5 Strategies to Be More Productive and Focused at Work During the Holidays

Sometimes we find our workdays seem to run into each other and we're constantly working on yesterday's (or last week’s) to-do list. This can be a big struggle over the holidays.

When that happens, it’s time to step back and look at our routines and find ways to ease the stress and regain our focus.

Here are five ways to manage your workday more effectively and productively.

Focus on your health and wellness. You cannot underestimate the importance of daily meditation, exercise, healthy eating, and good and adequate sleep on your ability to be productive and successful. Incorporate these aspects of your life into a routine, as mentioned above, and you'll find yourself enjoying greater success. Start the day with a tall glass of water and some energizing food. You need energy and strength to be at your best and so it's important to hydrate with water when you awake and to eat something high in protein and low in sugar, in order to avoid a crash later in the morning.

Find an app. Many routine tasks we need to do in our lives and at work can be made simpler and more effective by using technology to help us. Often, we think of technology as enslaving us as we spend too much time on social media but look to find apps to make your life easier.

Eat the frog and tackle the most difficult task first. One simple strategy that will pay significant dividends for your productivity is to take on your most pressing task immediately and work to complete it before moving on to something else. Avoid getting bogged down by email early in your day. Save the email for the afternoon and attack your most important task of the day first You'll find that knocking out a difficult or dreaded item on your to-do list first thing motivates you to get more day and take on some of those things you really enjoy with more energy.

Work in short bursts followed by a short break. Focus more efficiently by working hard but briefly on your tasks. If you work for 45 minutes and follow that with a quick walk, you'll return to your work with more focus.

Plan for success. Your day should start the previous night or afternoon by identifying your top three priorities for the next day. You're more productive when you plan your day out, allowing you to more easily accommodate and integrate surprises into your schedule as they come up. Also plan to attack your email and clear out your in-box in the afternoon, once you've completed your most important daily tasks.

By implementing these methods your workday will be more focused and productive.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Ruin Your Chance of Succeeding in Your Interview

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 22 Ways to Ruin Your Chance of Succeeding in Your Interview: "While it may sound like I am exaggerating with these gaffes to humor you and make a point, you would be surprised to know that these are all real-life instances that I’ve encountered as an executive recruiter and hiring manager ."

• 7 Ways to Get from Burnout to Balance: "Balance looks different for everyone. Balance isn’t even the same for one person over time. Right now, balance might mean putting 90 percent of your energy into your career. Ten years from now, that number might be 50 percent. It all depends upon what you value at any given time, what you want to achieve, and when you want to achieve it."

• Working Parents and Calendar Apps: "The best way to get a handle on this is to transform your calendar into your timekeeper. A calendar tool can be helpful, because it doesn’t just help you remember meetings or deadlines; it spotlights how you spend your time."

• Dealing with the Death of a Coworker: "Those emotions can be wildly varied and aren’t often ones someone wants to have in a work environment. Anger, guilt, and tears can bubble to the surface."
• One Simple Trick to Be Happier:"if you want to be happier, think of it like ordering tapas—go for small, satisfying bites rather than hinging everything on one main course."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: Tips to Overcome Age Discrimination

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 6 Tips to Overcome Age Discrimination at Work: "If you’re embarrassed by your age, others will sense that. People are attracted to candidates with confidence."

• 10 Tips to Go For Your Side Hustle Dream: "Success is all about falling down and getting back up. Here’s a writing prompt that can build your confidence: How have you overcome a near miss in your past to produce future gains?"

• Doing Creative Work When You Can't Stop Looking at Your Phone: "They key, I discovered, is to accept and even embrace the desire to check notifications, read various media, or even watch videos — but to teach myself patience in doing so."

• 5 Apps to Help You Master the Art of Small Talk: "So why not embrace small talk and, dare I say, get good at it? Here are some tools to help you become a more engaging conversationalist."
• How to Have a Positive Mindset at Work:"gratitude is linked to happiness and helps people think and feel more positively. When you’re actively going over the aspects of your life or your day that make you feel thankful, it changes your perspective from negative to positive."

