A fair immigration system would consider family and community ties before ordering deportation, but US law generally ignores them, and Trump’s policies are taking this to new extremes. Congress also bears responsibility for its abject failure to reform a system that everyone agrees is broken. It should require a hearing before deportation—or better yet, find a way to regularize the status of people who deserve legal recognition.
Author: signordal
10 Essential Oils You Should Have at Home
When an average person hears the words “essential oils”, he’d probably associate it with something that can improve the smell of a home. And though that is true, there’s more to essential oils than just bringing a pleasant fragrance.
So, if you are planning to get a new house, here’s an essential oils guide you might find useful.
Lavender
Widely used for its calming effects, lavender is, undoubtedly, one of the most popular essential oils. Of course, the reason is obvious. This oil brings a soothing effect when you’re stressed or irritated. Aside from that, it can also treat burns and relieve irritated skin.
To treat burns, simply put two drops of lavender oil on the affected area. In a few minutes, the swelling and pain will be relieved.
Peppermint
Having a hard time dealing with nausea? How about headaches? Do you want to improve energy levels?
You might need to have a bottle of peppermint essential oil at home. Massage a drop of this oil to your forehead and temples to relieve a headache. To relieve nausea, inhale straight from the bottle but be careful not to get it in the eyes.
Lemon
For those of you who have a congested chest or itchy throat, you will need several drops of lemon. When paired with honey, it can effectively soothe a sore throat!
If you want to use it in the kitchen, you can, too! Mix at least 5 drops of this essential oil with 4 ounces of an unscented liquid dish soap to get rid of grease in your kitchenware.
Eucalyptus
To add an antimicrobial effect to any DIY homemade cleaning recipe, make sure to add a few drops of eucalyptus essential oil. Five drops of this oil added to 16 ounces of water can effectively inhibit the growth of mold. Also, 10 drops of this added to a bucket of water can help ease the job of cleaning the floor.
Frankincense
Although it is a bit expensive, frankincense essential oil can effectively get rid of stress and relieve headaches. It can even help make bath time extra relaxing!
After washing your body with soap, put a few drops of frankincense essential oil to your washcloth. Then, wipe it over your body while rinsing with warm water. The steam will instantly infuse with the oil, giving you the refreshing and relaxing feeling you need.
Oregano
Oregano might be a popular kitchen ingredient but it also has some other uses at home. It has antimicrobial properties that help the body combat illnesses. No wonder why it’s a must-have! To fight flu and illnesses, diffuse this oil in your favorite diffuser. It’s that easy!
Tea Tree
Another powerful ingredient in homemade cleaners, tea tree essential oil deserves a spot in your home. Not only does it have soothing properties that heal rashes and itching, it also has properties that aid in stopping athlete’s foot.
Normally, this oil is diluted with a carrier oil, such as organic coconut oil, in a 1:1 ratio prior to applying to the skin.
Wild Orange
Apart from its pleasant smell, wild orange has got many good properties. It does not only work as a sedative, it can also be used for treating an upset stomach. Simply combine a tablespoon of coconut oil with a drop of wild orange essential oil for an instant massage oil.
Vanilla
Here’s something you might not be aware of: Vanilla essential oil has properties that can neutralize the free radicals present in your body. It can protect it against illnesses and diseases.
It also brings about a calming effect that makes it ideal for relieving restlessness and stress. Put a few drops of this oil into your bath or rub the oil on your temples for a quick relaxation.
Rosemary
If you are feeling confused or indecisive, you will need the fragrance of rosemary essential oil. It does a pretty good job at clearing your head and supporting digestive functions.
When combined with peppermint essential oil, it can improve one’s focus and insights, too! Just mix 3 drops of this oil with 3 drops of peppermint essential oil and rub on your upper neck. It should effectively improve your memory and keep you focused the whole day.
Actually, there are still lots of essential oils out there. These are only ten of them. Nonetheless, if you want your family to reap the benefits of these oils, then this essential oils guide can help you get started.
