For most people, happiness is hard to achieve. There are insecurities, stress and life problems they have to overcome first before they can truly be happy. However, once the storm has passed, happiness can’t only make your life easier; it can also make work a lot more enjoyable for you.

Here are some of the ways happiness can positively affect you at work.

1. You Stay Positive

Being happy at work can help you stay positive about your tasks. No matter how overwhelmed you become with your workload or how stressful your work environment turns out, you can still finish all your tasks with a positive attitude. You’ll be able to resolve problems in the workplace easier, too.

See Also: Solving Workplace Problems with a Culture of Creativity – 10 Strategies

2. You Build a Friendly Rapport With Coworkers

When you exude positive energy, people get attracted to you. They look forward to being with you and they sincerely enjoy your company.

This attraction can help you build a healthier relationship with your coworkers. When you get along with them really well, there’s a lesser chance for petty arguments and misunderstandings to happen. You’ll have no enemy at work, too.

3. You Are In the Good Books of Your Boss

Aside from being able to build a good relationship with your co-workers, you’ll also find it easy to get the approval of your boss. If he sees you as a likable and happy person, he’ll likely keep you in his company for a long time to radiate the same energy to his company.

See Also: 5 Easy Ways To Feel More Energized At Work 

4. You Learn Things Faster

Happiness makes you feel more enthusiastic about your work. With your high energy and motivation, you’ll be able to assimilate new skills and information quickly.

And since you can learn things at a faster rate, you increase your productivity and you get more work done.

5. You Make Better Decisions

By being happy and maintaining a positive attitude, you’ll be able to make better decisions that can help improve your work. When you make good decisions, you’re also helping out your coworkers and company to grow.

6. You Learn from Your Mistakes

When you’re happy with your work, you’ll find it easy to adjust and adapt. One good example is when you commit mistakes.

Compared with other people who’ll sulk and get anxious about occasional mistakes, you grow and learn from them. You admit your mistakes and apologize for them without feeling bad for yourself. You don’t allow your errors to bother you too much to the point that you can’t work properly.

By having a positive perspective, you can use your mistakes at work as stepping stones to get better in life.

Being happy doesn’t mean there’ll be no problems. It simply means that you have a different way of addressing them. Problems will not stop happening at work or even your life. Do not let it deter you from feeling good and experiencing happiness.

 

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For someone who invests money in his business, you want to make sure your office and employees stay at the top of their game. Unfortunately, however, that’s not always the case. There are late reports, typing errors and tons of backlogs that can negatively impact your investment.

If you’re looking for ways to eliminate these issues and increase the productivity of your team, here are a few office hacks you can check out.

The Power of Plants

Aside from increasing productivity, having plants in the office can also help reduce stress. Since they purify the air, they’re a great help in decreasing sickness and absences, too.

Studies have revealed that the presence of plants in the office can boost its workers’ productivity by as much as 10% to 15%. Experts suggest that these benefits are mainly due to the plants’ ability to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the air. When the carbon dioxide level in your office is low, workers can experience an improvement in their concentration.

Optimum Temperature

The temperature in your office can also affect your employees’ productivity. Take, for example, the study carried out by Cornell University.

In the study, researchers tested the idea by increasing the temperature in an office from 20 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees Celsius. After the dramatic change in temperature, the employees in the said office reported a decrease in their typing errors by 44%. Their overall typing productivity, on the other hand, was increased by 150%.

If you are planning on using this hack, you need to set aside a good budget for it since increasing the temperature in your office can affect your heating bill. Although it may require additional expenses, you can expect a faster return on investment with your employees working better and faster.

In case you are wondering what temperature you should use for your office, The Indoor Environment Group of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggests that 21.5 degrees Celsius is the most optimum.

See Also: How to Organize Your Writing Workplace for Better Productivity

Let There Be Light

Exposure to natural light has been linked to increased levels of serotonin.  It’s the hormone responsible for mood,  productivity and even sleep. The more you get exposed to natural light means the happier and more productive you can be.

Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, has said that the average office lighting only produces around 300 lux, which is the measure of brightness. For full alertness, however, we need to be exposed to around 1000 lux.

To reach this brightness in your office, you don’t necessarily have to invest in tons of light bulbs. Just opening up your windows and drawing the blinds up can give your employees their daily dose of productivity light.

See Also: 5 Steps to Creating an Inspiring Workplace 

Hydration

In the US, over 500,000 people get hospitalized because of dehydration. Aside from causing health issues, it’s also one of the most common reasons why employees feel less productive at work.

