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

by Caroline Webb

OVERCOMING OVERLOAD Next time you’re feeling overloaded, try these strategies—in fact, why not try them right now? Mindful pause. Give your brain’s deliberate system a chance to fully engage, by pausing to focus on your breath (or scanning your body, or counting back from one hundred) for five minutes. Get it out of your head. Write down everything that’s swirling around your mind, even the tiniest to-dos. Most important thing. What really matters most right now, either because it has to happen today or because it has the biggest impact? Smallest first step. What’s the very first step you can take toward doing that most important thing—something small enough to do today? Comparative advantage. What are you uniquely well placed to do—and what could others do, even if not as well as you? Focus on tasks where the gap between your capabilities and other people’s is biggest. Positive no. For a commitment that you need to delegate or decline: start with warmth; say what you’re saying “yes” to; say your “no”; end with warmth. Setting boundaries. If you could set one boundary in the way you organize your time, what would it be? What’s the clearest, cleanest way to communicate this preference to others? Automate small daily decisions. Consider whether you can do something at the same time or in the same way each day, to spend more of your mental energy on the things that matter. And finally: remember that you’ll lessen your feeling of being overloaded if you also take the singletas...