Oct22

Do you need a break?

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Do you need a break?

How long ago have you taken a break? And I don’t mean for lunch or coffee. I mean a mental break where you relax and decompress without your work laptop present or your phone on call. I get it, you’re busy, you’re important, you’re indispensable at work. People rely on you. You can’t stop now. You’re a trooper.

Stress can slowly creep up on you if you’re not careful. I can cause you to age faster, remember less, get sick more often, and be less focused.

“But I feel fine”, you say. “I’m doing great”, you say. Do you recognize the signs of being stressed? And it’s not only a feeling, stress has physical signs as well. Ask yourself these questions to know if you need a break.

Do I have too much on my plate?
Are you one of the people who try to do too much? Do you find yourself saying ‘yes” a lot? Does work, friends, family, social obligations, errands, and classes have your schedule maxed out? Learn to say no and to prioritize. Stop trying to achieve work-life balance. It is a myth. Create a life that is yours to live and don’t get swayed by other people’s standards of what a balanced life looks like. Do 5 minutes of meditation, instead of 30. Buy the cupcakes for that PTA event, instead of baking them yourself. Make one night takeout night, instead of spending all night, every night cooking dinner. Don’t say yes to every co-worker’s request…for help on a project, for drinks after work, for their kid’s birthday party… Get your groceries delivered instead of risking a toddler meltdown at aisle 5. You get the idea…

Do I look ok?
First things first. You’re beautiful. You’re handsome. You’re all that. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I’m not talking about looks for the sake of vanity. I’m asking if you’re showing physical signs of stress. Things like:

● Do you have bags under your eyes?
● Is your skin blotchy or prone to breakouts?
● How’s your hair? All there or losing some (or a lot)?
● Are you prone to colds and other seasonal illnesses?
● Do you have trouble focusing or remembering things?
● Are you losing/gaining weight?

Stress can cause sleep deficiency, weight fluctuations, and a lower immunity. Look long and hard in the mirror.

Do I get to go out?
You know you need a night out, right? By yourself or with friends. You need it if your only form of “socialization” is getting on social media. You need a night out if the only “catch-up” you’re doing with friends is browsing and commenting on their Instagram pictures. You need it if your only friends right now are your cats and dogs. You need a night out if you’re done watching seven seasons of five different series and are thinking of starting 5 more. Make plans, right now!

How do you know when you need a break? Share your stress ‘tells’ with us in the comments. Stay humble, hustle hard.

Oct8

Is there a good side to procrastination?

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Is there a good side to procrastination?

Procrastination is the action of delaying or postponing something. It is a very bad habit. Or so we’ve been told. But we always hear stories about some of history’s most excellent work done by famous procrastinators. Among these legends are Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Atwood, Herman Melville, Frank Lloyd Wright, and one college friend who has claimed to have done his thesis the night before it was due.

Procrastination is when you know you’re supposed to be doing something, but you choose not to do it for the moment until it gets down to the last minute – that last minute is when you’re panicky, anxious, and pressed for time. We all know that procrastinating isn’t good for us. The more we put something off, the more stressed we become in the long run. The task is like a knife hanging over your head until it gets completed. It puts us in an anxious state of mind and is like a running app at the back of our heads. This self-inflicted stress can be easily addressed if we just start on whatever task is looming over our heads, right? So why procrastinate?

We procrastinate because it feels good – in the meantime. Procrastinating decreases our stress levels at the beginning – when deadlines are far off and way into the future. We enjoy instant gratification and indulge in activities that are “of the moment”. We think that we’re always going to have time to do it later. Whatever “it” is. We only think about the task when the deadline is due.

Master procrastinators claim that procrastinating boosts their creativity. A book by University of Pennsylvania professor Adam Grant called Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World compiles research and examples supporting the theory that procrastination boosts creativity. There might be some truth to these claims after all. Professor Grant says “our first ideas are often our most conventional, and if we wait and give our ideas time to stew, we’ll come up with something truly original.”So, if we sit on our ideas for a bit and leave them to buzz around in our heads until the last minute, we MIGHT come up with something more original than our first idea.

