. It isn’t rare for the proportion of the work you are passionate about to sink to roughly a tenth, and for the rest of the time to be spent on admin and routine processes. This can soon lead to "boreout" syndrome: A state of being downright under-challenged at work, which so far has been discussed as a clinical disorder more in the media than in scientific circles. Boreout is characterized as the counterpart of burnout syndrome, which can lead to the burnout itself. It is important in this respect to develop a healthy attitude and not to perceive necessities as irksome, but as an elementary part of the whole system. It is also frequently a question of attitude and remaining open to learning new skills. Staying mentally flexible in such situations is an effective way to prevent boreout.