Tag Archive for: Productivity

Optimism Increases Productivity

How am I going to get through all this work?
I don't know what will happen if I fail?
What happens if we don't meet the sales budget?
I hope that I don't get sick!

If this is a familiar train of thought then you are in trouble!

Pessimism has been found to not only increase stress, but also increases incidence of illness &  absenteeism, tiredness, slower recovery from surgery, low self esteem, and causes the under use  of abilities.

You simply cannot afford to 'put up' with a bad mood, having a miserable day, or negative colleagues.  Pessimism will drain both your productivity and quality of life.

...yet, surely a little bit of healthy scepticism isn't really that bad?

No, it's not.

However, being pessimistic is not the same as being cynical.
Cynics simply don't trust what they hear - however, they may be very happy and hard working people.  Pessimists see themselves, and life, from a negative, bitter viewpoint - often making them feel stuck,  or even helpless - feeling that their situation will never change and that they will not be able to bounce back.

The very nature of pessimism cripples your ability to become resilient and bounce back from stress, pressure or burnout

The Mayo Clinic investigators believe that pessimism and depression are likely to be risk factors  for dementia. [4]
So, how to 'fix' pessimism? Use the anti-venom, naturally...a dose of optimism!
Test results found that 'optimistic' men were about half as likely to develop heart disease as men defined as pessimistic [4]

According to Martin Seligman, author of 'Learned Optimism':
"Within the American workplace, optimists overall stay with difficult and challenging jobs, while pessimists seem to do worse than predicted and even give up.  In our research on the roles of optimism and  pessimism, we conducted studies in the workplace. We looked for a demanding field in which there were a lot of challenges, frustrations, and rejection. The question was: 'What type of person copes with that kind of situation best?'

We tested 15,000 applicants for life insurance sales, a difficult job with frequent rejection and a high drop-out rate. We measured, by questionnaire, the explanatory style (a metric of optimism and pessimism) of the regular qualified people who were hired. Also included was a special force of 129 people who failed the industry test -- who wouldn't normally have been hired -- but who tested very well on optimism.

Our research followed both groups for two years and concluded with two basic findings. First, within the regular qualified group that was hired, the optimists significantly outsold the pessimists. Second, the special force of optimists who failed the industry test outsold everyone."[1]

So, can you become more optimistic overnight?

Well, let me ask that question another way... 'can you stop eating ice-cream from one day to the next?' Sure you can - you just stop buying the stuff or stop opening the freezer and it taking out in the first place.




It is a choice...like most things in life.

YOU choose what you eat.
YOU choose how you move your body.
YOU choose what you say to, and about, other people.
...and YOU choose what you THINK.

Yes - of course you can become more optimistic - you just choose different actions.
You think different thoughts, you express yourself with different words, you may even set different standards for yourself.

So, how do you create more optimism at work?

ACTION STEPS:

1. Get away from the garbage

If you don't want to smell - then don't touch the garbage!  If you want the optimism in your life, then you need to stop indulging in the complaining about the weather, traffic, politics, and everything else that isn't going perfectly.

Related:  How To Keep A Positive Attitude … When You Don’t Feel Like It

If the people you work or deal with each day are pessimistic, complaining, miserable sods then that's just tough luck.   However, it doesn't have to make you one as well.  You can choose not to get sucked into their vacuum of negativity and keep your own head strong.

How would you feel if someone walked into your living room and dumped a pile of rubbish on your carpet/floor boards?  I'm assuming this would upset you -
maybe even make you mad! You probably wouldn't tolerate anyone doing that to yourplace....so why would you tolerate people dumping their garbage thoughts and complaints in your
head?

Dave Boufford's website, http://www.mrpositive.com  is dedicated to sourcing positive news from around the world.  I recommend visiting his site and viewing his short motivational movie "Rules For Being Human".
Research suggests that optimistic attitudes can reduce risk of heart disease in older men, says Laura Kubzansky, assistant professor of health and social behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health.[3]
Make a choice about what you focus on and about the conversations you have.
2. External versus Internal
Do you spend more time putting yourself down and blaming yourself when things go wrong?  If so, then STOP IT!  Sometimes things just don't work out.  It doesn't have to always be about you!  There may be other circumstances that play a role in a disappointing outcome.
Optimists explain negative events in their lives as due to being a combination of them and circumstances - thereby not wearing the full burden of the problem on their shoulders.  In contrast, pessimists tend to see setbacks as mostly 'their fault'. [6]
Not everything is 'your fault' - share the burden with life.



