Posts tagged Office

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The office environment has come a long way since the 1950s. This infographic shows the dramatic transformation of fashion, gender roles — even our desks — over the years.

(Via Visual.ly)

fastcompany:

Busy Is The New Lazy

If you’re telling everybody that you’re busy all the time, it’s time to rethink your ideas about productivity.

So why do we keep doing all this humblebragging about how busy we are? It’s a question Choi investigates thoughtfully: She observes that people who are “legitimately occupied” with work or family rarely play the “too busy” card (clearly, we don’t know the same people)—or, may even go out of their way to make a connectionbecause they’ve been so swamped.

To Choi, when we say “busy,” we’re really trying to say something else—although what exactly that might be depends on the harried soul that’s complaining.

She supplies some translations:

I’m busy = I’m important.
Being busy gives people a sense they’re needed and significant, Choi says. It’s also a sign saying that you’re about to be on-ramped into somebody’s misguided ego trip.

I’m busy = I’m giving you an excuse.
Saying that you’re busy is a handy way to outsource your responsibility to your irresponsibility. Since you’re always distracted, you don’t have to do anything for anybody.

I’m busy = I’m afraid.
Look above at the “I’m important” part. Whether the speaker knows it or not, complaining of busyness is a subtle cry for help, one that reassures us that yes, we are in demand.

In this way, busyness functions as a kind of laziness. When we fill our schedules with appointments and hands with phones, we divest ourselves of downtime. When we’re endlessly doing, it’s hard to be mindful of what we’re doing.

How to eradicate busyness

Of course, it’s a interdependent issue. It’s hard to have downtime if your bosses subscribe to what Anne Marie Slaughter calls our time macho culture, “a relentless competition to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra hours that the international date line affords you.”

But don’t let that excuse suffice. You can convince your bosses—if you know how to approach the conversation.

Busyness is Not a Virtue

Read the full story here.

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This infographic reveals the importance of office collaboration and serves as a how-to guide for getting the most out of common personality types in the office.

newyorker:

Cartoon by Peter C. Vey. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/WUPvLj

Office hierarchy per usual.

(via What Makes Workers Happy? Optimizing Your Office Space - Tom Pappas Commercial Real Estate, Greenwood Village, CO)

How to Stay Motivated When You Work From Home

While working from home may no longer have the stigma it used to back in the 1980s or ‘90s, it brings with it its own set of challenges, as any home-based small business owner knows. Read More

(via How to Stay Motivated When You Work From Home - Image source)

Santa or Scrooge: The Pulse of Small Businesses This Holiday Season

Whether a small business is generous or a little penny pinching during the holidays usually depends a lot on how well the company did for the year. If you had a great year, it’s easy to get in the holiday spirit and give clients and employees gifts. But if you didn’t fare as well as you projected for the year, it might be more difficult to appear generous when everyone else is in the giving mood. Read More

(via Santa or Scrooge: The Pulse of Small Businesses This Holiday Season | Small Business Trends)

These 20 offices are some of the world’s best-designed and most awe-inspiring. Ping-pong tables and bright plastic furnishings are so 2011. This year, the companies with impressive digs have taken a more nuanced approach to giving their employees a covetable workplace.

Read More

Photo by Inc.com

(via World’s Coolest Offices | 2012 | Inc.com)