Productivity

The alarm goes off at 7:50am and you roll out of bed. You take your new thirty second commute to the desk nearby and turn on your computer.

Whether you’re a student, a recent graduate who just entered the workforce, or a grizzled, forty-plus hour a week veteran, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a few of the more unsavory personality traits that colleagues and coworkers sometimes have to offer. Let’s take a closer look at some of these traits, along with some tips for dealing with them.

Early to bed, early to rise…with the worm, and the health, and the wealth, and all that. The old adage that is famously attributed to Benjamin Franklin (besides the whole worm thing) is not just a fancy string of words, but a mantra that we should all try to live by.

This past year, so many employees experienced workplace burnout. Many people were overworked and felt Zoom fatigue, and many also suffered from the lack of time management skills—and put off work until the last moment.

When it comes to overall health, it’s imperative to look at the whole picture—and that wouldn’t be complete without the colors and textures of your emotions. Much to our collective detriment, we live in a society that often discounts the emotional world, writing it off as something secondary or too personal to discuss in the workplace.

Throughout my years in business, I’ve made plenty of “mistakes”—although I firmly believe there are no mistakes, only learning experiences. I’ve also picked up a few tips along the way.

Working from home offers comfort, flexibility, and freedom from many of the usual office constraints. It also offers challenges and distractions to productivity.

As more and more companies announce their return-to-work policies, many employees are pushing back. For example, after Apple announced its new hybrid work model requiring employees to return to the office three days a week starting in September, many Apple employees said they’d quit if Apple doesn’t change its stance (and let them work remotely full time and/or push back their hybrid start date).

Employee engagement is a measure of how emotionally attached employees are to their employers. Typically, the more engaged employees are, the greater effort they’ll put into pushing their employers’ agendas and the more resilience they’ll show when their employers face operational or economic challenges.

While most working parents have been trying hard to keep their children out of their Zoom work meetings, Jolene Cramer has been doing the opposite: she’s been letting her twin daughters join many of her video calls. A former Microsoft executive, Cramer is the senior director of integrated marketing at Limeade and co-author of the new children's book Take Care, which follows a child as she visits her mother at work.

At the start of the pandemic, none of us had any idea that it would force us to cancel or postpone all our face-to-face events. But given the risks associated with being in large gatherings, that’s what we were dealing with.