Day Crafting Today / Ideas, tools, behavioural psychology and practical philosophy from Day Crafting that you can put into practice now.

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Ideas, tools, behavioural psychology and practical philosophy from Day Crafting that you can put into practice ...

Today...

Day: Wednesday, I think.
Time: Just about 12:34 am
Chronorhythm:

Based on a finch chronotype day of 7am to 11pm.

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Enjoying the Power of Celebrations, Rewards, and Treats in Day Crafting

It’s Friday, the weekend has arrived, or you’ve finally cleared your email inbox. Maybe you’ve achieved a milestone that required hard work or simply had a stroke of good luck. Perhaps you’d be content with some unscheduled or undeserved kindness. All of these are reasons to celebrate, reward, or treat yourself (aren’t these the same thing?).

In my Day Crafting work, I make a distinction between celebrations, rewards and treats as separate tools because they serve distinct purposes and work in different ways with aspects of our behavioural psychology.

Before diving into the definitions, let’s address a common issue: many of us hesitate to celebrate, reward, or treat ourselves. We might listen to the nagging voice in our heads that says we don’t deserve special treatment or that celebrations are for children or significant anniversaries. Personally, I have a problem in that I can enthusiastically imagine a future reward but when I get there, I don’t actually feel like it – but I’m working on it.. Let’s explore what you might need to work on.

I’m making the wild assumption that you’re up for the challenge of overcoming any reticence you might have and that you might dust these three tools off and put them to into practical use in your Day Crafting workshop.

Here’s a quick and practical distinction between celebrations, rewards, and treats in the context of Day Crafting:

Celebration

  • What it is: An in-the-moment, instant reaction.
  • Examples: A celebratory shout, a fist-pump, jumping up and down.
  • Use it for: Reinforcing positive behavioural changes and promoting a positive mindset.

Reward

  • What it is: A future inducement, something reserved for a later time, requiring effort or merit.
  • Examples: A bottle of bubbly, a prize, a special experience, recognition.
  • Use it for: Boosting motivation and ongoing practice, serving as an incentive to tackle difficult tasks.

Treat

  • What it is: An unexpected or unearned gift, present, or service.
  • Examples: A surprise sensory pleasure like a special meal or a bouquet of flowers, an act of kindness or generosity.
  • Use it for: Enjoying a positive experience whenever you desire.

The Practice

  • Are you better at one of these?
  • Which do you need more of?
  • How can you encourage these practices in others?

By understanding and embracing the differences between celebrations, rewards, and treats, you can unlock the potential of each tool in your Day Crafting. How can you use these tools in your coming days?

Written by Bruce Stanley on Fri, May 05, 2023

Previous entries

The synergy of self-care, how sleep, nutrition, exercise and rest work together

Under the heading of maintenance (how we look after ourselves in a day) generally*, our four most important actions are sleep, nutrition, exercise, and rest. What I’ve been writing about this week, after exploring those four elements individually, is how they interrelate. I’ve been adding detail to an arrow network diagram that shows how they affect each other – and subsequent topics such as energy, productivity, stress, immunity, and subjective well-being. It is perhaps no surprise that sleep has the most connections on the diagram.

Fri March 31 2023

Breaking the Mold: How to Change Your Identity in a Single Day

When asked how he managed to stay so active and enthusiastic, despite his age, an 80-year-old man said, “Each day I wake up, and I don’t let the old man in.” This moving and powerful quote filtered through to Clint Eastwood (via Toby Keith, a songwriter), and both the quote and the song ended up in Eastwood’s film, The Mule.

Fri March 17 2023

Are your days NEAT enough?

Why is it that citizens of certain places live significantly longer, healthier lives than the rest of us? These ‘blue zone’ places include Sardinia, Okinawa, Icaria in Greece, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and a Seventh-day Adventist community in California. What they have in common are some fairly simple lifestyle factors that contribute to their residents’ longevity, such as a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, regular physical activity, and a strong sense of community.

Tue January 31 2023

Only a minority of people actually review their course

Are you off course? This is an especially relevant question if you’re in new territory or if you’re making a new thing and more often than not, we are in that situation. Even if we think we’re doing the same thing, the world around us is volatile and constantly changing. How does the opening question help? It helps in that the more often you review your direction and signs of progress, the more often you can course correct potentially saving you from using resources you would otherwise waste and the associated frustrations.

[It turns out that not many people do this very often]

Fri January 13 2023

Counting your happy days

Here’s a short story about Abd al-Rahman III and Day Crafting. He was the grandson of the Emir who chose him from all of the potential successors to take the throne at the age of 21. His father had been assassinated by one of his brothers but there were other uncles and cousins to choose from so he must have been special. Abd al-Rahman III was unusual in other ways – despite his Arab lineage, he was a short and stocky, fair-skinned, blue eyed man which suggests there were European concubines in his family tree.

Fri December 02 2022

What rhythms does your body move to? Circadian, ultradian, infradian and circasemidian.