3. Get into better thinking habits
Learn why some people naturally SWIM and become optimistic when dealing with stress and pressure  while others SINK and become pessimistic under the same circumstances.
I run regular courses on 'Becoming resilient to pressure in work and life' where I reveal the 4 key mindsets that will turn your pessimism into optimism.  You can find out more about them from:  www.bouncebackfast.com/public.html
References:
[1] http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/12/e12expand.html

[2] http://www.apa.org/releases/optimismhealth.html

[3]http://www.researchmatters.harvard.edu/story.php?article_id=332

[4] http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/03023.html

[5] http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=22934

[6] http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/03023.html

For additional resources on optimism:
* 'A Healthy Attitude - Optimism, Pessimism and Your Health'http://www.warrenshepell.com/mindbodybalance/art-healthyattitude.asp

Michael Licenblat B.Sc.(Psych) is a
Resilience Expert who helps people in business bounce back fast from pressure, stress and burnout in their work and life. He is a professional speaker, coach and author of three books.

 

To download your free special report on the ‘Seven ways to prevent yourself becoming Over-Worked, Stressed-Out, and Run-Down’, visit:    http://www.BounceBackFast.com 

Managing your time

Perhaps the greatest problem that people have today is "time poverty." Working people have too much to do and too little time for their personal lives. Most people feel overwhelmed by responsibilities and activities, and the harder they work, the further behind they feel. This sense of being on a never-ending treadmill can cause you to fall into a reactive/responsive mode of living. Instead of clearly deciding what you want to do, you continually react to what is happening around you. Pretty soon, you lose all sense of control. You feel that your life is running you, rather than you running your life.

On a regular basis, you have to stand back and take stock of yourself and what you're doing. You have to stop the clock and do some serious thinking about who you are and where you are going. You have to evaluate your activities in the light of what is really important to you. You must master your time rather than becoming a slave to the demands of a constant flow of events. And you must organize your life to achieve balance, harmony, and inner peace.

Taking action without thinking is the cause of every failure. Your ability to think is the most valuable trait that you possess. If you improve the quality of your thinking, you improve the quality of your life - sometimes immediately.

Time is your most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing you have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value. All work requires time. And time is absolutely essential for the important relationships in your life. The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management immediately.




I used to think that time management was only a business tool, like a calculator or a cellular telephone. It was something that you used so that you could get more done in a shorter period of time and eventually be paid more money. Then I learned that time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in your life depends.

In your business life, there are so many demands on your time by other people that very little of it is yours to use as you choose. However, in your personal life, you can exert a tremendous amount of control over how you use your time. And it is on this area that I want to focus.

Personal time management begins with you. It begins with your thinking through what is really important to you. And it only makes sense if you organize it around specific things that you want to accomplish.

You need to set goals in three major areas of your life.

First, you need family and personal goals. These are the reasons why you get up in the morning, why you work hard and upgrade your skills, why you worry about money and sometimes feel frustrated by the demands on your time.

What are your personal and family goals, both tangible and intangible? A tangible family goal could be a bigger house, a better car, a larger television set, a vacation, or anything else that costs money. An intangible goal would be to build a higher quality relationship with your spouse and children, to spend more time with your family by going for walks, or to read books. Achieving these family and personal goals is the real essence of time management, and its major purpose.

Second, you need business and career goals. These are the "how" goals, the means by which you achieve your personal "why" goals. How can you achieve the level of income that will enable you to fulfill your family goals? How can you develop the skills and abilities to stay ahead of the curve in your career? Business and career goals are absolutely essential, especially when balanced with family and personal goals.

Third, you need personal-development goals. Remember, you can't achieve much more on the outside than what you have achieved on the inside. Your outer life will be a reflection of your inner life. If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal life and your career, you must become a worthwhile person. You must build yourself if you want to build your life. Perhaps the greatest secret of success is that you can become anything you really want to become to achieve any goal that you really want to achieve. But in order to do it, you must go to work on yourself and never stop.

Once you have a list of your personal and family goals, your business and career goals, and your self-development goals, you can then organize that list by priority. This brings us to the difference between priorities and posteriorities. In order to get your personal time under control, you must decide very clearly upon your priorities. You must decide on the most important things that you could possibly be doing to give yourself the same amount of happiness, satisfaction, and joy in life. But, at the same time, you must establish posteriorities as well. Just as priorities are things that you do more of and sooner, posteriorities are things that you do less of and later.

The fact is, your calendar is full. You have no spare minutes. Your time is extremely valuable. Therefore, for you to do anything new, you will have to stop doing something old. In order to get into something, you will have to get out of something else. In order to pick something up, you will have to put something down. Before you make any new commitment of your time, you must firmly decide what activities you are going to discontinue.




