How to Stay Positive When It’s Cold, Wet and Never Stops Snowing or Raining

0:00Welcome back to the Productivity Podcast where I give you a daily productivity tip so you can get the most out of your time, your talent, and your ideas. I'm your host Brandon White, here we go. It's been cold, wet, snowing and freezing rain for weeks. You're soaked before you even get to the office. Your motivation is as gray as the sky, and you're starting to wonder if the sun is just a myth you see on the shows you've been binge-watching on Netflix as you hear the wind howling outside. Here's the thing, while you can't control the weather, psychologists have found you can control something even more important that doesn't just make you feel better, it makes you 14% more productive. They were explaining what psychologists call hope, that can change how you feel, then we'll look at a study from the Journal of Organizational Behavior that shows how hope

1:02drives real performance, and then we'll wrap up with three science-backed strategies to use hope so that you can feel better and more positive. When you're dealing with endless rain or endless challenges at work, quote unquote staying positive sounds like useless advice, but psychologists have identified what makes some people resilient in difficult circumstances while others spiral. It comes down to hope, and not just the fingers cross-kind. Hope is built on two specific skills, Pathways Thinking and Agency Thinking. Pathways Thinking means you see multiple routes forward. The rain destroyed your outdoor plans, you immediately think of indoor alternatives. Your project timeline got crossed, you spot three different ways to adjust. Agency Thinking is believing you have the energy and ability to take those paths.

2:03It's the difference between, I could try something else, and I'm going to make something else work. And here's what matters, hope isn't a personality trait. It's not something that you're born with or without. It's a skill you can develop, especially during those stretches when everything feels relentlessly difficult. A study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior titled Exploring the Role of Hope in Job Performance results from four studies. Measured hope alongside intelligence, optimism, and self-efficacy. To see what actually predicted workplace performance, hope won, across four different studies, hope predicted job performance better than any other of those other factors. And we're talking about objective performance, supervisor ratings, actual business outcomes, not just people saying they felt more motivated.

3:03Hope accounts for about 14% of productivity in the workplace. Studies with higher hope employees showed higher profitability, better retention, and greater employee satisfaction. And high hope people have cognitive flexibility. When plans fall apart, whether that's a rained out event or a derailed project, they don't get stuck ruminating. They reframe obstacles as temporary and start generating solutions. Low hope people, on the other hand, use avoidance as a coping strategy and tend to stay stuck thinking about the problem instead of solving it. So how do you build hope when you're staring at a forecast of another week of cold weather, rain or snow, or another mountain of work that feels overwhelming? Here are three science-backed protocols. First, give yourself something to look forward to today. Not someday, today. This is the fastest hope hack there is. Your brain needs proof that the current miserable moment is temporary and that something better

4:07is on the other side of it. It doesn't have to be big. A specific launch you're excited about, a show you're saving for tonight, a call with someone you enjoy talking to, schedule it now. When your brain knows a reward is coming, it stops treating the current stretches endless. Two, build a I've survived worse list. It runs as evidence, not feelings. When you're stuck in everything feels impossible, your brain needs concrete proof that you've navigated hard things before. Spend five minutes writing down real obstacles you've overcome. Blown deadlines you've still hit. Situations that felt impossible that eventually resolved themselves. Keep it somewhere you can find it. On the hard days, that list isn't feel good journaling. It's data that rebuilds your belief that you can handle what's in front of you right now. Three, come up with five alternatives before you pick one.

5:07This one directly trains pathways thinking. Whatever problem is in front of you right now, work challenge, blown routine, anything. Before you do anything, write down five different ways you could respond to it. They don't all have to be good. The point isn't the list. The point is training your brain to automatically generate options instead of locking up. Do this enough times and it becomes your default. Stuck stops feeling permanent. Look, sometimes it really does rain for weeks. Sometimes projects drag on. Deadlines pile up and work feels like a grind. You can't always change circumstances, but you can change how you navigate them. Hope isn't pretending problems don't exist. It's the practice to building to spot options and believe you can execute on them. With 14% more productivity, better problem solving and significantly lower stress, building hope isn't just feel good advice for rainy days, it's your legitimate edge.

6:11Give those three tips a try and remember, every storm eventually clears and the sun does shine. You're moved. Thanks so much for listening to the Productivity Podcast. Please remember to hit the follow button in your podcast player so you never miss the show. We'll see you in the next episode.