High Stakes Happiness: Shift in Positivity Journal

select and analyze a problem you have in your workplace

Learning how to grow creativity is one thing, but putting it into practice is a whole other story.

How can we use our creativity to be innovative in our workplace?

The first step is selecting a problem within your workplace that you would like to find a solution for. Look for gaps, what could be improved?

While being a full time student with 8:30am classes, I also work night shifts as a dealer at a casino. The combination of early morning classes and late nights at the casino have resulted in an increase in fatigue and tiredness. I am going to tackle and work to find an innovative solution to solve this problem.

Next is unpacking and analyzing the problem. Make sure you understand it and the restrictions that you may face in ways to solve it.

Because the casino is a very rule driven job, there is very limited space for creativity and change in the tasks and routine of my shifts, this poses an additional challenge, but one I am eager to take on. Due to the regulated environment I will need to find a solution to apply to the time surrounding my shifts, or during my seven 15 minute breaks throughout the night.

So, we’ve chosen our problem, looked for improvements, and analyzed it, whats next?

generate and rank ideas of how to solve that problem 02

Deciding you want to develop and innovation, but the process of doing so is much more difficult than it seems.

How can we use idea generation to be innovative in our workplace?

The first step is coming up with as many different ideas as you can, giving yourself a breadth of solutions to test out, modify and choose from.

In tackling my workplace problem of fatigue and tiredness, I focused on a few different areas for my idea generation, personal well-being and resilience, social engagement and environmental interaction, and efficient use of time and energy management, as these are the main areas where I could develop my solution from. The majority of my solutions stemmed from the personal well being category as I believe it is the best category of the three for developing a successful innovative solution.

In coming up with solutions ideas, it is great to have strategies and criteria for employing and ranking your generated solutions.

The strategies I created and employed to generate my solutions are brainstorming: leading to a wide range of creative solutions, random stimuli: leading to innovative thinking, and reverse thinking: leading to challenging conventional thinking.

The criteria I used to rank my solutions are, how well does the idea specifically address the problem I am trying to solve, how well does the idea align with my long term goals for finding a solution, how realistic is it that I will be successful in achieving the solution, are the solutions I’ve brainstormed realistic and achievable and does this idea introduce new approaches to addressing the problem?

generate and rank ideas of how to solve that problem 02

Generating as many ideas as you can is the best way to find a creative and innovative solution as you can combine ideas, modify ideas, and you make even come up with ideas you wouldn’t expect.

Personal well-being and resilience:

Develop a pre-shift routine, explore foods that help with sleepiness, create a post-shift wind-down routine, begin gratitude journaling, stay hydrated, bring snacks to energize, take both restful and energizing breaks, prioritize sleep hygiene, plan mini wellness retreats for days off, use positive self-talk, use positive reinforcement, use positive imagery, use positive affirmations, practice positive self-talk and attitude, focus on the positives and not the negatives, stay on track with sleep schedule on off days, be mindful of body posture, and learn stress management techniques

Social engagement and environmental interaction:

Stay engaged with players, create motivational boards, engage with coworkers whenever possible, utilize the energy in the casino as a mood booster, try out a weekly wellness challenge, utilize supportive work environment, and create a positivity journal.

Efficient use of time and energy management:

Utilize breaks wisely, create a mid-shift energizer, incorporate dynamic movement into breaks, use breaks as mental breaks from math and stay informed about sleep disorders

So, we’ve generated tons of solutions to our problem and ranked them, whats next?

develop an innovative solution to solve your problem 03

Developing innovative solutions to solve a problem is not the easiest task; it is a long process that involves critical thinking, persistent effort, iterative testing, and a willingness to learn from each setback.

How can we develop solutions to be innovative in our workplace?

Once you’ve generated and ranked all your ideas, the next step is to begin developing, modifying and testing a few of your solutions futher.

The three solutions I am going to be focusing on developing, modifying and testing are 1. creating a positive thoughts journal to encourage positivity rather than negativity when feeling tired 2. designing a before work routine to energize and prepare myself and 3. design a plan to utilize my breaks wisely by doing things such as packing energizing snacks, taking restful breaks and energizing breaks, etc.

I want to focus on these innovative solutions becuase they are something I can implement consistently during my shifts, will likely generate the most overall success, benefit and resolution for my workplace problem.

My plan is to take time during a shift or two at the casino to test out each of these solutions to gather insight on which one is the most beneficial to solving my workplace problem of fatigue and tiredness, as well as what changes and modifications I can make to make the solution as successful as possible.

So, we’ve began developing and testing the solutions to our problem, whats next?

implement your solution into your workplace 04

Implementing an innovative solution into a workplace to resolve a problem is a tedious process of iteration, testing, and modifying.

How can we implement solutions to be innovative in our workplace?

Once you’ve decided on your innovative solution, it is time to begin to implement it into your workplace, testing is effectiveness.

After my first round of implementing my final 3 solutions into my workplace I chose 1. creating a positive thoughts journal to encourage positivity rather than negativity when feeling tired as my final solution to my workplace problem of fatigue and tiredness. I chose this solution because during implementation I felt the most sucess and benefit from it as I almost immediately noticed an increase in my overall positivity to go to work and decrease in fatigue and tiredness.

The implementation of my solution has been very successful thus far. After testing 5 times I have already noticed a drastic improvement in my attitide, mood and awakeness during not only my friday shifts, where my workplace problem stems from, but also in all my other shifts as well.

So, we’ve implemented and tested the finalized solution to our problem, whats next?

Evaluate the success of your innovative solution 05

Evaulating and assessing your innovations is one of the most important parts of this process. You want your implementation to be beneficial and successful, and to do this evaluations need to be made.

How can we evaluate our success to be innovative in our workplace?

Once you’ve implemented your innovative solution, the next step is evaluating and assessing how successful the solution is in resolving the problem in your workplace.

I’ve implemented my solution, creating a positive thoughts journal to encourage positivity rather than negativity when feeling tired, quite a few times since the first time I implemented it and I have noticed a major increase in my overall positivity to go to work on friday’s after school, my brain power is much stronger, and a decrease in my fatigue and tiredness since starting using my journal.

Moving forward with using my journal at work there are a few things that can be modified to improve its success, including pre planning my pages before my shifts so I don’t take time away from using the journal in setting it up. I think making this change will improve the success of the solution, therefore helping resolve my workplace problem even more.

Overall, this project and process has been an extremely beneficial process as a learned experience I can apply throughout my school work, and as a real world experience, improving my workplace lifestyle at the casino drastically. I can’t wait to keep implementing my solution and using the high stakes happiness: shift in positivity journal to continue improving my positivty towards working through my fatigue and tiredness.

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