The news keeps hitting us with more results on studies about links between work and health, both physical and mental.  One of my posts last month, titled “Vacations 2008:  Are We Making Strides in Managing Time and Stress?” referenced a study published in Psychosomatic Medicine and another conducted at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin.  They related to [...]

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Last summer I had the privilege of being interviewed by the NBC Nightly News as their Productivity Expert, dealing with the topic of vacation deprivation in the United States. The question was why we take fewer vacations days on average than other countries. Have we improved since last year? With the economy in flux right [...]

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As we start out in the month of May, it is beneficial to reflect on what May Day means to many countries. On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of workers in the U.S. marched in support of the eight-hour workday. From that date, It actually took 54 years of struggle before we legislated the [...]

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In a post that I wrote last week about crisis management, I presented some techniques for limiting the pressure of deadlines. Responding to this, one reader commented that it wasn’t useful advice for those “on the front lines who don’t have jobs that come with laptops, travel, and corporate jargon.” I recognize that not everyone [...]

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Do you know any time-challenged parents who want to help their children use time productively? There is no question that kids can spend multiple hours per day on the internet, often to the detriment of homework. YouTube is one of the favorite spots. Now there is another site growing, called TeacherTube, based on the YouTube [...]

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Are one of those people who lament the lack of personal time to escape from work issues, yet cannot bring yourself to let go of the Blackberry, laptop, and cellphone even when on a vacation? Are you a family member who wants a vacation without those electronic intrusions into your spouse’s “free” time? There is [...]

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Two pieces of legislation, one from the House and one from the Senate, relating to mental health issues have recently passed. It is the latest step in a seven-year effort to craft a mental-health parity bill requiring insurance plans to match mental-health benefits with those for other medical conditions. The next challenge is to reconcile [...]

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My last post discussed how we stretch ourselves to the limit and then can push ourselves further when driving as we try to reach a destination quickly, often in the interest of better time management. At that same time the news came out about the possibility that two Mesa Air pilots both fell asleep in [...]

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In the previous post, I spoke about the common ways commuters multitask when driving. Another detriment to long-term effective time management is pushing through on the road so you can get somewhere faster, even though you may be struggling to stay focused. The National Sleep Foundation says: 60% of Americans have driven while drowsy 37% [...]

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80% of crashes and 65% of near crashes occur with three seconds of a multitasking episode involving physical movement. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration & Virginia Tech Transportation Institute) Notice that this is not even taking into account mental lapses while we work though an office problem or personal dilemma. We’ve all been guilty of [...]

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