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Gifford Pinchot is often called the “Father of American…
Gifford Pinchot is often called the “Father of American Forestry.” His life and legacy shaped American conservation and our public lands. Celebrate his birthday and check out his story https://on.doi.gov/Pinchot Photo of Gifford Pinchot National Forest by Pat Di Geronimo (http://ift.tt/18oFfjl).
Dating Tips for Finding the Right Person
The biggest challenge in dating is finding the right person.
Most of the time, dating is usually clouded with the wrong intentions. Some simply want to get laid while others want to see what happens next. These aren’t really wrong if those are what you intend.
But, if you are looking for the right match, you can easily get hurt if the other person has those intentions.
That is why it is important to make it clear what your intentions are, particularly at the start of the dating process. If you are dating to find the right person for you, then you have to be honest about it. Otherwise, you will get hurt if you play along and can become an easy prey to people who are just looking for fun.
Finding the right person takes time. Actually, it takes an enormous amount of time. Some people can be married, have kids and start a family only to realize that who they live with is not actually the right person for them. No wonder divorce rates are sky high.
Here are a few dating tips for finding the right person:
Eliminate Fear
Fear will always cause us to make the wrong decisions. Fear can easily convince us that who we are currently dating is the best we can have. At your very core, however, you know there is a mismatch in many of your characteristics and personality.
In other words, fear will make you blind to many unpleasant things and this can cause great issues in the long run.
It is best to date not because of fear, whether that is fear of loneliness or being single. Being single shouldn’t actually be feared at all since rushing into a bad relationship is actually worse than being alone.
Do not confuse being partnered with happiness, too. You can be happy alone and you’ll have a greater chance of finding the right person if you are complete on your own.
Take Time Before Committing
Commitment brings a relationship to another level. Sometimes, the sweetness and the “high” felt at the beginning of a new relationship can convince you to commit to something even more serious.
Hold back a little and think about what you are getting into.
Not being bitter, but you have to consider many things. Think about your career, social life, and personal life. If the relationship you are committing to may be disruptive to any of this, it may not be worth it.
See Also: 7 Ways To Tell That You’ve Gone From Dating To A Relationship
The Right Person May Be Appear as Wrong
There are many relationships that flourished not because of initial attraction. In fact, some of those that truly lasted are people who may have known each other for a long time without being entirely in love. The right person may be the wrong person at first, so give your partner a fair chance.
Who you are craving for may be toxic and cause you problems and those you may consider toxic or perceive to be may just be the remedy you need to achieve and sustain happiness.
You’ll never know!
Establish a Sensible Foundation for a Relationship
Many of us sign up for a relationship as if it’s a promotion of an insurance company. We forget that any relationship requires a solid foundation as it gets established.
Before you go about committing to enter a relationship, have a clear sensible foundation. For example, list your own set of values that are most important for you and see if the other person can identify with them. If not, better look for another one. Otherwise, you’ll just create your biggest regret.
Don’t Let Lust be the Foundation
Lust and sex (as dirty as possible) is a requirement for a healthy relationship. No argument in that one. But, take note that it shouldn’t be the foundation of your relationship.
Sexual chemistry is great but it doesn’t mean you’d go blind over the bad behavior of the other person. Life isn’t about sex alone. Remember the many other aspects of life you need to keep intact.
See Also: 4 Dating Mistakes You Could Be Making (And What To Do With Them)
Conclusion
Have fun dating and don’t let bad experiences take away the possibilities of finding the right person.
Again, it takes a long time to find the right one. But, if you do not stumble upon the wrong ones, you would never get there. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, but please learn from them and never allow them to hurt you. Appreciate the transience of people in your life and move on quickly!
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An Apartment With a Cool Design Created by 2Arquitetos
This project, designed by Celeno Ivanovo and Luiz Henrique Ribero, partners at the architectural firm 2arquitetos, is located in Brazil, specifically in the city of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, and sits in the countryside, where the weather is hot for most of the year. Its décor is done in a color palette of soft and fresh tones. This is due, in great part, to the..
