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How One Company Taught It’s Employees To Be Happier And What Happened Next

Media agency MEC offered a happiness workshop to a group of workers in its Manhattan office. Co.Create looks at the thinking behind the effort and the results.

Here’s the story.

How One Company Taught It’s Employees To Be Happier And What Happened Next

Media agency MEC offered a happiness workshop to a group of workers in its Manhattan office. Co.Create looks at the thinking behind the effort and the results.

Here’s the story.

Infographic: The Grinders Vs. The Dreamers. Who Wins?
To be great at your job, you have to embrace the grind. But the very word implies pulverizing something into nothing, as if with every type of your keyboard, your fingers flake away, until work has consumed your wrists, elbows, shoulders and chest.
Sorry! Don’t think about that visual!
Here’s a better one, by Joey Roth, that imagines the grind not as a platform for powderization, but as the step-by-step means to ascension.

By ‘grind’ I mean a combination of work ethic and improvised strategy that becomes a daily ritual, and ensures progression or improvement over time, regardless of an individual day or even week’s outcome.”

Here’s the full story.

Infographic: The Grinders Vs. The Dreamers. Who Wins?

To be great at your job, you have to embrace the grind. But the very word implies pulverizing something into nothing, as if with every type of your keyboard, your fingers flake away, until work has consumed your wrists, elbows, shoulders and chest.

Sorry! Don’t think about that visual!

Here’s a better one, by Joey Roth, that imagines the grind not as a platform for powderization, but as the step-by-step means to ascension.

By ‘grind’ I mean a combination of work ethic and improvised strategy that becomes a daily ritual, and ensures progression or improvement over time, regardless of an individual day or even week’s outcome.”

Here’s the full story.

Joss Whedon took a detour from mega-budget filmmaking to direct a passion project, the much smaller budget film, Much Ado About Nothing. “When you work at something really hard, then working at something else is a vacation. I remember returning to work on The Avengers (after taking a break to direct Much Ado About Nothing) with a clearer eye and being more invested not because I have my art and this is my commerce but because the joy of storytelling is back.”

Joss Whedon took a detour from mega-budget filmmaking to direct a passion project, the much smaller budget film, Much Ado About Nothing. “When you work at something really hard, then working at something else is a vacation. I remember returning to work on The Avengers (after taking a break to direct Much Ado About Nothing) with a clearer eye and being more invested not because I have my art and this is my commerce but because the joy of storytelling is back.”

Are you on the fence about working from home? Is your boss? This infographic features some numbers to put in context how good it is for you and your job. Unless you don’t want to be a less stressed, more productive worker, of course.

Are you on the fence about working from home? Is your boss? This infographic features some numbers to put in context how good it is for you and your job. Unless you don’t want to be a less stressed, more productive worker, of course.

Wriggly work: Byoearth empowers women to create income, increase crop production, and build their quality of life—with worms! 

Wriggly work: Byoearth empowers women to create income, increase crop production, and build their quality of life—with worms

Under intense scrutiny from the Fair Labor Association, Apple’s Chinese supplier has revised its labor policies, including changes to its internship program “to ensure that the job relates to the intern’s field of study” and that interns’ “skills before and after” are measured “to document the benefits of the training.” And the company is also said to have taken measures to ensure fair wages and prevent 40-plus-hour work weeks. Now one of the paragons of bad labor practices is treating interns better than most U.S. companies.
Are Foxconn Internships Now Better Than American Internships?

Under intense scrutiny from the Fair Labor Association, Apple’s Chinese supplier has revised its labor policies, including changes to its internship program “to ensure that the job relates to the intern’s field of study” and that interns’ “skills before and after” are measured “to document the benefits of the training.” And the company is also said to have taken measures to ensure fair wages and prevent 40-plus-hour work weeks. Now one of the paragons of bad labor practices is treating interns better than most U.S. companies.

Are Foxconn Internships Now Better Than American Internships?

Don’t check your email!

Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too.
The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list.

What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day

Don’t check your email!

Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too.

The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list.

What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day

I’m no neurologist but I am now certain that the synapses in your brain like the familiar path. It’s fast and easy. Diverting hurts. While I consider myself an open-minded person, apparently I’m not as open as I thought. That’s like finding out you have a bad habit that you didn’t know you had. Great!Finding topics that you can’t work up any interest in is not as easy as you’d think. But I was on a mission. A mission that led to mental stretching with subjects like…
THE CREATIVE BENEFITS OF EXPLORING THE UNCOMFORTABLE

I’m no neurologist but I am now certain that the synapses in your brain like the familiar path. It’s fast and easy. Diverting hurts. While I consider myself an open-minded person, apparently I’m not as open as I thought. That’s like finding out you have a bad habit that you didn’t know you had. Great!

Finding topics that you can’t work up any interest in is not as easy as you’d think. But I was on a mission. A mission that led to mental stretching with subjects like…

THE CREATIVE BENEFITS OF EXPLORING THE UNCOMFORTABLE


Being smart, energetic, and creative won’t save you from procrastination, but knowing the whys and hows of it can be a big help. Here are four things you might not know about your worst habit. Read more->

Being smart, energetic, and creative won’t save you from procrastination, but knowing the whys and hows of it can be a big help. Here are four things you might not know about your worst habit. Read more->

New York City-based think tank and fabrication laboratory Collab is founded on a simple premise: Creative people work better when they’re in proximity to one another. The lab, located in a 5,500-square-foot loft near the Holland Tunnel, serves a rotating membership of designers, architects, scientists, and engineers—and is home to some really cool toys.

Collab members have full access to an advanced 3-D printer, a laser cutter, an industrial sewing machine, fully operational wood shops, and model-making studios, among other great tools (that would never fit in most New York apartments). Cofounder Adina Levin calls it “an interesting community of people that come together in a space and work on their own endeavors and collectively work on projects together.” Members have access to the space 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and are encouraged to work on interdisciplinary projects.

(Source: Fast Company)

The myth is that charisma is not innate. What scientists have actually discovered—like many other myths they busted this one—is it’s actually a social skill, which like many others is learned. But this happens so early in life that by the time these charismatics get to adulthood, it all seems to be natural. And yet if, for example, you analyze the progression of Steve Jobs from 1984 to 2011 you’ll see he painstakingly learned it step by step.

Olivia Fox Cabane, from Cultivating Charisma: How Personal Magnetism Can Help (Or Hurt) You At Work