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Toward Greater Decentralization: Results from the 2015 American Time Use Survey

Posted on 07/25/2016 by ·
Toward Greater Decentralization: Results from the 2015 American Time Use Survey

"38 percent of workers in management, business, and financial operations occupations, and 35 percent of those employed in professional and related occupations, did some or all of their work from home on days they worked."—2015 American Time Use Survey, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Recently, I've written quite a bit about the trend toward workplace decentralization, which I expect to accelerate in the future. Interestingly, that's also the trend most publicized by the authors of the 2015 American Time Use Survey in their June 2016 press release. In 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics interviewed 10,900 Americans from all walks of life for the American Time Use Survey. ( … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance · Tagged: , ,

The Power Of A Daily 1 Percent Improvement

Posted on 07/20/2016 by ·

TRANSCRIPT But, imagine the power if every single person woke up every day and said "what could I do to be one percent better today?" You would roughly double your ability every 70 days. Think about that. Think about the power of how that would compound. It can be something little. It can be saying you know what? Today, I’m going to pick up the phone instead of send an email. Today, that typical one hour meeting, we are going to reduce that to forty five minutes. Today, I’m going to learn a new function in my software that I don’t already know. Today, I’m going to sit down and talk to a coworker about a process that is making me crazy. Today, I’m going to think if I were the queen of the word and king of the world if I could make up some rules about how we can use email around here more … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance · Tagged: ,

Five Ways to Serenity: How to Dial Down Work Stress and Boost Your Performance

Posted on 07/18/2016 by ·
Five Ways to Serenity: How to Dial Down Work Stress and Boost Your Performance

"The time to relax is when you don't have time for it."–Sydney J. Harris, American journalist. Despite the many arguments to the contrary, stress isn't necessarily bad for you. A little stress forces you to get off your duff and try to improve your life. Every good thing that humans have accomplished—from starting fires, to figuring out how to break rocks to make stone tools, to traveling to the moon—has been triggered by a form of stress, whether environmental, physical, or mental. Psychologist call positive stress eustress. What really hurts us is strain: too much stress forced on us too quickly for too long, without let-up. That's what causes people to break. This does not mean, however, you should invite stress when you can avoid it, or take on more stress just for your own good. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance · Tagged: , ,

Focus On The Things That Drive Your Company

Posted on 07/14/2016 by ·

TRANSCRIPT We had the leadership team, we only had about twelve people in there and the CFO got to talking about their expense report process. And he was explaining how they've got this all automated, and they can scan the receipts and they file their own expense reports and he was talking about how he was very proud of the fact that he did his expense reports and how efficiently he had his travel and I'm thinking. You're the CFO, they're paying you how much? This guy was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and he's filing his expense reports and booking his own travel. So he realized after that "you know that's probably a fifteen or twenty dollar type of activity isn't it?" and there's been a kind of a throw back. I have seen a resurgence, a resurrection of the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership & Teamwork, Performance · Tagged: ,

Five Ways to Tap into the Psychological State of Flow: How to Get into the Zone and Stay There

Posted on 07/11/2016 by ·
Tap Into State Of Flow

"It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were."— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Hungarian psychologist. Have you ever gotten into a project so deeply and focused on it so intently, that you looked up to discover several hours had passed? You accomplished a great deal, and the time seemed to fairly fly by. We even have sayings about this phenomenon: "Time flies when you're having fun," and "I'm on a roll." But psychologists don't take such occurrences lightly. They've put a lot of time and effort into studying this occurrence and have a name for it: "the state of flow." When you achieve a state of flow, skill merges with practice and preparation in an almost magical way. (<---Click to Tweet) … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance · Tagged: , ,

The Increasing Demands Of Work

Posted on 07/06/2016 by ·

TRANSCRIPT The bar keeps going up. Customers are more demanding, we found that out. Your internal customers are a little more demanding now. Remember when we were in hotel rooms and there didn’t used to be coffee makers. Do you remember those days? Remember the first time you went to a hotel room and there was a coffee maker! I remember the first time this happened to me. I didn’t even drink coffee but I made it because it was so cool. Look at that, coffee. Now, if you go to a hotel today, and there is not a coffee maker, now what do you think? What is wrong with this place? I can’t believe they don’t have a coffee maker. So, the bar used to be here, no coffee maker. And, then you got a coffee maker. What’s this called? Perceived satisfaction. Now, here’s the bar, coffee maker. You go … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity · Tagged: ,

Five Reasons to Set Impossible Goals: Don’t Be Afraid to Push Yourself Too Hard

Posted on 07/04/2016 by ·
Five Reasons to Set Impossible Goals by Laura Stack #productivity

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."— Sir Arthur C. Clarke, British science and science fiction writer. If you never dare to dream the impossible dream, you'll never know how much you can achieve. We all know this in our hearts, but many of us never apply it to our work lives. There's a saying that goals are just dreams with deadlines; so why should you ever hesitate to set impossible goals?  (<-- Click to Tweet.) No matter how impossible they may seem, goals offer solid targets for you to shoot at. They also stitch together intention, planning, ability, talent, execution, process, teamwork and more into a fabric of productivity you can constantly and consistently tweak higher, through the application of more and newer … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Leadership & Teamwork · Tagged: , ,

How Do You Know When You Are Being Productive

Posted on 07/01/2016 by ·
How Do You Know When You Are Being Productive Podcast by Laura Stack

It's easy to feel busy. How do you know when you are being productive? (C) 2016 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved. www.TheProductivityPro.com … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General · Tagged: ,

Eliminating Low Value Business Activities

Posted on 06/30/2016 by ·
Eliminating low value business activities

TRANSCRIPT We’re critical to the growth of our businesses. I mentioned that I had a little newsletter. I used to do that newsletter monthly. It was a good newsletter. It took me a day to write it. I had an original 2500 word article in there. I did tips. I did polls. We did hot links. It was an amazing newsletter. And, a day out of my life once a month would go into the production of that newsletter. And, about two years ago I got the flu and I rarely get sick but, I was out, I was down and I told my staff, I just can’t do it. I just can’t do it this month. We’re going to have to skip this month’s newsletter. I know we’re going to hear it. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. “Laura where’s your newsletter. I didn’t get your newsletter.” Guess how many people noticed? Three, out of a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General ·

5 Ways to Bring Productivity Out of Chaos: Mourn Change, But Move On

Posted on 06/28/2016 by ·
5 Ways to Bring Productivity Out of Chaos

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new." – Dan Millman, American writer and philosopher. By now, you've no doubt realized a basic fact of life: the only constant in the business world is change, especially as we hurtle full-throttle into the New Millennium. Ironically, most of us prefer things to remain the same. Change forces us to learn and do new things, stealing our time and making us expend energy—two resources often in short supply. As a result, many of us mourn change, because it often wrecks our comfortable lives and carefully laid plans. But you can't stay stuck in the past, and you can't sit beside the graves of your old processes while the world passes you by (click to tweet). Do it too long and you disengage … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Performance ·