Stick to your resolve
Keep those beginning-of-the-year resolutions with these tactics from organizing guru FranklinCovey:
Setting yourself up for action: 4 tips
What makes the difference between productive workers and those who simply think they’re productive? Doing vs. talking. Here are four quick tips on how to set yourself up for action: 1. Jolt yourself into action by trying something. 2. Prototype your ideas. 3. Replace update meetings with "huddles." 4. Create testaments to progress.
Keep pet peeve from nipping productivity
It’s 4:30 p.m., and one of your bosses has finally given you the documents you expected to receive that morning—the documents you need in order to wrap up a task by the 5:30 p.m. deadline. This is your biggest pet peeve—receiving things late (and without warning), but being expected to complete the task on time. What to do?
Workplace styles of the sexes
Do women have to be better than men to succeed in the workplace? Nearly half (45%) of all working women answered “yes” in a survey by Cisco and Gender IQ. Only 26% of men agreed with the statement. Other findings:
Can’t everyone just get along?
Defuse a stressed-out, tense workplace with simple, morale-boosting celebrations. Examples: To celebrate National Pie Day (Jan. 23), get pies for the office. For Make a Difference Day (the fourth Saturday in October), challenge each employee to do one thing for a co-worker.
Salaries dip, but there’s hope
Projected starting salaries for administrative professionals could see a decrease by an average of 2.2% in 2010. The good news: If you’re good at adapting to unexpected situations and able to quickly learn new skills, you’re the sort of person who will still thrive.
Reversing the toll of rudeness
More than 90% of the 3,000 employees surveyed by the Marshall School of Business said they had experienced incivility on the job. Of those, 50% said they had lost work time worrying about the incident; 50% considered changing jobs to avoid a recurrence; 25% cut back their efforts on the job. The remedy?
To get ahead, ignore naysayers
As far as you’ve come in this life, people still try to impose limits on you. That’s what Kamala Harris, district attorney for San Francisco, warned newly minted graduates at San Francisco State University last year. Her message: Ignore those people.
Create the next healthiest workplace
Last year, “Vitality Project,” sponsored by the United Health Foundation, set out to create the healthiest hometown in America. Its experts began working with town leaders in Albert Lea, Minn., to transform the way residents eat, work, exercise and play. To boost the health and well-being of the people in your office, follow Albert Lea’s best tactics:
Transitions make the words flow
Using transitions in your writing is like taking readers by the hand and guiding them exactly where you want them to go. Transitional words such as “however,” “meanwhile” or “likewise” create relationships between your sentences and paragraphs so that readers can understand why you’ve written sentences in a particular order.