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You’ve probably experienced the frustration of being distracted at work. Perhaps you were pulled into a never-ending Slack discussion, and when it finally ended you struggled to focus on the task you were working on. Or a coworker criticized you, and now you can’t stop replaying his comments in your head. It’s totally normal to lose focus after a period of time (which is why you should be taking regular breaks). But if you find yourself easily distracted throughout the day, you might want to consider tweaking some of your morning habits. They probably won’t eliminate all distractions, but you’ll at least start your workday strong building a good foundation for the rest of the day.
Via The Learning Factor
Learning new things is an important part of career growth, and 87% of millennials say professional development opportunities factor into their job decisions, according to Gallup. Acquiring too much information, however, can be a problem, putting your career at risk of becoming stagnant, says Dom Price, work futurist-in-chief and head of R&D at the software development firm Atlassian in Sydney, Australia. “In the digital world, we’re privy to an abundance of knowledge,” he says. “We believe getting smart means knowing more, but in fact, it is not. We’re not practicing what we know. The acquisition of knowledge is dangerous when you don’t practice it.” In order to succeed, Price argues that you need to understand the importance of unlearning—identifying the things you know that you don’t have time to nurture, and then letting some of them go.
Via The Learning Factor
It’s that time of year when many of us get motivated to make ourselves better—healthier, wealthier, wiser, or just different—in the new year. Roughly six in 10 of us make New Year’s resolutions, according to a 2016 Harris poll. But following through on those goals isn’t easy. Roughly half of those who are earnestly vowing to make improvements in 2018 are likely dusting off the same list they had last year. So if you want to actually accomplish those goals—or at least make a dent in them—by this time next year, use these five approaches.
Via The Learning Factor
What do people want out of work? More than money, more than benefits, much more than job security, a recent survey says, they want to be treated with respect. If that sounds like you, how can you increase the respect you get each day at work? It turns out that there are specific habits you can cultivate that allow you to train the people you work with to treat you respectfully each day. Here are 33 of these proven habits that can help, if you're willing to stick with them. Implement a few, take inspiration from the others, and you'll likely see dividends quickly.
Via The Learning Factor
Companies want to be profitable and maximize their performance and impact both in the world and within their industry. With that said, accomplishing those feats starts with cultivating a culture to allow those things to happen which starts with a priority on employee well-being. Culture is important -- it affects engagement, mindset, reputation, recruitment of talent, and well being. When looking to cultivate a healthy and high performing culture, start by emphasizing these six points:
Via The Learning Factor, Mark E. Deschaine, PhD, Bobby Dillard
We might spend days, months, or even years trying to figure someone out. Is he who he says he is? Should I trust her? The wheels in our head spin as we think of all the variables and how they'll play out. And still, we keep hearing that we should just listen to our instincts. Complicated questions, simple answer. What should we do, and where did this whole idea of the gut instinct come from, anyway? Intuition isn't some magical, mysterious quality that we carry with us. It actually comes from the knowledge and past experiences that we all carry. Even if we're unable to explain why we feel the way we do, there's a logical explanation behind our gut feelings. Whenever you encounter anything new, the unconscious side of your brain is constantly making assessments. It takes in certain cues, such as a smile or parts of a story, and then matches it with something similar in our database of memories to come up with a conclusion. Meanwhile, our conscious side remains unaware of this rapid process taking place.
Via The Learning Factor
1. Learn something new, even if it's stressful: Mastering a new skill means more stress now but more happiness later. If you are willing to push through a bit of added stress in the short term, you can experience huge gains in happiness for the long term. So learn a new skill. Though you'll take on a bit more stress, research shows you'll be happier on an hourly, daily, and long-term basis. The gains from this investment in time and energy were documented in a 2009 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. Participants who spent time on activities that increased their competency, met their need for autonomy, or helped them connect with others reported decreased happiness in the moment yet increased happiness on an hourly and daily basis. The key, according to the study, is to choose the right new skill to master, challenge to undertake, or opportunity to get out of your comfort zone. The greatest increases in happiness come from learning a skill you choose, rather than one you think you should or feel forced to learn.
Via The Learning Factor
Millennials are starting to take control in the workplace. There are now more than 75 million millennials in the workforce, more than baby boomers (just shy of 75 million) and Gen Xers (66 million). Now entering their late 20s and early 30s, the oldest members of the generation are starting to take more leadership positions in major organizations. Despite the fact that millennials are sporting one of the lowest rates of entrepreneurship in 25 years, 60% see themselves as entrepreneurs, and 90% recognize entrepreneurship as a mindset. Combined with their natural tendencies toward independent thought and mild to moderate anti-establishment vibes, this is making millennials a strong force of direction and leadership—and an even stronger one to come in the next several years.
