Your best work happens when you feel good

Think about your last genuinely good day at work. Not just a day when nothing went wrong, but a day when things felt ... possible. When you had energy for the hard conversations. When solutions seemed obvious instead of elusive. When you left feeling like you'd actually moved something forward.

What was different about that day?

It's easy to attribute good work days to external factors—fewer meetings, a lighter patient load, a boss in a good mood, luck. But research suggests something else is happening. On good days, when you're feeling good, your brain operates in flow. It's your brain doing what it was designed to do when conditions are right.

Barbara Fredrickson's work on positive emotions shows that when you feel good, your cognitive capacity literally expands. You see more possibilities, make connections between ideas that seemed unrelated, think more creatively. While stress and frustration narrow your focus to immediate problems, positive emotions broaden your awareness.

Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety demonstrates that when people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and admit mistakes, team performance improves dramatically. Not just engagement scores—actual outcomes.

Yes work is challenging, patients are demanding, systems are imperfect. And still, the research is clear: we do our best work when we feel good.

I'm calling this the Feel Good Factor—the simple truth that we do our best work when we feel good. It's about creating the conditions that allow your brain to operate at its best.

Your judgment is sharper when you feel energized, clear, and purposeful. Your creativity flows. You're more empathetic, a better collaborator. You solve problems faster, make better decisions, show up as the professional you trained to become.

Your ability to make life-affecting decisions, collaborate in high-stakes situations, and do the clear thinking your work demands—all of it depends on your mental state.

Here's the unfortunate irony: Most organizations systematically create conditions that prevent people from feeling good. Twenty-minute appointments when patients need more time. Approval processes that turn urgent decisions into months-long journeys. Performance systems that measure activity over impact.

These aren't intentionally designed to frustrate you. They're the predictable result of using industrialized management approaches ... and that creates our conundrum: if feeling good is essential for doing good work, and the systems we use to manage work systematically prevent people from feeling good, why don't more people change how they work?

Part of it is learned helplessness. We've accepted that "this is just how work is." Part of it is assuming we need organizational authority to create change. But mostly, I think it's this: we've missed that good days at work aren't accidents. They happen when specific conditions are present—conditions that are more susceptible to our influence than we realize.

Neuroscience research reveals that our brains operate optimally when we don't feel under threat—when we feel valued, have clarity about expectations, maintain autonomy over our decisions, feel connected to colleagues, and experience fairness in how things work.

Notice that none of these require executive approval or budget allocation. But they do require a choice. They're about how you structure your day, approach relationships, frame challenges, and design your work to be worthy of your care—your time, your energy, and your creativity.

Your next good day at work, your string of great days, isn't waiting for better policies or different leadership. It's waiting for you to create the conditions that let your brain do what it does best.

Sure, feeling good for its own sake is a good thing. Life is more enjoyable. We feel better. We're happier. But feeling good at work is not just for the sake of feeling good. It's about professional effectiveness—an argument backed by extensive research in management, psychology, and neuroscience.

Feeling good at work is essential for the complex, creative, and caring work healthcare requires because it enables the brain functions—creativity, empathy, complex reasoning, and, of course, more—that solving problems and caring for patients demands. And there's much more research supporting this: studies on flow states, self-determination theory, positive organizational scholarship (it's a thing!)—all pointing to the same conclusion.

The Feel Good Factor reveals how essential feeling good is for doing good work. And that's why it's at the heart of The Good Work Life philosophy. The Good Work Life animates five elements you can actively shape to create those conditions: developing a clear-eyed perspective on how things actually work while maintaining confidence in your ability to influence them, creating the conditions that help you thrive, integrating what matters professionally with what matters personally, building relationships that sustain you, and designing work worthy of your care.

Because what The Feel Good Factor tells us—and should declare to the organizations we work for—feeling good is required to do the work we do. Feeling good at work, and maintaining that feeling, should be the expectation of the systems and conditions around us ... because it's a matter of professional effectiveness.

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

Can’t talk to you at the water cooler this week … because I’m OOO. See you next time!

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on what we’re working through.