Dehydration can decrease productivity by slowing down your body functions. When there’s not enough water in your body, your system is forced to enter a conservation mode. This is to prevent further water loss. As a result, you feel sluggish and even sleepy at times.

The solution?

Get water coolers and make sure there are enough of them for all your employees. Aside from water, you can also offer delicious refreshments, such as fruit-infused drinks.

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If you’re trying to find ways on how to be more efficient, you’ve probably considered getting a few tools to help you out. However, with so many options to choose from, picking the best one can take time, effort and even money. As not all productivity and time management tools are created the same, you have to make sure you only get the best ones that can help you get more work done.

Here are 7 of the must-try tools you need to check out:

MyLifeOrganized

If you often feel that you are spending your time on irrelevant things and can’t organize your day, you should definitely check out MyLifeOrganized. It comes in two versions – standard and professional version.

The standard version offers all the tools that are necessary to optimize your productivity and work. The professional version, on the other hand, provides Cloud services as well as many other options to completely customize your work environment and set everything up just the way you like.

Universal Password Manager

The thing with passwords is that they can easily be forgotten. And if you’ve experienced having to go through password recovery, you know how tedious the process is, particularly the series of security questions.

This tool, however, eliminates all those concerns by storing your passwords and usernames in a huge database that is securely encrypted. The only thing that you really need to remember when using this tool is one master password that will unlock your access to all your other passwords and data stored in the Universal Password Manager database.

Pocket

Pocket is not, by definition, a time management tool, but it has some characteristics of it. It can be installed on any device and once you save something in it, you’ll be able to access the file whenever and wherever you want.

Pocket is free for use, but there is an option to upgrade to a Premium plan. Once you upgrade, you’ll be able to enjoy an ad-free use of the tool, advanced search options and additional tools for organizing saved content.

Toggl

Toggl measures the time it takes for you to finish a single task or multiple projects. It’s particularly useful if you’re working with a team since you’ll be able to see which assignments are taking too much time to get done.

Toggl offers several plans for its users. Its free plan provides the basic time tracking tool for an unlimited number of projects for individuals and teams of up to 5 people. It comes with charts and reports to help you understand your productivity and efficiency level, too.

The paid plans, meanwhile, come in three options – Pro, Pro Plus and Business. Each of these plans has extra features to help you manage your time and projects better.

See Also: Top 5 Time Management Hacks To Get You Ahead 

Listastic

Listastic is one of the best list-making tools there is on the internet. It’s suitable for making any kind of list, from a simple shopping list to a complex list of to-do things for your work. The ability to share them with your friends and colleagues is what makes this tool extra unique.

Unfortunately, however, Listastic is only available for Apple products. If you are not a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch user, you can skip this one.

Focus@Will

When it comes to internet and computer use, most of us have short attention span. The people who created Focus@Will found a solution to this problem using neuroscience and coding.

Although it’s not a time management tool, Focus@Will can help you perform better with your current tasks. It plays music that has been scientifically proven to improve focus. The website claims that it can increase your concentration by up to 400%.

See Also: 6 Tools to Increase Your Self-Employed Productivity 

Dropbox

Dropbox can save you a lot of time when it comes to data storage. It is basically a Cloud service that can save all your files while allowing access sharing with other people. It’s easy to use since it creates a folder on your computer which automatically uploads everything that you save in it.

Time never stands still and if you’re not going to take charge of how you use your time, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to do something productive at the end of the day. The tools listed in this article can help you not only with time management but your productivity as well.

How do you manage your time? What tools do you use to boost your productivity?

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“He has the most who is most content with the least” – Diogenes.

Cynicism was an ascetic philosophy school characterized by the renunciation of all comfort, luxury, and pleasure. Its followers believed that one can attain happiness by living a simple life- without wealth and power. When one of its most popular–and radical–member, Diogenes, told Alexander the Great to move out of his sun, Plato defined him as “Socrates gone mad”.

Despite rejecting possessions, fame and fortune, cynics enjoyed more happiness and freedom. To achieve the same state of mind, here are 5 important lessons you can learn from Cynics.

1. Live a simple life

Life is meant to be simple. We only need food, shelter, clothing and relationships to live happily.

Unfortunately, despite having all of these things , people continue to become less satisfied with what they have. This discontent makes their lives a lot more complicated and stressful.

For Cynics, however, these things are more than enough for a person to thrive. For them, it’s possible to live a happy life even without all these things.

