Tag Archives: Work

Work happiness

10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Becoming a Parent

10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Becoming a Parent

Raising a child is full of surprises. No matter how many books, parenting forums, and Dr. Sears articles you read, nothing can completely prepare you for becoming a parent. If I could go back to before my daughter was born and tell myself what I didn’t know I would experience, this is what I would say.
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How to Communicate Dissent at Work

How to Communicate Dissent at Work

Dissent plays an important role in the workplace. For any organization to thrive, employees need to be able to propose solutions to problems, raise questions about unethical practices and ask how they can work more efficiently and effectively. In places where dissenting opinions are encouraged, employees report greater job satisfaction, and leaders are able to consider a wider range of proposals and options before making decisions.

There’s only one problem with dissent: a lot of people don’t want to hear it. Accordingly, many employees worry that expressing dissent will cause others to see them negatively, or that it simply won’t make a difference. I’ve surveyed and interviewed hundreds of employees and supervisors to better understand how employees can more effectively express their ideas at work. There are no magic words that will make people listen to you, but I’ve found several things that seem to be consistently associated with positive experiences.
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Advice I Wish Someone Had Given Me for My First Job

Advice I Wish Someone Had Given Me for My First Job

Whether you’re straight out of college or starting a new career path, that first job can be scary. You might think you know the ropes, but it’s a lot more than just getting your work done. Here are a few tips I wish someone gave me before I took my first job.

Everyone’s workplace is a little different, but when it boils down to it, we all face the same set of challenges at a new job. You’ll probably need to start at the bottom of the totem pole even if you’re an experienced worker, and integrating yourself into the company culture is a lot harder than you think. Keeping your expectations in check is a good place to start.
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How temperature and lighting impacts our productivity

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Recently I sat down with Brendan Baker, one of the smartest people I’ve come across here in Silicon Valley. Clearly his brainpower exceeds mine by far and Brendan started explaining about a few things that I somehow always deemed true, but could never quite back up with great arguments or put my finger on:

“Your environment has a huge impact on how productive you are. That means the temperature in your room, the colour of your walls and the noise happening around you. There are lots of great academic papers on this, I’ll send them to you.”

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