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

by Caroline Webb

Multitasking can feel like a stimulating and efficient way to deal with having lots to do, but we’re actually far more productive if we singletask—that is, if we do one thing at a time.

BATCH YOUR TASKS, ZONE YOUR DAY

Batch your tasks into different types of work. What types of tasks do you have to do today? Which to-dos fit into which category?

Then, identify your uninterrupted blocks of time.

Next, decide which batch of tasks fits into each block of time.

REMOVE DISTRACTIONS

Turn off alerts.

Remove temptation.

Store stray thoughts in a “parking lot.”

Build up your stamina.

Time yourself.

SINGLETASKING Look at your schedule for today, and organize your tasks to allow your brain to work at its best (and get more done as a result). Try the following: Batch your tasks. Group together similar tasks (e.g., email, calls, and reading), so you’re not constantly switching from one mental mode to another. Zone your day. Decide on the best time of day to tackle each batch of tasks, including one or two “email zones.” Create longer blocks of uninterrupted time for your most important work. Can you move some appointments to create clearer zones? Remove distractions. Minimize interruptions, to help you focus your attention on the task at hand. Which alerts can you switch off? Can you use an app to block access to certain websites? Decide on a good “parking lot” technique to allow you to capture stray thoughts before they derail your focus. Plan small rewards for good behavior. How can you reward yourself for remaining focused while you singletask—for example, by setting a timer, or keeping a log? Share your wisdom. Can you be proactive in explaining your scheduling choices to colleagues? (Feel free to try the “a1b2c3…” exercise with them, to demonstrate why you’ve been keen to multitask less these days.)

And the more decisions we’re asked to make, the less cognitive capacity we have available to assess alternatives and make good, nuanced choices—a phenomenon known to scientists as decision fatigue.

What lies behind all these lapses is the fact that when our brain’s deliberate system is overworked, it can’t do its job properly.

In fact, giving our brain the chance to step back from a task and consolidate our experiences is a little like what happens when we’re asleep,

SMART BREAKS

Plan to take a brief break between the different task “zones” in your day.

Never let more than ninety minutes pass without doing something to refresh your mind and body—if possible, by stretching your legs and getting a brief change of scene.

Ericsson found that the highest performers typically work in focused blocks of ninety minutes, with breaks in between.

Create Breathing Room with Smarter Scheduling Plan meetings and calls that are shorter than the standard thirty or sixty minutes, whenever possible, to give your brain five to ten minutes to recharge between commitments. Wrap up commitments slightly early whenever you have the chance, to give yourself (and everyone else) a few moments of downtime.

REFLECTION TIME Finally, after completing big tasks, learning something new, or finishing up a meeting: Amplify the value of the experience by taking a moment to step back and reflect on your insights. What struck you most? (What will you do differently as a result?) If you’re with others, invite them to do it, too.

PLANNING DELIBERATE DOWNTIME Look at your schedule for today and tomorrow, and plan for the following: Take smart breaks. How can you make sure you take regular breaks, at least every ninety minutes and between each “zone” of tasks in your day? Make decisions at peaks (not troughs). Which tasks will require you to make a lot of choices? How can you make them when your brain is freshest? Schedule breathing room. Can you schedule meetings or offer your time in blocks of twenty-five or forty-five minutes (instead of thirty or sixty minutes), to create micro-breaks between commitments? For commitments that are already scheduled, can you aim to wrap up a little early? Allow reflection time. At the end of each task or meeting, take thirty seconds to capture your biggest insights. Try an end-of-day reflection practice such as DATE (discovered, achieved, thankful for, experienced).

But another reason so many of us often feel overloaded is because of something called the planning fallacy.1 This describes the fact that we typically expect tasks to take less time than they actually do, because we base our estimates on one standout memory—our best past experience—rather than the average time it’s taken us to do similar tasks

So I use a technique called ‘triangular breathing,’ where you breathe in for a count of three, then breathe out for a count of three, then pause for a count of three. By slowing your heart rate, you’re sending a signal to your brain that the threat has passed, so it reduces the other signals of stress.”

OUTSOURCE YOUR MEMORY

Looking at your to-do list, try these clarifying questions: What really matters most right now? (It may help to revisit your intentions for the day.) What really has to happen today, if nothing else? Project forward to the end of the day. What will you be most glad or relieved to have done?

What’s the smallest first step you can take to move things forward? This deceptively simple question soothes your brain for a couple of different reasons. First, it guides you away from worrying about the scale of the challenge you’re facing, toward something that you know you can do.

The “smallest step” question also reduces the load on your brain by redirecting effort from something it finds difficult (conceiving of an unknown future) to something it finds easy (thinking about an immediate action to take).

let’s turn to an old economic concept called comparative advantage, first articulated by economist David Ricardo in 1817—

So look at your work for today, and ask yourself: Which tasks truly fall into the category of those only you can do? Which tasks could someone else do moderately well (even if not quite as well as you)?

That’s where the “positive no” technique comes in. If you find it difficult to extricate yourself from low-priority commitments, then learning how to deliver a positive no is like discovering a new superpower—it gives you the ability to make everyone feel better about the choices you’re making (including yourself).

Like this: Start with warmth. First, acknowledge and show appreciation for the person’s request.

