The Happiness Advantage

In The Happiness Advantage, author Shawn Achor, believes people can reprogram their brains to become more positive which will result in increased professional success. The book is based on his experience as Head Teaching Fellow at Harvard for "Positive Psychology" and one of the largest studies of happiness and potential even done to identify an improve the formula for happiness. He believes that you can increase your productivity by 30 percent by increasing your level of happiness and that happiness is the precursor to success not the result of it. He sees happiness as a work ethic, a notion I totally support. Watch a short video on The Happiness Advantage to learn more about his work. 

Productivity Tips for Outlook 2010

Research says that people spend half of their day in their inbox answering e-mail.(No wonder people feel like they type all day!) So if you are like most people, you might be in the market to reduce the amount of time you spend plunging through e-mail as a way to create more time in your day. Matthew Woodget, a Senior Product Manager in the Information Work Group at Microsoft shared with me this short practical video with tips on how to get your inbox to zero. You’ll learn some great tips about creating shortcuts and using tasks as well as some other nifty features in Office 2010.

Emotional Intelligence Quiz

For those of you who have heard the term Emotional Intelligence before but are not sure exactly what it means, it’ the ability, capacity, skill; or, a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.  In a nutshell Emotional Intelligence is about, perceiving, using, and understanding emotions.    It involves the skills of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and lastly putting it all together with how you manage relationships.  People who have high Emotional Intelligence have the ability to read other people well, more specifically read others emotions well.   Want to know how well you are able to read emotions?  Take this quiz and find out. 

What is About Happiness That Makes Us Unhappy?

There is an article today in The Wall Street Journal about happiness that is worth the read for those of you on the quest to create more joy.   The article, Is Happiness Overrated, explores some new research that suggest people who “focus on living with a sense of purpose as they age are more likely to remain cognitively intact, have better mental health and even live longer than people who focus on achieving feelings of happiness.”  The research goes on to say that too much focus on trying to be happy, can actually make you less happy, and that it’s more about the type of things one focuses on that can bring about true happiness.