Diogenes lived in a barrel. He needed few contact with people and all he ever had was a simple robe to cover his body.

See Also: 5 Steps to Do Less in Life

2. Live with humor

Cynics didn’t take life too seriously. In fact, they are the best people who can illustrate how a good laugh can keep you healthy. Take for example Diogenes.

Despite his primitive conditions, Diogenes spent his life worry-free- even with a good dose of humor. His outlook in life is considered to be one of the main reasons behind his long life.

You can find a lot of humorous quotes from Diogenes in the surviving Cynic writings today. One good example is this:

“The proper time for lunch? If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man when you can.”

3. Stop caring about what others think

History suggests that Diogenes masturbated in public. Most of the food he ate were from other people. He lived in barrels and didn’t care about what other people would say about him.

The Cynics is a great source of inspiration in reducing social fears. Their indifference saved them a lot of time, worries, grief, and even jealousy.

4. Know unconditional happiness

Because Cynics weren’t dependent on any personal possession or power, they weren’t relying on anything for their happiness. Instead, they were happy with just the mere idea of being alive.

Learning from cynics, you must also strip off your desire for material things if you really want to be happy. If you rely your satisfaction on the amount of money you have or how powerful you are, you’ll never feel contented with what you have and your life.

See Also: 10 Secrets To A Happy and Fulfilled Life 

5. Be indifferent toward worldly success

Cynics, along with Stoics, knew the futility of pursuing money and social status. They believed that for us to be truly happy, we have to learn how to reject our desire for wealth, fame and power.

Unfortunately, it’s the other way around today. A lot of people work hard to attain wealth and fame in an attempt to cure their discontentment. However, as some millionaires already know, these things aren’t the solution. Although they can help make your life easier, they aren’t going to make you any happier.

 

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Catching people’s attention and making them listen to you can be a tough job, particularly if they don’t see you as an expert in their areas of concern.  In case you’re wondering how you can make them recognize your expertise, here are six things you can do.

See Also: 7 Convincing Reasons for Working as a Freelancer 

1. Listen First

Before you can make people listen to you, you have to pay close attention to them first. Even if you know more than they do, it’s best to keep quiet and wait for the other person to finish his speech.

As you sit quietly, it’s essential to build on your presence. Sit straight and focus on the person speaking. It’s also important that you maintain eye contact to make the other person feel that you’re paying close attention to what he’s saying.

Even if you are just sitting, you have to make other people feel your presence.

2. Engage Your Audience Immediately

Whether you are speaking to a small group or  a large audience, you should make it a point to begin your talk with something of extreme interest. You can provide some amazing data or statistics or quote a revered expert in the field.

The first words that will come out of your mouth can greatly affect the impression you create to your audience. If you are able to catch their attention right from the start, there’s a good chance you can keep them engaged throughout your speech.

3. Know Your Stuff

As an expert, your audience will believe everything you say. Because of this, it’s critical that you only provide factual information to your listeners. It can also help if you can provide supporting data and documents to back up your claims. Aside from building credibility, using research, logic and analysis in your presentation can make your talks more understandable, too.

4. Start Developing Your Reputation

Given the huge amount of content on the web and the sheer numbers of blogs out there, you will easily be able to find people who have the same area of expertise as you. Building a connection and reaching out to these people can help you develop your reputation more.

You can study and read their posts. You can also do your own research and establish your own writing style before you start submitting your work and name to their sites. It’s helpful if you can plan ahead and set specific goals, too.

Decide on the number of posts you can write within a certain period and plan your work schedule based on that time frame. Since rejections should be expected from time to time, you need to make sure your articles are of top quality before submitting them. Here are some tips to ensure your posts get published:

• Write a catchy title.
• Start with a “bang.”
• Use short sentences and break long paragraphs
• Cite experts and link to your sources
• Invite readers to comment on and share your post
• Use casual writing style

5. Create a Website/Blog/Social Media Platform of your Own

One of the best ways to promote yourself is to have your own brand. Creating your own website or blog can give you more chances of reaching out to people to share your expertise in your field. In maintaining your site, it’s best if you can keep it updated with current information. People are likely to follow experts that can keep them up to date.

6. Understand the Correlation Between Like and Respect

Much like teachers who work hard to earn the respect of their students, you should also learn how to establish a relationship with your audience. Before these people can listen to you, they must first like you. Once you’ve established a good relationship with them, they’ll be more than willing to pay attention to what you have to say.