Your “yes.” Then, instead of starting with “I’m sorry…,” begin by enthusiastically highlighting whatever your positive priority is right now, and why it’s interesting, important, or meaningful to you. Consider picking out a reason that will also resonate with the person you’re talking to. Your “no.” Explain that this means, with regret, that you can’t do the thing they’ve asked you to do. End with warmth. Perhaps there’s a suggestion or offer you can make without detracting from your real priorities, such as an introduction to other people who could help. At the very least, offer some warm wishes for success in their project. It’s an important closing sentence that often gets dropped when we’re focused on our own discomfort at saying no.

day. 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 sing...

As a result, we generally prefer to have a tasty treat today, rather than tomorrow or next week—after all, who knows whether the prospective treat will actually be delivered? In other words, we all have what economists call present bias.

He and his team found that we feel quite different about saving when we’re shown photographs that make our future self more real. In a series of four experiments, he and his colleagues showed that when people saw a picture of themselves digitally aged, they saved more than twice as much ($172 vs. $80) when asked how much they would choose to save out of $1,000.2

This “picture the benefits” approach helps with the many tinier moments of procrastination, too.

Of course, all these people might have ended up doing some of these pleasant things anyway—but by planning these treats as rewards for effort expended, they were helping to stack the cost-benefit analysis in the direction of overcoming procrastination.

By making the immediate task feel more enjoyable, all these examples reduce the amount of work that your brain has to do to make your short-term effort stack up against the eventual benefits.

What are the implications of letting the status quo persist? That’s something we typically don’t evaluate at all. Known as omission bias, this phenomenon is another source of procrastination,

And it’s even more powerful to publicly commit to getting something done, because our brain’s threat-perception and reward systems are so highly responsive to our social standing. It matters to us whether we’re respected by others.

For a quick way to do this, I like the technique of the “five whys,” where you patiently ask yourself a series of “why” questions to unearth the roots of your reticence; the name of the exercise refers to the fact that the true cause of your issue generally surfaces by the time you ask the fifth “why” question

BEATING PROCRASTINATION Think about the item on your to-do list that you’ve been avoiding for a while. (If you don’t have one, please take a bow, and skip to the next chapter.) Picture the benefits. What will be better as a result of getting this done, for you and for others? How great will that feel? Think back to the last time you got something like this done—what was the upside? Plan a short-term reward. How could you plan to reward yourself for today’s progress toward the end goal, if it’s a long haul? Tie the first step to something you like. Identify the first small step you need to take. Then find a way to link that to something you are definitely going to do today and that you enjoy doing. Amplify the downside of inaction. How can you sharpen your sense of the costs of not getting it done? What pre-commitments can you make, ideally involving other people? Ask the five whys. If you’re still finding yourself reluctant to make progress, ask yourself five “why” questions. What surfaces as the real blockage? What can you do to address that?

But we tend to assume that others share our preferences and perspectives, and that everyone understands and values things just as we do. This projection bias, as scientists call it, means that we don’t always listen that closely to what others are saying.

In general, people preferred to talk about themselves—to the point that they willingly gave up money to do so, since the cash reward for talking about yourself was 17 percent lower than the other two options. By looking at brain scans, the researchers confirmed that talking about their own likes and dislikes activated the volunteers’ neural reward systems, while speculating about the likes and dislikes of other people failed to have the same effect.

The kind of question that signals genuine curiosity is quite different. First, it’s an open question—one that can’t be answered with a yes or a no. Second, it invites people to share their thoughts, motivations, or feelings, rather than merely facts. Third, you actually intend to listen and reflect on the answer. I call them “quality questions” because they immediately shift the quality of a conversation.

Arthur Aron, a psychology professor at Stony Brook University, wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Johan’s story. His research has showed that less than an hour of reciprocal disclosure is enough to create remarkable closeness between strangers. On a scale of 1 to 7, hundreds of volunteers rated their “deepest” relationship as a 4.65 for closeness. After talking about their answers to personal questions for forty-five minutes, random pairs rated their closeness as 3.82—not all that much lower.12 The upshot: if you’re trying to build rapport, be willing to reveal a little of yourself.

BUILDING REAL RAPPORT For your next conversation where rapport is important: Set collaborative intentions. Set intentions that focus on improving the quality of the relationship, not on your agenda. Check your negative assumptions. Decide to find the other person interesting. Ask quality questions. Get really curious about the other person. Turn some of your regular closed, factual questions into open questions that invite them to share their thoughts and feelings about a topic (and that can’t be answered with a yes or no). Show that you’re listening by following up with a “tell me more” about one thing they said. Create a sense of in-group. Look for points of similarity or connection—shared goals, gripes, or interests—to create a sense of in-group that means the other person’s brain sees you as friend rather than foe. Use reciprocal disclosure. If you’d like the other person to open up to you, think about what you’re willing to show and share of yourself. Pocket that phone. If you need to stay reachable while having an important conversation, make your ringtone loud enough to hear from your pocket or bag.

Here’s what’s startling: even though it was clear that the questioners had made up questions based on their own esoteric interests, and this was why the answerers struggled to get many questions right, all three groups rated the answerers as less smart than the questioners. And the answerers were even harder on themselves than the questioners.8 Nobody seemed to accept that the answerers performed less well because of the situation they’d been randomly placed in, rather than because of their innate intelligence.

Here’s what I suggest when someone has infuriated or disappointed you: Step 1: Get clear on the “true facts.”