Our editors handpick the products that we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book Emotional Intelligence revolutionized the way we talk about intelligence and spent a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list. His latest book, , coauthored with Cary Cherniss, focuses on how we can build personal and organizational excellence in all areas of our lives.
What are the ingredients of a great day at work? The kind of day that leaves you feeling satisfied and fulfilled? In their book , psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer detailed part of a Harvard Business School study in which they asked 238 women and men at seven different companies to keep daily journals about their inner work life. The highlights of a great workday were as follows:
Maybe those sound appealing—but also impossible to achieve. The good news is most anyone can have days like this. The trick, it turns out, is managing disturbing emotions so you can focus. Research by psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University found that a major source of our bad moods at work is in our own minds, rather than what happens to us. The title of their study of 2,250 women and men, printed in the prestigious journal Science, says it all: “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.” They found that people are distracted in general around 47 percent of the time—and unfortunately, people can sometimes be distracted even more while at work.
What distracts us most is not the mess someone leaves in the lunchroom or your fifth meeting of the day but, rather, our own upsetting, disruptive thoughts, like Why didn’t he answer my email? Why did she say that thing to me? These personal interactions are what we obsess about when we wake up in the middle of the night, or think about over and over instead of what we need to be focusing on in any given moment. Here’s how to break free from the chatter:
Having a great day at work not only makes you happier, it also boosts your performance and productivity. While some days will naturally go more smoothly than others, there are many things you can do to increase the odds of having a good day at the office. Follow these tips to make your workdays more positive, fulfilling and successful.
Morning Rituals to Start Your Workday Off Right
How you begin your morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. Follow these habits to kickstart a great workday
1. Prep the night before – Avoid morning rush by getting ready the evening before. Pick out your outfit, pack lunch, and gather items you need. This prevents scrambling.
2 Get adequate sleep – Prioritize 7-9 hours of quality sleep to be well-rested and focused, Being sleep deprived drags down your mood and performance,
3. Exercise briefly – Even 10 minutes of exercise in the morning boosts your energy and mental clarity for hours. Try quick yoga stretches, jump rope, or go for a walk.
4. Eat a nutritious breakfast – Breakfast eaters are more productive. Consume a balanced meal with protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats to fuel your day.
5. Listen to uplifting music – Play energizing, positive tunes on your commute to work. Music boosts motivation and wards off anxiety.
6. Practice mindfulness – Set the tone with 5-10 minutes of deep breathing, meditation, or prayer to ground yourself. This calms your mind.
7. Visualize success – Envision yourself having a great workday, accomplishing tasks efficiently. Visualization has been shown to improve performance.
8. Arrive early – Getting to work 10-15 minutes early allows you to settle in calmly and reviewing your plan. Rushing creates a frenzied start.
9. Say hello to coworkers – Greet colleagues with a smile. Even brief pleasant interactions improve your mood and relationships.
Beginning your workday feeling relaxed, centered, and positive sets you up for success. Make it a habit.
Work Habits That Optimize Your Day
Adopting smart work practices ensures your day stays smooth and productive:
1. Tackle priorities first – Complete your most critical tasks early when your energy is highest. This prevents urgent tasks from piling up later.
2. Take regular breaks – Schedule short 5-10 minute breaks every hour to recharge. Staring at your screen without breaks drains you.
3. Avoid distractions – Close email, silence phone, and limit social media to reduce disruptions that derail your focus.
4. Use productivity tools – Apps like Grammarly, RescueTime, Focus@Will help you work more efficiently. Enable useful technology.
5. Handle tasks just once – Use the OHIO method – Only Handle It Once – to maintain efficiency. Don’t revisit the same task repeatedly.
6. Use your calendar – Block time for big projects and tasks in your calendar. Scheduling work prevents days from slipping away.
7. Eat lunch away from your desk – Get away from your workspace to eat lunch. This refreshing change of scene re-energizes you.