Via The Learning Factor
Tell someone 'I'm sick' or 'I'm tired' and you're not really giving them much information. How sick? How tired? Do you have a mild cold or a dread disease? Are you a new parent who hasn't slept in months or did you just enjoy the party last night a little too much? Burnout is the same. It comes in different degrees, from your common 'I can't wait for happy hour' variety, to far more serious 'I need to take a six-month sabbatical and re-evaluate my life' burnout. The appropriate response for different stages is very different. So how do you know how burnt out you are exactly? Science, apparently, can help. Recently 99U's Hamza Khan dug up a classic Scientific American article (subscription required) that describes a 12-stage model of burnout developed by psychologists Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North. Here are the stages the scientists outline:
Via The Learning Factor
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.
Via The Learning Factor
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.
Via The Learning Factor
A few weeks ago, after receiving a 21-page PDF report breaking down my so-called “emotional intelligence,” I did the logical thing and forwarded it to my boyfriend. He glanced at the list of categories on the second page and exclaimed—before reading my results—”Flexibility, uh oh!” The report was the result of an assessment I’d taken three weeks prior called the EQ-i 2.0, which is based on nearly 20 years of research and has been taken by some 2 million people—and sure enough, it told me I’m about as inflexible as people close to me seem to think I am. Shortly afterward I scheduled a call with its developer, Steven J. Stein, who reviewed my results and offered this suggestion: “I would start looking at how you operate—what your routines are, how you get through a day.” When I asked him for an example of a routine I might want to shake up, he said, “Like, eat a different breakfast or something.”
Via The Learning Factor
My great-grandparents, Cleve and Zelma Carder, lost almost everything they owned during the Dust Bowl years. After losing their homestead and ranch, they packed what they could into a Conestoga Wagon and made the trek from Northern New Mexico to find work picking cotton in the fields of Oklahoma. When my great-grandmother told me stories of those difficult times, it wasn't with bitterness or anger. She would laugh as she recalled her husband's refusal to remove her grand piano from their wagon, despite the fact that it weighed over 1000 pounds. Instead, the family would spend several hours digging the wagon free from the sand in the dried-up riverbeds that they crossed. In the last years of her life, her strongest memories were not of her failures or disappointments but of the love and hope experienced within them. I am grateful to her for helping me learn at an early age that we get to choose how we view our circumstances and how we let them affect our mindset.
Via The Learning Factor
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You’ve probably been taught that giving compliments build relationships. In the self-help classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie stressed the importance of “giving sincere and honest appreciation” to others in life and work. He’s not wrong, but the thing is that showing real appreciation is difficult to do. How many times has someone given you a “compliment” and you just know they’re trying to get something from you? Compliments can easily veer into flattery and feel insincere, leaving the recipient wondering about the giver’s hidden agenda. Here’s what it takes to avoid all that–it’s easier than you think.
Via The Learning Factor
Be honest: How is your progress so far on those New Year’s resolutions you lined up just a few weeks ago? As January wears on and the cold, dreary weather continues for many of us, sticking with your resolutions can quickly start to seem more challenging than you’d expected–and sometimes completely impossible. If you’ve made and broken countless resolutions in the past and are already struggling this year, don’t give up hope just yet. It simply might be time to take a different approach to your resolutions. Understanding a little bit more about how the brain reacts to rewards and motivations could make the difference between forming a new habit for life and giving into temptation or laziness after a few weeks.
Via The Learning Factor
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.
Via The Learning Factor
Doctors use the “universal pain assessment tool” to measure how uncomfortable their patients are. It’s a simple mechanism made up of smiley (and sad) faces. At one end of the spectrum is “pain free,” and on the other is “unimaginable, unspeakable pain,” with “tolerable” and “utterly horrible” falling in between. It’s not terribly scientific, but the tool helps medical professionals download your pain data from a little chip in your brain, so to speak, making it one of the best and fastest assessments at doctors’ disposal. It’s not just pain that’s difficult to quantify–so is the human experience generally. But researchers have devised tools to study other mushy concepts, too, including creativity. And in the process we’ve learned there’s at least one thing that tends to nudge people into measurably more creative thinking: boredom.
