#Bucket September 25

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For September I am participating in the 30-Day Literary Lesson Coach4aday Challenge today the lesson is on the BUCKET of stuff we need to accomplish at work.

Tom Rath and Don Clifton wrote a book that I read after I was retired. Ironic that its primary focus was adding positivity to your work life. Yet the concepts in it were intriguing even to someone who was retired like me.

Literary Lesson from “How Full is Your Bucket”

“How Full is Your Bucket” was released in 2004.

This is a quick and easy read for anyone working in teams or in a leadership position. The lessons from this book come from an analogy. According to this theory, each person has a bucket and a dipper, and with positivity, you fill your bucket and the buckets of others, but with negativity you deplete others’ buckets as well as your own.

To learn about the Bucket and Dipper go to this link.

The final chapter of the book focuses on five strategies for increasing positive emotions:

1. Prevent Bucket Dipping – Be aware of when you are ‘bucket dipping’ and stop it, encourage others to do the same.
2. Shine a Light on What is Right – Focus on the positive and what is going right already, this fills others’ buckets.
3. Make Best Friends – Having a best friend (or many) at work may increase health, productivity and satisfaction.
4. Give Unexpectedly – Look for opportunities to give small gifts or perform random acts of kindness.
5. Reverse the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” In other words, be individualistic in the way you fill others’ buckets, do things that meet each person’s interests and personality.