It’s that time of the year where resolutions abound with both resistance and positive anticipation, where a clean slate can bring about goals to change one’s habits for the better. As a result, there are numerous articles providing tips on how to really quit smoking once and for all or how to finally “take it off and keep it off.”
We have skimmed over those and collected a few stories on increasing productivity while keeping your sanity, which we hope will be helpful to our adult students, alumni, and all of you in the workforce doing the work-life-balance jig.
“Twelve Time Management Habits to Master in 2013″ – Forbes.com
This one taps Benjamin Franklin’s formula for changing habits that “he found himself lacking. He knew that nurturing these habits would bring about positive change in his life.”
The article makes recommendations of twelve time management habits that are worth having when it comes to being successful for business, but the key is utilizing this simple yet effective formula.
From Forbes, “Modern psychologists recognize three key elements in Franklin’s three-hundred-year-old procedure for changing habits:
- He started out committed to the new behavior.
- He worked on only one habit at a time.
- He put in place visual reminders.”
How to Train Your Brain to Stay Focused - Entrepreneur.com
While this article is obviously focused on entrepreneurs, the insights can apply to anyone with, well, a brain. Because our personal and business life has pressured many into a habit, which many believe to be counter productive — multitasking…
“Staying focused can be tough with a constant stream of employees, clients, emails, and phone calls demanding your attention. Amid the noise, understanding your brain’s limitations and working around them can improve your focus and increase your productivity.”
So how do we move through our daily work life that is an array of all of the above and more? Entrepreneur provides these three tips:
- Do creative work first – the brain can tire, as we most know, so work on projects and tasks that require a full tank first, moving on to the easier things afterward that require less thinking.
- Allocate your time deliberately – are you a morning person or a night owl? Design your day around how you work best and at what time.
- Train your mind like a muscle – similar to training yourself to meditate, when the mind wanders, reel it back in, in repetition of need be.
How to Turn Past Mistakes Into Future Successes – AOL Business
This last one is actually from October of last year, but still highly relevant, especially since this time of the year is about reflection on the year that’s just past.
In this video, Internet entrepreneur, CEO and co-founder of Sprint.ly, Joe Stump provides his answer to the question, “What Role Has Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?”
By putting together a bullet list of mistakes, and then utilizing the age-old notion of learning from them, he takes that knowledge gleaned by personal experience to turn lemons into lemonade and future business successes.
Is one of your goals for starting 2013 on the right foot include launching or continuing your education path? Feel free to contact our Regis CPS team of enrollment counselors at 1-800-481-5581 or info@regis.edu, or request an information packet online.