If you want to spend more time with your family, for example, you must decide what activities you currently engage in that are preventing you from doing so.

A principle of time management says that hard time pushes out soft time. This means that hard time, such as working, will push out soft time, such as the time you spend with your family. If you don't get your work done at the office because you don't use your time well, you almost invariably have to rob that time from your family. As a result, because your family is important to you, you find yourself in a values conflict. You feel stressed and irritable. You feel a tremendous amount of pressure. You know in your heart that you should be spending more time with the important people in your life, but because you didn't get your work done, you have to fulfill those responsibilities before you can spend time with them.

Think of it this way. Every minute you waste during the waking day is time that your family will ultimately be deprived of. So concentrate on working when you are at work so that you can concentrate on your family when you are at home.

There are three key questions that you should continually ask yourself to keep your personal life in balance.

The first question is: "What is really important to me?" Whenever you find yourself with too much to do and too little time, stop and ask yourself, "What is it that is really important for me to do in this situation?" Then, make sure that what you are doing is the answer to that question.

Thought for the Day

The second question is: "What are my highest value activities?" In your personal life, this means, "What are the things that I do that give me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction? Of all the things that I could be doing at any one time, what are the things that I could do to add the greatest value to my life?"

And the final question to ask yourself, over and over again, is: "What is the most valuable use of my time right now?" Since you can only do one thing at a time, you must constantly organize your life so that you are doing one thing, the most important thing, at every moment.

Personal time management enables you to choose what to do first, what to do second, and what not to do at all. It enables you to organize every aspect of your life so that you can get the greatest joy, happiness, and satisfaction out of everything you do.

(Brian Tracy is one of America's leading authorities on the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. He is a dynamic and entertaining speaker, known for his ability to inform and inspire his audiences.)

 

7 Time Management Tips That Actually Work

Do you want to be more productive or organized? Do you stay busy all day long but fail to accomplish anything? If so, you have landed on the right page. The time management tips given below can help you increase your productivity and keep you satisfied at the same time. Read on.

 

 

1) It is a myth

As far as time management is concerned, this is the first thing you need to keep in mind. No matter how busy you may be, your day will always be 24 hours long. You can't change time. What you can change is yourself. In other words, you can train yourself to use your time effectively.

2) Find out what kills most of your time

Most of us waste a lot of time. The time we waste can be invested for higher productivity. So, it's a good to find out where you kill most of your time. Do you kill most of your time surfing the web, posting on Facebook or making personal calls?

Many of us are prey to time-wasters that steal time we could be using much more productively. What are your time bandits? Do you spend too much time 'net surfing, reading email, Facebook posting, texting, or making personal calls? This is the first step if you want to start your journey of time management.

3) Set Time management goals

You can get started by eliminating the biggest time wasters in your personal life. For instance, for one week, you can set a goal that you won't log into your Facebook account while you are doing your important tasks.

 

More from PIVOTAL on Time Management

 

4) Put Together a time management plan

The purpose of putting together a time management plan is to readjust your behavior so you can achieve a goal that you set, such as decreasing your stress or increasing your productivity. Therefore, we suggest that you set your goals and then monitor them so you can see your progress.

5) Use Some tools

You can use many tools for managing your time. This tool can be an app or a Day-Timer. This will help you find out where you are heading and how you are going to invest your time down the road. For instance, with Outlook, you can schedule your events without any problem.

6) Prioritize ruthlessly

Ideally, you may want to begin your day by prioritizing the tasks for the next 24 hours. Aside from this, you may want to set a performance benchmark as well. For instance, if you have to do 10 tasks in 24 hours, make sure you know the tasks that you have to complete no matter what.

7) Learn to outsource

Irrespective of the size of your business, you don't need to handle all the work yourself. You may want to share some workload with someone else as well. It could be an on-site or off-site assistant. So, it's a good idea to consider outsourcing.

So, if you are finding it hard to manage time, we suggest that you give a go to these tips.

Using special apps for time management is a good idea. If you are looking for a good app for this purpose, we suggest that you try out Tomato Timer or Pomodoro Timer.

Author:  Shalini Madhav 

The Happy Secret to Better Work

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

This #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing.

Lifesaving magic of tidying up

Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?

Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).

With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller featuring Tokyo’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.

 

 

About the Author

 

 

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The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage

 

National Bestseller!

How to enrich your life and destroy doubt in 5 seconds.  

