Archive for Work Hours

How often do you say “no” and mean it?!

March 28, 2013 Networking, Social Media, Work Hours No comments

You have to learn to say “no”. You can’t always take care of everyone else and if you spend more than half your day on the phone, you’ve got to figure out a way to scale back.

Spending more than 4 hours a day on the phone is taking away from other valuable opportunities. It is literally impossible to be focused 100% on more than one task simultaneously and if your multi-tasking while talking on your phone – someone or something is missing your full attention.

How much time do you spend typing and replying to emails each day? How much of that time is spent on essential emails? By essential I mean emails that are directly related to the execution and completion of the job you do. It is estimated that only 10% to 20% of emails that most people get each day require their attention and are essential to their job. Are you distracted by those Facebook email updates?

One way to reduce this email frenzy is to politely request to your email contacts that you are removed from non-essential bulk emails lists. This can also be applied to your personal email.

Work-life balance

May 23, 2012 Work Hours No comments

Do you feel like a hamster on a wheel? Do you look around and wonder if you are the only one racing from meeting to meeting and email to email … Do you have a niggle in the back of your mind that if you don’t keep moving at this pace you won’t be able to keep all the plates spinning?!

We have become a generation of individuals who are slaves to the corporate world where working long hours is rewarded by a bigger salary, more kudos and special attention! Is this the message we should be giving? Surely, it’s about working smarter not harder – why should you be penalised for getting your job done in a timely and efficient manner when others are being rewarded for being slow or deliberating staying at work to be seen until the boss goes home?

We will all need to work for longer in the future but there is also more to life if we all last that long!

Wake up corporate world! Let’s start rewarding the right behaviour!