Building passion is also a great way to manage and reduce workplace stress. Stress is a serious drain on productivity and had a direct effect on worker health and absenteeism. Stress-related illnesses cost businesses an estimated $200 billion to $300 billion a year in lost productivity, as reported in Stress in the Workplace. A study by Health Advocate found that 1 million workers miss work each day due to stress. This absenteeism costs employers an estimated $600 per worker each year. Twelve percent of employees have called in sick because of job stress. This is not surprising because most people respond to increased stress with added caffeine and alcohol consumption, smoking, and prescription medications.

How Gritty Are You?

I recently talked to a staffing agency about the importance of being gritty.

Grit is about tenacity, resilience, and a willingness to keep pushing through despite obstacles and our own natural inclination to take the easy way out.

Staffing recruiters, like most salespeople (and who isn't in sales?) need to be gritty in the face of rejection, radio silence, ghosting, and, even worse, angry clients.

It's what allows them to meet more people, make more referrals, and close more deals.

And live up to their mission of improving the lives of employers and employees by making the connections that grow businesses and provide opportunities (not their exact mission, but my take)

How to build workplace passion

Productivity begins with engagement and passion. Disengaged, dispassionate workplaces are much less productive.

It is well-documented that many folks are not passionate about their work. According to Deloitte research, “Up to 87.7 percent of America’s workforce is not able to contribute to their full potential because they don’t have passion for their work.”

11 Traits of Successful People

Are you curious to know what separates the truly successful from everyone else? Do you want to know what the highest performers do that distinguish them from the pack?

Well, between my experience with my own high-achieving clients and my research, here are some qualities that I came up with.

Drive and passion – Successful people are driven and passionate about what they do. They work harder than most and make sure things get done. They take pride in seeing things getting completed and take charge when necessary. Their passion is contagious and rubs off on others around them, who start to believe what they believe.

7 Tips to Use Your Commute Wisely

Despite the recent uptick in people working remotely, most people still commute back and forth to an office. And that takes quite a bit of time out of each day. In America, workers spend about an hour a day commuting to and from work. When you factor that the average number of workdays per year exceeds 250, that calculates to the equivalent of more than thirty-one workdays, or six workweeks, spent in transit. The number becomes even more staggering for those who commute for long distances or routinely deal with heavy traffic.

How You Start Your Day is Everything

We may not realize it, but our brains burn through much energy and attention trying to hold on to ideas, tasks, etc. that it doesn’t want to forget. That’s why every task, commitment, and event should be written down or saved.

Work Batching Tips

In my last post, I introduced work batching as a strategy to help busy professionals save time by batching together similar activities into a single workflow. Time batching is effective because it builds structure and boundaries around blocks of time so that you can dive deep into specific tasks without the interruptions that commonly break up your workflow.

Batching works for both shallow and deep tasks. Shallow tasks, such as replying to email, data entry, and completing forms, require lower levels of productive energy. Deep tasks, like writing a proposal and preparing a presentation, require high levels of productive energy and high focus for longer periods of time.

Batching Work Saves Time

Time batching is a time management technique in which you group similar tasks together for focused work. During the allocated time, you work to complete all the tasks. If you want to get more done, with less distraction, consider batching your work.

How is this helpful?

For starters, by batching work you can do a lot of tasks that require similar processes all in one sequence. Things like responding to emails, completing forms, and doing research. The advantage is that you can get “in the zone,” build momentum, and knock off a bunch of things in short order.

If, on the other hand, you do a little of this and some of that, there is no flow, and each activity tends to take more time. This is, in part, because your brain needs to constantly reorient and focus on something new.

Feedback from my "Break often but briefly" post

“Thank you for sharing these helpful tips about taking breaks. Somehow, I was already taking a walk, reading and eating during my breaks. I intend to continue doing them. However, I may explore listening music which I rarely do. Sometimes, one feels a sense of guilt when one takes a break. It is reassuring to know that it is beneficial.”

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