Get your brain in motion

Tag: work (Page 1 of 2)

How great bosses motivate

Elle Kaplan highlights in her article on INC eight things that great bosses tell their employees daily to motivate them.

1. “I have total confidence in you.”
2. “This is what I want us to accomplish…”
3. “What can we do better next time?”
4. “I want to play to your strengths.”
5. “What is your opinion?”
6. “How can I better support you?”
7. “Let me know if you have any questions.”
8. “Good work.”

It is a useful list that can be handy in many occasions…

Read the full article

 

Image source:

Get fit at work – 10 Exercises to Do at Your Desk

Most people today spend too much time tied to desks, buried in emails. Our modern lives have been engineered so that we can spend most of it sitting down. Unfortunately, sitting is literally killing us.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 3.2 million deaths can be attributed to lack of physical activity. Our sedentary lifestyles are responsible for increasing our risk of diabetes and heart disease as well as a loss of muscle and bone strength. Perhaps even more alarming is that people who exercise regularly are probably still not getting enough movement in their lives to counteract the deleterious effects of sitting too much.

According to this article, with a little more activity throughout the day, we can actually reverse the inevitable weight gain associated with such a sedentary existence.

There are countless ways to sneak more activity into our day, aka exercise hacks. There are exercises to do at our desk, such as chair exercises and stretches we can incorporate into our daily routine.

Here are 10 stretches you can do at your desk:

1. Rubber Neck – Sit up tall and drop your right  ear down towards your right shoulder (you don’t have to touch it!) and hold for a few seconds and repeat for the left side.

2. Reach for the Stars – Interlace your fingers and reach up towards the sky, as high as you can … keeping your palms facing up towards the ceiling.

3. Look Around – Turn your head the left and try and look over your shoulder and hold for a few seconds … repeat on the right.

4. Bobblehead – Drop your chin down towards your chest and GENTLY roll your head from side to side.

5. Shrugs – Raise both shoulders up towards your ears and hold for a few seconds and release. Repeat a few times for good measure.

6. Chest Opener – Bring your hands behind your back, press your palms together, sit up tall and hold for 5–10 seconds.

7. Seated Toy Soldier – Sit up tall and extend your right arm all the way up towards the ceiling. Straighten your left leg out and raise it up as you bring your right arm down and try to touch your left foot.

8. Knee Hugger – With a bent knee, lift your right leg up and grab it with your arms and pull it in as close to your chest as you can. Hold for 5–10 seconds and make sure and do it on the left side, too.

9. Reach and Bend- Extend your right arm over your head and reach out as far as you can to the left and gently bend over. Hold for a few seconds and do it the other way.

10. Knee Press – With your right ankle on your left knee, gently press against the right knee a few times. Of course, after you’re done with the right side, be sure and give the left side some love, too.

Image: PixabayGeralt

3 Tips for getting back to work

The vision of returning to the office after vacation and the reality usually have very little in common. In this article you will find some tips to avoid the post-vacation crush:

  1. Actively plan for your return.

When planning time away from work, most people focus on getting organized for departure. Avoid undoing all that restoration by treating your return as something that needs to be managed in advance as well.

While many of us try to maximize vacation time by coming home Sunday night experts suggest considering an earlier-than-last-minute return.

2. Factor in some triage.

Don’t just walk back into the office after a vacation without a plan of attack, unless you want to be steamrolled. Experts suggest you protect the time you’ve set aside to get caught up the way you would a meeting or a presentation.

3. Your out-of-office response is your first line of defense: wield it to your advantage.

Your out-of -office autoreply needs to be straightforward, helpful, and honest, but not that honest.

 

Learn to plan ahead, rely on your coworkers, and understand that sometimes, it’s inevitable that you’ll miss out on that last-minute request, and you’ll be that much more productive when you return.

 

Image: Holidayyourdoku .com  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

Eight Steps to End Procrastination

An article from Website Designs looked at how to end procrastination

Here are 8 small suggestions to follow.

1. Change Your Perception

2. Let Go of Fear

3. Split Up the Project

4. Just Get Started

5. Talk About It Publicly

6. Work In Short Periods

7. Ask for Accountability

8. Reward Yourself

If you want to read more, see the full article  

 

Image source: Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

9 skills hard to learn that will pay you off forever

Fruitful skills at work can sometimes be hard to learn and practice.

Here’s some tips to boost your work every day.

1.Time Management: planning is the first step and needs discipline. To do list and scheduling will help you to focus.

2. Empathy: do you feel what people feel? That’s the key to foster the team spirit in your office.

3. Better sleep helps, as many medical studies confirm.

4. Positive self talk: it doesn’t matter what others think of you, but what you think of yourself certainly does. Are you confident enough with yourself?

5. Be consistent. To mantain a top position you have to work harder.

6. Ask for help: when you ask people for advice, you validate their intelligence or expertise, which makes you more likely to win them over.

7. Shut up, if needed, but also listen

8. Mind your business: it will take time, but will surely help the atmospher at work.

9. And finally master your thoughts, directing them to what you want to do and accomplish.

Read the full article: the 9 tips

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Image source: FlickrRaul Pacheco-Vega (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Life and juggling balls in the air

On September 6, 1996, Bryan G. Dyson, then Vice Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola, delivered a commencement speech at Georgia Tech’s 172nd where he made an extraordinary and wise set of remarks.

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them Work – Family – Health – Friends – Spirit, and you’re keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that WORK is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls FAMILY, HEALTH, FRIENDS and SPIRIT are of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. How?

1. Don’t undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is because we are different that each of us is special.
2. Don’t set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.
3. Don’t take for granted the things closest to your heart. Cling to them as you would your life, or without them, life is meaningless.
4. Don’t let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future. By living your life one day at a time, you live ALL the days of your life.
5. Don’t give up when you still have something to give. Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
6. Don’t be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect. IT is this fragile thread that binds us together.
7. Don’t be afraid to encounter risks. It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
8. Don’t shut love out of your life by saying its impossible find. The quickest way to receive love is to give; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly; and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
9. Don’t run through life so fast that you forget not only where you’ve been, but also where you are going.
10. Don’t forget that a person’s greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.
11. Don’t be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.
12. Don’t use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved.

You are what you believe. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!”

Brian G. Dyson

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Image source: Flickr – Mads Johansen – (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

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