How to Fix the Sunday Blues. Even after the best of weekends (or especially after the best of weekends), there’s a cloud that descends.
Chances are, you’ve felt it. In a 2013 poll from the career site Monster.com, 81 percent of American respondents said they get Sunday-night blues—and 59 percent said they experience them “really bad.” As laid-back “weekend you” begins to morph into uptight “weekday you,” anxiety over anticipating an overflowing in-box, the drudgery of packing school lunches, and the tyranny of a mile-long to-do list sets in. “Sunday nights aren’t considered the end of a great weekend but the beginning of something neither the child nor the adult is looking forward to,” says Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play, in Carmel Valley, California. But what is the cause of this dread? Do Sunday on Saturday Typically we schedule fun stuff on Saturday, obligations on Sunday. Homework is yet another Sunday downer. Become a Forward Thinker. If You Want to Meet That Deadline, Play a Trick on Your Mind - NYTimes.com. It’s just a few days into the new year.
How are you doing on your resolutions? Wait: Have you even started on them yet? Recognizing that the hardest part of many tasks is beginning them at all, two researchers have sought to determine whether certain outside cues can jump-start us toward reaching our goals. Such cues, which manipulate our perception of time, are simple yet effective, according to a recent article in the Journal of Consumer Research. In one study, conducted in 2010, the researchers asked two groups of farmers in India to set up a bank account and accumulate a certain amount of money by a deadline, offering extra money as an incentive. The farmers in the first group were more likely to set up an account immediately, even though both groups had the same amount of time.
Photo So the inventors of the New Year’s resolution were on the right track when they had people set new goals on Jan. 1 rather than Dec. 31. Nine Things Successful People Do Differently. One of the trickiest challenges any child faces (or any adult, for that matter) is figuring out how to get from wanting to do something -- like getting a better grade on his or her next quiz, or studying over the summer for college admissions tests -- to actually doing it.
Commitment is a first and very necessary step when it comes to reaching a goal, but it's just the beginning. Psychologists have spent years studying the process and pitfalls of goal pursuit, and identifying strategies for overcoming those pitfalls -- knowledge that could be of particular benefit to young learners. In the except below from her new e-book, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently (Harvard Business Press), you'll read about one of Dr.
Halvorson's favorite tools in the motivation toolbox: if-then planning. 2) Seize the Moment to Act on Your Goals. 5 Tricks to Stop Procrastinating for Good. Getty Images I meant to write this piece two weeks ago.
I created a Word document (November 4th, was it?) And fully intended to start banging away on my Mac. CET Surveys. 5 Fool-Proof Ways to End Procrastination Today. The 25 Most Productive Ways to Spend Time on the Internet. Identify What Type of Procrastinator You Are. Thrill Seeker Do you want to feel good?
Then complete a task when you have time to do it. You'll experience the thrill of finishing early. Do you find (Christmas) shopping unpleasant? Make it more attractive so that you finish it before the deadline. Avoider Challenge those irrational thoughts that make you decide not to act. Indecisive One of the reasons people don't finish tasks is their fear of being evaluated.
The complete guide to structuring your ideal work day - Quartz. Optimizing your work day to maximize your productivity and happiness admittedly isn’t a hard science.
Differences in body chemistry, sleep routine, personality, profession, and office culture mean that one person’s ideal day is another’s productivity nightmare. But there are some evidence-based guidelines you can follow to get yourself on the right track. Morning person, waking up, alert, when to exercise. Being Powerful Distorts People's Perception of Time - Joe Pinsker. With all the extra time they imagine they have, CEOs tend to experience less stress than those lower down the ladder.
Toby Melville/Reuters Maria Konnikova, writing in the New York Times, made the point recently that there’s much more to poverty than just a shortage of money. Being poor, she said, brings with it other abstract deficits, most notably a lack of time. She quoted Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist and the author the book Scarcity: “The biggest mistake we make about scarcity is we view it as a physical phenomenon. It’s not.” Being Powerful Distorts People's Perception of Time - Joe Pinsker. How to Do Life: What They Didn't Teach You in School (Audible Audio Edition): Marty Nemko, Ken Cohen.