5 Ways to Be More Organized Today

One way to reduce stress and anxiety related to your job is to become more organized and structured at work. This will help you be better prepared for the inevitable curve balls that come your way.

Implement these five tips to be more organized at work today.

Create a to-do list. But limit it to only three to five items. Be focused on tackling the most important tasks facing you today and avoid becoming distracted by tasks that seem urgent but ultimately do not contribute to the success of your project, career, or company.

And create your list in an e-version rather than hard copy so that you don’t add to the clutter around your work area. If you don’t want to use a simple Word document you can find many apps available to assist with setting your daily priorities.

Simplify your work space. Speaking of clutter, remove anything you don’t need from your desk or work area. Keep your space free of items (folders, files, papers, desk supplies, etc.) that are unnecessary to the work you’re doing. These items can make it difficult to concentrate or focus on the task at hand, or complicate finding some important notes you jotted down about the project you’re completing.

A clean, simple work space will assist you in directly your energies more fully to the important tasks you’ve identified.

Schedule time to organize. Set aside 15-20 minutes in your day to organize your work area, systematize files and folders, and remove or delete unnecessary files.

Ensuring that you schedule just a few minutes to organize each day will prevent you from becoming overwhelmed in the future.

Plan for tomorrow. Before you leave work take 10-15 minutes to evaluate your day, review your to-do list and set your priorities for the next day. This will enable you to relax and enjoy the evening better, and prevent you from the stress of thinking about what you need to get done.

Automate as much as possible. If there are ways to use apps, programs, or other tools to automate task associated with your work find a way to incorporate them into your work flow. This can free up time for the most important things you do in your work day and can ease stress levels.

Spend a few minutes today researching apps related to your job and you can yourself better equipped and more organized tomorrow.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Tell if a Company's Culture is Right For You

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• How to Tell if a Company's Culture is Right For You: "Congratulations, you got the job! Now you have to decide whether to take it. You’ve done your research and know the ins and outs of the company’s public profile, but how can you assess cultural fit?"

• Can Gratitude Make Millennials More Successful?: "Some of the most productive people seek out opportunities to continually learn, grow, and reflect."

• How to Become a Master Connector in 5 Easy Steps: "What I noticed was, they all shared (and share) a willingness to connect those they know with one another. They want their friends to be friends with their friends, and always consider who should know who."

• 10 Must-Have Apps to Streamline Your Life: "If you tend to surf social media throughout the day and see articles that pique your interest but are fairly long, this is the app for you. Pocket allows you to save articles, videos and websites for later when you’ll have time to digest them"
• Fun Journaling Prompts to Transform Your Boring Gratitude Practice: "It's no secret that practicing gratitude is a key to success. Some of the world's most successful people swear by it."

5 Ways to Excel in Your Career (and Life) in 2017

As you've entered the new year you've likely set some goals for yourself in 2017 and, if you're like many people, a goal or two is related to your job and career. Of course, we can start the new year with good intentions and then quickly find ourselves discouraged and failing to meet our goals.

Consider the following five ways to stay on track with your goals and to excel in your career and job in 2017.

1. Automate when possible. Find ways to increase your productivity and create additional time in your schedule by automating as many tasks as possible. Use an app to manage your budget or to organize your email. There is, really, an app for everything so you have an opportunity to better manage and control some of the many tasks that dominate modern life.

2. Start a side gig. If you've always wanted to work for yourself or start a business now is the time. Set aside a few hours every week to work on this: develop a business plan, create a web site, offer your services as a freelancer, or start making that product you've dreamed of.

3. Go back to school. Start taking a class or two toward earning a new degree or certificate. You can even learn online or informally by reading some books by experts in your field of interest.

4. Be mindful of your health. Unfortunately, many of us don't pay enough attention to our health and don't realize that we can be much more successful in work and life, and increase our productivity if we focus on our health. Take a look at your diet and eat more healthily, be sure to be active and exercise, have a consistent spiritual practice, such as meditation, get enough sleep, and reduce alcohol and caffeine.  

