Learning Center

The project may be entirely ordinary like cleaning out the garage, or it may be critically significant like preparing a major presentation for work. The goal may be to start eating more healthy foods or to advance your career. Whatever the circumstances, one of the major obstacles facing any project or goal is the phenomenon of procrastination. And the digital ...

We are all accustomed to receiving instructions for improving our health. We know these directions by heart: eat more fruits and vegetables, get 8 hours of sleep each night, consume less sugar, stay hydrated etc. Somehow these repeated commands fail to inspire many of us to change our behavior, even though we accept their scientific validity and know that we ...

We are forgetful creatures. I’m not referring to the “senior moment” variety of forgetfulness. I’m talking about the habitual forgetting that takes place in the midst of everyday life challenges and stresses, when we “forget” to make those choices that we know will keep our bodies, spirits and relationships healthy. We forget that change can only happen today and not ...

People who have a persistent propensity to complain, find fault and judge others harshly can sap your energy and optimism if you are not careful. One of my EAP clients recently compared the effect of a colleague’s unrelenting negativity to a toxic cloud of second hand smoke: irritating, suffocating, and pervasive. It got me thinking about how challenging it can ...

You know the feeling. A dark cloud of procrastination sweeps in blocking the light of your enthusiasm, inspiration and creativity. Your project stalls. Momentum fizzles. Distraction and guilt follow. According to Dr. Joseph Ferrari, a leading researcher in the study of procrastination: “Everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator.” He estimates that 20% of adults in the United States ...

If you take the pleasure of getting things done at work and multiply that by the pleasure of getting better at what you do, the result is improved job satisfaction, higher motivation and diminished levels of stress. It’s a simple formula: we come to work to get something done and when we do our level of well-being and engagement increase. ...

There is nothing better than an impending disaster to clarify the distinction between the essential and the trivial. When total annihilation is on the horizon no one is wasting any time worrying about whether it’s going to rain this weekend. The standard formula for disaster movies builds upon the stark choices offered by the threat of total calamity. In response ...

You know that jittery feeling you get before you have to make a presentation? Most people believe that trying to “calm down” is the best way to handle this kind of pre-performance anxiety. It turns out that most people have it wrong. A recent study, by Alison Wood Brooks at the Harvard Business School, investigated this problem and her findings ...

Ethel Weiss is the primary (and sole) investigator for the longest running research project in the country on the subject of happiness and job satisfaction. When I tell you that the study is being conducted in Massachusetts you might reasonably suspect that the Harvard Business School or M.I.T. have something to do with it, but they don’t. Ethel’s extraordinary research ...

I am concerned about the escalating lack of civility that surrounds us in our everyday life. Incivility at work has many different forms. We see everything from the gossiping coworker to the intimidating bully. Then there are the supervisors who take credit for your work but never give credit and the managers who are dismissive and rude and will not ...

“If management stopped demotivating their employees then they wouldn’t have to worry so much about motivating them.” W. Edwards Deming If you read my blog post last week you know that I was the winner of The Listserve email lottery and as a result had the opportunity to ask 5 questions to a diverse group of 25,000 strangers. This week ...

What would you want to say if you had the chance to send an email to 25,000 strangers dispersed across planet earth? That’s the question that faced me last week and I had 48 hours to decide what to do with this opportunity. The Listserve is an email lottery. One person every day has a chance to broadcast a message ...

The path to perfect is littered with failure and disappointment and should be avoided by anyone seeking self-improvement. Perfect is the enemy of good because perfect is an oversized and complicated fantasy, not an achievable goal. When it comes to making changes in your work habits or your relationships or your health it often pays to think small. I am ...

This has been a week of strong emotions. The sudden and wanton destruction of lives at the Boston Marathon finish line briefly shattered our sense of safety and compelled us to think about our shared human mortality and vulnerability. We reached out urgently to connect with friends and family members in Boston. Most of us were overjoyed to learn our ...

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way ...

We are increasingly awash in information. The remote gives us faster access to the information on television and Google gives us instantaneous access to the expanding universe of internet based information. Our phones, email and social media give us continuous and real time updates on our friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues. We are buyers and sellers in an information economy. ...

Even the “show me the numbers” folks over at the Wall Street Journal are alerting their readers to the fascinating body of research demonstrating the positive impact of smiling. It appears that remembering to smile more could pay off in a variety of ways including better heart health and lower stress levels. The idea that facial expressions don’t just reveal emotions ...

It’s not your imagination. It’s a hard cold fact. Researchers at Texas A&M, after collecting data on auto speeds on most major roads every 15 minutes every day of the year, have concluded in their 2012 Annual Urban Mobility Report that traffic congestion is wicked bad. To be more precise, the average commuter loses 38 hours – nearly a week ...

The signature of Tom Peter’s iconic first book, “In Search of Excellence” was the following 6 words: “Hard is soft. Soft is hard”. He was talking about how “hard” financial numbers can be easily manipulated and “hard” business plans can be nothing more than fabricated flights of fancy. The true hard stuff, he maintains, is something business often undervalues as ...

Thank you Ira Glass. For those of you who do not know Mr. Glass, he is the creative force behind  ”This American Life”  which is an insanely good and quirky  radio program on NPR. Ira is a consummate story teller but this wasn’t always the case. In a jewel of a video, he describes the sizeable gap between his taste in ...