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Professional Development
  • Posted by Christa Schelter at
    12:00AM 07/28/2012 • 0 Comments

    Perception vs. Performance: The Sleep Study

    Do you get the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep a night? Some of us shrug off the missed hours as something that won't hurt productivity.  If there's a sense of fatigue we can work harder and longer with an energy drink or coffee shot.

    But a recent study out of The Journal of Vision may change your perception of how much sleep you need. A team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have discovered that regardless of how energized you feel, that lack of sleep can influence the way you perform certain tasks. “Our team decided to look at how sleep might affect complex visual search tasks, because they are common in safety-sensitive activities, such as air-traffic control, baggage screening, and monitoring power plant operations,” explained Jeanne F. Duffy, PhD, MBA, senior author on this study and associate neuroscientist at BWH. “These types of jobs involve processes that require repeated, quick memory encoding and retrieval of visual information, in combination with decision making about the information.” 

    Researchers collected and analyzed data from visual search tasks from 12 participants over a period of one month. In the first week, all participants were scheduled to sleep 10-12 hours per night to make sure they were well-rested. For the following three weeks, the participants were scheduled to sleep the equivalent of 5.6 hours per night, and also had their sleep times scheduled on a 28-hour cycle, mirroring chronic jet lag. The research team gave the participants computer tests that involved visual search tasks and recorded how quickly the participants could find important information, and also how accurate they were in identifying it. The researchers report that the longer the participants were awake, the more slowly they identified the important information in the test. Additionally, during the biological night time, 12 a.m. -6 a.m., participants (who were unaware of the time throughout the study) also performed the tasks more slowly than they did during the daytime. 

    “This research provides valuable information for workers, and their employers, who perform these types of visual search tasks during the night shift, because they will do it much more slowly than when they are working during the day,” said Duffy. “The longer someone is awake, the more the ability to perform a task, in this case a visual search, is hindered, and this impact of being awake is even stronger at night.”


    (Story materials via Brigham and Women's Hospital.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 09/19/2011 • 2 Comments

    Boost Work Productivity by Exercising

    The fall season brings expanded waistlines. Whether it's Halloween candy, Thanksgiving turkey or holiday banquets, the opportunity to eat more food is higher than any other time of the year. That's why it's crucial for your health and wardrobe to exercise as much as possible. 

    There's another reason, though, to regularly exercise: it can increase your work productivity. 

    A study—published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine—by researchers at Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet shows that it is possible to use work time for exercise or other health-promoting measures and still attain the same or higher production levels. The same production levels with fewer work hours means greater productivity, while at the same time individuals benefit from better health as a result of the physical activity.

    “This increased productivity comes, on the one hand, from people getting more done during the hours they are at work, perhaps because of increased stamina and, on the other hand, from less absenteeism owing to sickness,” said Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz and Henna Hasson, the researchers behind the study.

    In the study, two workplaces in dental care were asked to devote 2.5 hours per week to physical activity, distributed across two sessions. Another group had the same decrease in work hours but without obligatory exercise, and a third group maintained their usual work hours, 40 hours a week.

    The results showed that all three groups were able to maintain or even increase their production level, in this case the number of patients treated, during the study period compared with the corresponding time the previous year. Those who exercised also reported improvements in self-assessed productivity—they perceived that they got more done at work, had a greater work capacity and were sick less often.

    How much exercise do you get during your work day? 

    (Story materials provided by Stockholm University.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 05/19/2011 • 0 Comments

    Workplace Interruption

    More likely than not, you'll be interrupted before you finish reading this blog entry. 

    According to a recent survey of more than 500 IT workers by software company harmon.ie and market research firm uSamp (United Sample), 45 percent of employees work only 15 minutes or less without getting interrupted. And 53 percent waste at least one hour a day due to all types of distractions. 