See Also: 4 Motivational Triggers to Get You Started Right Now

No matter how knowledgeable you are, do not establish yourself as a self-righteous authority who has all of the answers. Instead, you should express genuine interest in establishing good relationships first. This is especially important in a work environment that is based on teamwork. In short, people listen to people they like.

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Have you ever found it difficult to find a topic to talk about when you meet someone new at a social gathering? Do you find it burdensome to keep the conversation going?

If your answer to these questions is a strong “yes”, then it’s probably high time you reconsider your communication skills. If you don’t know how to keep a conversation going, it can hurt your confidence and discourage you from initiating interaction with other people.

To get you on the right track, here are some of the things you can say to keep a conversation going.

1. Their Reason For Coming To The Venue

This is one of the easiest topics that can keep a conversation going. Almost everyone has a reason for going to the places that they do. It can be for entertainment, shopping or some other purpose that isn’t immediately apparent.

It’s also an open-ended question which means you’ll get more than the usual “Yes” or “No” answer. You can use the other person’s response to push your conversation further.

See Also: How to Keep a Conversation Going

2. Current Events/News

Don’t pick anything negative or controversial to start off with as it can either kill a conversation or create a wrong impression on your part. Start with something a lot of people can relate to, such as a local parade, a recent theater showing or a movie that just came out recently. You can easily tie some of these events to hobbies someone may be interested in.

3. Something You Notice At The Venue

Have you ever been to a venue where something about the place just stands out? It can be the actual place, ambiance or some of the venue’s decorations.

Using these things as topics can help you connect with people with the same interests and opinions. For example, if you point out how the decorations don’t match the atmosphere, you might hear people say that they noticed them too and how odd they are.

Once people are able to feel that you connect with them in terms of interests, they can be more confident and comfortable to share their thoughts and ideas.

See Also: 5 Ways To Keep a Conversation From Coming To a Dead-end Standstill

4. Something That Just Happened

If you’re unsure about how to start a conversation, you can take advantage of the things that happen out of the blue. It can be about spilled drinks, broken glasses or anything that can catch another person’s interest.

One key thing to remember when it comes to using this topic as a conversation starter is to avoid dwelling on unfortunate events. Although it can help you connect with other people, talking about someone tripping in the hallway can leave you looking like the bad guy.

5. Food or Drink Recommendations

If it’s your first time to a place, it’s a good idea to ask people around about what food or drink they like ordering from the venue. Aside from giving you a good idea about the place, you can also take it as an opportunity to connect with new people.

You might even be surprised to hear lots of food and drink recommendations from these people.

6. Participating In An Activity

If the gathering you are at has some activities, you can try participating. Most activities in gatherings and events are usually held as an icebreaker for the guests.

They can be as simple as playing a short game, acting, or singing. The idea isn’t to push yourself to your physical or mental limits, but to get involved and get the atmosphere going. You can almost always talk about the activities with the people involved afterwards.

7. Showing Off Your Hobby

For some people, showing is better than telling. Talking about the activities you enjoy is nice, but if you can show people your hobby, you’ll be able to keep the conversation more alive.

It doesn’t have to be a flashy performance. It can be as simple as showing some of your artwork, manuscripts or pictures of dishes you’ve recently cooked.

People can easily get bored if you keep on narrating the things you’re good at. Although showing off is nice, you should still keep it to a minimum. You wouldn’t want to look like your bragging your skills.

8. Using Humor To Start A Conversation

Humor is a good way to engage people. When people laugh, it means that they are listening to you and they’re having a good time.

You don’t have to be too creative or a comedian to crack a little joke. In fact,  you can simply start off by sharing a funny story or making a witty inquiry that’s relevant to the current topic. You don’t necessarily have to make people continuously laugh. However, once you’re able to start with a humorous tone, it’s relatively easy to switch topics.

Conclusion

Keeping a conversation going is as hard as starting one. No matter how much effort you put into it, it’s still inevitable for some people to lose interest in what you’re talking about.

Despite this, it’s important that you keep it real as possible. People can easily know if you’re faking interest or forcing yourself into the conversation. Instead of building a connection, you’d be pushing people away from you.

Don’t Say “You Don’t Know What To Talk About” anymore. The next time you’re talking to someone, try one of these topics. Aside from giving you more ideas to talk about, they can also help boost your confidence.

 

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You’re probably thinking:

Pokemon Go can’t possibly improve your productivity and there’s no way it can increase all chances that you can get anything done by playing it.

 

Well, here’s the thing.

