Just read this article over at men.style.com and partially agree to it,

although it is a “style” website, and the article is a bit one sided, it does bring up a good question related to the psychology of the modern white collar

Why do people boast about how hard they work, how tired they are, how many hours overtime they did last night, how they came in on the weekend to work..??

Why do they have to make sure they let EVERYONE know how tired they are?

Are these people scared to lose their job?

Do they think this is some kind of status symbol?

Im sure there was a time, where people just pretended to be good, rather than whining..

“It’s the first thing that comes out of someone’s mouth when you ask them how they’re doing,” says Matthew Moss, 34, a creative director at a marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. “‘Oh, I’m exhausted.‘ The first thing you think is ‘Oh, this guy is tired, which means he’s probably been working really hard.’ Or ‘They’re full of shit.’”

“People use tiredness as a proxy for effort,” says Steve Gravenkemper, an organizational psychologist at Plante & Moran, a consulting and accounting firm based in Detroit. “They say, ‘Gee, I tried real hard even though I didn’t get the result, and you can see that by my exhaustion.’”

Im guilty of doing this myself occasionally, but i can see that no one thinks better of you if you complain how busy or tired you are..

Just try to be happy as much as you can

Smoking is a very social activity, people pick up smoking from their friends, they use it as an excuse to socialise at work.. And quiting smoking will depend largely on people around you quitting aswell..

A study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that online social networks can play a prominent part in people quitting smoking. A person’s desicion to quit is affected by people in their social network and even people they do not know.

Sucessfulness of quitting smoking is often deterimed by social pressures, people tend to quit smoking in groups.

If a spouse quit smoking, the other spouse was 67% less likely to smoke.

If a friend quit, a person was 36% less likely to still light up.

Siblings who quit made it 25% less likely that their brothers and sisters would still smoke.

Co workers were also quite influential especially if the individual works at a small firm.

But people were influenced even when individuals saw other people they don’t even know were quitting, This is were social networks come in..

People who are trying to quit smoking should try to socialise with others who are quitting smoking, and social networks can be an platform for this. Facebook Groups, Forums etc..

UPDATE:

WOMMA Word Blog Covers how social networks change smoking behaviour aswell.

Here are the interesting parts:

* Over the course of 30 years, the number of smokers in the network dropped from 45% to 21%
* Closer relationships (family, co-workers in small companies, etc..) had more influence and impact
* Yet a single person’s quitting seemed to have an effect at least through 3 degrees of separation

Using Social Networks for Social Marketing

The implications of the study on social marketers’ use of social media and social networks is great. Can behavior change experts embrace the use of new digital networks to accelerate the spread of social norms and word of mouth? They will need to let go of some control – a lot of control – to do so but we may just find a way to produce behavior change in something under thirty years.

The report confirms the usefulness of engaging influential groups within a network:

“Moreover, medical and public health interventions to encourage people to quit smoking might be more cost-effective than initially supposed, since health improvements in one person might spread to others. Finally, the isolation of smokers within social networks suggests that blanket policy approaches (e.g., advertising and taxation) may be usefully supplemented by interventions targeting small groups.”