productivity

Our lives are intertwined with music; the time you had your heart broken, the day you walked down the aisle, the shocking call you took in the middle of a grocery store that was playing a Green Day song. Many of the most momentous occasions of our lives are marked by music, and we use them in many ways depending on our mood. Need to study? Turn on something classical. Ready to dance? Hip-hop fits the bill. Nostalgic? Turn on 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, depending on the decade you were born.

Need to train your mind into better concentration and productivity? Try sniffing these scents for some awesome olfactory power that hones your brain…

If you’re like most of us, you probably feel that your work habits and productivity are not near their full potential. Whether it’s a lack of motivation, boredom with your tasks, a feeling of mental/emotional depletion, or just struggling with time management—we all get to a place in our work lives where we feel somewhat stuck. Many successful people have overcome this—or avoided it completely in the first place—by moving to another country…preferably as far away as possible.

How many times have you aimed to be a productive do-it-all in the morning, only to end up as a barely-done-anything drained person at the end of the day? Sure, we all have our bad and unproductive days every now and then, but if this is happening to you way too often, then it’s time to make a stop-doing list instead of your normal to-do list, to raise productivity levels.

I have a complicated relationship with my Amazon Echo and Dot, the hands-free, voice-controlled devices Amazon developed as a user-interface for Alexa, their answer to Siri and other intelligent personal assistants.  The Echo and Dot devices can be used as Bluetooth speakers, but their most well-known function is to allow users to interact with Alexa – you can search the web, buy stuff directly from Amazon (because, of course!), listen to music, get news briefings, and more – all by simply talking to the device.

We all bring baggage home from work. Sometimes it’s the day’s tiredness; sometimes it’s work that has to be finished. Mostly it’s stress—disguised as anger, impatience, and sometimes just plain old meanness.

Sluggish as a sloth in the afternoon? Try these tips to keep the sleep and fatigue at bay…

What is the afternoon slump? If you are lucky enough not to know, that’s great, but in case you are a regular victim of the intense sleepiness, sluggishness, mind fog and general tiredness that seeps in somewhere between the hours of 1 pm and 3 pm – then you better read on…

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

How many minutes to do you have to read this right now? Are you leisurely strolling through some of your favorite webpages? …At home or at work? Should you be doing work instead?

I don’t want to “adult” right now. By that I mean I don’t want to be responsible, I don’t want to run any errands, I don’t want to show up and engage in life. What’s interesting is I don’t want to go somewhere else; I don’t want to swim with dolphins in Maui, for instance. I want to withdraw completely. In yoga, the term for withdrawal is pratyáhára.

In the past three years, I have moved several times. And as I settle in to each new space, I always end up adopting various plants to scatter around my place. I have always tended toward ivy or spider plants, since I can’t kill them easily, and most recently I have taken some new succulents under wing. For me, having plants is partially for the aesthetic; a little green in my living space is refreshing and reminds me of being in nature, a place I enjoy very much. However, keeping indoor plants has just as many physical benefits as it does psychological.