    Other survey findings include

    • The majority (57 percent) of work interruptions now involve either using collaboration and social tools such as email, social networks, text messaging and IM, or switching windows among disparate standalone tools and applications. 
    • The lost hour per day translates into US$10,375 of wasted productivity per person per year, assuming an average salary of $30/hour. For businesses with 1,000 employees, the cost of employee interruptions exceeds $10 million per year. 
    • Web-based activity is pervasive in the workplace. For example, two out of three people will tune out of face-to-face meetings to communicate digitally with someone else. 


  • Posted by Michael Pinchera at
    12:00AM 02/25/2011 • 2 Comments

    Case for Ignoring E-mails

    Is the demand of e-mail getting uncomfortable? Would you ever consider willfully ignoring some e-mail because of this growing demand? How about setting an auto-reply such as the following?

    Due to the volume of email I receive, I no longer personally review every message. If you are interested in learning more about why I have decided to set limits on my email time, you can read this [link to this blog post or one you draft yourself]. If you do not receive a further reply within 72 hours, please assume that I have had to focus on other professional or personal priorities at this time. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

    That's just what Alexandra Samuel has done (see her HBR post about the rationale).

    A stunning practice for sure...take a look at the comments!

    One takes on vacation out-of-office auto-replies: "Sorry, but I'm on vacation until xx/xx/xxxx. When I get back, I'll delete all the flood of email that arrived while I was gone, so if this note is important, please send it to me again after that date. Thanks..."

    To this, Samuel responded that the "I'm out of the office but will read your e-mail when I return" auto-reply is actually "the undoing of the psychological benefits of a vacation!"

    Of course, there's also the perception, if you don't respond to an e-mail, that the communication (or dare say, even the relationship) is not of interest or of little value to you. While that may be the case sometimes, Samuel makes note that with e-mail, senders are pushing demands of communication onto the recipient. Send an e-mail and you're demanding the receiver spend some of his or her valuable time dealing with it. The problem is, e-mails are so easy to send that people are increasingly throwing tasks and to-dos around to others with little thought of the consequences upon the communications overload of the recipient.

    Certainly few PlusPoint readers will engage in such an extreme e-mail ignoring campaign (I'm guessing), but what do you think about the practice in general? Do you think it would help you?



  • Posted by Blair Potter at
    12:00AM 01/05/2011 • 0 Comments

    Sleep Impact

    Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post, says getting more sleep will make you more productive. And she has the scars to prove it. Here she is speaking at a TEDWomen event. (We're on a TED kick today.)



  • Posted by Veleisa Patton at
    12:00AM 11/12/2010 • 0 Comments

    The Layers of Knowledge

    Have you ever worked with a VP of Knowledge or a Knowledge Manager? Well I do, and these are some of the most curious and thoughtful people I’ve worked with. No matter the industry, they are the ones constantly uncovering the next level of information, to get the juicy nugget at the center. It reminds me of a concept I learned in school, “Peeling back the layers of onion,” which is related to relationships. The more you peel back, the more “intense” it gets, so to speak.

    For the Knowledge team at MPI, they are nearly obsessed with how planners and suppliers learn, via the delivery methods provided to them. This includes the website. Since the redesign, the department has reviewed and categorized thousands of pieces of content, including video, podcasts, multimedia presentations and webinars.

    As part of the “onion” of the relationship with members, and because they’re never satisfied with status quo, the next question from the team is “Do you like websites?”

    More specifically, the MPI site. And even more specifically:

    • What types of tools and topics of content are making a difference in your career?
    • Is the delivery of this content accomplishing what you need in the most convenient manner?

    Now, recognizing that this is research-loving group, there is a survey to find out the answers to those questions and others. You can rest easy, the survey was kept to a brief 21 questions. Your responses ensure that the efforts of Knowledge, in their quest to find more industry content for you, meet your career and information needs, which ends up improving your overall member experience.

    For those who are social media samurai, please share the link via LinkedIn, twitter and Facebook. The more, the merrier, the more layers peeled when it comes to surveys. 

    Please let us know what you think about the website redesign.