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Summer Samson Designed an Elegant Apartment Full of Light
This modern apartment has been decorated by Studio Summer Samson. In its design, marked by a classic and elegant style, we can see how the rooms, spaces full of light, flow, and how a faint color that highlights the delicacy and good taste in the design of each of its spaces is apparent. Earthy tones have been subtly combined, with a fantastic mix as a result. The contemporary style of..
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Easy Cleaning Hacks For The 5 Dirtiest Kids’ Items In Your House
Within minutes of becoming a mom, I realized what dirty truly meant when my son’s blowout diaper leaked all over my arms and clothes. And as he gets older, the messes are evolving. From fishing toys out of the toilet, pulling blanket corners out of his mouth, and picking up the Lego landmine on the kitchen floor, cleaning after my son has become a daily chore.
A study by ASecureLife.com revealed a surprising analysis of everyday objects touched by kids aged newborn to four years old. The study found that strollers, pacifiers, and plush toys are the dirtiest kids’ items in a home, each hiding more germs than the average bathroom floor.
Yes, the germs that cause pink eye, whooping cough and pneumonia are present on the items your child uses every day.
To avoid letting those pathogenic germs get in contact with your kid, here’s a guide to cleaning children’s toys.
Cleaning 101
Before you begin decontaminating your kid’s stuff, note that there’s a key difference between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting.
Cleaning involves wiping something clean of the visible mess—like food, dust or dirt—using soap and water.
Sanitizing happens after cleaning and involves using a chemical solution to kill the most dangerous germs. It’s generally used for surfaces that come in contact with food.
Disinfecting uses a chemical solution that is stronger and kills most germs. It’s best for nonporous surfaces.
Surfaces and toys frequently used by small hands should be cleaned often, but cleaning can expose children to harsh disinfectants. Chemical household disinfectants, like bleach, are hazardous to human health and the environment.
Instead of using those chemicals, try to look for alternatives. There are eco-friendly bleach alternatives approved by the Environmental Protection Agency that include less harmful, biodegradable ingredients. Essential oils, hydrogen peroxide, and vinegar are common ingredients because they contain antimicrobial solutions that can be effective disinfectants and sanitizers if labeled as such.
This doesn’t mean you should throw out antibacterial wipes. Instead, use them sparingly and strategically. You don’t need to use them daily, but maintain a regular cleaning schedule where you focus on sanitizing and disinfecting the most used areas of your home and baby items.
See Also: The Six Best All-Natural Cleaners for Your House
Here is a list of the five germiest children’s items and a guide for how and when to clean each one.
Stroller
Your stroller is pushed across city streets, into public bathrooms, and through amusement parks. Then, when its filthy trek is complete, a stroller is stored in a car trunk or garage—hot, enclosed spaces that provide perfect conditions for germs to multiply.
Worst germ: Streptococcus, which can cause illnesses like strep throat, pink eye, and meningitis.
Quick clean: Turn the stroller on its side and give it a good shake to dump the crumbs. Then, use soap and water to clean the fabric seating area. Use a mild cleaning solution to wipe down the stroller’s handles, cup holder, and food tray.
Deep clean: Use soap and water to clean the remaining fabric areas, like the canopy and storage basket. Wipe down the frame using a mild cleaning solution and a damp cloth. Household cleaners, abrasives, solvents or strong detergents “can scratch, discolor, and weaken plastic or cause corrosion on metal surfaces,” according to stroller brand Britax.
Pacifier
Pacifiers are a parents’ best friend and their worst nightmare. Though the sucking is a huge relief for babies, pacifiers quickly attract germs around them from being dropped on the floor, shoved in diaper bags and passed between hands.
Worst germ: E. coli, which can cause diarrhea, urinary tract infections, and even respiratory illness.
Quick clean: Generally, rinse off the pacifier or wash with soap and water.
