Mark: The most dangerous piece of career advice ever given? "Love what you do." Michelle: Whoa, that's a hot take to start with. That phrase is practically stitched onto every graduation cap and motivational poster in existence. You’re saying it’s… bad? Mark: It sounds inspiring, but today we’re exploring why that single phrase might be the root cause of modern burnout. It sets an impossible standard and gives companies a free pass to demand endless emotional labor. Michelle: Okay, I’m intrigued. Because the pressure to perform passion is exhausting. If you’re not blissfully happy, you feel like you’re failing. So what’s the alternative? Just… tolerate where you work? Mark: Something much better. We're diving into the book Love Where You Work by Bruce Daisley. And this isn't some armchair philosopher. Daisley was the European Vice-President for Twitter and held senior roles at Google and YouTube. He lived inside the very pressure-cooker culture he's now trying to help us fix. Michelle: Now that adds some serious weight. He’s seen the engine room of the modern work machine. So if 'loving your work' is the trap, what's the first step to getting out of it? It feels like my brain is just a puddle of fried mush by 3 PM every day. Mark: That's exactly where he starts. Not with grand cultural change, but with a personal rebellion. A rebellion against the constant noise that’s frying our brains.

Mark: Daisley uses a fantastic, and kind of tragic, story to illustrate what this pressure does to our creativity. He talks about the band The Strokes. Michelle: Oh, I love The Strokes! Their first album, 'Is This It,' felt like lightning in a bottle. So raw and effortless. Mark: Exactly. It was recorded in a dingy basement studio, low pressure, pure creativity. It became a massive global hit. But then came the second album, 'Room on Fire.' The expectation was immense—from the label, the fans, themselves. And what happened? Michelle: I remember the reviews were… not great. People said it sounded like they were just trying to remake the first album. It lacked the spark. Mark: Precisely. Under intense stress and pressure, their creativity didn't soar; it retreated. They fell back on what they already knew worked. They repeated the old tricks. The pressure to deliver squeezed the innovation right out of them. Michelle: Okay, so most of us aren't rock stars dealing with second-album syndrome, but that feeling of pressure to just repeat what works… I feel that. It's safer. When you’re overwhelmed, you don’t innovate, you just try to survive. You answer the emails, you do the report the same way you did it last time. Mark: You’re describing what Daisley calls the modern work crisis. He cites this incredible statistic that 60% of professionals are connected to work for 13.5 hours a day. That adds up to a 70-hour week of just… being available. Our brains never get a chance to switch off. Michelle: That’s not a workweek, that’s a surveillance state we’re imposing on ourselves. But what’s the actual harm? I mean, besides feeling frazzled. Mark: It’s physiological. He points to research where scientists measured cortisol—the stress hormone—in people who check email outside of work hours. Half of them showed chronically high stress levels. He compares the health toll of this constant stress to being exposed to secondhand smoke. It’s literally shortening our lives. Michelle: Wow. So our jobs are the new smoking. That’s a cheerful thought. So what’s this personal rebellion you mentioned? What’s the fix? Mark: It’s a collection of what he calls "Recharge" hacks. The most powerful one is adopting a "Monk Mode Morning." Michelle: A Monk Mode Morning? It sounds peaceful and completely unrealistic. What is it? Mark: It’s the simple idea of dedicating the first 90 minutes or two hours of your day to your most important, deep-focus task. No email. No Slack. No meetings. You put on your headphones, signal to everyone you are unavailable, and you do the work that actually matters. You build a fortress around your attention. Michelle: A fortress of solitude in the middle of a chaotic open-plan office. I love the idea, but let’s be real. My boss uses our team chat like a walkie-talkie. If I don't respond in five minutes, they think I’ve been abducted. Isn't this just advice for CEOs and freelancers? Mark: That's the most common pushback, and Daisley has a brilliant answer for it. He says you can’t do it alone. This isn't just about your personal discipline; it's about defining new team norms. Michelle: Ah, so you have to get your co-conspirators on board. Mark: Yes. You have a conversation as a team. You say, "Hey, we're all drowning in notifications. How about we agree that from 9 to 10:30 every morning is protected deep-work time? We can solve problems that come up after that." It’s about overthrowing what he calls the "evil mill owner who lives inside you"—that voice that says you have to be constantly visible and busy to be valuable. Michelle: The evil mill owner… I know that guy. He pays me in anxiety. So the rebellion isn't just turning off your phone; it's a coordinated, team-level ceasefire. Mark: Exactly. You reclaim your focus together. And that’s the perfect bridge, because Daisley argues this isn't just an individual fight. You can't find 'Monk Mode' if your team culture is fundamentally broken. The next step is to go beyond just recharging yourself and start engineering a team that actually has a 'Buzz'.