8. Monitor your energy – Note when your energy dips and take a break. Listen to your body’s cues.
9. Say no to non-essentials – Politely decline unnecessary meetings and extra duties that won’t advance your goals. Prioritize ruthlessly.
10. End on a positive note – Before you leave work, list your completed tasks and achievements in a worksheet. Recognize your progress.
Following strong work habits daily leads to greater mastery, efficiency and sense of accomplishment.
Strategies to Stay Positive at Work
Positivity is a mindset that can be cultivated. Use these tips to maintain a upbeat mood all day:
-
Express gratitude – Start a gratitude journal where you list things you’re thankful for. Focusing on blessings boosts happiness.
-
Laugh often – Share a funny YouTube video with coworkers or eat lunch with amusing friends. Laughter relieves stress.
-
Do what you love – Schedule your favorite tasks like writing, data analysis or meetings you enjoy each day.
-
Celebrate small wins – Reward yourself for reaching small milestones like finishing a proposal. Recognition motivates.
-
Savor your successes – When you complete a big project, savor the moment instead of rushing to the next thing. This boosts satisfaction.
-
Be solution-focused – If problems occur, concentrate on finding solutions. Avoid dwelling on the roadblock.
-
Tune into your passions – Schedule time for important side projects that you’re passionate about. This brings fulfillment.
-
Help others – Assist stressed colleagues with tasks or share your expertise. Helping people feels meaningful.
Focusing on the positives creates upward spirals of success. Adopt these habits to tap into your natural optimism, resilience and motivation. A positive mindset powers performance.
How Managers Can Help Employees Have Good Workdays
Managers play a big role in influencing employees’ work experiences. Here are some tips for managers to help their team members have fulfilling, productive days:
-
Show appreciation often – Recognize employees’ accomplishments both publicly and privately. Feeling valued motivates staff.
-
Promote collaboration – Foster friendships and idea-sharing between team members. Strong bonds help everything go smoothly.
-
Allow flexibility – Permit telecommuting, adjusted schedules or freelance gigs. Added flexibility empowers employees.
-
Monitor workloads – Ensure no one is overburdened. Reducing excessive workloads helps prevent burnout.
-
Implement ergonomics – Provide standing desks, monitor height adjustments, and ergonomic equipment to keep staff comfortable.
-
Discourage overtime – Let employees know working excessive overtime is neither required nor expected. Stress the importance of work-life balance.
-
Check in regularly – Have frequent one-on-one meetings to discuss progress, answer questions, and address any roadblocks.
-
Advocate for employees – Support employees’ learning opportunities, compensation increases, and career growth. Be their champion.
-
Model work-life balance – Don’t routinely send late emails or call early/late meetings. Set boundaries to avoid normalizing overwork.
With emotional intelligence and people-focused leadership, managers can significantly enhance team members’ job satisfaction and performance. Employees feel empowered to succeed.
Key Takeaways
-
Begin each workday smoothly by getting organized the night before and following a consistent morning routine.
-
Adopt productivity habits like taking breaks, minimizing distractions, and using tools to work efficiently.
-
Stay positive by expressing gratitude, laughing, helping others and focusing on solutions.
-
Managers should show appreciation, allow flexibility, monitor workloads and model work-life balance to help staff thrive.
-
Having consistently good days at work results from both individual habits and supportive leadership.
By putting these tips into practice, you can transform your work life. Instead of merely tolerating your job, you can start enjoying the satisfaction of having truly great days at work. With a positive mindset and smart work strategies, you will perform better and advance your career goals. Soon, dreaded Mondays will be a thing of the past!
Have a daily meeting—with yourself
Thankfully, your power of focus can be buffed up by strengthening your brain’s circuits for concentration, in much the same way you’d build muscle power at a gym—through steady practice and basic reps. Here’s a highly effective way to build your brain’s capacity for focus:
- Find a quiet time and place where you won’t be disturbed or have to answer your phone. Sit upright comfortably—a straight-back chair is fine. Now bring your attention to your breath. Follow the whole in breath and the whole out breath. Then do the same with the following breath.