Throughout your life, you've had parents, coaches, teachers, friends and mentors who have pushed you to be better than your excuses and bigger than your fears.  What if the secret to having the confidence and courage to enrich your life and work is simply knowing how to push yourself?

Using the science of habits, riveting stories and surprising facts from some of the most famous moments in history, art and business, Mel Robbins will explain the power of a “push moment.”  Then, she’ll give you one simple tool you can use to become your greatest self.

It takes just five seconds to use this tool, and every time you do you’ll be in great company. More than 8 million people have watched Mel’s TEDx Talk, and executives inside of the world’s largest brands are using the tool to increase productivity, collaboration, and engagement.

In The 5 Second Rule, you’ll discover it takes just five seconds to:

Become confident

Break the habit of procrastination and self-doubt

Beat fear and uncertainty

Stop worrying and feel happier

Share your ideas with courage

The 5 Second Rule is a simple, one-size-fits-all solution for the one problem we all face—we hold ourselves back.

The secret isn’t knowing what to do—it’s knowing how to make yourself do it. 

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A Perfect Mess

Mess is not really the issue; it's our ability to tolerate mess that's the problem.

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Rituals for an energized life

 

Are rituals part of your life? Maybe you'd like to better understand what I'm asking before you commit to an answer. In my way of thinking, a ritual is a prescribed or established rite, ceremony, proceeding, or service. Lots of things that happen in religious establishments qualify as rituals too, but that's not specifically what I'm talking about here.

During a recent coaching call we were exploring the ways I could restart some habits. It was suggested that the use of ritual might help. The conversation took some interesting twists and turns, and I got intrigued with this concept of ritual helping make and break habits. It would be useful for me if I could figure out how to make it work.

Personally, I think rituals are fun. Energizing, even! They add depth and breadth to any number of activities, from trivial to important. For example, Wayne Dyer had a ritual of giving thanks three times as he arose each morning. Boulder, Colorado, used to have a ritual of the world's shortest St. Patrick's Day parade in front of the only Irish bar in town at the time; the green semi-truck that was part of the parade was longer than the parade route.

You may participate in some rituals yourself, like tailgate parties before (during and after too?) football games, class reunions, Mardi Gras, the Tooth Fairy, brushing your teeth before bed, Cinco de Mayo, the girls' or boys' night out, and reading or saying prayers before bed - you get the idea, and can most likely expand on this list.

You may be wondering about now, how can ritual help with creating or breaking habits? In some ways, a ritual is a habit. From that perspective, it comes about because it has importance to you.

To start with, let me point out my client was de-energized by some of the missing habits that formerly were enjoyed. And disgusted by habits that had snuck in.

When I used to wear contacts my morning ritual was to get dressed, comb my hair, put my contacts in, and brush my teeth. When I quit wearing contacts my toothbrushing habit suffered. The ritual was broken, and days of fuzzy teeth ensued. Ick! It became vital to me to find a way to get that done so I could stand being with myself. Leaving the toothbrush and tooth powder out at night triggered me to use them in the morning. Ta da! Then, when I wanted to start stretching every morning, I chained that desired new habit to the trigger of brushing my teeth. My morning ritual is entrenched now, and I love it!

Adopt a similar thought pattern to start the new habits: start with a ritual that was already in place - going to morning prayer. That would be the trigger for a new habit - walking for thirty minutes afterward. Chaining to that triggered-event was the habit of going to the organic green grocer on the way home to buy fresh produce for lunch and/or dinner. After those three activities were finished, going to the office to tackle the first task of the day, the one that took the most concentration, focus, and fresh brain was next. Hence, a new ritual was born - comprised of four activities.

You can do the same thing with habits you want to form. Use anchors, triggers, and chains of activities.

Then how can ritual be used to break habits? First, what is the habit you want to break and why do you want to break it? Those are important questions to answer before figuring out how to use the concept of ritual to help you drop that habit. What I'm asking is, do you really want to break the habit - or do you just think you should, or someone told you that you should.

OK, do you have the answer to those questions yet? Now, what activity, thought, or behavior happens just before or after the habit you're thinking about breaking? Let's say, for this exercise, that you have three chained events. Presuming those are desirable events, think about what habit can you substitute for the undesirable habit. When the first event happens, replace the second event with the new and desirable event, and then connect the third event to the new one.

Or, if you don't have a habit you want to substitute, here's a suggestion of how to remove it. Consciously break the chain of events so you can remove the middle event (the bad habit), and then connect the first and third events into a new chain. That lets the first event in the chain quit acting as a trigger for the second event, and instead trigger the original third event. The original third event is now the second event. Follow that?