Then there’s the matter of speed. Admittedly, procrastinating makes us work faster. Procrastinators are of the mindset that they can finish a task fast enough if they create a sense of urgency for themselves. Kind of like when your room is on fire and you’re able to lift a piano – the procrastinator gets a boost of adrenaline as they realize that the deadline gets closer and closer. Suddenly, they have more energy. Well, they’re also in panic but that’s beside the point. Procrastinating apparently makes you faster and more focused.

Lastly, procrastinating is said to help us make better decisions. How? Author Frank Portnoy, in his book Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, writes that “we generally should delay the moment of decision until the last possible instant.” Doing this, allows us the maximum amount of time to gather information and brainstorm possible outcomes.”

Are you a procrastinator? Do you work better after procrastinating for a while? Share your stories with us. Stay humble and hustle hard.

 

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Oct1

The Perks of Coffee

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The Perks of Coffee

October 1 is special. It falls on a Monday and signals the start of another productive week. It also signals the start of the last quarter of the year and tells us that – fall is here! There’s another thing that makes October 1 extra special. October 1 is International Coffee Day. In honor of the work fuel that keeps countless shift workers, employees, students, and parents alive, here are 5 fun facts about the beverage we all know and love.

Coffee aromatherapy
The moment you hold that warm mug of coffee in your hands and that rich, coffee aroma wafts in the air, you immediately get the benefits of coffee. It’s that powerful! You don’t even have to drink it yet, to get its amazing benefits. Research shows that the smell of coffee and just being exposed to its aroma could reduce stress and instantly perk you up. You get all that sans the caffeine. In fact, this study shows that the smell of coffee “is enough to reverse the effects of sleep deprivation on the brain.” Coffee has 800 compounds, most of them are tied to the scent. And we all know that scent triggers memories, feelings, and connections. We may associate these with wakefulness.

Coffee for improved health
Did you know that coffee can help improve brain function and memory? Coffee has compounds that help prevent beta-amyloid build-up that may contribute to the onset of Alzheimer’s. Not only does it keep us awake, but it also helps our brain function better and helps improve memory. No wonder it is the go-to drink for students who are burning the night oil.

Coffee as a mood booster
This study that ran for a decade, found that “depression risk decreases with increasing caffeinated coffee consumption”. The secret – Dopamine. Dopamine stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers and is a substance associated with happiness and euphoria.

Coffee lifeline
Interestingly, coffee also reduces the risk of suicide. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, reveals that “the risk of suicide among adults drinking 2-4 cups of coffee (the equivalent of about 400 mg of caffeine) a day was 50% less than the risk for adults who drank decaffeinated coffee or one cup or less of caffeinated coffee.” This could again be due to the fact that coffee stimulates the production of Dopamine, as well as Serotonin and Noradrenaline – all of which are feel-good substances. However, you should not self-medicate with coffee, as the same study shows that “drinking more than 4 cups of coffee didn’t drop the suicide risk lower.” So, the age-old saying stands true – take everything in moderation.

Coffee for beauty
Those coffees scrubs aren’t the only thing good for your skin. The antioxidants found in coffee also helps your skin look great, your hair shinier, and the chlorogenic acid compound in coffee stems retinal damage.

Who would’ve thought that this humble beverage could be so much more than a wake me upper? There are so many reasons to love coffee and now you know 5 more.

How about you? How do you like your coffee? We’d love to hear about it. Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard!

 

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Sep24

Easy PC Organizing

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Easy PC Organizing

Ah, Microsoft updates…don’t you just love them? They take up a chunk of time and you don’t always like what they have changed – this time around. But, it is prudent to always update your OS, not to mention your antivirus. Keeping your devices running smoothly takes a lot of work. You’d have to defrag, run updates, keep your files organized, have a competent Antivirus, etc. These things will ensure that your machine will keep working long after you shelled out a crazy amount of money to get that powerful workhorse. If you’re lazy about taking care of your devices, an OS update and anti-virus update is the very least amount of maintenance you can do for keeping your data and your machines safe.