- When your mind wanders off, and you notice it wandered, let those thoughts go, and then bring your focus back to your breath and start again with your next breath.
That’s the basic move. You’re training your brain to ignore distractions and concentrate. After you’ve built your power of concentration, you can add “open monitoring,” where you watch your thoughts come and go without getting lost in them. Start with a short length of time, say five or 10 minutes, and gradually extend it. Find a time during your day when you can be fully focused, and then practice regularly. If you feel like you need a little help getting started, try an app like Calm, Ten Percent Happier, or Headspace.
Stronger attention with an ability to let go of distractions is the skill that transfers to your time at work. It’s the mental equivalent of getting more physically fit. Studies by neuroscientist and attention researcher Amishi Jha at the University of Miami find that such attention training (sometimes called “mindfulness”) has a range of benefits, from strengthened concentration to enhanced alertness. Those indicators of a great workday? “I 100 percent agree that strengthening attention hits the mark on all of them,” she says.
And, she adds, “I’ve had lots of days like this—the odds of hitting these great-day indicators are greater if I’ve done some kind of attention exercise. I’m more aware of whatever comes up in my mind, and can let thoughts come and go.”
Don’t expect a miraculous, overnight change. Progress comes gradually, just as with getting more physically fit via workouts. Jha describes it as a “dose-response” effect: The more time you put in, the better the results, as she details in her book .
The benefits of building your attention power feed into the likelihood of having that great day at work. For one, this attention strengthener is explicitly a way to get more absorbed (companies call it “engaged”) in what you need to be doing, and ignore whatever distractions come your way, including the seductions that lure you to your phone. There’s a twofer here: The same circuits that focus attention also make you calmer and put you in a better mood.
A bonus: This simple brain workout also boosts your resilience under stress, according to findings by neuroscientist Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With progress, you won’t be triggered as often, your upsets will be less intense, and you’ll recover more quickly if you do lose it.
Research on creativity has long shown that the more upbeat your mood, the better your problem-solving and ability to concentrate on what’s important to you in the moment. The worse your mood (as we all know), the poorer your focus, morale, and creativity. Being upset captures your attention, fixating it on what’s eating you. But as you calm down, your attention frees up, and you can be more mentally sharp. And the less self-absorbed in your problems you are, the more socially available you become. Instead of lurching through your day like a zombie, you’re more likely to reach out, joke with colleagues, and enjoy the people you work with. You might even become what companies call a good “organizational citizen,” someone who helps out coworkers beyond the limits of your own job description.
As Jha puts it, “You don’t have to leave it to chance whether you have a great day.”
Optimal, by Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss. Copyright © 2024 by Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
HAVE A GREAT DAY AT WORK EVERYDAY (4 EASY TIPS)
How to have a good day at work?
Read through this article for a complete list of tips to help you have a good day at work. Gather everything you need the night before. There’s no need to rush around and stress in the morning.
What can one do to stay active all day?
Here are some specific activities that you can do to stay active throughout the day: Take a walk or bike ride during your lunch break. Do some jumping jacks or squats while you’re waiting for the microwave to heat up. Get up and move around every 20-30 minutes. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Park further away from your destination. Incorporate activity into your hobbies. For example, if you like to garden, you can do some weeding or light yard work. Find ways to be active with your family or friends. This could include going for a hike, playing basketball, or dancing.
Why is having a good day at work important?
It can allow you to reduce your stress levels. By having a good day at work, you can become better prepared for the next day. This can reduce your stress level and allow you to put more effort into your work, which may help you enhance your overall performance. It makes it easier for you to complete your tasks.
How to have a nice day at work?
Then, you can choose which advice on how to have a nice day at work better fits your situation. Maybe you just need more sleep, or maybe it’s something bigger. A good workday preps start at home. Little things like sleeping well, exercising, or meditating can actually make a big difference on the rest of your day. And that’s just the beginning!
