Why office schmoozing is essential, how we ended up with terrible office plans, and more trending stories

What’s happening in the world of work: The Saturday edition of the Daily Rundown highlights the business trends, perspectives, and hot topics you need to know to work smarter. Read on and join the conversation.

We’re thinking about productivity all wrong. Being a busy bee means nothing if you aren’t helping the rest of the hive, writes Humanyze CEO Ben Waber. As work gets increasingly complex and collaborative, with projects sometimes involving hundreds or even thousands of workers, individual efforts come second to group success. So instead of going off on your own, reach out to colleagues for help and offer the same to others, Waber advises. Consulting with such informal experts around the water cooler can save a team some 265 hours of work every month. ? Share your thoughts: #ProductivityDownside

Why you should make work friends: Only 30% of employees said they had a close friend at the office in 2004, down from about half in 1985, amid increased stress and a rise in remote working arrangements. A recent piece in the Harvard Business Review says fostering compassion at the office can help counter the trend: This begins by making an effort to notice how others are feeling and reaching out to those who may need help or just a friendly ear. “If people feel like they belong and genuinely care about one another, they will be more creative, resilient, and eager to contribute at work,” say the article’s authors. ? Share your thoughts: #WorkplaceBonds

Hot Topic: Office Space

The average American worker will spend 90,000 hours at work in his or her lifetime — which means, for many of us, the office is our home away from home. Here’s how people are thinking about its past, present, and future. ? Join the conversation: #ChangingOffices

• Open-plan offices are all the rage, but the original concept is old – really old. And many of today’s manifestations are just sad, poorly designed copies of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision, argues Vox.
• Corporations are waking up to the fact that drab rows of desks are not working. So they’re designing flexible spaces that aim to evoke pleasant coffee shops, not 1960s typing pools.
• Your next office could feel like a spaceship. Engineers and architects have begun to employ a multitude of sensors to identify the relationship between air quality, temperature, and light and productivity, all to inform office space design.

Too many rules can be a downer at work. Recent studies suggest workers cooperate more, generate more ideas, and spend more time on tasks when their employment contracts are less specific. Increased autonomy allows workers to be more creative and motivated. This isn’t to say structure is inherently bad; the trick is to lay out what needs to be accomplished while giving employees some wiggle room. Put another way: You don’t need to specify the number of chocolate chips to put in the cookie, you just need to emphasize that they should be delicious.? Share your thoughts:  #RulesMotivation

Diverse hiring (and its benefits) goes deeper than you think. More companies are recruiting candidates on the autism spectrum, a population that has faced significant hurdles in traditional work environments and suffered high unemployment rates. Businesses are increasingly recognizing the benefits of neurodiversity — the idea that people with different neurological profiles will approach problems in different ways, reports The Guardian. And organizations like Procter & Gamble, SAP, EY, and even the Israeli army have begun to seek out candidates with autism because of their unique skills. ? Share your thoughts:  #Neurodiversity

One last idea: One reason humans are so creative? Our brains are lazy — and bored. They “seek a balance between exploiting the knowledge we’ve earned and exploring new surprises,” explain authors David Eagleman and author Anthony Brandt. Brains expend less energy when things become predictable, but they also crave the unfamiliar.  ? Share your thoughts: #LazyBrains

“We live in a constant tug-of-war between routine and novelty. Creativity lies within that tension.”

What's your take? Join the conversation on today’s stories: #ProductivityDownside | #WorkplaceBonds | #ChangingOffices | #RulesMotivation | #Neurodiversity | #LazyBrains

Katie Carroll — / Share this using #DailyRundown