Michelle: Okay, 'Buzz.' That word gets thrown around a lot in corporate retreats. It usually means forced fun and trust falls. What does Daisley mean by it? Mark: He means something much more scientific. It’s the tangible energy you feel in a high-performing team. It's a mix of psychological safety and genuine human connection. And his point is that it’s not magic; it can be engineered with surprisingly small tweaks. Michelle: I’m listening. Give me an example. Mark: The simplest, almost comically simple one, is: move the coffee machine. Michelle: Hold on. You're telling me the secret to a high-performing, energized team is… appliance placement? That sounds like something from a bad self-help book. Mark: I know how it sounds! But he tells these stories of companies where different departments never talked to each other. The engineers sat on one side, sales on the other. They were siloed. By moving the single coffee machine and water cooler to a central point, right in between them, they forced these informal, unplanned collisions. Michelle: The water cooler effect. Mark: Precisely. Those little five-minute chats while you're waiting for the espresso machine are where trust is built. It’s where a salesperson might casually mention a problem a client is having, and an engineer overhears and says, "Oh, I have an idea for that." It’s about creating the architecture for serendipity. Michelle: I guess that makes sense. You can't schedule those moments. You have to create the conditions for them. But it still feels a little… soft. Does he have a more hardcore example? Mark: He does, and it's one of my favorite business stories of all time. It comes from the Toyota car factories. They invented something called the "Andon Cord." Michelle: An Andon Cord? What’s that? Mark: It’s a physical rope that runs above the entire assembly line. Any single worker, at any level, who spots a problem—a misaligned bolt, a scratch in the paint, anything—is not just allowed, but required to pull that cord. Michelle: And what happens when they pull it? Mark: The entire, multi-million-dollar production line grinds to a halt. A light flashes, a manager comes running—not to blame the worker, but to ask, "What did you see? How can we fix this, right now?" Michelle: Wow. That’s an incredible amount of trust and power to give to every single employee. The cost of stopping the line must be huge. Mark: It is, but the cost of letting a defect continue down the line is even bigger. What the Andon Cord did was create ultimate psychological safety. It sent a clear message: we value identifying problems more than we fear stopping production. We are focusing on the issue, not the person. It’s safe to raise your hand and say, "Something is wrong here." Michelle: And that’s the core of psychological safety. The belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. The Andon Cord is just a physical manifestation of that culture. Mark: Exactly. And it connects directly to one of Daisley's "Buzz" hacks: "Admit When You've Messed Up." When a leader openly says, "I was wrong about that decision," or "I don't know the answer," they are pulling a metaphorical Andon Cord. They are making it safe for everyone else to be human, to be imperfect, and to be honest. Michelle: So whether it's moving a coffee machine to spark conversation or installing a cord to stop a factory, the principle is the same. You're intentionally designing an environment where people feel safe enough to connect and contribute authentically. Mark: You’ve got it. You're engineering the 'Buzz.'

Mark: And that brings us to the most powerful story in the whole book, which for me, ties everything together. It’s from Daisley's time at Twitter UK, and it’s about a colleague named Lucy. Michelle: Okay. Mark: Lucy was a beloved marketing manager. One day, she called in sick, and the team later learned she had been diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. The team was devastated and wanted to show their support, but she was in a hospice with strict rules. They couldn't send flowers or visit in a large group. Michelle: That’s a heartbreaking situation. Feeling helpless when someone you care about is suffering. Mark: Completely. Then one colleague, Lyndsay, had an idea. She said, "Let's knit her a blanket." Most of the team, including the men, had no idea how to knit. So they arranged for lessons. For days, the office was filled with people—engineers, salespeople, executives—awkwardly learning to knit, stitching their individual squares together. Michelle: That’s an incredible image. A tech office full of people knitting. Mark: They raced against time, finished this huge, multi-colored blanket, and couriered it to the hospice. That night, Lucy sent a tweet. It was a picture of her, cozy under the blanket, and the message said: "Keeping cosy with my @TwitterUK @Twitter blanket," followed by two hashtags: #Family and #LoveWhereYouWork. Michelle: Wow. That gives me chills. Mark: That hashtag, #LoveWhereYouWork, started by a dying colleague feeling the love of her team, became an internal movement at Twitter. It became a symbol of the culture they were trying to build. Michelle: That’s… profound. So it's not about being forced to 'love your work' from the top down, like some corporate mandate. It's about creating the conditions—the monk mode for focus, the psychological safety of the Andon Cord, the simple human connection of knitting a blanket—where that feeling can actually emerge organically from the bottom up. Mark: Exactly. The book's argument is that joy at work isn't a lottery ticket you might win if you're lucky. It's a series of small, deliberate, evidence-based choices we make for ourselves and, more importantly, for our teams. It's about building a workplace that is fundamentally more human. Michelle: So for anyone listening who feels stuck in that burnout cycle, maybe the first step isn't to quit your job or find your one true passion. It's just to pick one small thing from this. Mark: One small thing. Michelle: Don't try to fix everything. Just turn off your email notifications after 6 PM tonight. Or suggest a walking meeting tomorrow instead of sitting in a stuffy conference room. Or maybe just bring in some donuts and don't talk about work. Mark: That's the perfect takeaway. Start small. Start with one thing that makes your day, or someone else's day, a little bit better. We'd love to hear what small hacks you've tried in your own workplaces. Let us know what works, what doesn't, and what you're fighting for. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.