Layoffs, shortened workweeks, stressed-out workplaces … it all can lead to another byproduct of the recession: increasing workloads and work slippage. How are administrative professionals ensuring that, with stakes soaring higher than ever, no work falls through the cracks?
The perfectionist boss can easily drive you crazy, spending time correcting others’ less-than-perfect work and agreeing to take on any and all projects. Some workaround tips for you:
When making decisions, pay attention to the factors that lead people to make bad ones: relying on past experience, making prejudgments that turn out to be wrong and being swayed by attachments to people, places or things.
The cliffhanger boss likes to wait until the last possible moment to deliver a finished project. He thrives under deadline pressure and will create that pressure if it isn’t there already. How can you work around that?
The time-waster meeting is a common fixture in offices across America. The reason, says Reid Hastie, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, is that we’re not thinking about and valuing our time the right way.
What does an Oreo cookie cream filling have in common with administrative professionals? Everything! Without that cream, there’s no magic center that holds it together. You’re left with two chocolate disks sitting there waiting for something special to happen. The special ingredient: you.
Cut back on workday spending … Keep your mind primed for work by clearing away the cobwebs … Know the right way to vent to relieve stress … Think “ABB” or “always be briefing” … Uncover wasteful spending with creative thinking.
Thomas Edison not only invented the light bulb, he filed for more than 1,000 patents and essentially invented the concept of R&D, or the system of looking at problems and solving them creatively. The guy knew how to innovate. What can we learn from one of America’s greatest problem solvers?
What makes the Internet useful is also what makes it so undeniably distracting: There’s no end to what you can find online. Luckily, a few browser add-ons that work with Firefox can help make web surfers more productive (all available at
addons.mozilla.org).
Fear can paralyze even the most successful people. To make it through the recession, though, businesses need people who can be fearless. Gayle Lantz, author of Take the Bull by the Horns, says that to move back into “thrive” mode, “You’ve got to figure out how to aggressively move forward.”
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