News You Can Use: 1/6/2016

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  • Are you over scheduling? (Let me answer thatYes you are)

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3054966/are-you-overscheduling
  • It’s a New Year and a New Start. How About a New Job?

    If you’ve been working for the same company for several years, are you really certain that you enjoy the work? Or have you been consumed by a hefty paycheck? Changing jobs gives you the ability to not only discover your real passion but also allows you to start making money by doing something that you actually enjoy doing for a living.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254434

  • 10 habits to be better at your job this year

    4. BE THE PERSON EVERYONE ADMIRES
    From the sought-after industry leader to the person who’s unanimously approved for the promotion, people with great reputations seem to have an easier time at success. But their status doesn’t happen overnight or by chance. The first step in being that person everyone admires is to do what you say you’re going to do. “You can have a reputation of being friendly or nice, but if you don’t get it over the finish line, your reputation will suffer,” says Grace Killelea, CEO and founder of the women’s leadership program Half the Sky

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3054489/hit-the-ground-running/10-habits-to-adopt-now-to-be-better-at-your-job-in-2016

  • Why adversity is good for your career

    STAY HUNGRY
    A benefit of starting out a lower rung is that it instills you with a drive to succeed. This, certainly, is the case of Enio Ohmaye. Previously a senior scientist at Apple, he’s now an executive at EF Learning. But he’s never forgotten the summer he spent as a busboy in Monticello, New York. He lived in a ramshackle house and was berated by the wealthy people he served. Now at the top, he is still attentive to the experience of people at the bottom: “When I interview people,” he says, “I afterwards often ask the receptionist how those people treated them.”

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3054887/how-i-get-it-done/why-adversity-can-be-the-best-thing-for-your-career

  • How to Stay Calm When You Know You’ll Be Stressed

    You’re not at your best when you’re stressed. In fact, your brain has evolved over millennia to release cortisol in stressful situations, inhibiting rational, logical thinking but potentially helping you survive, say, being attacked by a lion. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin thinks there’s a way to avoid making critical mistakes in stressful situations, when your thinking becomes clouded — the pre-mortem. “We all are going to fail now and then,” he says. “The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be

Productivity Bulletin: 12/19/2014

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Flickr

Productivity Bulletin: 11/28/2014

Photo: Tim Parkinson, Flickr

Happy Black Friday readers – go buy something and help the economy, but when you are done – here is something educational. 

  • Increase employee satisfaction by recognizing hard work

    The obvious first two incentives are monetary and paid time off. These are also some of the most expensive for the company and usually are reserved for the highest achievers on a managerial or sales force, or are distributed evenly across a company that is showing stellar lateral performance. While this kind of incentive is great at riling up a storm on the sales floor or in the bullpen: if a company uses this too much, it could suffer huge financial loss after a while…

    http://www.business2community.com/sales-management/increase-employee-satisfaction-recognizing-hard-work-01068379

  • Productive people never have “free time”

    Productive people are never “free.” They don’t have 15 minutes on their lunch break to “have a quick call.” They don’t “kill time”—a terrible phrase. You can always put a window of time to good use if you work for it. Productive people schedule their priorities—not always their time, but always their priorities. When they don’t have something to do, they find something to do.

    http://lifehacker.com/productive-people-are-never-free-1661375021

  • Kick @$$ at work:
    This isn’t the best example in the article, but it is something to consider and reflect upon (seriously, read this article):

    Remember names: At one job interview, the interviewer introduced himself and then announced that he was going to ‘ask me a bunch of tough technical questions.’ He did and I aced it. I was thrilled with my performance. He then announced that he had one more question for me. My smug self thought, ‘Throw it at me! I just killed all the other ones. Here is what it was:
    What is my name?
    I didn’t have a clue what his name was and felt like a complete idiot.

    http://www.1500days.com/how-to-kick-ass-at-work/

Productivity Bulletin: 11/21/2014

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Flickr

  • Leave your desk at lunch:

    The same point I just made in #1 is doubly true for creativity. Have you ever experienced the phenomenon of having some of your greatest ideas while in the shower? Do you think you are alone in that? You’re not. When you “free yourself up” as you do in the shower or while taking a break from your work, your brain is suddenly “free” to consider new, fresh ideas that can potentially solve the problems that were plaguing you while you were so vigorously pondering the issue. Letting your mind wander a bit over lunch can lead to new ideas and new inspiration.

    http://www.careerealism.com/leave-your-desk-lunch/

  • Time Assets vs. Time Debts
    Good post on managing your time and identifying things that drag us down from being productive.
    http://jamesclear.com/time-assets
  • 6 questions to ask to learn about a company’s culture:

    Maybe your interviewer will mention off-site brainstorming meetings, clubs meant to help develop employees’ skills or even the company softball team. “But if they skirt this question, that tells you a
 lot about their culture… or lack thereof,” Cochran says.

    http://lifehacker.com/six-questions-you-should-ask-to-learn-about-a-companys-1658633604

  • Don’t just invent something, fix a problem:
    http://99u.com/workbook/34987/dont-just-invent-something-fix-something
  • As we try to develop better relationships with our customers, I like this pamphlet approach for the upper levels:
    http://www.seanogle.com/entrepreneurship/pamphlet-principle
  • Allow people choices when creating change:

    Allow People Decisions. Change cannot happen to people. It needs to happen with people. Change must be co-created. Everyone should have some say in how the change is implemented. It is their job and their life. Let them have an element of control. If you keep lines of communication open for suggestions, you will hear lots of good ideas from the people who need to make the change happen. Use those ideas because it will build more engagement in the process. Create the change together.

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141030174822-11290604-3-ways-to-motivate-change
    PS: On in the case with my son, provide the perception of choice…

  • Warren Buffet on Goals: (If it isn’t the most important, avoid at all costs)

    But the story nevertheless resonates because it promotes a truth that I think is vital to remember in our current networked age: spending time on lower priority goals, even though they’re helpful and generate value, can leave you worse off than if you had avoided them all together.

    http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/11/11/warren-buffett-on-goals-if-its-not-the-most-important-thing-avoid-it-at-all-costs/