How to Bring Joy into each Work Day

Feeling down or feeling the blues at the end of your work day? Let’s talk about why we struggle with joy, how to identify joy each day and 3 simple questions to ask yourself each morning to help cultivate joy.

Why we Struggle with Joy each Day

As humans, we are naturally wired to have more negative thoughts than positive thoughts. Psychologists call this negativity bias. We tend to gravitate towards negative news/events and dwell on these events more than positive ones. This has a powerful effect on our thoughts, behavior and decisions.

Picture this: We have negative bias in real-life events all the time. Have you ever humiliated yourself in front of co-workers or friends? Do you vividly recall that event and feel embarrassed about it months later? Your co-workers or friends have likely forgotten all about this small event, but you are still dwelling on it.

Have you ever received a performance evaluation at work and constructive feedback was offered for where to improve? Do you tend to fixate on these comments rather than feeling good about the positive aspects of the review?

How do we Prime Ourselves for Joy each Day?

Remember back to your time in school when there were pre-tests before a topic? I definitely remember these, and I use them in my own classroom as an Associate Professor. These pre-tests were priming our brains to learn a topic.

This same concept of priming can be used in everyday life. We can prime our brains to see positive and joyful moments in each work day.

1. Set the tone for your day.

You can start out each day by asking yourself the three questions in the next section to make sure you’re priming your brain for the day.

2. Reframe the Language we use.

Many times, we use language that leans towards a negative bias. For example, when we use I have to do something today. Let’s shift this wording into I get to or I choose to language. This simple shift reminds us that we do not have to do anything in life. We have a choice and we have a choice to do things that add joy to our lives.

3. Stop Dwelling on Past Mistakes or Failures.

The past is in the past. Our mistakes and failures were learning experiences. It’s time to shift into the present moment. What opportunity do you have here and now to choose joy?

4. Reward yourself.

Many times, we tend to oversee the joy and progress we are making in life because we never stop and celebrate small wins. This is your time to take a moment, schedule in white space and celebrate. The rewards are personal to you – just don’t skip celebrating it!

3 Questions to Ask Yourself Each Morning

Each morning, set the tone for the day. I recommend starting with journaling your thoughts on these 3 questions. As you incorporate this into your morning routine, consider saying them out loud and adding scent to it with essential oils as well.  

1. What is one thing I can get excited about today?

The first question focuses on something you can control in your life. For example, being excited about a workout you signed up for or a new software you are training on today.

2. A situation that might stress me out today could be… and my best self will handle it…

Inevitably, there are challenging situations that arise in life. When we are prepared for them and are willing to bring our BEST SELF to the table, everyone benefits. Maybe this means you have a challenging meeting that will stretch you today, but you tackle it head on.

3. Who is someone I can surprise with a note, gift or thank you today?

Spreading joy is one of the best ways we bring positivity into each day. For example, you may give a friend a hug, send an audio or video message to a colleague or handwrite a note to leave on someone’s desk. These are small gestures that show appreciation for others and spread the joy to our communities.

Next Steps to Bring Joy into each Day

Use the techniques and 3 questions each day for the next week. At the end of the week, write down how you feel. Have your feelings at the end of the day changed since beginning these simple shifts?

Learn more about how to decrease stress and burnout in your life on The Burnout Doctor Podcast and burnout starter kit.

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Multitasking is making us STUPID | A Guide on How to Stop Multitasking!

Have you ever bragged that you are an amazing multitasker? Do you pride yourself on being able to DO it all and HAVE it all? Let’s talk about how multitasking is getting in our way of living a stress-free (or at least less stressful) life.

What is Multitasking?

Multitasking is doing two things at the same time.

Sounds simple, right? How can we complicate and say that multitasking is weighing us down and causing more stress than calm in our lives?

Picture this: You are cleaning up dinner and washing your dishes. You decide to turn on your audiobook while you clean up. You’ve just gotten to a thrilling surprise in the audiobook and are elated! Your partner walks over to help put away and dry some of the dishes. He looks at you, says something and then asks again. You snap out of your audiobook trance and realize that you were so focused on listening to your audiobook that you didn’t scrub that pan very well and part of the pasta is still caked to the bottom!

Can you relate? This is an example of multi-tasking. You were washing the dishes at the same time as listening to an audiobook.

The BIG difference? You were not FOCUSING on both activities at the same time because that is not humanly possible!

