We all need a chance to smile in the middle of the work week, but looming deadlines, critical meetings, unfinished projects, administrative changes, long to-do lists, missing breaks, and more can make it hard to stay motivated to accomplish everything you need to do, much less to throw a smile in there somewhere. When that happens, it’s time to release the kraken – er, quackin – of your work mojo and get it done! You’ll feel much better when you feel accomplished, even if its one small, niggling task you’ve been putting off. Try it – do that one small thing and do it well, and you’ll find yourself smiling!

For me, the roughly 150 work-related items on my monthly to-do list (I gave up writing and rewriting and rewriting weekly lists years ago) can be overwhelming, but hey, we’re all stronger than we thinnk, and we can all do more than we realize.

Something I’d love to do, if I ever get the chance, is to see this amazing Rubber Duck sculpture by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. The famously fun duck is an oversized (waaaaay oversized) floating installation that first appeared in western France in 2007, and has been seen all over the world, including in Brazil, Japan, Belgium, Australia, China, Thailand, and the United States, among other places. While the duck appears to be on a temporary hiatus after its last appearance in Indonesia in November 2017, like any bird, you never quite know when it may reappear and give us all a smile!

Rubber Duck in Seoul, South Korea, October 2014 – Photo by travel oriented