There is noth­ing like that great feel­ing at the end of a good work day. We are happy, grate­ful, relaxed, pain-free, and gladly ready for our choice of activ­ity in the evening. Very sim­ply, here are my obser­va­tions of things that lead to such a won­der­ful feeling.

1. Don’t use the wrong muscles!

In other words, be com­fort­able. After all, what do the trapez­ius and rhom­boids have to do with the prod­uct you are developing? There is no point giv­ing chores to mus­cles that have noth­ing to do with the work at hand! But that is exactly what hap­pens if you are seated or sit­u­ated uncom­fort­ably while work­ing. Make a deal with those mus­cles to not cause mutual pain. A proper pos­ture is easy to remem­ber to start out with, but as the mind wan­ders into soak­ing the bad­ness of stress, the deal is bro­ken. Pay atten­tion reg­u­larly, and before you know it, good pos­ture becomes auto­matic. Also, remem­ber­ing to move brings atten­tion back to uncom­fort­able and suf­fer­ing parts of the body.

2. Con­nect equally with peo­ple and work.

What works for me is to iden­tify one big and a few small goals for the day. As an agile team, we start the day with a quick chat on what we intend to do, where we need help, where we can offer help, and what everyone’s day is expected to look like. How­ever, through­out the day, on great work days, we con­nect, offer help,  and if pos­si­ble, take breaks together. We inject pos­i­tive energy, appre­ci­ate the progress by oth­ers, and count our bless­ings — not every­one gets to work on mean­ing­ful things with great peo­ple. On the days we fool­ishly choose not to do that, that great feel­ing at the end of the day eludes me.

3. Smile!

What we do is hard, as is any mean­ing­ful endeavor most folks under­take. The lazy and easy thing to do is to get dragged down when results fall short and progress is slower than desired. It typ­i­cally is, espe­cially for ambi­tious teams dri­ven to do mean­ing­ful things. So it is just plain silly, unwise and unhelp­ful to get neg­a­tive and not appre­ci­ate all the things that are pro­ceed­ing well. It is the job of the oth­ers to lift up the early vic­tim, and sup­ply the nec­es­sary oxy­gen. A pos­i­tive, happy and appre­cia­tive state of being never made any­one per­form less effec­tively. In fact, it is the one thing that leaves us strong to fight another day. And remem­ber to breathe — real oxy­gen is very impor­tant too!

I wish every­one that great feel­ing at the end of each work day!