5. Build a support system. None of us can succeed on our own so be sure to develop your support system. Your support group should ideally include co-workers, friends, family, a supervisor at work, and a mentor or two.

5 Steps to Improve Productivity and Build Success in Your Life and Career

Many of us struggle with productivity and focus in your jobs and careers. Here are five steps you can try to increase your productivity and find greater success in your job and in your life.

1. There's an app for that. Many routine tasks we need to do in our lives and at work can be made simpler and more effective by using technology to help us. Often we think of technology as enslaving us as we spend too much time on social media but look to find apps and sites like IFTTT to make your life easier.

2. Develop a routine. The discipline of following a routine, similar to an athlete in training, can help you be much more productive than when you let each day rule you with the tyranny of the immediate.

3. Focus on your health and wellness. You cannot underestimate the importance of daily meditation, exercise, healthy eating, and good and adequate sleep on your ability to be productive and successful. Incorporate these aspects of your life into a routine, as mentioned above, and you'll find yourself enjoying greater success.

4. Plan for success. Take time each day to plan out the key tasks and responsibilities you have for the following day. You're more productive when you plan your day out, allowing you to more easily accommodate and integrate surprises into your schedule as they come up.

5. Tackle the most difficult task first. One simple strategy that will pay significant dividends for your productivity is to take on your most pressing task immediately and work to complete it before moving on to something else. You'll find that knocking out a difficult or dreaded item on your to-do list first thing motivates you to get more day and take on some of those things you really enjoy with more energy.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 10 Tips to Do More and Be More

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 10 Tips to Push Yourself to Do More and Be More: "Start saying your goals out loud. This way, you'll be more likely to manifest your dreams. Begin this habit today."
• 5 Ways to Be a Great Mentor: "That unwavering commitment to excellence provided a clear roadmap for the kind of teacher and manager I wanted to be."
• How to Showcase Your Personal Brand in an Interview: "A personal brand is your distinct talents and what you represent. As it turns out, a strong, appealing personal brand can help job seekers in the interview process."
• The 25 Best Free iPhone Apps for Business: "Incredibly useful apps that can help you run your business a whole lot smarter than ever before."
• 10 Behaviors of Genuinely Successful People: "Their careers, their accomplishments, the success of their companies speak for themselves. You’ll never hear them breath a word about how much money they have or make. They tend to be fairly modest."

7 Diverse Apps to Help You in Your Job Search

Welcome to the age of the app. Since 2009, the software tailored for smartphone and tablet use has come at us full-force, changing entertainment, productivity, and other areas of our lifestyle. Tech-savvy job seekers have utilized apps as another method to market themselves, browse job listings, or prepare for interviews. Get acquainted with the apps below to add more weaponry to your job-search arsenal.

*Note: Most of the apps below are available through the Apple App Store or the Android Market. Prices may vary.

LinkedIn: One of the more popular apps around, the LinkedIn app allows you to update your LinkedIn profile, search others' profiles, and search for positions while on the go.

Twitter: Job-seekers are turning to Twitter to find employment by following the Twitter feeds of the companies they are most interested in (many of these companies have job-specific accounts in addition to their normal corporate ones) and to stay in touch with recruiters and network with others.

Indeed.com: For those who are simply looking for jobs, Indeed.com's search aggregation technology puts jobs from many sources (newspapers, specialized-job search sites, large career-based websites like Monster, etc) in one convenient location. Its app maintains its reputation for simple design and depth of postings.

Craigster: Many career fields (such as writing and graphic design) heavily rely on Craigslist to post positions, and Craigster creates a user-friendly interface to browse positions.

Pocket Resume: A creative app that allows you to design, display, and send your resume to others.

Great Career: This career-maintenance app, created by Stephen Covey of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People fame, helps job seekers get connected with their values, contributions, and relationships to not job find a job but to create a career that is rewarding and fulfilling for them.

Evernote: While not technically a job-search app, Evernote is an award-winning app that helps you stay organized by allowing you to create text, audio, and photo notes while providing many options for note organization and syncing.

Stay on the cutting edge of your job search apps that will make you a more savvy job searcher.