Make the Most of your Workday

The challenges you face at work can be burdensome and even chaotic.

Every workday you face is – or should be – special. Each one is a blank slate of tremendous possibilities and positive opportunities waiting for you to make your mark. The problem is that each workday often involves an email inbox full of messages to answer; a physical inbox filled with papers requiring your attention; and numerous other tasks, projects and personalities you must handle – usually under pressing deadlines.

“The workday can be an active battleground with unproductive chaos and changes resulting in stress, confusion and useless conflict.”

In addition to doing a good job with your work, you probably face the daily pressures, problems and pretenses common to any workplace. These include dealing with office dramas and difficult colleagues; managing long-term workloads; staying current with constant – and confusing – technological change; and sometimes working for unpleasant, incompetent or indifferent bosses.

You have only so much energy – physical, spiritual and mental – to handle workday stress.

Many office workers put up with daily, constantly changing chaos. More and more often, across the globe, chaos is becoming the ultimate sign of the times. This is true in all venues and environments – most definitely including the office. Besides the constant deluge of emails, many office workers must attend so many meetings that they have little time to think about or perform their jobs correctly. With all these pressures, it’s difficult for office workers to pay attention to the instructions, specifications and requirements that affect their assigned tasks.

“Even if you decide someday to leave your current role or organization, chances are strong that you will find similar problems in the new department, team, organization and…yourself.”

Of course, everyone also has personal pressures, problems and responsibilities outside the office that weigh down the workday. Add in unexpected surprises at work and at home. Many office workers see their office environment as a constant pressure cooker.

With “adaptability, focus and proactive planning,” you can leverage each workday for top performance and maximum satisfaction.

Does this sound familiar? If so, don’t lose hope or become downhearted. With the right mental attitude and the proper physical, emotional and spiritual fortitude, you can “fall back, regroup, reframe and bounce back” from workplace demands.

For your workdays to average out being as good as possible – and not disastrously bad – you need to develop self-awareness, positive self-talk and energy management, and to try to take time for “reflection and action planning.” Your workday is just that – your unique and singular day. Take full control of each one as “the leader of yourself.”

The more you control what happens to you at work, the happier you will be.

To experience fulfillment at work, people want to be able to control their workdays and the work they do. They’d like clear instructions from their leaders, satisfying relationships with their colleagues and a solid connection with their organization. Workers also want fair treatment and sufficient break time to re-energize.

“Being brave and getting to know our personality and other personality types may include learning about what causes us stress and how we react under stress.”

When dealing with an unpleasant work environment, remember that you do have choices. You can fight your way through each distressing workday while crossing your fingers that things might somehow magically improve. Or you can take specific actions to improve your situation. To start, establish your long-term employment objectives. Envision what your ideal future job would look like, and take positive steps toward your goals.

First, create your “current workday profile.”

You can’t improve your situation at work if you don’t understand it, so analyze it. Ask if this is your dream job, a “stopgap, stepping stone, springboard” – or something else? Are you in a “honeymoon” phase or is the honeymoon over? Can you work it out, or is it time to move on?

Determine which facets of your job you’d like to fix: your engagement, productivity or satisfaction. Try to identify what makes you unhappy at work, what you get from your job, what stands in the way of being more productive and which factors create chaos for you at work.

Second, create your “desired workday profile.”

What would your ideal employment scenario look like? How could you make things better? Moving ahead, you need to identify what changes you would like to implement to create a better life at work. Reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. Consider how you could improve in each of these areas: managing yourself; defining your priorities; assessing how you value time and energy; communicating effectively; confronting, challenging and conquering chaos; and “choosing change.”

Beyond any personal challenges you might define, change is never easy. Change of any sort can make the people around you uncomfortable. Be ready for this ordinary reaction. Recognize that some colleagues may try to sabotage your positive efforts. Plan and prepare for these eventualities.

No matter what your position, you are ultimately in charge of your own workplace satisfaction.

It would be wonderful if organizations, executives and managers went out of their way to make their office environments as pleasant as possible for employees. Unfortunately, this is rare. Unhappy workplaces have a negative impact on the people in them. If you are an executive or manager, take steps to make your workplace as pleasant as possible. Make the environment safe and comfortable, and design it to encourage employee interaction. This isn’t merely the right thing to do; it elevates employee engagement and productivity.

“Our engagement with our work is like any relationship: Hard work is required to sustain it.”

You might not be a formally designated leader in your organization, but you can still lead others at work. To begin, lead yourself: Become the wonderful leader you’ve always wanted to have. This will help you become a role model for your colleagues. Such role models have a positive influence on others and helps shape their actions. Modeling is a potent form of leadership.

As a worthy role model, keep in mind that your priorities won’t necessarily match your colleagues’ priorities, so don’t focus only on what you want. Collaborate with them so you can take what they want into account as well.