Deep clean: Every few days, run it through a dishwasher cycle on the top rack or place it in a pot of boiling water for five minutes.
Plush Toy
Toys get dragged across grocery store floors, left in the bathroom and covered in mucus and spit-up. The fur of a soft toy absorbs any liquid and germs it comes in contact with, making stuffed animals some of the most difficult children’s toys to properly clean.
Worst germ: Listeria, which can cause listeriosis in people with weakened immune systems.
Quick clean: Make a gentle, detergent-free solution and use with a damp washcloth to quickly clean surfaces of a soiled plush toy. For greasy or oily spots, put the stuffed animal in a plastic bag, sprinkle cornstarch liberally over the toy, shake the bag and let it sit for a few minutes. Finally, vacuum it clean.
Plush toy brand Douglas advises against cleaning stuffed toys with disinfectant wipes or cleaners that have alcohol as they can alter the toy’s coloring and leave behind an unhealthy residue.
Deep clean: Throw the stuffed animal in a laundry machine on a hot water cycle. Put the stuffed animal in a white pillow case before washing to prevent matting or losing the fur. Remain conservative with the soap and don’t use fabric softeners as too much cleaner will leave a residue on the toy. Afterward, sun dry to prevent the animal from losing its shape.
See Also: 7 Tips in Choosing Perfect Toys for Your Kids
Diaper Bag
You’ve likely heard you should never place a purse on a kitchen counter because of the number of germs it carries on the bottom. Magnify that by 100 for a diaper bag. Diaper bags sit on changing tables, rest on floors and get shoved in strollers.
Worst germ: Pertussis, which can cause whooping cough.
Quick clean: Dump out any crumbs, then spot clean soiled spots with mild soap and water. Boogie Wipes—wipes made with saline to ease raw, runny noses — are great, gentle spot cleaners.
Deep clean: Follow the cleaning instructions on your diaper bag’s tag. Some diaper bags can be thrown into the washing machine by placing them in a pillowcase to avoid zippers and accessories from being ripped off. You can also wash them upside down so the bag won’t fill with water.
Other diaper bags can only be tended to with a cloth covered in soap and water. Dry the bag in the sun inside out to prevent the color from fading.
Board Book
Board books are resilient to the aggressive play of toddlers. However, they’re not resistant to the germs that can grow on them as they get in contact with dirty mouths, hands, and floors.
Worst germ: Moraxella, which can cause sinusitis, ear infections or pneumonia.
Quick clean: Use a cloth lightly moistened with soap and water to clean any soiled spots.
Deep clean: Mix a cup of water to a ¼ cup vinegar and use the natural solution to rub down board books. Never scrub board books as this could rub away the page’s color. When cleaning board books, using less moisture is best as the pages will warp if they become too wet.
Prevention
As a general rule, you should clean toys that don’t go in a child’s mouth monthly. There are exceptions, though, where a children’s item should be cleaned immediately, according to Fisher-Price:
When soiled. If food has been spilled on it, get rid of the mess as soon as possible with a soapy water scrub.
Post-sickness. If your child is recovering from an illness, like flu, diarrhea or a cold, disinfect any item that came in contact with your child during their sickness.
Post-play date. You never know what sickness or bacteria other children are carrying, so disinfect the toys that another child played with, especially if they put it in their mouth.
Although it may seem obvious, prevention is a caregiver’s first line of defense. Frequent hand washing for you and your kids is a good first step.
While it’s impossible to completely avoid germs, being aware of what you should regularly clean can help keep your child safe and healthy. Use this list to focus on the germiest objects your child comes in contact with and be sure to regularly clean your child’s other toys throughout your home.