Via The Learning Factor, Bobby Dillard
Some people just seem to bounce back from whatever life throws at them. Whether it’s illness, loss, or tragedy, they do the tough work of picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, and carrying on—even when it seems impossible. If you’ve ever thought, “I could never do that” when looking at one of these apparent “superheroes,” don’t be so sure. It’s actually possible to build resilience to make yourself better able to bounce back from even the most difficult times. “It’s the ability to get back in the game after you’ve had some sort of failure. And indeed, we can learn to become more resilient,” says social scientist and leadership expert Frank Niles, PhD. Niles says there are a number of science-backed areas people can address to help them be more resilient. Here are some ways you can shore up your “resilience bunker” to better prepare for when tough times strike.
Via The Learning Factor
Find it hard to advocate for yourself? You’re not alone. The personality trait that psychologists call “agreeableness” describes how motivated you are to get along with other people. If you’re highly agreeable, that motivation can sometimes prevent you from sticking up for your own interests. Anytime you ask for something at work, you run the risk that you’ll be told “no”–and possibly aggravate the person you’re asking. As a result, agreeable people may be put off from asking in the first place. This can be a problem, because research suggests that agreeable people tend to make less money than disagreeable people (even accounting for the fact that disagreeable people lose their jobs more often). And in leadership roles, agreeable people may not be as good at getting their teams all the resources they need. So what can you do to be more assertive even when it just isn’t in your personality to do so? Here are a few tips.
Via The Learning Factor
As entrepreneurs, we often work late into the night, only to roll out of bed the next morning, picking up where we left off. One day bleeds into the next, making it seem as if we're always doing, doing, doing and searching for new and novel ways to do more. The truth is, your desire to do more and get more done will lead you not toward greater productivity, but toward burnout, if you don't take time each day to check in with yourself, and set your intention for how you want your day to proceed. Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying, "If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe." There is no evidence to suggest that Lincoln actually said this, but the point is not lost on us. How we prepare to do the task before us determines our success.
Via The Learning Factor
No matter where you are in your career, it’s only natural to occasionally feel as though there are things you’d like to change. But it’s one thing to say you want to make a change and quite another to actually make it happen. In order to make serious steps toward reinventing yourself, you need to first commit to it and then take action to make those changes a reality. Here are twelve ways you can reinvent yourself at work and in your personal life, backed by science.
Via The Learning Factor
We’ve all had those days: You’re under pressure to get things done, but you can’t seem to accomplish anything. There is still hope. Here are a dozen strategies you can put to work immediately to help you salvage your day and get more done.
Via The Learning Factor
What’s the point of networking if not to get other people to like you? Sure, you need new contacts to see you as interesting, competent, professional, and potentially valuable to them—but if they don’t also find you likeable, nobody will feel motivated to reach out later and work with you. The reason why all comes down to emotional intelligence, the set of skills and qualities that allow people to form deeper, closer relationships with others. Likability is a key ingredient in that, and its career benefits are pretty obvious. For instance, being likeable—and liking your coworkers in return—can increase your chances of getting promoted. But when it comes to first impressions, you don’t always have much time to get people to like you. So here are a few straightforward things that the most emotionally intelligent people do to cement their likability from the get-go.
Via The Learning Factor
Packing your beach bags? Firing up a grill? Now’s the time for leaving work concerns at work and skipping off someplace where you can relax, regenerate, let loose, and just have fun. The idea of doing anything that even remotely reminds you of your job probably doesn’t seem too appealing—and that’s fine. But even so, your vacation doesn’t have to be dead time when it comes to self-improvement. Before you roll your eyes and click or swipe out, there’s good news: You can boost your skills while relaxing and de-stressing. In other words, your vacation can be a great time to improve your emotional intelligence—and still thoroughly remain in vacation mode. Since that’s one of the most important job skills on the market right now, it’s worth taking a page or two from the most emotionally intelligent vacationers’ play books.
Via The Learning Factor
Mindfulness is paying attention to what’s happening in the present moment. So if you’re aware that your mind is wandering, you’re halfway to a successful mindfulness practice. The other half of mindfulness is gently returning your attention back to the here and now. But this doesn’t mean you have to yank your misbehaving mind back to reality. Instead, think of it as a compassionate return to consciousness. Picture a feather on the ground, lifted up by a gust of wind and then floating back down to rest on the pavement. Wandering. Awareness. Return.
Via The Learning Factor
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Everyone wants to be more productive. For me, morning habits are the most adaptable and useful habits to focus on.
You’ve probably experienced the frustration of being distracted at work. Perhaps you were pulled into a never-ending Slack discussion, and when it finally ended you struggled to focus on the task you were working on. Or a coworker criticized you, and now you can’t stop replaying his comments in your head.