  • Posted by Michael Pinchera at
    12:00AM 09/01/2010 • 0 Comments

    U.S. Needs a Vacation

    Yes, the endless debate: Americans whine about the vacation time afforded or mandated by their European peers. But an increasingly stressed field of workers with more employers taking advantage of workers' misfortunes, in concert with the evermore denied need for more paid time off work, is creating a bad situation that will only get worse, according to the BBC's Michael Goldfarb.

    Goldfarb thinks Americans' acceptance of longer work hours with less vacation time is, sadly, based on raw fear:

    "[Americans] have been increasingly afraid to ask for it directly and way too afraid to come together and demand it as a group. It is easy enough to get fired in the U.S., and when people have a job they tend not to want to make waves."

    In conclusion, Goldfarb posits that near-future research is likely to find Americans with less paid holiday than ever.


  • Posted by Michael Pinchera at
    12:00AM 08/18/2010 • 1 Comments

    Hunting Innovation

    I've always found "innovation" to be an incredibly powerful word--it's not about doing something well, it's about doing something well in a groundbreaking way. Guerrilla marketing, for instance, was truly innovative in the mid-1980s and then again in the late 1990s when creative minds combined it with new communication technologies afforded by the Internet. The earlier guerrilla marketing tactics are now mainstream, but the field, in continual flux, will see more waves of innovation whenever DIY minds need it.

    However, organizations are now increasingly aware of the value of innovation (it's no longer just a domain of the DIYers) and are recognizing ways in which to foster this creativity...always in search of greater success.

    Chasing this same always-on-the-horizon goal, I eagerly clicked on a link for a Harvard Business Review blog, "Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation." Succinct and eye-opening: Fewer than 50% of CEOs surveyed worldwide believe their organizations are equipped to deal effectively with the rising complexity of the business world.

    The big question though: "Are CEOs and senior leaders really willing to make the transformational moves necessary to foster cultures of real creativity and innovation?"

    Here are a couple of the "six secrets" that drew my interest and impact meeting professionals. While reading, consider what would happen if your organizations or clients implemented these ideas.

    "PROVIDE THE TIME. Creative thinking requires relatively open-ended, uninterrupted time, free of pressure for immediate answers and instant solutions. Tims is a scarce, overburdened commodity in organizations that live by the ethic of 'more, bigger, faster.' Ironically, the best way to insure that innovation gets attention is to schedule sacrosanct time for it, on a regular basis."

    "VALUE RENEWAL. Human beings are not meant to operate continuously, the way computers do... The third stage of the creative process, incubation, occurs when we step away from a problem we're trying to solve and let our unconscious work on it..." The author says going for a walk, listening to music and meditating are effective in "inducing the shift in consciousness in which creative breakthroughs spontaneously arise."

    The blog closes with: "These activities are only possible in a workplace that doesn't overvalue face time and undervalue the power of renewal."

    So this latest hunt for access to the realms of innovation leads back to the value of renewal...

    Sometimes we need to pause and shift our emphasis from the hunt back to the building blocks of creativity and innovation. After all, the hunter is more likely to be successful when empowered with a clear mind and a sharp spear.




  • Posted by David Basler at
    12:00AM 07/15/2010 • 1 Comments

    Heat Your Office & Save Money!

    It's cold in Ithaca, NY most of the year, but according to a recent Cornell University study cold doesn't necessarily translate to keeping people awake and alert as it has been rumored to do. The study on the opposite hand finds that the warmer the office employees can actually be more productive. The study was based largely on observing typing rates while adjusting the overall temperature in the office setting form 68 to 77 degrees (20-25 C).

    "At 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with a 10 percent error rate, but at 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time with a 25 percent error rate," Hedge says. "Temperature is certainly a key variable that can impact performance."

    The most amazing takeaways from this study . . . workers battling a dropping thermostat will not only make more errors on the job but could also cost their employers up to 10 percent more in labor costs annually.