Rev up with Design Factory Melbourne #2

Rev Up with DFM is a series of short posts to get your day started. Delivered in bite-sized chunks, this series gives you a taste of a wide range of activities, that you can try out to enhance your own workflow or share them with your team. Each week, we share an activity varying in four different themes; Gain Focus, Boost Energy, Find Inspiration and Make Connections.

This week’s theme: Find Inspiration

Let us introduce a short activity to direct your focus on reinforcing positive moments and identifying what makes you feel great.

This week we want to focus on the power of positive emotions and designated time to pause and reflect. This short activity is all about finding inspiration and energy through recognising great moments and actions that will enable us to harness more positive emotions on a day to day basis. Taking time to recognise positive emotions is a worthwhile activity, as it is linked to our performance (Schwartz & McCarthy, 2007) and physical well-being (Rimer, 2011). 

“Most people realize that they tend to perform best when they’re feeling positive energy. “

(Schwartz & McCarthy, 2007)

Activities that encourage us to reflect enable us to gain insight, they evoke our emotions and give us an opportunity to connect the past with the future. We take time to pause and take stock of our achievements, thoughts and challenges. Mindful reflection of positive moments is a way to become more aware of how we feel in different situations and during our workdays. It is a way to harness our emotions better and increase our resilience and effectiveness (Schwartz & McCarthy, 2007).

“When people are able to take more control of their emotions, they can improve the quality of their energy, regardless of the external pressures they’re facing.”

(Schwartz & McCarthy, 2007)

This activity helps us to recognise the positive feelings we often tend to forget and don’t share, neither with ourselves nor with others. How we frame questions is crucial for driving good reflection. Main point is to give this a go and see what kinds of questions prompt different thinking. You might do this activity to prepare for your day or a task ahead if you are looking to feel more grounded, increase your mood and thus ultimately work towards increasing your performance.

Connecting with positive moments warmup - How to do it? 

The following is a suggested order for the emotional warmup and can be done individually or in a group. If you guide others through this activity, ensure all members are comfortable to participate.

*Take a piece of paper and pen. You can also use your computer - we often prefer the tactility of a paper and pen, and the opportunity to scribble thoughts without the feeling that they need to be fully prepared or finished.

There are two questions in this activity. Take 3-5min for each question, and if you are doing this with a group, you can encourage voluntary sharing after each question. Each question is framed for your work environment, however you could also apply this to your personal life.

1. When thinking about your work, think of a moment from the past week that you’ve felt great. Think of why? 
2. What do you hope from the work week ahead? What is the action you can take to ensure this will happen? 

Now, how do you feel? Did something surprising emerge? Did you find a moment from a small encounter or instance, or perhaps something quite big that you have been working towards and that went well? Perhaps you feel inspired by those moments? Or perhaps you found it difficult to find moments when you have felt great at work? In this case, take some time to think about what feeling great means for you; what makes you tick? Then think back of even the smallest moments, instances, interactions and build from there. This could be something that seems insignificant at first or a quickly passing moment, or perhaps you have had a whole day when you felt like you had a good flow going.

All answers are correct and the most important thing is to take some time to reflect and recognise these emotions and moments. It is important to adopt such practices to have a more positive outlook on life as optimistic thoughts and moments drive positive emotions. 

Finally, you should think about actions - What do you hope for, and what can you do about it? As David and Tom Kelley share in their Creative Confidence book: “The value lies not in the idea, however, but in the action.” 

You might want to repeat this activity at the start of each week, to recognise moments where you felt great and ensure you can build on those moments and replicate them as much as you can. We also encourage you to revisit your actions and thoughts, to ensure you can keep accountable for yourself and ensure you give time and focus to your personal development. 

Stay tuned for the Rev up with DFM activity next week.

References:

Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2013). Creative confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all.

Rimer (2011). Happiness and Health. Harvard School of Public Health. Retrieved from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/happiness-stress-heart-disease/ [18.5.2020]

Schwartz, T., & McCarthy, C. (2007). Manage your energy, not your time. Harvard business review, 85(10), 63.