To improve your work experience, you must communicate effectively with your managers and colleagues so you can develop meaningful relationships. Communicating badly has the opposite effect and can transform your colleagues into subtle or not-so-subtle adversaries. To become a quality communicator, start by being a good listener. When you communicate, be aware of your intended message, your emotions when delivering it and the reactions of your co-workers.

Effective communicators never dodge difficult conversations with their colleagues. If conflict occurs, face up to it and deal with it. Try to turn a bad situation into a good one. Be honest and authentic in these conversations since dishonesty is always destructive.

Take time to reflect about specific work challenges, and consider what steps you could take to make things better for yourself.

Consider these crucial questions:

• What would make your workday better?
• How many enjoyable workdays do you normally have each week?
• Do any of your workday problems stem from “personality, behavior at work, mind-set and self-talk?”
• Do you understand and acknowledge your organization’s priorities? Your team’s priorities? Your work priorities?
• How do you plan and schedule your time?
• Is your organization responsible for the chaos you confront daily? How much do you contribute to it?
• Are you resilient enough to deal with chaos? If not, how can you make yourself more resilient?

List specific actions you could and should take to make yourself happier at work. Measures you might implement include:

• Make a list of the challenges that make you unhappy at work.
• Undergo a formal personality assessment to learn what makes you tick.
• To increase your self-awareness, ask those who know you to assess you objectively and discuss how you come across to others.
• Develop a positive and self-affirming mind-set.
• At the end of every workday, pay yourself this compliment: “Well done!”
• Organize your work priorities.
• Employ specific strategies and tactics to become more satisfied at work. Tell your colleagues what you’re doing, and ask for their support and assistance.
• Identify one external source of chaos and figure out how to eliminate or minimize it.
• Pinpoint one source of chaos for which you are personally responsible and determine how to reduce it or make it go away.
• Don’t accept chaotic conditions at work as inevitable. Confront self-defeating conditions in your office, and try to change them.

Never allow yourself to feel powerless. If you face a daunting situation at the office or in your personal life, do your best to change it for the better. If you are unhappy at work, remember you can quit any time. Recognizing that you are in charge of your career and that you indeed have choices can be liberating. The realization can result in a “positive shift” toward something new and better at work and at home. Align any action you take with your “beliefs, goals and mind-sets.”

Identify your three biggest challenges at work, and make plans to deal with them. Outline the actions you will take. Think about the support and resources that could help you, such as feedback or coaching.

Determine which facets of your job you’d like to fix: engagement, productivity or satisfaction.

The actions you decide to take at work and away from the office should address your “engagement, productivity, satisfaction and overall workday happiness.” Think about taking positive action to:

• Study the issues you face, with a focus on problem-solving.
• Take a walk during your workday, and exercise more often.
• Acknowledge that the more you take care of yourself away from work, the better things will go for you at work.
• Recognize and list the good things – tangible and intangible – that your work brings you.
• Regularly eat lunch with your co-workers and get to know them.
• Take a course in your field that will help you advance at your organization.
• Honestly assess what you contribute in output and attitude.

Consider the factors that make most people happier, more satisfied and more productive at their jobs, so that you can:

• Develop self-knowledge about “what makes you happy” at home and at work and strive to do those things.
• Enhance your ability to “speak up, push back,” uncover options and create necessary boundaries.
• Consciously change your state of mind at the end of the day so you go home with a positive outlook.
• Focus on the people around you.
• Solicit quality feedback.
• Stay aware that solving problems at work may lead to new opportunities.
• Ask for help from your team or whoever at work you feel most comfortable approaching.
• Recognize that any workday might present new, unexpected opportunities.
• Remember that every “workday is precious.” Don’t waste even one potentially special day.

The three major factors in finding satisfaction at work are “hope, change” and leading yourself.

The three factors that can make the largest contribution to your happiness at work are hope, change and leading yourself. For these elements to function, you must be in touch with yourself, and understand what makes you satisfied with life and work. Try to be sufficiently adaptable to weather an entire day of crazy office chaos and still go home with a contented mind.

“A workday needs a leader, and that is you. To go home feeling satisfied, engaged and productive, your approach needs to be proactive rather than constantly reactive or passive.”

Understand that instituting a change of any kind – including finding a reliable way to be happy at work – can be difficult. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Stay positive and work hard to change things, but don’t expect an easy cure. One way to start creating the improvement you want to see is to be kind to all your colleagues – and to yourself.

How We Can Help You

At Bentley Moore Executive, we have specialists with excellent commercial experience in behavioral change, transformation, service delivery, cost savings, cost containment initiatives, as well as operational efficiencies gained operating in the public, private and charity sectors.

If you want to know more or wish to engage us to have a consultation on sustainable cost savings for your business or organisation, please do feel to contact us.

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About the Author

Mary A. Camuto founded MC Consulting, a firm that specializes in leadership, organizational development, training design, group facilitation, managing chaos and effective communication.