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In a Lonely Place
Dorothy B. Hughes’s 1947 In a Lonely Place (just reissued by New York Review Books Classics) suggests that the current ongoing reemergence of American female crime writers from the ’40s to the ’60s may be approaching what occurred with the male counterparts of these writers in the ’80s, when Black Lizard and other presses began reissuing the out-of print work of Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich, and others. One imprimatur of literary regard came in 2015, when the Library of America issued a two-volume set of female crime writers from the ’40s and ’50s in which Hughes shared space with, to name a few, the likes of Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, Margaret Millar, and Dolores Hitchens.
There will always be those whose reaction to women crime writers is to think they are delivering a compliment when they say that women can write just as tough as men. But that view reduces the work at hand — whether written by men or women — to little more than braggadocio. The unifying point of the best pulp writers was to drag the reader into squirrelly states of anxiety, guilt, complicity, and, over the typically brief lengths of these novels (usually no more than 200 pages), deliver the supremely uncomfortable experience of walking around in the bodies of the protagonists.
Those states are the “lonely place” Hughes refers to in her title, the moods of resentment, longing, paranoia, jealousy, and rage that her protagonist, the serial strangler Dix Steele, exists in. The implicit topic of In a Lonely Place is misogyny, but Hughes’s novel is one is which a serial killer of women is far weaker than the women he kills. As the crime novelist Megan Abbott points out in her Afterword, Dix Steele certainly foreshadows Tom Ripley, the much smoother psychopath who was to take center stage for much of Patricia Highsmith’s career. But Hughes’s vision of violence also prefigures Hannah Arendt’s 1970 On Violence. Faced with civil unrest and the often worse police response, Vietnam, and the calls for revolutionary violence among the radical faction of the New Left, Arendt set out to distinguish violence from the concepts of strength and force and power. With would-be revolutionaries fond of quoting Mao’s dictum that all political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, Arendt wrote, “Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of [violence] is power.”
Making a similar distinction between strength and violence, Hughes gives us a portrait of a murderer who, though calculating, commits his crimes in a febrile state, one so fragile and agitated the merest thing can break it. In the opening pages, Dix is stalking a potential victim he sees walking home alone at night (the M.O. for all his killings), and he’s enjoying the pursuit: “He didn’t walk faster, he continued to saunter but he lengthened his stride, smiling slightly. She was afraid.”
But like a coughing fit ruining a movie take, a sudden interruption shatters Dix’s fantasy of control:
She had just passed over the mid hump, she was on the final stretch of down grade. Walking fast. But as he reached that section, a car turned at the corner below, throwing its blatant light up on her, on him. Again anger plucked at his face, his pace slowed . . . The girl was safe. He could feel the relaxation in her footsteps. Anger beat him like a drum.
Hughes’s imagery amplifies the meaning of the moment: Dix is thrust literally into the light, cast from the safety of the hunt. It’s a slap in the face that Hughes follows this potential victim’s escape with Dix committing a successful murder, presented by chance, a few hours later, as he is on his way home from spending the evening with friends.
The friends are Brub Nicolai and his wife, Sylvia. Brub and Dix were stationed together in England during the war. What Dix doesn’t know about Brub when he looks up his old friend is that Brub is now an LAPD detective investigating the stranglings that are plaguing the city. There’s an off-kilter comedy in the scenes where Dix socializes with the Nicolais (almost always at Brub’s instigation). Dix is living off a monthly check from a stingy uncle back east. He’s convinced the old man he’s in L.A. to try his hand at writing a novel. That’s the line he uses with Brub and Sylvia, claiming it’s a mystery novel, thus giving him license to inquire about Brub’s methods and gain an inside line on how the hunt to uncover him is going. But the uneasy interactions between Dix and Sylvia, his seeing her as a rival for Brub’s attention and his (correct) hunch that she senses his sickness, are an echo of the relationship at the center of the novel: Dix’s affair with the aspiring actress Laurel Grey.
