 It’s impossible to avoid everything that drains you, but you can restructure your day to make the most out of your decision-making power. BY DR. JOSH DAVIS Most tasks, at least for professionals and knowledge workers, lead to some mental fatigue. After all, we are constantly engaging in activities that involve decision making and self-control. The key to limiting mental fatigue is recognizing the work that is most likely to deplete your resources in a substantial way and, when you have any say in the matter, to simply not engage in that work before you want to be at your best. So how can you identify the tasks that lead to mental fatigue and keep you from being incredibly productive? If you feel spent after doing a task, there’s a good chance it is tapping into your self-control. The degree to which tasks take a toll on self-control, decision making, or other executive functions varies with each person. Here are some examples of common activities that can lead to mental fatigue:  “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it” - Charles R. Swindoll Learning how to respond to a situation rather than just reacting to it brings huge rewards. Needless to say, it is one of those behaviour changes that is easier said than done. However it can be achieved.
Responding rather than reacting means you will have taken time to consider the situation and which response and consequent outcome best suits you. The difference between reacting and responding:
To react means you are not able to influence your emotions and you act full of emotion rather than from a place of clarity. What you gain by stopping knee-jerk reactions is a sense of strength, achievement, power to  Guest post by Nate Regier for the Seapoint Center
Ask anyone about “conflict” and you’ll most likely hear negative descriptions such as: painful, damaging, draining, upsetting, disrespectful, demeaning and relationship-destroying. Most people dread conflict and can’t imagine how they could turn conflict into an energy source because they don’t understand what it really is. Conflict is simply energy – the energy caused by a gap between what you want and what you are experiencing. The energy of conflict can be misused in “drama” or it can be harnessed to create something positive and useful. The Cost of “Drama” Drama is created by “struggling against self or others, with or without awareness, in order to feel justified about our negative behavior.”  When anger rises to the surface, they don't react -- they respond. by Marcel Schwantes Anger is one powerful human emotion. It is also a very normal human emotion that needs to be expressed in a healthy way. But there's a place and time for appropriate anger, and we all have to learn how to manage it before it escalates. That takes emotional intelligence -- the ability to exercise self-awareness to understand the situation from multiple angles and self-control to see things through other filters before pulling the anger-trigger. When anger comes knocking, and it will, we have to know how to deal with it appropriately. If mismanaged, it can take down company morale and sabotage your ability to lead and collaborate well. Here are six habits of people that manage theirs remarkably well. 1. They put boundaries on people who make them angry. Having healthy boundaries means you're assertive enough to confront and set limits on a particular  Being successful in life requires you to make the right decisions for yourself and this takes knowing who you are and what you uniquely offer. When you say yes to the right projects and job for yourself, you are able to beautifully handle the work and the obstacles that inevitably arise as you make something happen in the world. Susan brings you a cutting edge, revolutionary body of knowledge called BG5 that applies the principles of individuality from Human Design. Using the knowledge gained from BG5 analyses catapults you into a new way of dealing with yourself and others which leads to unprecedented results. For more information about how my colleague Susan Begeman Steiner works with teams and individuals check out her website: sbsteinercoaching.com Susan Begeman Steiner - Coaching for Individuals and Teams  Like peer pressure, habits can make you do stupid things or spur you on to achievement. By Ilya Pozin An entire industry has sprung up around the pursuit of success, full of self-help books, motivational conferences, and decorative Etsy items with uplifting messages. But self-improvement doesn't require shelling out tons of cash for a patented and trademarked formula for success. Your best self is just a few slight adjustments away. I, for one, know I could add quality and productivity to my day just by eating breakfast. There's no big cost. There's no formula. It's just a bowl of cereal to kickstart my mind and body each day. Too often I rush out in the morning, living on repeat, never correcting my bad habits. Breaking (and Making) the Habit Loop Every repetitive action that we take in our daily lives, good or bad, is a habit we've built up over time. According to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, this is due to a three-step pattern he calls the "habit loop." The decision-making part of the brain goes into a kind of sleep mode when the habit loop kicks in, which is why we continue even problematic behaviors.  According to Neuroscience Multi-tasking is Bad for You by Mayo Oshin, Juggling ideas at the intersection of science, art and philosophy.
We’d like to think that we can multitask — respond to emails, text messages, toggle between multiple tabs on a browser and scroll through social media feeds, whilst working on important tasks — but, our brains would say otherwise. According to neuroscientists, our brains aren’t built to do more than one thing at a time. And when we try to multitask, we damage our brains in ways that negatively affect our well-being, mental performance and productivity. Here are nine ways multitasking is killing your brain and productivity. 1. Multitasking can lead to permanent brain damage A study from the University of Sussex (UK) compared the brain structure of participants with the amount of time they spent on media devices i.e. texting or watching TV. The MRI scans of the participants, showed that the high multitaskers had less brain density in  Stressful, absent or micromanaging bosses can be very difficult to deal with. by Nora Battelle, Multimedia Staff Writer at Thrive Global
76 percent of Americans — a clear majority — said they have or recently had a toxic boss, according to new research conducted by Monster and released today. A positive work environment is crucial to performing good work — and to managing your own stress — and leadership often plays a vital part in setting that positive tone. Toxicity, in the survey, took several different forms, and the numbers on all of them were high: 26 percent of bosses, according to Monster’s survey, are “power-hungry,” 18 percent are “micromanagers,” 17 percent are “incompetent” and 15 percent are simply absent (“What boss? He/she is never around,” as the survey phrased it). These numbers are a stark contrast to the 19 percent of employees who see their boss as a mentor and the 5 percent who indicated that their boss is someone with whom they have “the best relationship.” Alan Benson, Ph.D., a professor of Work and Organizations at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, explains the significance of these numbers to Thrive Global: “Facing a bad boss can be one of the greatest challenges we can have when managing our careers.” He suggests that there are three courses to take when faced with a bad manager who stresses you out: “Exit the team, voice your concerns to the boss or to HR or just suffer through it.” The choice you make, according to Benson, should “depend on your exact circumstances,” but his advice gives some helpful questions to consider as you decide on your approach. When to go to HR “Toxic,” in the survey and otherwise, is used as an umbrella term for a lot of different types of behavior. |
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