Summary of How to Have a Good Day Book by Caroline Webb

The Behavioral Sciences have made some landmark achievements that can help us improve the quality of life we live. Three major benefits stand out. First, our priorities and assumptions determine our perception to a great degree. Second, when we set the right kind of goals, our performance improves, and we get the spinoff of feeling good. And third, what you picture in your mind can shape your real-life experience.

Everyone sees the world through certain filters. Our perception is dependent upon our priorities and assumptions. When we pay attention to the careful selection of our priorities, we can control what penetrates our filters.

Annie Dillard says “How we spend our days is of course, how we spend our lives.” We’ve all had good days and bad days. There are things that make a good day and a bad day. We are always either in a defensive mode or a discovery mode. In discovery mode, we have clarity and seek opportunities to advance our goals. In defensive mode, we live in reaction to other people’s demands and we feel overwhelmed. Each day we have a choice. We can either allow events and circumstances to dictate our lives or we can choose to be intentional and proactive in the way we spend each day.

When a situation feels out of our control, our brain and adrenal glands react by pushing much higher levels of adrenaline into our system. This flood of chemicals turns our system from a state of readiness into something edgier. This edgy state can feel exciting at first but it quickly erodes our thinking and our decisions and ultimately, our day. To reduce our time in the defensive mode and spend most of our time in the discovery mode, we need to track waking time, daytime and nighttime. Break your day into these three components.

If we simply let the day happen to us, we miss a big opportunity. We need to be intentional in the way we spend our waking time. The brain is always sifting through a large amount of information and giving us a subjective reality. With a few minutes of mental preparation and a quick check of our assumptions and priorities, we can shift the way we experience the day, making it more productive and enjoyable.

There is a three-part system for setting intentions — aims, attitude, and attention.

Aim to identify the most important activities of the day. What are the actions you want to take, the interactions you want to have, and the work you want to do? Then identify what really matters most to make the day a successful one. Find one or two clear outcomes that those activities lead to. Take these outcomes and set aside an uninterrupted block of time during the day to devote to this work.

Next, you need to adjust your attitude. Most people approach the day using rose-colored glasses. It is better to use a method known as mental contrasting to adjust your attitude and increase the odds of having a successful day.

US Navy Admiral, James Stockdale, spent 8 years in a Vietnamese POW Camp. On reflecting on the prisoners who cracked under pressure, he said: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail at the end which you can never afford to lose with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.” There are over 20 years of research to prove that people are far more likely to achieve their goals if they think hard about both the outcomes they want and the obstacles they’re facing and plan for both. A great way to leverage mental contrasting is to come up with a when-then plan. When working on an important task and you get interrupted by someone who has an urgent request to ask of you. You can respond with a positive note that acknowledges the person’s request. Then, explain how what you are working on has a higher priority than what they are asking of you. Politely decline the request and if possible, offer to help them in another way such as directing them to someone you think might be able to help.

Prime your attention with images and words. This priming helps the brain to make associations with similar images or words. If we prime words or images of our goals or our intentions throughout the day, we are more likely to make associations to that goal. It will help us find more opportunities to advance the goal and to discover creative solutions to problems that our subconscious mind is able to associate due to this priming effect.

A group of researchers at Harvard Business School evaluated the daily work patterns of over 9000 people who were working on projects that required creativity and innovation. The likelihood of creativity was higher when people were able to focus on one task for a period of uninterrupted time. People who had interruptions experienced limitations in their level of creativity