by Tom Rath
What friends or colleagues do the best job of adding positive energy to your environment? What could you learn from them to better carry that positive energy forward?
10: Be 80 Percent Positive
Recap: Focus most of your time and attention on what is working.
What proportion of your interactions in the last day were positive? What percentage were negative?
How can you make sure that people know you are paying attention to their work and efforts?
What is the most meaningful praise or recognition you have received in the last year? What made this recognition stand out for you?
11: Start Small and Be Clear
Recap: Practical goals and good questions create speed and productivity.
What small action can you take today to boost the well-being of one of your closest friends?
What is one good question you can ask new acquaintances to learn more about what’s going on in their work or life?
How can you invest even more time and energy into one of your most productive relationships?
12: Take a Break for Relationships
Recap: Social networks that we often take for granted profoundly shape our lives.
How can you build more in-person social time into your work?
Which friends and family members improve your health and well-being when you spend time with them?
What is one practical step you could take to pay attention to other people better when you are together? How will they know they have your full and undivided attention?
13: Put Experiences First
Recap: Spending on people and experiences yields the greatest return.
What is an experience or trip you can plan to create well-being for yourself and others?
How can you invest more time or financial resources in the long-term growth of another person?
How can you help others look forward to an upcoming experience or trip you have planned? If you don’t have anything planned right now, what can you do to help someone else benefit from the memories of a past experience?
14: Avoid Flying Solo
Recap: We do better work when we collaborate and have shared incentives.
What are a couple of the best moments in your life? Did they involve other people?
How much do you focus on beating a competitor compared with the time you spend trying to create new value for other people or groups?
Do the rewards, recognition, and incentives around you center on individual or group goals? What would the ideal incentives look like if the goal was to do more for others?
15: Build a Cumulative Advantage
Recap: The more you focus on another person’s strengths, the faster they grow.
What is the earliest example you can remember of someone spotting a unique talent of yours and encouraging you to spend time building on that strength?
When was the last time you noticed someone performing at an exceptional level and you pointed it out to that person?
Who can you recognize in the next day with great specificity, sincerity, and detail?
CHAPTER RECAP AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Energy
16: Put Your Own Health First
Recap: When you eat, move, and sleep well, you can do more for others.
How often do you put your own health first in the midst of a demanding day?
What could you do to build small, healthy choices into your lifestyle for good?
What changes do you notice in your mood, energy levels, interactions, and productivity on days when you eat, move, and sleep well?
17: Eat Your Way to a Better Day
Recap: Eating well starts with healthier defaults and decisions and with making every bite count.
What are the central elements of a healthy diet for you? How could you build more of these elements into your routine?
What are the most common foods you snack on throughout the day? Could you add healthier standby snacks to your routine?
Do you notice how some foods influence your mood and energy more than others? How can you eat more more things that give you energy?
18: Learn to Walk Before You Run
Recap: Being active throughout the day matters most for your health and well-being. The more you move, the better your mood.
On a typical weekday, how much time do you spend sitting? Add up the time you spend sitting while eating, commuting, working, meeting with others, socializing, watching television, and working on your computer. How could you reduce this number by at least an hour per day?
What is one thing you could start doing today to add more activity to your daily routine?
How can you remind yourself to take a break from sitting at least one or two times every hour, even if you just get up for 30 seconds to stretch?
19: Sleep Longer to Achieve More
Recap: Every hour of sleep is an investment in your future, not an expense.
What is the ideal amount of sleep you need to feel well-rested? How often do you get enough sleep to be effective during the day?
How can you make sleep a clear priority and value in your family and social and work circles? What can you do to help everyone around you structure their schedules for optimal sleep and subsequent energy?
What is one small adjustment you can make in your bedroom to get consistently better sleep?
20: Eat, Move, and Sleep to De-Stress
Recap: Your daily actions can keep chronic stress from accumulating and doing more damage.
Instead of focusing on one element of health at a time, what can you do to ensure you are eating, moving, and sleeping better every day?
Chronic stressors are a bigger problem than temporary stressors. How can you structure your days to avoid situations that are constantly stressful?
Are there specific people who create a disproportionate amount of negative stress in your life? If so, what can you do to reduce the time you spend with these people so you inherit less secondhand stress?
21: Respond With Resiliency
Recap: Your reaction to a potential stressor is more important than the stressor itself.
Identify one small stressor you have today. How can you reframe this stress (why it matters or why it is meaningful to you) in a way that adds motivation while decreasing stress?
The next time you face an immediate or acute stressor, how can you remind yourself to mentally push “pause” before you respond hastily to someone else — online or in person?
What is one of the most resilient responses you have had to a major challenge in your life? What could you learn from this experience to turn your next major stressor into a more meaningful challenge?
B. Essential Reading
(ON MEANING, INTERACTIONS, AND ENERGY)
* * *
The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work
by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
This team’s study of more than 12,000 diary entries reveals how small daily momentum in meaningful work is what differentiates top-performing individuals and teams from the rest. This book is filled with great research on the topic of our daily work lives.
* * *
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler
This book summarizes an extraordinary amount of research on the power of the social networks that surround us. Written by two leading researchers, Connected shows how relationships shape our health, work, and well-being in ways we never would have guessed.
* * *
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Written by one of the world’s top psychologists, this book coins the term “flow” to describe the state you are in when you love what you are doing so much that you lose track of time.
* * *
Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending
by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton
This is the most comprehensive review I have read about better ways to spend your financial resources. Co-authored by two of the world’s leading researchers and experts on spending and well-being, this book led me to rethink how I prioritize my time and financial resources.
* * *
Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
by Paul Ekman
This book will change the way you think about your next interaction with another person. Author, psychologist, and researcher Paul Ekman explores how our faces and feelings affect the quality of our days.
* * *
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
by Adam Grant
This amazing book details why giving more is good. Written by Wharton professor Adam Grant, who has conducted a remarkable amount of research on these topics, this is an exceptional guide to building better careers, organizations, and communities.
* * *
Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day
by Todd Henry
This is one of the most compelling and provocative books I have read on the topic of doing what matters most every day. Simply reading this book will motivate you to do more tomorrow.
* * *
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
by Daniel H. Pink
This is a remarkable book about why we do what we do each day. Pink summarizes decades of important research about the need to find more intrinsic motivators in our work and lives.
* * *
Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
by Brian Wansink
If you want to make better decisions about what you eat, this book is the single best place to start. Brian Wansink is the world’s leading authority on the psychology of eating and why we often make choices that work against our long-term interests.
C. References
Prologue
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