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

Express appreciation.
Take a moment to tell someone you’re grateful for
something they’ve done, rather than racing on to the next thing in your
schedule.
Be helpful.
If you see someone who’s struggling, take a moment to ask if you
can help. You can specify how long you’ve got: “I’ve got fifteen minutes
before I have to head off. Do you need a hand?”
Do something unexpectedly delightful.
Give up your seat. Let a driver cut
in front of you. Bring treats to share. Introduce someone especially warmly.
3. FIND 
SOMETHING
 INTERESTING
If you’re bored, one way of quickly lifting your energy is to figure out ways to
make your work more interesting. Easier said than done, you say? The whole
reason you need a boost is because you’re uninspired by what you’re doing? I
hear you. But let me remind you of the magic of “buzzword bingo.” If you
haven’t played this game, the rules are something like this: Define some
overused, jargon-heavy phrases that you suspect will be mentioned in the day’s

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presentations, meetings, or conversations. Agree on the list of phrases with your
fellow players. Then listen for them, checking off each hackneyed gem as you
hear it. The winner is the first person to get bingo. Somewhere in the mid-1990s,
I had teammates who sometimes used this technique to liven up dull meetings,
and the result was a lot of laughter. But it’s also undeniable that we paid more
attention overall—not just to the silly jargon—and we felt less drained at the end
of it all.
Why did it lift our spirits so much? Largely because we 
decided
that there was
something worth listening to, and directed our attention accordingly. Remember
that our brains are always filtering out some of the information around us to
avoid overloading our limited neural capacity. We focus on whatever confirms
our expectations (among other things) and tend to filter out the rest. So if I’ve
decided that what I’m about to hear is going to be boring, I’ll tend to see and
hear things that confirm I’m right to be bored. If I’ve decided it’s going to be
interesting, I have half a chance of finding it a little more so. We know the
reality we perceive is highly subjective; we might as well seek out the more
interesting aspects of reality if we want to feel more energized by everyday life.
So there’s a lot to be said for this simple but effective strategy: get into the
habit of deciding to find 
something
interesting in what’s going on around you.
Home in on something worth learning or remembering, even if it’s a bit
subversive (“Today I’m going to learn how not to completely lose it when
dealing with the office psychopath”). If you’re in an interminable training course
that’s going way too slowly, decide to find something noteworthy about the way
it’s being taught, something that could improve the way you communicate your
own ideas to others. If you’re engaged in the most boring task on the planet,
perhaps you can at least find the quickest or slickest way of doing it.
By any measure, Ruby is someone who’s had a thrillingly varied career. Early
on, she was a sought-after interpreter; many years later, she was head of a
business school. These days, she devotes her time to filmmaking. But after
graduating with a degree in international business, Ruby’s first job was in the
shipping industry in Taiwan—and there, she found herself calling on the “find
something
interesting” technique just about every day. She says, “Nothing was
computerized back then, there was just a big book with lots of prices in it, which
I had to use to price shipments. I spent the first week memorizing as much as I
could, but after a month I was really bored. The work turned out to be really
mechanical. I knew I needed to look for a different job, but in the meantime I
decided to learn about other people’s roles, by chatting to my colleagues and

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asking them about their work. I learned how the U.S. shipping line worked, then
how the Europe and Middle East lines worked. I even learned how to run the
switchboard in my spare time at lunch, which helped me understand more about
how the company worked. And I learned about the CEO’s job by getting to
know the CEO’s personal assistant. It made my day-to-day experience feel so
much more bearable—worthwhile, even. And it gave me more to talk about
when I was interviewing for my next job.”