Days, it turns out, are rather easily made.

The time required varies, but trends closer to making the bed, or making a cup of tea, than to making Ravioli. (If you are crazy good-looking and smile at people who aren’t when you pass them on the street, it can be much quicker.)

The effort required is approximately equivalent to taking out the trash. And as with taking out the trash, most of the effort is getting around to it.

Making someone’s day is heartbreakingly easy. Because, as Nathan Glass points out, and in this case it’s especially true, the competition just isn’t very good. Often, there’s no competition. It’s sad, but it’s true: just consciously trying to make someone happy puts you, automatically, at the very front of a very small pack — quite possibly, just you — of people trying to make that specific person’s day.

With just a little bit of industry experience, the odds of success are overwhelming.

Days can be made with:

• Flowers
• Invites for coffee
• Real listening
• The washing of dishes
• Hugs
• Thank you emails
• Snacks
• Handwritten cards

You might think that people who are X already know they are X, so there’s no reason to tell them they’re X, and besides they probably get so many people complimenting and thanking them for being X that it’s tiresome.

Nope!

People who are X and know they are X, as far as I can tell, still love being told they are X, especially if the compliment is sincere or novel.

(Ridiculously famous people may be exhausted by the volume of fan mail and compliments, but the people who you consider famous might not feel famous, or get many nice letters.)

I get a lot of comments on my hair. I can’t take much credit, since I don’t even brush regularly. Yet old women regularly make my day with a sincere compliment about my hair. Even simple compliments, by letting us experience another’s wonder and appreciation, remind us to feel lucky, and therefore grateful, for what we already have.

Making someone’s day is easy and underpriced in the current social marketplace, because many days are not going well. ^[1]

A millionaire founder’s day can be made by a Twitter DM from a complete nobody.

A parent’s day can be made with one phone call.

A child’s day can be made by a really good game of Legos, or a trip to the beach.

A clerk’s day can be made by treating them like a human being, rather than an extension of the store.

An artist’s day—week, month—can be made by telling them what they made mattered to you.

Just about anybody’s day can be made with a bouquet.

Your day can be made — by making someone’s day.

We carry all the sincere compliments we have received in little chests in our hearts (or is it the other way round?) for the rest of our lives.