It's like fixing the backyard swing by removing the bad link. The swingset I had as a kid had chains, not ropes, to connect the swing seat to the swingset frame, making that analogy easy for me.

You have now created a new ritual that supports the habits you want in your life. Cool, huh.

Taking control of your life by introducing new, desirable-to-you habits, or old, undesirable-to-you habits energizes you. There are lots of wins in this concept. I hope you'll play with it to make it work for you too.

Kit Cassingham is the Chief Energizing Officer at LIFE (Live In Focused Energy). She's been coaching professionals in energizing their lives for vitality, productivity, alertness, and satisfaction since 1989. Kit lives an energized life, and continuously looks for ways to help improve that lifestyle for herself and others.

Take control of your life through your attitude, health habits, and energizing habits. Kit's LIFE coaching is the answer to help you create the productive and energetic life you aspire to, and to help you age gracefully. https://www.LiveInFocusedEnergy.com is the doorway to that life.

How to Create a More Organized Mind And Desk

If you're trying to organize your mind to reduce decision fatigue and information overload, then you need to make sure that you organize the space around you.

Organised desk, organised mind

In many ways, our spaces are a reflection of the state of our mind - but actually the correlation works both ways and if you have a cluttered desk or home, it will make your mind more cluttered too.

When it comes to spaces that contain a lot of information and items, your desk is one of the most pressing areas for organization. Let's take a look at some things you can do to make your desk better organized.

#1 Throw Things Out

This is really how you start making any space more organized - you throw out anything that isn't 100% necessary. If it's a decorative item, then ask yourself if it really fills you with long-term fulfillment.

If not? Bin it! Otherwise, ask yourself when the last time you used it was and whether you really cannot survive without it.

The same goes for that drawer that's full of stationary. Do you really need that much stationary? Could that space not be much better used for other things?

#2 Create a System That Reflects Your Brain

Another tip is to create systems that you can use to keep your documents in order. And a great way to get inspiration for this is to look at the way our brains store information.

Specifically, our brains have three main 'compartments' for storing information. These are:

Working Memory - which is the information we're currently working with and doesn't necessarily need to be stored.

Short Term Memory - which is the information we hold for a few days. If it doesn't get used enough it will be thrown out, if it is important, it will be stored in long-term memory.

Long Term Memory - which is the information that we have stored permanently. Nothing gets destroyed here but access can become more difficult without practice.

So how do you create something similar to this?

Simple: you make one space for each type of information.

Your 'working memory' could be your noticeboard and desk itself. This is where you keep anything that you're currently working on and need immediate access to.

Not using it anymore? Then it goes into short-term storage - somewhere like a paper tray.

Then, at the end of each week, go through your short-term storage and move anything important to your 'long term storage' and throw out the rest. That's how you create a much more organized desk and mind.

By the way, Keye Wu is on a mission to transform 1 million guys into the most productive, masculine and purposeful men. If you REALLY do not know the 5 Little Known Ways To Double Your Productivity For Men yet, we need to fix that. Join hundreds of other men already using it right now FREE in my value-packed productivity blog here. Alternatively, check out one of my most popular flowstate video here.

The Organized Mind

organised_mind

Smart, important, and, as always, exquisitely written. Daniel Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness "

New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin shifts his keen insights from your brain on music to your brain in a sea of details.

Readers of his two previous "New York Times" bestsellers have come to know and trust his unique ability to translate cutting edge neuroscience into an informative and entertaining narrative. Now Levitin turns his attention to an issue that affects everyone in the digital age: organization.

It s the reason that some people are more adept than others at managing today s hyper flow of data. "The Organized Mind" explains the science behind their success and with chapters targeted specifically to business readers shows how all of us can make small but crucial changes to regain mastery over our lives.

The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we're expected to make more--and faster--decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing car keys or reading glasses, missing appointments, and feeling worn out by the effort required just to keep up.

But somehow some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow.

In The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel--and how readers can use their methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces, and time.

With lively, entertaining chapters on everything from the kitchen junk drawer to health care to executive office workflow, Levitin reveals how new research into the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory can be applied to the challenges of our daily lives.

This Is Your Brain on Music showed how to better play and appreciate music through an understanding of how the brain works. The Organized Mind shows how to navigate the churning flood of information in the twenty-first century with the same neuroscientific perspective. "

About the Author

DANIEL J. LEVITIN is the James McGill Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University and is dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the Minerva Schools at KGI. He splits his time between Montreal, Quebec, and the San Francisco Bay area.

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