It perhaps stands to reason that we’re likely to perform much better when we’re happy and fulfilled, but research from Virginia Commonwealth University believes that their finding that our creative performance is boosted by having a good day is noteworthy.

The researchers conducted around 11,000 surveys that asked employees to share their everyday work experiences. The survey was able to identify five typical workplace experiences that have an impact on our creativity.

“Essentially, we researched how employees’ work environments and their creativity ebbs and flows over time—showcasing how individuals can experience five distinct daily workplace experiences that map onto their creative potential,” the researchers explain. “Everyday workplace experiences that are, for example, ‘exciting’ or ‘dull,’ are known to influence employee performance.”

Daily experiences

The various dimensions combine together to help create a number of unique workplace experiences that we’re likely to face each day:

• Toxic days: These are low in stimulant factors such as freedom and organizational support but high in obstacle factors such as time pressures and conservative attitudes. These days are rife with conflict, and not the good kind. Thankfully, they are uncommon, making up about 8% of the days.
• Disengaged days: These are low in both stimulant and obstacle factors. Simply, people are “checked out” on these days, which make up about 10% of the workdays.
• Typical days: As the name sounds, typical days show “average” levels of stimulant and obstacle factors. As one might expect, this was the most commonly occurring type, making up about 34% of all workdays.
• Ideal days: These were high in all stimulant factors, and the obstacle factors were low. (Interestingly, there were still moderate levels of time pressure.) Simply, these days were the opposite of toxic days and made up about 30% of all workdays.
• Crisis days: These were unique in being high in both stimulant and obstacle factors. Simply, there were a combination of toxic and ideal days, making up about 19% of all days. These days seem to have “good” conflict, where employees are debating and wrestling with key problems in their work.

Creative performances

The results revealed that people tended to have more creativity on “ideal days” compared to the other days. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we are at our least creative on toxic and disengaged days.

“It is important to understand and manage these daily workplace experiences to improve employee creative performance,” the researchers say. “As many contemporary organizations will attest, this is an area that is increasingly important for companies to develop a distinct competitive advantage.”

Interestingly, however, people also seemed to view creative performance to be particularly high during crisis days, with creativity ranked as high on these days as on ideal days. What is important to note, however, is that the actual performance on these days seldom matched the perceived performance.

“Simply, crisis days might play a unique role in helping move projects forward when teams hit roadblocks, but this finding suggests how we typically think about creative performance may need to be a bit more nuanced,” the researchers explain.

What is perhaps important to note is that our experiences are fairly consistent, with people typically having the same type of experience from one day to the next. The researchers hope that their findings will reinforce the importance of considering the environment we place workers in and the impact this has on their creative performance.