I was sitting at work one day when, suddenly, a coworker arose from his desk and hurried away. Curious, I asked another co-worker where he was off to in such a rush. I was told that he left to go defeat a “Gym” two blocks away.

Frankly, I didn’t know what a gym was at the time, but I knew he must be playing Pokemon Go. I was intrigued, and the next thing I knew I was already downloading Pokemon Go right to my phone.

What happened next surprised me even more- I really liked it.

The Hook

And it wasn’t just me. A quick walk through town and I saw a lot more people hooked to it. I met a woman in her 40’s, a man in his 50’s, working professionals, and several other people I never would have imagined would play. It appeared that Pokemon Go’s appeal goes beyond just children, teenagers, and young adults.

This got me pondering why people were drawn to this game, and why achieving success in the  game was more exciting, presumably than achieving success towards real life goals.

Analysis of the Catch

In Pokemon Go, it’s relatively easy to accomplish a variety of tasks and get rewarded for them. For example, you can go for a walk in your neighborhood and achieve a number of things, like leveling up your trainer, powering up your Pokemon and hatching an egg. You can also start working on evolving a Pokemon, taking over a Gym, or discovering new Pokemon to add to the Pokedex. In fact, you could be doing all of the above on any given adventure.

Whether it’s a big or small accomplishment, you get rewarded in Pokemon Go. The consistency of these rewards is what draws more and more people to the game. The more rewards you get, the more motivated you become to get to the next levels.

Compare to Reality

In reality, we don’t get to celebrate rewards for every small accomplishment.

This is largely the reason why many people never complete their goals. Big goals are overwhelming, and even if you break your big goal into smaller chunks, it can be challenging at times to keep up the momentum to keep moving forward.

The concept of celebrating small wins has been emphasized by entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss, Chase Jarvis, and many others. Simply put, the concept is to celebrate your small wins daily.

Take this for example:

Imagine you are writing a 500-page novel and you write one page every morning. You don’t get rewards every day after you write a page, and it will take quite a bit of time before you finish the book and reap the fruits of all your hard work.

Now, compare it with playing Pokemon Go. In the game, you’ll get rewards for every milestone and level you surpass. Which one do you think will excite you more?

While reality is extremely far from the virtual world of Pokemon Go, it doesn’t mean that we can’t apply its principles to our life goals. While you’re laughing at me, I’m going to show you how the game can boost your productivity by as much as 10x.

 

See Also: 3 Ways That Celebrating Your Half Birthday Will Jumpstart Your Productivity

Applying Pokemon Go to Your Goals

The first two things you need to learn is to define your goals and create rewards for those goals.

Defining goals

It’s simple to define your end goal. It can be about starting a business, publishing a book or getting a new job.

These goals can sound simple, but, in reality, it can take a lot of time before you can accomplish them. And the longer it takes means the longer you’ll have to wait to enjoy the rewards you can get from them.

The trick is to break down these goals into milestones and designate rewards for each of them.

 

See Also: How to Set Personal SMART Goals To Succeed 

Setting up rewards

Now, this is the fun part. After setting up your milestones, you’re ready to pick out rewards for them. In essence, your rewards should make you feel more motivated to go on and reach the next milestones.

Here are some ideas for rewards:

1. Verbal celebration and self-acknowledgement of daily goals. This can be as simple as telling yourself about how awesome you are after completing your daily goals. In addition, you can supplement this by taking 5 minutes of quiet time to just be happy about your accomplishments and think about all the things you’re grateful for that day.

2. Pick rewards you’ll really enjoy. In case you’re able to write 10 pages this week, reward yourself with a ticket to that concert you really want to see. If you’re able to write 2 pages today, reward yourself with a good movie tonight.

3. Get a friend in on the game with you. For example, if you get your to-do list all completed, you’ll go to an art museum together. You can also make it a double wager so that if you both accomplish your to-do lists, you’ll go to that brewery you’re both dying to check out.

4. Pick smaller rewards.  It can be as simple as a cup of your favorite coffee, a walk in the park or your favorite TV show.

One key thing to remember about these tips is that rewards usually vary from person to person. They don’t have to be big but make sure they’re meaningful and exciting to you. In the long run, setting up exciting goals can motivate and encourage you to reach your end goal.

Follow-Up

1. Clearly define your goals and break them into small chunks and milestones, using the table above as an outline
2. Select and assign rewards to every small chunk and milestone, again utilizing the table as a reference
3. To download a free copy of the Goal and Reward Planning Worksheet, head over to TurboResults.com

Now it’s your turn. How do you boost your productivity?

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