Is your day a harmony or a discord? This isn’t just poetic language. You have a finite amount of energy you can use during your day to maximise your productivity, wellbeing, creativity or whatever else matters so there are two actions you can take.

Firstly to make sure that energy is as high as it can be each day and secondly to schedule your choice of when you do things so that you’re doing the task when your energy for it is at its peak (this might mean you can do more, efficiently).

For example, the peak time for physical performance is late afternoon to early evening for most elite speed athletes which is why the Olympics schedules the 100m for that time. Here are our main energy rhythms that affect each of our days.

Thu November 10 2022

Why would you want to join a choir if you’re an introvert?

Does the lack of time or fear of stepping out of your comfort zone prevent you from experiencing joy and remarkable days? This is a short story about grief and the crunch day to take on a challenge.

Thu September 22 2022

Day Crafting: The Productivity Workbook

Day Crafting is about developing the skills to use time meaningfully. It is the everyday art of making a good life. It is a set of methods to craft the style in lifestyle.

How is your day different from how it could have been? Bridging that gap is the practical skill of Day Crafting. It is the good life in two steps: balance and flourish today, then repeat tomorrow.

Tue September 06 2022

Day Crafting: The Body-clock Workbook

Day Crafting is about developing the skills to use time meaningfully. It is the everyday art of making a good life. It is a set of methods to craft the style in lifestyle.

How is your day different from how it could have been? Bridging that gap is the practical skill of Day Crafting. It is the good life in two steps: balance and flourish today, then repeat tomorrow.

Tue September 06 2022

When self-care meant getting dirty and skirting peril

What does self-care mean to you?

Is it on autopilot or something you relish giving attention to? What problems do you encounter in your day to day self-care routines? I’m asking because I want to make the interventions in Day Crafting fit the kinds of problems we all encounter – and I’m starting to write the Self-care Workbook this week.

Mon September 05 2022

Monthly Apprentice Practice Set

MAPS is a monthly open workshop space for Day Crafting Apprentices to gather (over zoom). It is part action learning and part masterclass. It is a good way to develop and deepen your skills with the support of a leaning community. It feels like being in a warm and friendly workshop where fellow Apprentices are pleased to see you and find out how you’re doing.

Tue August 30 2022

Day Crafting Tailored Workshops

Day Crafting workshops are practical; as with any craft, workshop participants should be able to pick up useful skills and life-changing insights in even the shortest time. Workshops also include accessible content covering related theories and psychology but it is in support of the experiential focus.

Fri November 19 2021

Introductory Workbook – Learn Day Crafting at your own pace

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In this post you will find some photos from the workbook, a free sample to download containing a range of example pages and a link to buy the book.

Mon November 01 2021

Get Your Day Crafting Five A Day

What five things could you craft into every day to help your life flourish? This simple intervention goes to the heart of the Day Crafting philosophy – the good life is more days with time for these activities. The ingredients for a good life are simple, the challenge is intentionally making time for them and giving them our attention.

Fri June 04 2021

School holiday Day Crafting primer for children

How can Day Crafting help your children structure their days when they’re on holiday from school? Answering the question, ‘What do you want to do today?’ can be quite a cognitive challenge. My daughter is 10 and we’re experimenting with this tool (which we’ve co-adapted) to provide some inspiration.

Sat May 29 2021

Reset your days to your internal clock

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Thu April 22 2021

How To Think Like A Day Crafter

I’m fortunate enough to be in control of my schedule, so why does the 9 to 5 work ethic, amongst other influences, still loom and glower over my thinking? I feel like a long departed influential industrialist striking a pose like Isambard Kingdom Brunel is shaping my choices. Along with him is a sports (or business) coach who talks about goals and winning and success. I think there is a capitalist media mogul in there too, pushing rumours and feeding worries about insecurities that I can purchase my way out of.

Fri March 19 2021

The problem with business goals and imagining the future

Why is Day Crafting primarily concerned with shaping today, this day as the way to a good life?

I began coaching leaders almost 20 years ago in the context of their skills development, quality of life and ambitions. I noticed that nearly everyone could easily imagine exciting future goals. I was part of a programme that took executives through a deep visioning process and at the end they knew this: where I want to be in x months or x years time. However, almost none of them knew how to affect the quality of the day they were actually in and most goals were dropped a matter of weeks later. The part of our thinking that imagines the future is no match for the identity and behaviour part that dominates the present.

Fri March 05 2021

The best way to design a new behaviour

I know a ‘lean systems’ expert. Her job, in aerospace manufacturing is to observe processes in factories and work out how to make them more efficient. This involves changing the position of machines and materials and the flow of materials around the space. Crucially it involves changing people: their ideas, their habits and practices, but people don’t like change.

Fri February 12 2021

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Fri February 05 2021

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When we got back at 2.30 the power was back on early ... so what did we do?

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Fri January 15 2021