How To Have A Good Day At Work
In honor of the Labor Day holiday in the US this week, I’m sharing the distillation of my thirteen years of research into what makes for good work into the top five ways to have a better day at work.
It turns out that good days at work have very specific, common characteristics. When we discover what they are, we can consciously reverse-engineer our habits and actions to fulfill them.
Each of these actions is small and achievable, but when practiced, have a disproportionate impact – not only on the course of your day, but also in the course of your life. They create good things for you in the moment (like positive emotions, motivation and satisfaction) but they also build to good things in the long term (like achievement, purpose, and longevity.
Good Day Action #1: Do something you want to do before work
Autonomy, feeling like you are in control of your self and what you do, is one of the most essential factors for happiness at work. It also protects you from long-term chronic stress.
However, most people feel that work is where their autonomy goes to die. That’s why it’s absolutely critical that you carve out time each day where you can do what you want.
This autonomy time can take so many forms: journaling, meditation, exercise, breakfast with a friend, spending time on your hobbies, connecting with your partner. It just has to fulfill two characteristics:
It’s something you want to do (not imposed on you.)
It’s something that takes between 10 - 60 minutes
Ask yourself: what is something I would love to do each day? What is something I could do that would help me to be the best version of me? What is something that would help me to achieve my long term goals? You can do different things every day: just be consistent with carving out some time every day.
I really recommend that you do this in the morning before work (if you have traditional hours) but it will also be helpful if you do it on your lunch break or after work. When you do it in the morning, you reap big benefits: you’ll be more energetic, you’ll be less likely to put it off, it’ll be less likely that another priority knocks it off the schedule, and most importantly, it will set you up for the rest of the day.
When you start your day with some morning autonomy, it carries you through the rest of your day. You feel more empowered and motivated, which will make you more successful at work. That success, in turn, will allow you to find new ways to exercise autonomy at work, which will lead to more happiness for you. Start the positive upward spiral by claiming your mornings for yourself.
Good Day Action #2: Get into flow
Studies have found that experiencing the state of flow is predictive of satisfaction with your work. That’s because flow is awesome. Flow is that magical state of being completely in the moment, forgetting yourself and becoming one with whatever it is you are doing.
But to find flow, you have to have two things: first, the ability to focus on your work, and second, for that work to be at just the right level of challenge.
First, you cannot get into flow if you keep getting interrupted. Studies have found that people who are regular interrupted and who multitask more are significantly less happy at work. Unfortunately, our multitasking culture in knowledge work is insidious and impossible to truly overcome. That’s why I recommend you try to get one protected hour to focus each day. Tell your boss and coworkers you are going to focus on a task for an hour and then log out of all chat programs and close all distracting websites. Set a timer. Then dig in.
Second, the other condition of flow is a task that is just right — it at challenges you the right amount. Here’s a handy little diagram that shows how to find the right spot.
Choose one task that needs your focus and energy, and start to work on it.
If you discover that it’s too easy and you’re getting bored, drifting back to your phone and chat, you can ramp up the challenge (one little trick I use is to set a nearly-impossible deadline on easy things because it makes the challenge greater, and forces me into flow.) If it’s too hard and you’re feeling anxious, break the task into a smaller chunk.
Just one hour a day will make an enormous difference in your happiness (and your work performance, too!)
Good Day Action #3: Find (and stay focused) on your bigger why
One of the most core human needs is feeling like we matter and that we are here making a difference. For most of us, this manifests in feeling like we want to have a purpose or for our work to be meaningful. A study found that 9 out of 10 employees would take a pay cut to have a lifetime guarantee of meaningful work, foregoing up to 23% of their lifetime incomes.
People who have meaningful and purposeful work are more likely to:
Be more resilient
Be more motivated
Have higher engagement at work
Have a greater sense of empowerment
Perform at a higher level
Experience greater fulfillment
But people tend to look for it in all of the wrong places. They ask themselves, “What is my purpose?” instead of the question that will help them to find it, which is “Who am I serving right now, and how can I do more of it?”
When you ask yourself that question, you pull the focus from yourself and your needs (which will never, ever lead to your purpose) and focus instead on how you are using your strengths to make a difference to others.
Every single job out there has the potential to make a difference in someone’s day. Last year, I was driving from San Diego to San Francisco. Alex was feeling incredibly sick. We were on hour 7 of the drive, and all I wanted was to be home. We pulled into a Starbucks drive through and met the most amazing young guy working at the window. He made us laugh, he truly connected with us, and we pulled away with our moods totally changed. I will never forget how he helped me in a really tough moment. I’d be willing to bet that guy finds a lot of purpose in what he does every day, viewing each customer as someone to help.
As you start to work each day, ask yourself, “How can I serve people today?” Here are a few places where you might find that answer:
The tasks that you do, and who benefits from them
The relationships you have at work, with coworkers, customers, suppliers, or partners
The way that you think about your work, like viewing it as a place to practice your values, or a way that contributes to others’ lives in some way
At the end of each day, reflect on how you did with serving others. How did you leave the world a bit better today, right where you are? These micro-moments of meaning add up into a purpose and a meaningful career. You don’t need to throw out your corporate job or go work at an orphanage to find meaning. Start right where you are.
Good Day Action #4: Use a bounceback strategy
Feeling stressed about work or life each day is pretty much a guarantee. And yet we act surprised every time it happens, and more than we’d like to admit, our days get completely derailed by it. I’m sure I’m not alone in allowing one email or side comment ruin my precious 24 hours.
If we acknowledge that setbacks are inevitable each day, then we can design their fix: bouncebacks. Bouncebacks are consciously-designed strategies that we can use to recover from stressful moments. Research has found that feeling a positive emotion actually undoes the effect of a negative one. Bouncebacks not only help you recover, but they make you more resilient, too.
Here are the steps to design a bounceback routine:
Make a list of the moments that lead to the most stress for you.
Choose a positive emotion that you’d like to feel more of in your life (joy, gratitude, serenity, amusement, awe, joy, hope, interest, pride, inspiration or love.)
Identify one tiny way that you can consciously choose to feel that emotion (for example, for interest, reading a page of book you’re excited about; for love, giving your kids a hug.)
Then, put them together to design your bounce-back ritual: When [stressful thing happens], then I will [positive emotion act.] Every time a stressful event occurs, practice your tiny positive emotion ritual.
When the inevitable stress or anxiety happens, lean on your bounceback ritual to build your resilience and start to undo the effect of stress.
Good Day Action #5: Have a meaningful connection
We truly need other humans to flourish. The probability of dying early is 20% higher for obese people, 30% higher for excessive drinkers, 50% higher for smokers, but 70% higher for people with poor social relationships.
Seek to have moments of meaningful connection in your day; meaningful doesn’t have to mean a deep or intimate conversation, but it does mean having an authentic moment where you feel as though you really connect. Look for these moments when you’re buying groceries, walking through the door of your office, or partnering with someone on a project at work. (If you can help someone while you’re connecting, even better! Doing kind acts is the most reliable booster of happiness that exists.)
Cultivate a small habit of checking in your connection progress at one point in the day. I use my afternoon coffee as a reminder to ask myself, ‘Have I had a good connection today?’ If the answer is no, I’ll set aside a little time to call someone or send a message to a friend.
Give these five actions a try this week and watch as your workday is transformed. It really only takes a few things to make a big difference in your day, adding up to an incredible impact on your week, month, year, and career.