Nicholas Ray’s 1950 film of the novel, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, Ray’s wife at the time, replaced the novel’s plot with what was essentially Ray’s meditation on his failing marriage. By contrast, Hughes’s novel (though written from Dix’s point of view) is very much a woman’s take on masculinity and its limits. A male writer might very well have presented Laurel as a sexpot, if not a femme fatale, her assured manner and ability to verbally parry the men after her used as the mark of a hard little number. Hughes presents Laurel’s toughness as a necessary defense mechanism. Laurel is wised up but not unfeeling. Dix literally bumps into her at the L.A. apartment complex where they both live, and this is how Hughes describes her:
She stood in his way and looked him over slowly, from crown to toe. The way a man looked over a woman, not the reverse . . . He stood like a dolt, gawking at her.
And that’s the core of the relationship. Laurel falls into bed with Dix, but she can’t bring herself to fall in love with him. Her instinct prevents her, and a far more conscious part of her knows that Dix can never give her what she dreams of. To Hughes’s immense credit, she presents that recognition not as avarice but simply as the knowledge of someone who’s seen the horrible stresses money brings into love affairs and marriages and is determined to avoid them.
There is also, in Hughes’s line “He stood like a dolt, gawking at her” an awful shadow of the self-loathing that drives Dix. For Dix the ecstasy of falling in love with a woman like Laurel is the pathway to torment, an invitation to indulge his insecurities. The most reasonable and psychologically astute explanation for male violence against women is male feelings of inferiority, and yet in depiction after depiction, novelists and filmmakers often ignore the distinction between violence and power, the distinction Arendt insisted on. It doesn’t take long for Dix to go from feeling he’s found the girl of his dreams to wondering who she’s with if she comes home later than expected, to fretting about how he will afford to entertain her and clothe her, thinking of Laurel as an exquisite possession that must be displayed in an appropriately elegant setting. What Hughes is describing in these moments is common enough male possessiveness. What’s startling is that she’s placed it in the mind of a psychopath. This isn’t soapbox sociology, in the manner of Susan Brownmiller’s famous declaration that all men are potential rapists. It’s a psychologically acute perception of the continuum on which jealousy and feelings of emasculation and violence reside. Hughes puts the reader inside a dual consciousness, making us feel simultaneously women’s physical vulnerability and men’s worry that, in the eyes of women, they will never be man enough.
The kicker — and it’s a stunning one — is that Dix isn’t wrong. That appraising look Laurel gives him when she first sees him, the distance and suspicion he senses in Sylvia, are not paranoia on his part. They know something is off with him, intuitively grasping what all his artifice attempts to conceal. And there’s an even larger and more unsettling context. The lonely place of the title is not just Dix’s state of mind, not just the friend’s apartment he has obtained Tom Ripley−style and uses as a hidey-hole. The lonely place is America itself. In the opening paragraph, Dix stands on the shore of the Pacific at night, imagining he is once again flying one of the fighter planes he piloted in the war. “It wasn’t often,” Hughes writes, “he could capture any of that feeling of power and exhilaration and freedom that came with loneness in the sky. There was a touch of it here, looking down at the ocean rolling endlessly in from the horizon; here high above the beach road with its crawling traffic, its dotting of lights.”
When he turns his back on the ocean, looks back at the land he returned to, Dix is just another man who, a short time ago, had a purpose and the respect that came with it. (Hughes offers a contrast here in Brub, who has turned his back on family riches to work and build a life. But he seems a happily adjusted exception.) As in William Wyler’s film The Best Years of Our Lives, which came out one year before this novel, showed, it’s not just crazy men who came back to a feeling of being lost, lost amid the postwar prosperity of America, back to a life whose goals and aims seem so paltry next to the wartime missions they have returned from. A mere two years after this country’s greatest triumph, Hughes, like Wyler, foresaw American loneliness as an internal exile. The horror of Dix Steele is just how much he is alienated from — and how close that alienation comes to what we still call masculinity.
