Get your brain in motion
Stress makes our heart pound, our breathing quicken and our forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for us if we believe that to be the case.
In this TED Talk, Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Traditional economics does an excellent job explaining human decision-making in situations where people have all the facts and are thinking logically. Nevertheless, in our everyday lives, we often do not have complete information and decisions can have an emotional impact as well. Dealing with these uncertain and risky day-to-day decisions can often lead to bias, require emotional regulation, and may result in habit formation too.
This article provides 5 tips on how we can make better day-to-day decisions:
1) Rest or Sleep on It: When you have to make a big and important decision, it may be best to do it when you are rested, focused, and motivated.
2) Take Your Time: Thinking clearly and logically takes time too. When we are in a rush, we jump to a quick conclusion that may be full of biases and hunches, rather than carefully thinking through the facts and information.
3) Gather The Facts: Beyond having the time and energy to think clearly, our decisions are only as good as the information we have about our choices and options. We can ponder a choice for hours, but if the information we mull over is very limited, or of poor quality, then all that effort and thought will be much less effective. Therefore, the more reliable facts and information we can gather and consider about a decision, the more we can reduce our uncertainty and make better choices.
4) Stay Open to All Possibilities: Sometimes, our quick thinking biases how we consider facts, information, and options along the path of decision-making—not just at the final decision. Particularly, we often automatically accept things as “true” before we carefully deliberate about them. Also, our reasoning about an issue may be motivated by a “directional bias”, leading us to selectively review only the information and facts that support what we already want to believe. Given that, we can often jump to conclusions, or be biased to confirm something that we want to believe, rather than honestly looking at what all of the information and facts are really telling us. Therefore, when making important decisions, it is helpful to stay open to all of the facts and possibilities (especially to the ones you don’t want or like).
5) Create Rules: We all get tired, unmotivated, rushed, stressed, and emotional at times. Beyond that, gathering every fact and carefully thinking through every decision is impossible—especially as we move through our day-to-day lives. That is why, when they are thinking clearly, more effective decision-makers often set up simple rules and formulas to make better choices—even when they are rushed at a later date. Even in situations where we might get caught up in biased and emotional thinking, we can often set up rules or formulas ahead of time to see us through.
Fruitful skills at work can sometimes be hard to learn and practice, but they will pay off.
Here’s some tips to boost your work every day.
Read the full article by Rachel Gillett in Insider
Image source: Pixabay (C00)
Many people try to increase their productivity. There are people who scurry from task to task, always checking e-mail, organizing something, making a call, running an errand, as they think that “staying busy” means you are working hard and you are going to be more successful.There are innumerable hacks and tricks to manage your time effectively.
These are some useful tips to manage your time:
Read more: The creativity post
Image source: Pixabay (CC0)
People who are habitually late (or are late even once, when it counts) project incompetence, self-centeredness, and even a lack of integrity.
This article provides 10 useful tips to be on time every time:
The only constant in life is change. but are you prepared to handle any change on your workplace? Change is what ultimately drives growth, so you have to be willing to accept it.
Until you recognize that change is going to happen, and get over the frustration that comes with it, you won’t be able to effectively manage your business. This isn’t to say change is no longer problematic after you learn to accept it, but it does become easier to deal with.
From a management and leadership perspective, managing change is a major challenge. Not only is technology advancing at a rapid pace, but the infusion of millennials into the workplace means ideologies and approaches are changing. There’s an entirely new perspective on what work entails and the role people and businesses play in carrying out particular tasks.
This article provides 5 powerful ways to better confront change:
1. Prepare for Multiple Outcomes
The very nature of change is such that you can’t predict or control what happens. The best thing you can do is stop trying to guess what will happen. Instead, you should place as many small bets as you can on a variety of different outcomes. By preparing for multiple outcomes in a scenario, you’re essentially hedging your bets. You’re ensuring that you don’t get caught in a situation where you’re unprepared or unable to move.
2. Quiet Your Limbic System
The limbic system responds to uncertainty with a knee-jerk fear reaction, and fear inhibits good decision-making. Fear is a big part of change. Once you’re able to deal with the fear component of the equation, your decision making will naturally become more rational and calculated.
