Teaching Business Communication and Workplace Issues

Putting it off until "later" is not something uncommon we say to ourselves, especially when Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are a click away. But when it comes to work, procrastination definitely has some expensive costs.

"The U.S. gross national product would probably rise by $50 billion if the icon and sound that notify people of new email disappeared," Piers Steel, an associate professor at the University of Calgary told the Associated Press. . .

Narcissists are hard to deal with. They're vain, extremely selfish, and typically don't have the mental capacity to think beyond their own needs.

But they can also be great leaders. . .

What makes you, you? Is it how you think of yourself, how others think of you, or something else entirely?

At TEDxYouth@Manchester, Julian Baggini draws from philosophy and neuroscience to give a surprising answer.

Personal development gurus tell some impressive lies in order to sell their products. That’s right. Lies.

These convenient little falsehoods are effective motivators because they play on primal human needs and emotions.

Shouldn’t people who promote personal growth for a living be uncommonly straightforward in their marketing? Sadly, this is far from true, even among the popular names in the field.

The good news is that once you understand these, you are free to grow and develop in realistic ways. . .

Every decision we make is influenced by subconscious behavioral biases.They cause us to make snap judgments based on bad information, to be unfair, and to waste time.

This is clearly problematic for managers, students, professors, and people in general.

Once we become aware of these biases, we can disrupt our thinking and come to terms with reality.

We've collected a long list of cognitive biases . . .

You're only productive at work three daysout of the week. How can you improve that?

The secret to getting more done is to make things automatic. Control over your schedule stops you from getting tired at work. Progress motivates us more than anything else. Your mind moves you, but how you move also affects your mind. Superstition can improve performance and when people wish you luck you do better. . .

The key to figuring out what isn't working in your life is understanding some basic psychological facts about yourself — like why we can't resist paying attention to danger, or that people see what they want to see. . .

Why is it that between 25 and 50 per cent of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?

It's not just the number of hours we're working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time. . .

A common goal is to become more organized or productive, and a common complaint is that it is more of a challenge than first anticipated.

We all have our personal challenges; there are things we know we should do but simply don’t. Tasks that we ought to do but simply don’t want to. Habits that we want to implement but struggle to apply. Techniques we know we will benefit from, but somehow there never seems to be the time, the discipline or the commitment to follow through. . .