Productivity Archives - Page 9 of 13

The right job for your brain in your 60’s?

What’s The Best Job In The World That’ll Keep Your Brain In Top Shape In Your 60’s? The answer to this title-question would seem like it’s a no brainer. Of course, it’s doing something you love and getting highly compensated for it. Plain and simple. right? But wait … recent studies have shown that what you choose to do for a living could have a strong influence on your mental acumen or sharpness of perception as you grow older. What the research says: It’s funny. We go about running after college degrees and chasing careers without so much as a pause to ask ourselves how our career choices will affect us when we’re old and gray. Research studies are beginning to say that careers requiring more mental complexity (surgeons, lawyers, civil and mechanical engineers, astronauts, writers, etc.) could help protect our brains from deterioration as we get to be senior citizens. People with mentally demanding jobs stand a better chance of having better memory in old age, the studies further indicated. In other words, if you had decided to pursue a career as an executioner, bringing death convicts to the gallows, you won’t stand a ghost of a chance that your memory and other mental faculties would still be in good shape when you’re in your late sixties (or, perhaps, with such a job, it’s all for the better). Other things you should do to keep your faculties working in your old age. Seriously, these emerging clusters of information should help us choose our careers wisely. Obviously there are a lot of other things we could do to protect our minds as we grow older. Among these, research has cited getting regular exercise, learning new things, engaging in a lot of social interaction, living a more mentally and interesting lifestyle along with a complex career choice. All these have been associated to much better cognitive abilities during the latter part of our lives. “Cognitive Reserve”: How does this work? The specific mechanisms that work behind this protective shield is not yet fully understood. Some researchers and psychologists who have delved into this subject are saying the mental stimulation that happens when people perform complex jobs helps build up what they call “Cognitive Reserve”. This then aids in protecting the brain against the bad effects of aging and the pathological results of diseases which may occur over time. Others suggest that the factors that were pre-existing and which draw people to such mentally engaging work in the first place, are the very same elements that protect the brain from the ravages of time. What seems to be accepted with reasonable and rational conclusion is that complex jobs protect aging brains. So, if you’re thinking of walking dogs in the park as a career choice, think again!

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Create Positive Emotions At The Workplace. It Raises Productivity

Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Productivity, Workplace Culture / My Holland

A lot of men say that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the pessimist, sees women as naughty and bad. An optimist HOPES women are naughty and bad! Seriously though, you know the big difference between these two points of view: Optimism being one that can have a great impact not only on your career or profession but also on your health and life, in general. What Research Studies Say In fact, research studies have shown that optimism helps to keep depression away, improve your social ties, boost job performance and raise the chances of success in any undertaking. And when you come face to face with setbacks, optimism can make you more resilient. Pessimism, on the other hand undermines work, friendships and health. It increases your stress when you dwell on the negative too much. It actually is the recipe for depression and failure. Given these, wouldn’t you rather work with the optimist who can lighten up the day and who you can count on for support? Of course you would!, unless you’re “The Voice of Doom” who loves to hang around people who do nothing but complain, point blame at co-workers and see the whole world as nearing its end. High Performance Emanates from Optimistic Employees If you look closely at your people in the workplace, you may notice (as studies in actual work setting reflect) that your high performing teams tend to have a 6-to-1 ratio of positive to negative viewpoints. The low performing groups have an under 1-to-1 ratio. This gap generally makes a tremendous difference in your business, organizational set-up and the people who comprise them. Your best performers typically produce the top scores on profits, customer service ratings and other value measurements. Have no doubt about it. Positive emotions play a key role in a company’s daily operations. It broadens. Negative emotions hold you back. What You Can Do So, on your one-on-ones with the negative guys help them out. Persuade them to distract themselves. Help them find healthy distractions like music, exercises, meditation, etc. Short of getting them to take up bullfighting lessons, get them to learn new things.These will help put their focus somewhere else. Get them to reappraise problems and see them in a different perspective. Is it half-full or half-empty? Is it really that complex or do they just see it as such? Teach them to regard a thought as simply that: a thought. No need for them to make any judgments. The only real thing is experience. With the foregoing, you should be able to lend a hand in raising the optimism levels in your company and shoo away all forms of negativism. This is key to productivity that leads to business success.

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Loving what you do… small steps

Compassion, Mindfulness, Productivity, Wellbeing / My Holland

Can you picture Tiger Woods driving a heavy truck hauling cargo from the piers to their destination in the city’s warehouses? How about Meryl Streep? Do you see her counting dollar bills as a bank teller? Neither, I’ll bet, can you visualise Steven Spielberg as a used-car salesman convincing a prospect to buy that Toyota Camry. Along with a lot of other people, these three personalities : an excellent young , meticulous golfer, an accomplished, multi-awarded actress and a highly successful film director with the wild imagination of a 12 year old, all love what they do. They enjoy every aspect of the careers they’ve chosen to pursue and excel in, and presumably wouldn’t trade it for anything else. Fate has been good and generous to them – loving what they do and getting paid handsomely for it. The celebrity status, the fame and glamour that come with it are gravy for a remarkably delicious steak! Wouldn’t it be grand if we can all just do what we enjoy doing and get a hefty paycheck at the end of each month? Is there actual truth to what most commencement speakers tell a graduating class, “Do what you love. The money will follow,” ? Surely, it’s inspirational, but there aren’t any guarantees. You could pretty well go broke doing what you truly care about. The experts say desire is all important when you’re treading into the unknown. When you simply want to follow your passion and do what you enjoy doing, or at least pursue something that’ll lead you to what you love in order to do your best work, a certain degree of uncertainty revolves around it. Success isn’t a sure thing. It’s a make or break thing. Your strong desire though will push you to be more creative, more resourceful and help you go for the whole nine yards. So, what if I have the desire but am sure it won’t lead to anywhere that’ll bring in the money, should I still go for it? In a research study, “The Power of Small Wins” which ran in Harvard Business Review a few years back, it showed that people who progress everyday toward something they love, feel tremendously satisfied and fulfilled. And so to answer the question … Yes, go for it! But let’s qualify that. If chasing this thing you’re crazy about won’t enable you to bring food on the table or, it would keep you away from a college degree, then hold back. Don’t make any big bets on your desire. This does not mean though that you cannot work on your passion a little at a time, or start building blocks. Spending 15 minutes or half an hour a day on it will keep the embers burning. And you really should. Why? Because you could be wrong! Assuming doing what you love won’t bring in the greenbacks could ruin your whole life. So, take those small steps towards what you love doing. Who knows? You just might discover that this passion of yours is a treasure chest waiting to be opened.

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Productivity

The right job for your brain in your 60’s?

Create Positive Emotions At The Workplace. It Raises Productivity

Loving what you do… small steps

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