Napping: It Is Alright to Do at Work

Sleeping on the job is not always seen as a good thing. In fact, your boss with probably think that you are lazy and not really doing your job. In recent years, many progressive companies have begun to encourage employees to take mid-day naps to recharge. Many of these companies even have specialized napping rooms that are comfortable and away from the noise of VoIP services and other distractions. Naps can help you refocus and re-energize for the rest of the day. It can also be a huge help to those that are trying to balance work and family life where neither place can be conducive to sleep. Although napping is becoming a more popular employee perk in some industries especially software development, there’s still a great deal of resistance in the corporate world towards sleeping on the job,

Yelling at Your Phone

There are days when those internet phone service is not cooperating and those mobile applications are not doing what they should be doing. Those days you just want to yell at your phone. There could be tech soon that lets you charge the phone by yelling at it. At least there is some good that is coming out of the frustration that you are experiencing. That's the idea behind a recent collaboration between scientists at Queen Mary University of London and Nokia. The team is working to develop a prototype charger that could replenish the battery of a mobile phone using human voices, music or even background noise. There is sound and energy all around us and we need to be able to use the technology to harness its power. Of course this idea is not entirely new because there was a prototype created in 2011. This time it seems like it might make it to the market.

Distractions Left and Right

We live in an information overloaded world where we are constantly bombarded with information and some sort of stimuli, much of it coming from different mobile applications. This can cause more problems than just an emerging case of ADD, it can really hurt businesses and their productivity. One of the tools that employers can use is incorporating workplace flexibility. It can actually reduce employee absences by 20% and improve morale and productivity. The number-one time-wasting activity is surfing the Internet for personal reasons, according to a recent poll from Survey.com. The poll also found that one-third of workers say they are unproductive because they don’t have enough to do. Managers should communicate regularly with their employees about priorities and deadlines. Employees should also be encouraged to ask questions and periodically check in to make sure that they are meeting their manager’s expectations.

Research in the Cloud

Research and software development have finally found each other. It has been a relationship in the making for a long time so it is a surprise that it took so long. Patterns from a lot of data are crucial to certain research and experiments. When there is a computer doing all the large number crunching, the scientists can get more done and see a much bigger picture of what it going on than if they were the ones doing all of the calculations. The costs can also decrease dramatically when a lot of the data is stored in cloud services. Many of the tedious procedures are also becoming automated which to some degree can give more precise and accurate results. Researchers can then remotely select experiments and get sent the results. It take over $1 million dollar to set up a functioning lab so the financial burden constrains experiments and makes it hard for garage-sized startups to get off the ground. Throw in some automated software programs and three people have the potential to do the work of thirty.

Turn Your Phone Off

When is the last time you powered down. All the way down. Not asleep. Not in airplane mode but ON/OFF. Try it with me now. Take your phone out, if you're not already playing with it, and turn it off. Fair warning, you will experience a short stint of anxiety and emptiness and confusion which is all very common. These mobile withdrawals are unpleasant (and slightly pathetic) but the sobering and liberating experience is worth more than your hopeless attempt to beat the 357th level of Candy Crush. I promise. Now lets have a chat. First off, when was the last time you had a conversation with a friend that was there in person without taking your phone out or even thinking about your emails and upcoming video conferences. I thought so. So here are some tips: first of all keep the phone in your pocket and I can assure you that it will take some practice. Secondly, you do not need all those apps, trust me. So just delete them. Also buy yourself a watch and actually use it. Set boundaries such as no phones in the bedroom or bathroom. I hope those are fairly self explanatory. We have more computing power in our pocket than that necessary to put the first man on the moon. Seriously. Think about that for a second.

Tech Products You Should Have

Anyone who owns a smartphone knows it can run through a battery in less than a day with all the mobile applications and communication software.. So I carry a backup battery charger everywhere. The Digital Treasures ChargeIt Universal 3600mAh Power Bank is a great choice to consider and only $30 on Amazon. Cloud based storage is also a must to have in the digital age so that you will not lose any of those important files. And why risk it when cloud-based storage options are so widely available and cheap? One of the best bargains is Google Drive, which is free for the first 15 GB of storage and $1.99 per month ($23.88 per year) for up to 100GB. (You can also get 1TB for $9.99 per month or $119.88 per year.) You can use it to sync files between all of your devices and access your files from anywhere. Electric toothbrushes work better than manual ones. Not only does brushing with an electric toothbrush leave your teeth feeling cleaner, according to a report by The Cochrane Collaboration Oral Health Group, it also reduces plaque and the risk of contracting gingivitis, an early stage periodontal disease that affects 50 percent of adults.

Be More Productive

In this world, we need to figure out a way to work smarter and not harder. It is important to get the most out of your time so that there is a lot more time for the things you love. One of the best tips is to find the three most important things that need to get done, such as finishing that web development project, and do those first thing in the morning because otherwise you will get too busy and run out of time. As far as to-do lists go, it might help to write out everything that needs to be done the night before so that you can just jump right in in the morning. My most recent and favorite change to my to-do list has been separating my "today" list from a master list of everything I need to get done. I often feel anxious about all the things I know I need to do at some point -- I need to write them down somewhere so I don't forget them, otherwise I worry about when they'll get done. But I don't want these cluttering up my list for today. That will just make today seem busier than it is. The whole idea of working smarter, rather than harder, comes from the problem many of us have of putting in more and more hours, only to find we don't get more done. We want to find methods of being more productive in less time. One way to go about this is to adjust the way we measure productivity.