Don’t believe me?

Picture this: You’re enjoying listening to a podcast while commuting in your car (lots of this in Los Angeles traffic!) While avoiding another car merging into your lane on the freeway, you realize that you completely missed the point Jessica Stansberry was making! Now you need to click back to rewind 15-30 seconds and replay her point!

Again, you were multi-tasking here. Listening to the podcast at the same time as driving. BUT you were not MULTI-FOCUSING. This is not humanly possible.

Why Multitasking Hurts us more than it Helps us

When we try so hard to switch between tasks, we are using up valuable brain processing. When we pride ourselves on multitasking, we are actually slowing ourselves down more than helping ourselves. Yes, it is possible to DO two things at the same time but it is not possible to FOCUS on two things at the same time.

This is especially true if we are using the same parts of our brain on two tasks. For example, if we are trying to write an email while talking on the phone, we are multi-tasking our auditory systems and setting up ourselves for failure in one of the areas.

How to Stop Multitasking and Transition to Solo-Focusing

Here’s a simple solution to multitasking. I call it solo-focusing.

1. Become self-aware when you are multitasking
2. Acknowledge you are multitasking
3. Transition into solo-focusing on one task at a time

Solo-focusing means concentrating on one task at a time. From the examples we mentioned before, solo-focusing means we pause our audiobook or podcast for a minute to focus on washing dishes or driving. We stop the quick task switching that is overloading our brains and potentially causing even more mental clutter to transition from multitasking into solo-focusing.

Don’t believe that this works? Let’s take Nurse Katie as an example.

Nurse Katie gets very busy and confused while she takes care of multiple patients at once and talks to physicians, pharmacists and dietitians. When she implemented this simple 3-step solo-focusing process, she had a complete change in her feelings towards work! Her brain felt less cluttered with information and she felt less stressed throughout the day. She dedicated specific focused time to each task at hand and felt present with her patients. Ending multitasking can have a big impact on

Next steps to Ensure you Stop the Multitasking Mindset

Apply what you’ve learned here. Grab an accountability partner to help you recognize when you are multitasking. This may be someone from your home or work setting. Many times, we may be doing this without realizing. Slowly applying this 3-step process will transform your life. As with anything, consistency is key. Be the master of your life and your life will feel less stressful.

Learn more about how to decrease stress and burnout in your life on The Burnout Doctor Podcast and burnout starter kit.

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How to Slow Down a Busy Work Day | A Guide to Get You Started

Have you ever felt that the day went by in a blur? You cannot remember where one meeting started and one meeting ended. From our physical meetings to our video Zoom meetings, it’s a struggle. Add on top of that your daily commute and email overwhelm, and you’re all but sure to feel burned out at the end of the work day.

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How to Let go of a Busy Work Day

Remember, clutter is anything that takes away our energy and focus from what is most important to us. I call the things that affect our ability to process a busy work day Mental Clutter. Make sure you go back to my previous blog post on this topic.

Picture this: Think about all the transitions you experience during the day. Take a moment and write a few of them down here. Answer these questions about each transition:

• Do you ever carry over negative energy from one activity to the next?
• Do you ever feel depleted but still plow into your next activity without a break, even though you know you should take a breather?
• Are you losing a sense of presence and appreciation for life and others the further you go in your day?

I know, I’ve been there.

As an Associate Professor at a School of Pharmacy for Doctor of Pharmacy students, my plate is full. I often go from back-to-back meetings, to teaching the graduate students, to answering emails from students, to committee work for the university, and coming home to run my own small businesses. Days easily feel like a blur, and the feeling of work burnout can creep in without us even realizing it.

First Steps to Stop Burnout from your Work Day

Become a Master of Transitions

When you have back-to-back meetings or things scheduled on your calendar, become a master of transitions throughout the day. Transitions are a necessary part of our day. We transition from home to our car to commute. Then, we transition from our car in the work parking lot to going into work. We transition from reading emails to working on a project. When we pick up our kids from school, we transition to mom.

From now on, as you move from one major activity to the next, try this Letting Go Exercise:

• Close your eyes for 1 minute.
• Sit up straight.
• Breathe deeply.
• Repeat the phrase let go in your mind over and over again. Command body to let go of tension in shoulders, neck, face, jaw, back, legs.
• Set intention.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Returning to Work

Now that you’ve successfully let go of the busy day, it’s time to generate energy each hour. When we feel the day has been a blur, it probably has been because we are not taking intentional breaks to let our mind reset, our eyes take a break from screen time and our minds to let go of information it is accumulating at a fast rate.

