A couple of weeks ago, a question occurred to me.

I wonder how much I spent at Jimmy John’s in 2016?

You see, last year I developed a bit of a Jimmy John’s habit. It was an especially busy year at work, with a couple new projects demanding big chunks of my time and periodic lunch meetings keeping me at the office over the noon hour.

At first, Jimmy John’s was an occasional treat. I’d bike there on my lunch break when the weather was nice and order a #1, no tomatoes, with a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. Yummers.

We have to make mistakes, it’s how we learn compassion for others. — Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

There are a lot of upsides to screwing up.

1. Failure teaches, and it’s a far better teacher than success.
2. Failure keeps us humble. Our shortcomings balance our successes.
3. Failure helps us develop empathy. Or, to paraphrase Curtis Sittenfeld (because I like her wording better), mistakes teach compassion.

How, though? Here’s one way we can use our mistakes to develop compassion, and it’s something we already do (but for ourselves, not for others): think about the intention behind the action.

Every day above ground is a good day. — Um . . . Mel Bernstein in Scarface, apparently. Huh. Still a great quote!

You’re interested in personal development (making a conscious effort to get better at life), which means you’re at least a little bit concerned with your own happiness. You want reality to match your expectations in the areas of life that you care about, right? Me too!

So how do we make this happen?

As I work through Daniel Pink’s modern-day classic, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, I’m struck by a profound truth:

If you want to create an engaging workplace, don’t focus on material rewards. Instead, offer meaningful work.

Pink claims that most folks managing organizations have an outdated view of human motivation, believing that carrot-and-stick motivation (rewards for good performance and punishment for poor performance) is the best way to ensure productivity from your employees. It’s not, and never has been.

Feeling a little scattered?

Here’s a list of productivity “easy wins”: little tweaks that will make you significantly more productive with virtually no effort required.

Enjoy!

1. Unsubscribe from unwanted email lists

We’ve all had our concentration broken by our buzzing smartphone as it brings us good news of a 40% off sale at LL Bean or BOGO Honey Nut Cheerios at Walgreens. Our email inboxes should be free of spam, and the good news is this dream is now in sight. Almost every mass email has a tiny “unsubscribe” link in the fine print at the very bottom, and unsubscribing really does work.