THE UN-COMFORT ZONE with Robert Wilson “Writing is not a job; it’s a hobby!” thundered my father when I told him my plans for college. “You need to get a profession: medicine, law, engineering or accounting.” I cheerlessly acquiesced and enrolled in a Pre-Med program, but at the end of my first year, after struggling through Chemistry, I changed my major to Philosophy. When I told Dad, he grunted, “That … Continue reading
Via The New York Times By DAVID POGUE In the last nine years, I’ve reviewed nearly 1,000 products for The New York Times. Can you guess what every single one of them has had in common? All of them were intended for use while you’re awake. Today, the exception. Studies show that about half of all Americans don’t get the recommended amount of sleep. ( For adults it’s seven to … Continue reading
Via Reuters Blogs – USA Posted by: Yinka Adegoke We think you saw this one coming: Employers are losing a whopping 1.5 workers per 100 in employee productivity to the social networking phenomenon that is Facebook. This number was uncovered by the clever folk at Nucleus Research, who surveyed 237 randomly selected office workers. They discovered that some of you spend more time than you probably should poking, adding and … Continue reading
Via Poker News By Dr. Tim Lavalli The Hawthorne Effect describes an actual mistake discovered by some researchers. The original study was attempting to discover the relationship between worker productivity and working environment. The first variable introduced was lighting. The question was: would better lighting mean higher worker output, and then would poorer levels of lighting reduce worker output? At first the data was all over the board, there was … Continue reading
Since Efficient Traveling is Productivity and vice versa, I thought this article was great for our APS Blog. Happy Traveling!! Bob Via New York Times By David Pogue I’m always surprised at how many people seem to like reading about what hardware and software I use. Last week’s “Pogue’s Productivity Secrets” e-column, for example, got blogged and passed around far more than I would have expected. On a plane yesterday, … Continue reading
via AFP DETROIT, Michigan (AFP) — A revived manufacturing sector is critical to leading a recovery of the slumping US economy, underscoring the need for new policies, business leaders told a national economic summit. The second day Tuesday of the Detroit, Michigan summit seeking an economic strategy offered more comments on the critical importance of the industrial sector in view of the global crisis. “One of the lessons we have … Continue reading
via National Post By Jacqueline Thorpe We have commented that the one thing the U.S. economy has going for it that many others don’t is its ability to churn out strong productivity growth — even in the face of a brutal recession. In the first quarter, the United States achieved productivity growth, or output per hour per worker, of an annualized 1.6%, as companies slashed costs and jobs in reaction … Continue reading
Via Bloomberg By Shobhana Chandra & Bob Willis Fewer American workers filed claims for jobless benefits last week, signaling that the worst phase of the employment slump has passed. Initial applications for unemployment insurance fell by 4,000 to 621,000 in the week ended May 30, in line with forecasts, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Another Labor report showed worker productivity rose more in the first quarter … Continue reading
Via CANADA.COM by Amy Husser, Canwest News Service Corporate Canada can improve productivity and decrease turnover if more active steps are taken to engage gay workers, results of a study suggest. According to research released Wednesday by Catalyst — a non-profit organization that promotes diversity in the workplace — “invisible” lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workers are likely to be less engaged than their openly gay counterparts because of … Continue reading
Via FORBES WASHINGTON — Worker productivity, the key ingredient to rising living standards, likely grew at a faster pace in the first quarter than the government previously estimated, while labor costs increased less. Productivity, the amount of output per hour of work, is expected to increase at an annual rate of 1.2 percent in the January-March period, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters. That’s up from the government’s estimate … Continue reading