We feel happy when we perceive ourselves to be making progress on worthwhile goals. When you conduct your tasks looking for and taking advantage of unforeseen opportunities, you will feel in the moment like your schedule is slipping and you aren’t getting as much done. This is because you are overly focusing on your short list of tasks and not measuring your overall impact. Focus on the impact.
When you realize that you have unexpected opportunities to take advantage of, revise your to do list. As silly as it seems, the act of adding the new items to your list will have a surprisingly strong effect on your sense that you are making progress. All of a sudden, the stress you feel from extra things to do will be replaced with the satisfaction of getting so many extra things done, and that satisfaction will propel you forward in your current projects and everything that follows.
Leveraging unexpected opportunities while aligning your emotional perspective with the greatest impact will drastically accelerate your productivity and dramatically increase the joy you feel in the work of each day.