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If you’re constantly frazzled on the job, logging super-long hours with little to show for it at the end of the day, chances are good that you’re mismanaging your time. But the good news is it’s easy (enough) to reorganize your schedule and get back on a successful track, stat!

“There’s a lot coming at us: mail–and [all kinds of] paper in general–emails, texts, phone calls, bosses calling for help, deadlines, projects–it doesn’t stop,” points out Felice Cohen, organizer and author of 90 Lessons for Living Large in 90 Square Feet (or More). No wonder so many of us get so behind and feel so exasperated. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

The answer isn’t to do more. “Not everyone can multitask, and most of us who do probably shouldn’t,” says Cohen. Rather, the answer is to do what you do smarter. And here’s how.

Let’s face it: Negative feedback on your job performance can be a drag. Who likes to be told that their work could use improvement?

Research published in the Harvard Business Review provides some interesting insight into receiving and giving such feedback. While managers by and large avoided giving negative feedback or praise, employees craved it. And they weren’t looking for platitudes, either—57% wanted corrective feedback versus 43% who wanted praise. Seventy-two percent said that corrective feedback could improve their job performance.

Still, it’s one thing to think about that in theory—and another to hear from your manager, “We need to talk about your performance . . .” If you do find yourself on the receiving end of negative feedback or criticism, here’s how to cope.

Summer isn’t known to be the season for high productivity. Unplanned absences spike, especially on Mondays and Fridays and before holidays. These days off reduce productivity by 36.6%, according to a survey in the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

But that doesn’t mean your company needs to suffer. Whether you’re fighting the urge to take a day off or picking up the slack from a missing team member, it’s a good idea to create a summer productivity plan. We spoke to six productivity experts who shared their best advice for getting work done during the summer.

It’s hard to get anything done with all of the push notifications pulling us into other directions. You can find something else to do or think about at any given moment. But maybe the distractions aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s your willingness to be distracted that needs to be examined.

“Distractions are by-products of a problem,” says Kyle Cease, author of I Hope I Screw This Up: How Falling In Love With Your Fears Can Change the World. “Something outside of you is pulling you away from yourself or a goal. But the distraction is actually on the inside, and what’s going on outside matches what’s going on inside.”

We invite distractions as a way to handle three internal struggles, says Cease.