How to avoid having a bad day

Or, how to manage micro-annoyances to have a better day?

The captain of the Ever Given had a bad day. For whatever reason, his ship got a tank-slapper on in the world's most important shipping lane and binned itself into the bank of the Suez Canal thus almost bringing global trade to a halt.

There are other bad days. At work, it may involve getting laid-off and over the last year, it may have involved news of a loved one due to coronavirus. These days are literally the worst. Truly bad days.

But, how often have you left work - or closed your laptop - and said: I've had a really shit day? You know, a bad day when none of the actual truly bad things have happened, but you still feel like crap. I would imagine it's fairly frequent.

Bad days at work in my experience fall into two categories. One, when things don't go to plan, such as a project failing, and two, a day just filled with lots of micro-annoying instances that really get on your nerves.

While projects not succeeding do lead to bad days, and often are not the fault of a single instance or person, the days filled with annoying crap are the ones that I feel we can manage much better, and therefore help us avoid having those repetitive bad days.

So, what is a micro-annoyance? There are literally millions to choose from. The car in-front not signally before it turns, the coffee machine is out of water, being on mute, your colleague is on mute, you being told you're on mute, and so on.

These are the things that routinely piss you off. And, when they build up throughout the day they gradually put you in a worse mood to the point that when you finally end your day, you sit back and say: what crap day.

So, what can you do to manage these micro-annoyances? First, there are some fundamentals around lifestyle, which maybe not everyone can manage effectively - so I'm not going to preach about those.

But, the first sign that you're going to have a bad-micro-annoyed day starts when you wake up. You've been awake for one minute, and you already feel tired.

I'm no health expert but getting the right amount of sleep for you is important. I wear a Whoop band, and it tracks my sleep and tells me how prepared my body is to take on strain. Today, Whoop tells me I'm 64% recovered. What does that mean? Probably, not a lot, but it tells me that I'm not exhausted but I'm also not 100% today.

Knowing how you feel is the first part of avoiding micro-annoyances. I know I'm tired today, so I'm going to moderate - within the reason of my work commitments - what I do to avoid getting cranky.

The second part of avoiding micro-annoyances is knowing how to manage all the things that are going to happen to you today. You know that you'll be on mute at some point. You know your boss is going to ask you for something that you've already sent them. You know someone is going to Slack you for something that they could do themselves.

The secret to avoiding having a bad day is to recognize these micro-annoyances and simply let them roll off your back. Let them go, move on, forget about them - whatever your coping mechanism is... don't let these small things ruin your day.

People are annoying, work is annoying, almost anything can be annoying, but don't get bogged down in them. And, yes, I know they are annoying, but actually training yourself not to let them get to you does work. Almost tell yourself - that was annoying - and then move on. It's truly a gamechanger.

In addition, to forgetting these micro-annoyances, focus on the good stuff. Now, most office-home-based jobs don't give you the moments of enormous satisfaction but think about the great one-to-one conversation you had, the small win on a piece of work that you've managing for a few weeks, a funny meme that a colleague shared.

For all the micro-annoyances there are many many micro-happy-moments. They may be fleeting, but they are there. Think about those.

Does it matter? I think yes. We all remain under significant levels of stress brought about by the pandemic. Our mental health has never been more in focus or more important. So any hack possible to avoid having a bad day is worth a try.

Let me know how you get on.