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

S
TAYING
 S
TRONG
Whenever you’re facing a lot of ups and downs, work the mind-body loop:
Sleep.
Stay calmer and wiser by taking extra care to prioritize your
sleep routine. If that’s especially tough to achieve right now, consider
whether there’s a way you could take a nap now and then.
Exercise.
You can instantly clear your head and lift your mood with
twenty minutes of moderate exercise. Split it into two or three chunks
of fast walking if that helps you fit it into your day.
Mindfulness.
Try a few different pause-and-focus techniques, and then
build your favorite one into your daily routine to reap some of the
cognitive and emotional benefits of mindfulness.

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PART VII
Energy
Boosting Your Enthusiasm and Enjoyment
Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and
dry details, and carries him onward and upward in every station in
life. It accomplishes more than genius, with not one-half the
disappointment and peril.
—
SAMUEL SMILES (1897)
At this point, you’ve got a full “good day” tool kit. You’re focusing on the
right things, and organizing your time to give those priorities your best
attention. You’re handling every interaction with sensitivity and aplomb,
and feeling sharp. Everything you say and do is having great impact.
You’re breezing past setbacks with your mojo intact, and feel well set to
handle even the most difficult of days.
This part of the book is intended as a bonus—a source of extra fuel for
those moments when your tank is running a little low, or the times when
you want to burn a little brighter. Perhaps you’re going through a patch
where you’re feeling uninspired by your work. Or perhaps it’s just a busy
time and you could do with a boost to get through the longer hours of the
day. Either way, the advice in the pages ahead will help you turbocharge
your slow and weary days, and make your already good days great.
I’ll first show you some practical tactics that will help you lift your
mental, emotional, or physical energy, to give you a shot in the arm when
you most need it. The final chapter will then lay out a strategy for creating a
longer-lasting, deeper enthusiasm for your work—with easy first steps that
will bear fruit immediately.

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TWENTY
Topping Up the Tank
When we’re out of juice at work, of course we can spur ourselves on with the
promise of rest and recreation once we get home—or once we get to the
weekend. (Or vacation. Failing that, retirement.) But with an understanding of
the way our mind works, we can do considerably better than that. Drawing on
what we know about the brain’s reward system and the psychology of well-
being, there are lots of ways to give ourselves a quick boost when we’re feeling
more stretched or drained than we would like. I’ve picked out seven tactics to
share in this chapter, all of which work well in fast-paced professional life
because they’re so simple and instantaneously effective. After that, I’ll also
suggest two ways to make the most of these energy boosting tactics—first, by
being analytical about the times when you need to deploy a boost; second, by
making sure that you use one of them to end on a high note.