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Wonderful Hotel in Taipei City Designed by Taipei Base Design Center
Taipei Base Design Center, an award winning Design Company that was established in 2002 in Taipei City, carried out this fabulous project in 2016 in Taipei City, Taiwan. On it worked the architects Janus Huang, Roy Huang, Jeh Zhang, Chang Zone, Irene Pan and Jon Chen. This fantastic hotel not only has modern rooms that allow guests to enjoy all the available amenities, but also offers spectacular views of the..
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11 Habits That Can Absolutely Transform Your Productivity
You’re reading 11 Habits That Can Absolutely Transform Your Productivity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
If you think that highly productive people are superheroes who have special methods which help them be at the top of their game every single day, you are very wrong. They apply these simple habits and stick to them religiously. With a little practice, you can do so as well!
1. Neat surroundings
Focusing on your work while the workspace is full of distractions can be very tricky. So if you have piles of papers or documents in your line of sight, take some time to put them in a drawer and tidy up your surroundings a bit. It will help you concentrate on your work and allow you to dedicate more time to a particular task.
2. Power naps
As odd as it might seem, taking short naps during your work hours can actually help you feel less stressed and increase your productivity. You will also be less prone to impulsive decisions after you doze off for an hour or so which will undoubtedly make you more successful.
3. Away with the distractors
Checking your Facebook or Instagram feed constantly can lead to a distracting spiral which will disrupt your productivity at the end of the day. It can sound impossible, but as soon as you identify the distractor that takes up most of your work time, you should try to reduce the minutes (or hours) you spend on it. The most common distractions are the internet, social media, texting, office gossip, and e-mail.
4. No cell phones
Leaving your phone on while working can be damaging because the very sound of vibration can make you think about the received text message so your mind cannot focus completely. Using your smartphone during work hours can harm your productivity but also make you less communicative. Not to forget that you will probably miss some important deadlines along the way.
5. Move regularly
Being physically active can do wonders for your creativity and efficiency. You don’t have to join a gym and exercise every single day – simply take a walk or a quick twenty minutes jog. It will help you clear up your thoughts and come up with brand new ideas.
6. Positive work environment
If you work for a company that often surveys their employees and gives positive feedback, the chances are you will feel more confident and be at least 21% more productive on a regular basis. Fewer people would leave the firm and your clients will be 10% more satisfied with the quality of the delivered products or services.
7. Sunshine and nature
Is your workspace situated in a poorly lit corner with the artificial lights? Try relocating closer to a window. The results of a study by California Energy Commission proves that people who enjoy the sunshine and natural surroundings during their work day are more efficient by 25% when it comes to performance tests. The tested subjects also processed the calls 12% faster.
8. Plan ahead
Use schedules and to-do lists in order to determine which tasks require your immediate attention. Try to keep your ideas out of it and write them down in a separate notebook so you don’t mix them up with the work.
9. Don’t overwork yourself
If you think that clocking in more hours on a weekly basis will make you more productive, you are very wrong. People are not machines so there is no need to tire yourself every single week. John Pencavel who works at Stanford University published his research in 2014 which proves that employees who worked for 70 hours a week were as productive as those who worked for 56 hours.
10. Catch those z’s in moderation
Showing up well rested at your workplace is a first step to boosting your productivity but this doesn’t mean that you should sleep for twelve hours either. The research published by Finnish Institute of Occupational Health proves that under sleepers and over sleepers used more sick days than people who slept for seven to eight hours every night. So make sure you stay in that range.
11. The most important 20%
If your work day lasts for eight hours, you should spend exactly ninety minutes working on the hardest and most important tasks that require your full focus and attention. It will help you deliver the high-quality results without increasing your work related stress.
Conclusion
Some of these habits such as limiting the time you spend on your phone or social media might look complicated and impossible at first but you can always start small. As a matter of fact, you can tidy up your work space right now and make an instant change that will brighten up your mood.
Also, don’t beat yourself up if you are unable to apply every single habit from this list right away. And keep in mind that sometimes your productivity depends on the company you work for and you can’t directly influence that.
You’ve read 11 Habits That Can Absolutely Transform Your Productivity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Sig Nordal 