This month we welcome guest blogger in Mark Waller, one of our Community Fellows*. Mark is Station Maintenance Superintendent at AGL Loy Yang. He has 31 years’ heavy industrial experience, with interests including improving his leadership effectiveness via increased emotional health, mentoring people, reading and overseas travel adventures.

Each evening, after another unrelenting day’s work, my fiancée Janice and I ask each other, ‘Did you have a “PIP” or a “PIP-F” day?’ The former means Productive, Interesting, and Purposeful. The latter means Productive, Interesting, Purposeful and FUN.

Inevitably we conclude we both had a PIP day, but we generally have far too many tasks and conflicting priorities for many work days to be PIP-F. We recently realised it was only by exception that one of us said we had a PIP-F day.

Recognising this eventually led Janice and I to discussing possible options for gaining more PIP-F in our work days. We decided we didn’t want our work days and working lives to be nothing but frantic, resentful blurs. Aside from the personal impact, we knew that working this way was too often pulling us below the line.

Making concerted efforts to seek out splashes of fun each day would enable us to enjoy our working lives more and not be resentful toward our large workloads. This would inevitably be good for our emotional health and so have a positive impact on the people around us.

We started to try some ideas for finding more PIP-F in our work days, and knowing that many leaders in many professions are in exactly the same situation as ourselves, we decided to write these down. So here are some ideas we’ve been trying in order to find more PIP-F in our days.

  • Deliberately and consciously seek out and/or create humour and laughter, even if only for brief moments. It’s okay to a crack an occasional funny at the relevant time. It’s amazing how three or four opportunities have presented each day since we’ve been more focused on looking out for these moments.
  • Make conscious efforts not to treat our roles and KPIs as a matter of life and death. Take more holistic views to put it all into perspective. Will the things causing us stress today really matter next week, let alone several weeks or months from now?
  • Seek activities during the working day to increase our heart rates and get some fresh air, like a five to 10-minute walk outside or a brisk effort up a flight of stairs. In the language of Global Leadership Foundation, this is about improving balance by connecting with the ‘Body’ centre. It’s surprising how much better you feel when you sit down again.
  • Schedule daily reflection time to appreciate what we have achieved, even if unplanned, instead of what we didn’t accomplish.
  • Work harder on ourselves than on our jobs. Don’t convince ourselves that we’re too busy to attend that lunchtime yoga session or team building activity. Again, this is about maintaining balance.
  • Ask ourselves, ‘Do I really have to attend that meeting?’ When we can say no occasionally each week, the extra time freed up makes us feel slightly more in control and therefore happier.

We’re not saying any of these ideas are easy or even convenient. We’re only suggesting making a concerted effort to try some of them out, if you don’t already. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the positive difference this approach can make to your busy, daily work ritual and your emotional health.

* Community Fellows are people we recognise who are contributing to the Global Leadership Foundation purpose of raising the emotional health levels of other people across the globe.  This is through leading by example in the work they do and in the conscious choices they make and mindful practices they undertake in their own lives.

Photo by Fré Sonneveld on Unsplash