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Sound and memory and broader social understanding are sacrificed in favor of heightened awareness of the threat directly in front of us.

The best bosses succeed because they keep chipping away at a huge pile of dull, interesting, fun, rewarding, trivial, frustrating, and often ridiculous chores.

…even the nicest bosses unwittingly reward followers who shield them from bad news.

Unfortunately, many bosses who pay lip service to cooperation unwittingly implement reward systems that stomp it out.

…as a boss, you can earn credibility with your people by demonstrating that you will go to war for them every now and then – even over fairly trivial things.

…a hallmark of poor performance is a lack of self-awareness; [bad bosses] consistently overestimate their skills in just about any task that requires intellectual and social skills…

…three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward, are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

…there are many ways to be happy, but we cannot find happiness. No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness – by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.

Whether it’s money, grades, promotions, popularity, attention, or just plain material things we want, scientists agree: seeking out external rewards is a sure path to sabotaging our own happiness.

As long as we are regularly immersed in self-rewarding hard work, we will be happy more often than not – no matter what else is going on in our lives.