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

PUTTING YOUR PERSONAL INTERESTS TO WORK
Ben found a way to bring a private talent more fully into the workplace. But
what if your personal interests seem nothing at all to do with your day job? What
then? That’s where Catherine (from the previous chapter) was, some time back.
She’d been in her job as a senior operational manager for five years, and she
found she was starting to get less energy out of her days than she was putting in.
“On the surface, everything seemed great. I was still getting the work out the
door. But my motivation was getting weaker. The days felt longer, and it seemed
to take ages to get anything done.”
Ever since childhood, Catherine had been into art, literature, and history, and
she’d even had a spell working for a classical music recording company. But
now her days were filled with budgeting and knocking heads together. One day,
she had a chance conversation with someone about her past. “This guy
commented on how mismatched my interests were with what I did for a living.
He asked me, ‘How do you stay sane?’ and I realized he was right—something
was missing.” Her cultural interests felt completely separate from her day-to-day
work.
Catherine decided to be more creative in finding a way to connect the things
she loved to the things she did for a living. “I embarked on what I called a
‘structured reinspiration program.’ I’d watch a classic movie every week with
my professional life in mind, and take something from it into my work. For

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example, one had the character of Thomas More in it, who was basically an
administrator in King Henry VIII’s court in sixteenth-century England, and I
realized his job was not unlike mine.” Identifying with More’s courage in
standing up to the king gave her a lift. Leaving aside the historical detail that
More ended up being beheaded, “there was at least one day when thinking of
Thomas More helped me to take a stand about something I cared about at work,
in a way I felt good about.”
Catherine started visiting art galleries with the same goal. She would pick a
painting to look at, then think about how it related to issues she was wrestling
with at work. “It always put a spring in my step,” she says. “Sometimes I came
away inspired with a new idea. Sometimes it just made me feel better about
something bad happening at work. After all, there’s so much tragedy in history
that it helps you see that someone screwing up slightly is okay. Life will go on.”
And that paid dividends in the way she felt about her job, she says. “My days
quickly started to feel less bogged down. I felt like my horizons opened up
again, and I was able to focus again on what was possible in my job, with more
creativity in thinking of solutions.” And now whenever she feels at a low ebb,
Catherine says, “I tell myself, ‘Time for a reinspiration intervention.’ It always
works.”
To create your own “reinspiration program” based on your interests outside
work, ask yourself:
What topics or activities most interest you? What do you find genuinely
intriguing to read or learn about, without being asked or expected to do so?
How might you make a stronger connection between that interest and your
everyday work?
• Could it yield an insight you can apply in a professional context?
• Is there a technique or tool you could borrow?
• Failing that, could you form an interest group with like-minded colleagues
—a book group, a choir, a team—to bring more personal joy into the
workplace?
In his book 
Give and Take
, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Adam
Grant describes an experiment where employees were given a chance to do
exactly what Ben and Catherine did, crafting a “more ideal but still realistic

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vision of their jobs” by adapting their responsibilities to match their personal
strengths, interests, and values. Some took on new projects. Some customized
existing tasks to make them feel more enjoyable or meaningful. Many found
ways to delegate tasks that simply weren’t a great fit—perhaps using a version
of the “positive no” technique I mentioned in