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As COVID Went, So Went the Nation: The Results of the 2020 American Time Use Survey

Posted on 09/08/2021 by · Leave a Comment

  by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE "Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings."—John Updike, American novelist Since 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released the results of the previous year's American Time Use Study (ATUS) during the following June or July. Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic was time's greatest thief in 2020. In addition to stealing time from American workers, the pandemic affected ATUS interviews all year long. None took place from March 19 to mid-May. As a result, the 2020 ATUS is missing data for two months… but that doesn't mean the data collected were useless. Far from it. Homework The most obvious difference this year isn't any real surprise. The number of people working at home nearly … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General ·

Post-COVID Productivity: Five Ways It’s Going to Improve Our Performance

Posted on 08/11/2021 by · Leave a Comment

 by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE  “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors."—African Proverb While we may be premature in assuming that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed with the Delta variant alive and well, it’s better than it was a year ago. However, things will never be the same in its wake, even for those of us untouched by the disease itself. Our new attitudes about social distancing, personal protection, and hygiene will remain for a long time, as will practices adopted in all aspects of our lives. Among other things, we're still weathering the worst recession since the Great Depression, when so many of us were laid off, furloughed, or otherwise out of work due to lockdowns. Now that we're piecing together the shuttered and shattered portions of our economy, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Personal Productivity ·

The Benefits of Coaching: Six Ways It Can Boost Productivity

Posted on 07/08/2021 by · 1 Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE "Coaching isn't therapy. It's product development, with you as the product."—Fast Company magazine. Business experts often cite coaching as an effective way of enabling employees, by making sure they embrace their jobs and maximize performance. By coaching, I don't mean those all-hands-on-deck motivational sessions where a celebrity or high-powered speaker (like me!) delivers a keynote address aimed at improving solidarity or general productivity. Those definitely have their place, but count as coaching only in the most general sense. Coaching isn't the same as an annual evaluation, either, though some coaching may take place during the evaluation. It isn't mentoring, because that usually doesn't involve a manager. Nor is training, another essential, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General ·

It’s Not (Completely) What You Think: Five “New Age” Management Techniques

Posted on 06/01/2021 by · Leave a Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE "To thrive in this new age of hyper-change and growing uncertainty, it is now imperative to learn a new competency—how to accurately anticipate the future."—Dan Burrus, author, business advisor, and futurist When many people hear the term "New Age," we think of crystals, magic mushrooms, and alternative spirituality. But when applied to business practices, the term takes on a different meaning. Oh, there's some of the esoteric in New Age business; but as it typically does, the business community has extracted only what seems to work. It's more of a New Age of productivity than a new type of lifestyle. Practitioners of New Age management techniques have chosen logical practices for treating their human resources as, well, more human. Let's take a look at … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Life Balance ·

True Performance: Five Ways to Avoid Fake Productivity

Posted on 03/10/2021 by · Leave a Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE "Better productivity means less human sweat, not more."—Henry Ford, 20th century automobile manufacturer. We all know the classic definition of increased productivity: producing more goods or services per given amount of time; or, as the online Oxford Dictionary puts it, the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input. That's foundational knowledge, right? The problem is, while these definitions may have applied when our economy was based almost entirely on agriculture and manufacturing, they don't necessarily apply to our modern service-based economy or knowledge jobs. Here's what I mean. Consider the editor who cuts 10,000 unnecessary words out of a novel. Using the old … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General ·

Sharpening Your Tools: Six Reasons Why Mental Fitness Matters in the Workplace

Posted on 02/08/2021 by · 1 Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE  "To survive, a man needs food, water, and a sharp mind." Louis Zamperini, Olympic runner and World War II veteran and POW This isn't a just another blog about how to hone your mental acuity so you can boost your workplace productivity. There are plenty of those out there, and I've done one or two myself. No, this article is about the why, not the how. You may think the why is obvious, but is it? Most people only have a nebulous idea that mental fitness is a good thing—and, of course, they're correct. But it's important to know why it's a good thing in detail, because this makes its value easier to pin down and focus on. There are always the basic arguments for keeping your mind sharp. It may help you live longer and avoid Alzheimer's and other forms … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork ·

Making the Right Choices: Five Observations About Intuitive vs. Analytical Decision-Making

Posted on 01/12/2021 by · Leave a Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” Peter F. Drucker, Austrian-American Father of Productivity. Making solid decisions is key to effective and productive work at all levels—individual, team, division, or corporate. Most of us make a remarkable number of decisions daily; some researchers claim we make thousands, if we include every little choice, like what to eat and which task to do next. In the case of routines, most represent decisions made in advance or enforced by deliberately limited choice, so we spend time more efficiently. Most decisions are personal and have limited impact on others. But the decisions you make during work hours can impact thousands or even more, depending on your position—not … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General ·

Shutting It Down: How to Be a Productive Project Closer

Posted on 12/08/2020 by · Leave a Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it." -- Scott Allen, American computer programmer and author. In business, there are two types of "closers," both of which boost the organization's performance in different ways. The more common type of closer is a salesperson or marketer who's adept at closing deals with potential clients, bringing new projects on board. Let's call them deal closers. Without deal closers, we'd all be without work. The second type of closer is less obvious, but in their way is also imperative to effective, profitable business performance. The project closer, usually (but not always) the project manager, makes sure a project ends neatly, with no confusions or loose ends. He or she gets … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General ·

Three Steps to Greatness: Using Your Habits to Influence Your Goals

Posted on 11/06/2020 by · Leave a Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit is persistence in practice.”— Octavia Butler, America author and MacArthur Fellow. As complex as people are, when it comes down to it, you might consider us intelligent meat machines fueled by chemical reactions and guided, in large part, by programs we call habits. These boil down to repeated, automated actions—something like those of a robot on an auto assembly line, though not as stringent, and not always occurring in the same order. One of my colleagues almost always makes a large cup of coffee first thing each morning, eats a bagel, and gets to work. After years of doing it daily, he doesn't have to think about the process of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Productivity ·

Out of Whack: Five Reasons Tracking Work Time Wastes Time

Posted on 10/05/2020 by · Leave a Comment

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE "Here's my timesheet, filled out in increments of 15 minutes. As usual, I coded the useless hours spent in meetings as "work," whereas the time I spent in the shower designing circuits in my mind as "non-work." Interestingly, even the time I spent complaining about my lack of productivity is considered "work.""—Dilbert to an HR colleague, in the comic strip Dilbert by Scott Adams, September 15, 1995 Anyone who's ever labored in a corporate environment has been required, at one time or another, to track their work time. You've probably been there, scrambling to figure out what the heck you did from 1:15 to 1:30 last Thursday afternoon. Were you working on Project A, B, or C? Were you cleaning your cube or organizing files to enhance your long-term … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General ·