3. Get Over the Pursuit of Perfection
Between little things and big responsibilities, we’re all making a handful of mistakes on a daily basis. The sooner you get over the notion that you can or should be perfect, change will come easier. You’ll put less pressure on yourself and be more willing to confront the challenges and decisions that await you.
4. Prioritize People Over Processes
You really need to have strong relationships with people you can trust. Together, you can use your collective knowledge, experience, and creativity to tackle these new issues. Prioritize people over processes and you’ll be better off almost every time.
5. Know Your Limits
When you know what you can and can’t do, you’re able to hand off certain responsibilities and processes to other people who are better prepared to handle a specific element of change. It can be humbling to do this, but it’s usually what’s best for the company.
Have you ever seen or experienced something and wished you spoke up?
In this TED Talk, the writer Sakinah Hofler makes the case for writing as a tool to help you process difficult memories and reclaim the power they may hold.
Pick up a pen or pull up a keyboard and follow along as she walks you through how to unburden your mind and inspire reflection!
This article provides some tips for designing an effective agenda for your next meeting:
Seek input from team members. Ask team members to suggest agenda items along with a reason why each item needs to be addressed in a team setting. If you ultimately decide not to include an item, explain your reasoning to the team member who suggested it.
Select topics that affect the entire team. Team meeting time should mainly be used to discuss and make decisions on issues that affect the whole team. These are often ones in which individuals must coordinate their actions because their parts of the organization are interdependent. If the team isn’t spending most of the meeting talking about interdependent issues, members will disengage and ultimately not attend.
List agenda topics as questions the team needs to answer. A question enables team members to better prepare for the discussion and to monitor whether their own and others’ comments are on track. Finally, the team knows that when the question has been answered, the discussion is complete.
Note whether the purpose of the topic is to share information, seek input for a decision, or make a decision. It’s difficult for team members to participate effectively if they don’t know whether to simply listen, give their input, or be part of the decision making process. If people think they are involved in making a decision, but you simply want their input, everyone is likely to feel frustrated by the end of the conversation. Updates are better distributed prior to the meeting, using a brief part of the meeting to answer participants’ questions. If the purpose is to make a decision, state the decision-making rule.
Estimate a realistic amount of time for each topic. This serves two purposes. First, it requires you to calculate how much time the team will need for introducing the topic, answering questions, resolving different points of view, generating potential solutions, and agreeing on the action items that follow from discussion and decisions. Second, the estimated time enables team members to either adapt their comments to fit within the allotted timeframe or to suggest that more time may be needed. The purpose of listing the time is to get better at allocating enough time for the team to effectively and efficiently answer the questions before it.
Propose a process for addressing each agenda item. The process identifies the steps through which the team will move together to complete the discussion or make a decision. Agreeing on a process significantly increases meeting effectiveness. Unless the team has agreed on a process, members will, in good faith, participate based on their own process. The process for addressing an item should appear on the written agenda.
Specify how members should prepare for the meeting. Distribute the agenda with sufficient time before the meeting, so the team can read background materials and prepare their initial thoughts for each agenda item ahead of time.
Identify who is responsible for leading each topic. Someone other than the formal meeting leader is often responsible for leading the discussion of a particular agenda item. This person may be providing context for the topic, explaining data, or may have organizational responsibility for that area. Identifying this person next to the agenda item ensures that anyone who is responsible for leading part of the agenda knows it before the meeting.
End the meeting with a plus/delta. If your team meets regularly, two questions form a simple continuous improvement process: What did we do well? What do we want to do differently for the next meeting? Investing five or ten minutes will enable the team to improve performance, working relationships, and team member satisfaction.
Web 2.0 applications and social media have provided new venues for businesses to inform, understand and connect with their customers. This free book provides a general understanding of using blogs, podcasts, live streaming, wikis, social buzz, social media, and more to enable businesses to rethink their approach and leverage new digital media’s advantages.
Theoretical concepts such as RSS feeds and practical examples such as constructing a WordPress blog are covered in detail. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Klout, and others are examined from a business perspective.
Image source: Flickr – mkhmarketing (CC BY 2.0)
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