But what about organization? If you’re too lazy to do software maintenance, you’re most likely too lazy (or inexperienced) to keep your files organized.

Tell me…does your downloads folder look like it is in need of its own dewey decimal system? Is it filled with old files that you have downloaded since 2015? Is your desktop stacked with icons and app shortcuts and folders for saving off temporary files? Can you even see your wallpaper? Does your start menu fill up the bottom bar of your screen? Is there even space to add more? Does your photo library have old photos? Bad photos? 10 photos of the same thing? (Yes, I’m talking about those selfies where you have the same shirt on but just different poses)

I’m sure you get my point. Our rooms, our houses, our lives need a little bit of spring cleaning from time to time – so do your work machines – PCs, laptops, and phones.

If you can’t be bothered or don’t know how to – here are three organizers that can automate the job for you:

Adobe Lightroom – this powerful tool can organize your photos for you. If you work in the creative industry or dabble in some photography – you’re going to need a tool to organize your growing photo collection. Here’s how to use it to organize your photos.

DigiKam – digiKam is an advanced open-source digital photo management application that runs on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. The application provides a comprehensive set of tools for importing, managing, editing, and sharing photos and raw files. As you’ve read, it is a free and open source tool – but if you love their work, you can give them a donation to support their projects.

Aerosnap – this nifty tool lets you send your active window to any part your screen You can minimize, open shrink to fill a quarter or half of your display, and bounce off your primary display entirely (if you have a multi-monitor setup). Just hit the Window key + one of the arrow keys to start snapping. This feature has been made available since Win7. Here are instructions on how to turn the feature on and off on Win10.

Do you know of other organizing tools that can automate file organization for you? We’d be happy to learn about them, share them with us in the comments! Stay humble, hustle hard.

 

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Sep17

A Story of Remote Work

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A Story of Remote Work

A survey done by Gallup in 2015, reports that 37% of the US labor force is working remotely…and that number is rising. The option to do remote work is one of the perks that is being made available to employees today. It certainly is one of the perks that millennials look for when job hunting. Offices are now equipped to provide a remote work option to their employees. And there are many tools to enable this: powerful laptops, video conferencing software, collaboration tools, instant messaging, and cloud syncing to enable employees to work from anywhere. These are just a few of the tools. But many myths and misconceptions surround this way of working.

Why aren’t we all still adopting this way of working when technology has enabled an easier way to do remote work. This is probably due to the stigma surrounding remote work – with remote work meaning you can work from anywhere outside the office setting (co-working spaces, coffee shops, work from home, etc.).

One prevailing myth is that productivity decreases when you work from home. This is because of the three temptations: the fridge, the bed, and the TV. But one study from Harvard Business Review notes that a worker’s productivity increases by 13.5% if he/she is permitted to do remote work. This could be due having fewer distractions like office chatter, white noise, pointless meetings, and the infamous breakroom effect where you get pulled away to socialize, have coffee, or eat cake with co-workers.

Some office traditionalists wonder if remote workers are as committed to their work as workers in an office setting. One question is if they even get out of their pajamas for work. The underlying fear is that if they don’t even bother to get dressed, they can’t care that much. But many remote workers do get dressed – they go through the morning routines of taking a shower, preparing breakfast, and seeing the kids off to school before hunkering down to work. The only difference is that they avoid the long commute/drive through horrible traffic. That is a major win for everyone if you ask me. More remote workers mean fewer vehicles on the street.

And then there’s the myth about poor communication – that somehow remote workers are harder to get a hold of than office workers. This belief can easily be addressed by communication software. Meetings via teleconferencing through Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom, or other tech is just as or dare I say, even more, effective than face to face office meetings. It eliminates delays because there’s no need for running around to find a meeting room, invitees can join in at any time, and participants can join in from anywhere in the world and at any time zone.

A remote workers workload doesn’t change, they still have to finish the task that they have to attend to even if they’re outside of the office setting. This means they tend to overcompensate by having more structure in place since they more time and more autonomy over their schedules.

Are you a remote worker? How is it working for you so far? Share your experiences with us in the comments. Stay humble, hustle hard.

 

Written by Jaie O. The Help