When we take a break each hour we can first start with the Letting Go Exercise. Then, we can ask ourselves 3 questions before returning to work:

1. What energy do I want to bring into this next activity?
2. How can I do this next activity with excellence?
3. How can I enjoy the process?

This may sound simple, but have you actually seen how it feels when you do this intentionally? Try it sitting in the car before your next transition. You may be surprised to find that you no longer carry over negative energy when you take one minute to let go and reset.  

Simple Daily Steps to Stop Burnout from a Busy Day at Work

Apply what you’ve learned here. Help the cycle and set a timer if you don’t remember to take a break each hour. Remember, you are in control of your TIME and your feelings at work. Be the master of your life and your life will feel less stressful.

Learn more about How to Slow Down and Stop Burnout at Work with our FREE Workshop: https://drjessicalouie.com/joy

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How to Stop the Email Overload | A Guide to get you Started

Email is part of our everyday lives. It’s become a normal way to communicate with loved ones, friends, colleagues, and companies near and far. BUT…it can become overwhelming in our daily lives. As we talked about last month, clutter affects our work productivity and our email inbox is part of our mental clutter.

The Basics

How is email overloading our mental load (also known as mental clutter)?

Remember, clutter is anything that takes away our energy and focus from what is most important to us. Mental Clutter affects our ability to process information. Email is part of our digital clutter and it affects our ability to process information intentionally.  

Picture this: Have you ever opened your email inbox first thing in the morning? Were you overwhelmed with responding to the messages in your email? Did you proceed to check your email right before bedtime? Did you have trouble sleeping after reading a not-so-friendly email?

I know, I’ve been there.

Email is a passive activity that eats away at our time. It causes our brains to go into overdrive to address all the information coming in from it. Let’s shift this today with simple steps.

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First Steps to stop the email overload

Clarify the purpose of your email inbox. Write it down… the purpose of my email inbox is…

If you’re having trouble with this, think about:

• What type of communication tool do you want your email to be?
• Is email for non-urgent communication or urgent communication?

Remember, YOU get to decide this purpose. Not someone else. Not societal pressures.

I used to think email was for urgent communications and allow it to control my life 24/7. I soon realized the high levels of stress, burnout and clutter in my life were related to email (and this false thinking). Typically, email is for non-urgent communications. We respond within a reasonable timeframe (usually 24-72 hours) but not immediately. Urgent communication is usually related to phone calls/text messages and not email.

Now you may be thinking that this statement is not possible. Trust me, it is. Just like everything in life, we teach others how to treat us, how to talk to us and how to communicate with us. We set the expectations and boundaries we want to have in life.

That includes EMAIL.

Picture this: Not sure how to communicate an email boundary? Write it into your contract before selling a service, a welcome letter when someone purchases from you, talk about how to get in touch with you to your colleagues, babysitters and friends. My contracts and welcome letters clearly state that we believe in work-life alignment and that means urgent communications are done via a business text message and non-urgent communications via email will be responded to within 24-48 business hours.

How to Simplify your Email Overload

Keep it simple to free up your space and mind to generate energy daily. Use these basic principles to get started:

1. Schedule time to open your email inbox

2. Each email requires 1 of 3 options:

• File into an Archive folder (NOT into a sub-folder) if you read it but don’t need to do anything with it and it should not be deleted.
• Act on it now if it takes 2 minutes or less. I call this closing the files. Anything in life that takes 2 minutes or less, we do right away to avoid the accumulation of mental clutter in our brains.
• Defer the email and schedule a time on your calendar to respond to it. Maybe that means it takes 15 minutes or 30 minutes to gather the response. Add it to your calendar so you won’t forget about it. Then, file this email into the Archive folder to free up the space in your email inbox.

How to align email into your life

Continue to set boundaries around email. Here are a couple questions to consider asking yourself:

• Does this email bring value to my life?
• Does reading this email spark joy?

If yes, keep these emails and read and enjoy them. If no, unsubscribe from these email lists (usually at the bottom of the email) and let it go with gratitude. The emails you signed up for to receive a promotion can always be re-subscribed if the need arises again. If you signed up to follow a resource you enjoyed using but have not been reading the recent emails, let it go. Know you can always re-subscribe when it fits your life and you’ll TAKE ACTION on the emails again.

