How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

Before you get into your task in detail, take stock of recent positive
events.
You can do this on your own, or with others at the beginning of a
meeting. For example:
• Take a moment to recall one or two good things that have happened today,
or in the past week. (It’s fine if these are tiny wins or are unrelated to your
current work. Perhaps someone brought you a coffee this morning when
you weren’t expecting it. Quite literally, it’s the thought that counts.)
• If it’s something you’ve worked on before, review recent progress and
identify what has helped you achieve those wins.

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Imagine the ideal outcome of the task or project.
If you’ve got a tough task
on your plate, it’s easy to get uptight if you focus purely on the hurdles you
have to overcome. Try setting them aside for a moment, and ask yourself:
• “What does the ideal outcome look like?”
• Then: “What first steps would take us toward the ideal outcome?”
“I always make sure to begin each piece of work in a good mood,” says
Peggy, our advertising art director. “It’s just very difficult to come up with
anything smart when you’re upset, angry, or tired. You can’t work when you feel
under threat.” A favorite technique of hers before she dives into a task is to take
a moment to appreciate one thing she likes about her job. “For example, I think
about the way it gives me the chance to do different things every day. I like to
learn new things, and I’ve been able to work on projects in pharmaceuticals, soft
drinks, beer, you name it.” That moment of appreciation helps her set her mood
and put her into discovery mode, so she’s in good shape for the challenges of the
day.
DRAW AN ISSUE TREE
You’re tired. The work is hard. You’re trying to think straight, but your mind is
foggy and you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere useful. It’s making you
irritable, or anxious, or maybe both. That’s often how it feels when your
deliberate system is overloaded. But you can give your overworked brain a
helping hand by applying some structure to your task, so that you’re handling
just one part of it at a time rather than trying to tackle the whole issue at once.
Let me give you an example. Imagine you’re a landscape gardener, and you’re
not bringing in the profits you’d hoped when you set up your business. You’re
not sure what to do to improve the situation before the bank starts breathing
down your neck. One option is to stop using the services of a hired hand who
helps you out occasionally. (Let’s call him Frank.) But you know you sometimes
need help for the heavier work. You’d have to stop taking on the bigger projects,
the sort that bring in the healthiest revenues. Already your brain feels tired.
So instead, you start to think about the issue in stages. First, you write down
the question you’re wrestling with: “How to increase profits?” Logically, then,
what are the different routes you can explore? Profit is revenues minus costs. So

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you can increase revenues or you can reduce costs. Or maybe both. You write
that down as a tree with two branches coming off your big question. Okay. It’s
not going to win the Nobel Prize in economics, but your head feels a little clearer
already.
Now set aside the “reduce costs” branch for a moment, and just focus on
“increase revenues.” What are the basic ways of bringing in more money? You
can charge higher prices for the same amount of work. Or you could increase the
amount of work you do.
Then, you turn your attention to the “reduce costs” branch. One of your major
costs is your hired hand, but other categories include your materials, your
transport costs, and your marketing. You draw those branches.

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At this point it feels like there might be a few different avenues to explore.
With less brain swirl, you could now take each branch in turn and break it down
further, if you wanted.

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Now you’ve got a rich list of ideas to test out. You don’t like all of them, and
there are some holes. But your head feels clearer, because at each stage you’re
thinking about only one or two things at once. And as a result, you start to see
that you have some good options. For example, you might look into buying your
supplies in bulk, asking existing customers to recommend you, and checking
competitors’ rates to see if you’re underpricing your work.
This is one of the tricks of the trade that my colleagues and I used at
McKinsey. The consulting firm is famed for being able to wrestle complex
topics quickly to the ground, and this kind of issue tree was often one of the first
tools we used when beginning to think about a daunting topic. And sometimes
you don’t even need to draw yourself a whole tree. Sometimes the first or second
branch is all you need for inspiration. In the last chapter, I described how Nayan
(the bank CFO) was faced with a difficult decision about a colleague. For him,
merely drawing the “fire him”/“don’t fire him” branches of the issue tree made it
obvious that there were a host of options open to him under the “don’t fire him”
branch. Being systematic in breaking down the issue was enough to make it
easier for Nayan to see his options.

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