Sukha?  What is a Sukha!

Don't name your company that.

The SEO will suck(a).

Nobody knows what it means!  It's hard to spell!

The Sukha Company?  Do you think you're Jessica Alba with The Honest Company?

Great advice from one's friends, right? 

We'll come back to that.

This story begins in Bali. 

I got married in April 2023 and took a honeymoon 15 timezones away from my home in Austin, TX.  The distance gave me wonderful perspective from the day-to-day, and the relaxed schedule gave me the opportunity to casually talk with a bunch of our members about what they love about our platform...to learn with a beginner's mind what keeps them coming back month after month.

Listening to them refreshed my heart.

I went into these conversations thinking I would arrive at a clear sense of "the killer feature that everyone loves is..." but I did not.

What I learned was that the reason our members come back is not any one feature...it is how our platform makes them feel on a daily basis.  I was reminded of Kent C. Dodds' tweet (he mentions our previous name):

Many members talked about a "3pm Slump" the days they don't use our platform: a moment in the afternoon when their productivity and focus fall off a cliff and they bemoan "where did the day go?  I still have so much to do!"

I love that they said with our platform they look up at 3pm and are like, "wow - I feel on top of the world.  I feel accomplished."

In Sanskrit this feeling is "Sukha."  The happiness of self-fulfillment.  It's from "Su" = good + "Kha" = place.

So I bought Centered and renamed it "The Sukha (Happiness) Company" to keep this good place available for you.

So why is happiness so important?  Isn't everyone striving for productivity?

Well, research at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick supports that happiness correlates highly with efficiency, and may even be the necessary foundation for being highly productive.  A 2019 paper by Oxford University's Saïd Business School, in collaboration with British multinational telecoms firm BT, found this conclusive link between happiness and productivity.  And before you ask, yes, the researchers found that happy workers do not work more hours than their discontented colleagues – they are simply more productive within their time at work. (Oxford article; full Oxford abstract; supporting work at the University of Warwick)

In short: we are still going to support productivity...but never lose our focus on happiness and that great feeling when you're working and you're "in the Zone." 

With Michael Cash, my new co-founder whom many of you know as the brilliant mind of our Customer Success and Operations, we intend to double down on building out more supportive communities and engaged Coaches. 

Feeling the support of others on the daily is a major stress reducer.  Because you're correct if you're thinking: "if happiness is affects productivity, does stress affect productivity in the opposite direction?"

Yep.

There are a host of studies that find a negative correlation between overall stress and productivity – higher stress scores are significantly associated with lower productivity scores.  The National Library of Medicine provides a 2021 study in conjunction with the Kansas Journal of Medicine on “Workplace Stress and Productivity.”  The results of this study clearly suggested that employer efforts to decrease employee stress in the workplace increases employee productivity. (source)

And the friendships in the daily coworking communities on The Sukha are huge drivers of happiness and reducers of stress.

We love seeing chat messages between Coaches and members like this:

So, in the face of sage advice to choose something obvious & Googleable like "Focus Space" or "Community Flow App," we are doubling down on our weird name for this good space...the space we hold for each other as we hold each other up.

Welcome to The Sukha.

- Steven (& Michael)