If emails are considered “essential” for work purposes but don’t fit the above two questions, go back to the first steps above on how to teach others to communicate with you.

Simple Daily Steps to stop Email Overwhelm

Apply what you’ve learned here. You can stop email overwhelm! Subscribe to less emails, send less emails, and feel the joy of less email clutter! Remember, if you don’t want emails to be urgent communication tools, then don’t respond immediately to emails. And most importantly, stop checking email outside of work hours!

Click here to learn more about the Mental Clutter Email creates at our FREE Workshop.

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How Clutter Impacts your Work Productivity

One of the easiest ways to increase work productivity is to remove clutter from your work life and home life. But why? And what really is clutter?

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The Basics

What is Clutter?

Clutter is anything that gets in the way of experiencing joy each day. It can be anything that takes away our energy and focus from the things that are most important to us.

Is there more than one type of clutter?

YES!

To make it simple, I view clutter in four categories. Physical clutter, mental clutter, emotional clutter and spiritual clutter exist in our world. All types of clutter affect our work lives and home lives – AKA our JOY!

4 Types of Clutter:

·  Physical Clutter is comprised of our tangible objects. We visually see this type of clutter in our work offices, cars, and homes. Physical clutter can be simplified using the KonMari Methodä.

·  Mental Clutter affects our ability to process information. Mental clutter tends to accumulate in our digital world through emails, text messages, phone calls and digital files. It is similar to mental overload, or the mental load that many people carry around.

·  Emotional Clutter affects our ability to express feelings such as sadness, fear, or anger. Today, many of us find difficulty expressing our feelings due to the digital world. One way to help reset this is to journal your feelings.

·  Spiritual Clutter affects our energy levels and ability to be present in the moment. Today, many of us are incorporating mindfulness and taking mindful pauses during the day to help with spiritual clutter.

Now that we know what clutter is and the four types of clutter affecting our work lives and home lives, how does clutter relate to work productivity? Clutter takes up valuable resources including our time, energy, focus, and money.

Picture this: How many times have you misplaced a piece of paper? A password to an important software for work? A reference book? The time you spend looking for lost things adds up, and TIME is a resource that we cannot get back. Now think about how many times you have had to re-organize your desk because it was covered with papers, books or office supplies? Add in the time you’ve spent decluttering your email inbox and internet browser tabs and that is some SERIOUS time spent on non-income producing work activities.

What does research say about clutter and stress levels?

The research shows that cluttered spaces leave us feeling anxious, helpless and overwhelmed. Clutter is directly tied to stress levels from cortisol production in our bodies (especially in women). Our brain only has so much space to take in and process information. Clutter makes it more difficult to focus because it takes up some of that brain space.

All that to say – YES, clutter may be affecting our health and wellbeing. If we don’t tackle the issue, clutter can add anxiety, stress, lack of focus, and other problems to our daily lives. Your clutter impacts your work productivity in a lot of negative ways if you allow it.

So, how do you get started decreasing clutter to improve work productivity?

Step 1: Acknowledge that clutter is affecting your work productivity. It all starts with our MINDSET around clutter. We need to acknowledge that clutter is not serving our best self. Let it go with gratitude and the intention to find joy at work and in life.

Step 2: Clarify the purpose of each physical item in your work life. Outline the purpose of your digital platforms – your email, your phone use, your internet use, and your social media use. Fill in the end of this sentence for each of them (and remember it is YOU who decides this, not your boss or society or culture).

·  The purpose of my email inbox is…

Step 3: Simplify how you use each area of your work life. Simplify the physical clutter – ask yourself if it sparks joy, has a functional use, or has a future use? If yes, keep it and store it with intention in a proper location. If no, let it go with gratitude for the learning experience it taught you. Continue to apply the simplifying step to each physical item and then move onto the digital clutter (mental clutter).

Step 4: Align your work into your life and NOT the other way around! Work is ONE part of our life and NOT our whole life. Do the mindset work around this idea and you’ll be cultivating joy at work through simple workflows that serve you.

I want to know how clutter has shifted your feelings about work and joy in life!

Watch our FREE Workshop on How to Cultivate Joy at Work today!

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