How To Help People Thrive In a Contracting Economy.

In a thriving economy, business is good and it is considered to be operating at peak performance. Workers are mostly salaried or full-time, business is expanding, and investments are being made. People are buying houses, cars, planning vacations, and basically spending their discretionary income. But what happens when the economy begins to contract and the economy goes into a downturn?

Why You Should Take Your Lunch Hour.

On a beautiful day, it struck me as insanely odd that co-workers were choosing to eat lunch in the basement of our building. For four hours, we slaved over work and here is our chance to break free for one hour to eat, clear our mind of chatter, and recharge. Yet, they crowded around a table in the basement talking about whatever while I basked in the warmth of the sun with the coolness of the air on my skin. How could they choose to pass this up?


As I sat outside peering through the green leaves into the sky, I arrived at a realization:  How a person spends their lunch hour speaks volumes about their mental state.


Personal life and work life are connected because they affect one another. Many people define themselves by their occupation, others just work in a field they enjoy for income, while some just work to live. But most people will arrive home tired and exhausted from work and continually fade until it's time for bed. They have become so out of tune with nature and their place in nature that they only experience the resulting stress from working in a fabricated and stale environment of man-made materials for the better part of their waking hours. They cannot even get enough sense to remove themselves from this environment to eat healthy and think on their own for an hour lunch.

How to Micromanage Employees and Stunt Productivity.

Oftentimes, managers have such a drive to control everything that employees are inundated with policies and rules that build resentment and discontent. Always be in uniform when on company property. Using the restroom is part of the 15 minute break. Always stay busy, never stand idle. Especially when there seems to be no reason for the rule: Always have your cell phone turned off and not at your desk.

When an employee is overshadowed with the constraint of rules pertaining to their job, he/she loses respect for the workplace. When this happens, he or she is no longer working 'for the company' but 'for a paycheck'. And this is not in the best interest for the company or the employee. What usually happens is the employee becomes disgruntled and begins looking for a better job.

Interviewing: How the Art of Preparing for Interviews Makes You Blend In.

There are countless articles and a multitude of career advice to be found on how to ace an interview. Job seekers are told what questions the interviewer will more than likely ask and how you should answer them, how to act, how to dress in the appropriate gray, blue, and white business attire, when to ask questions to show your interest and knowledge, how to write your cover letter and thank you letter. Interview advice is important to follow if you ever have hope of landing a job, let alone a dream job. Or is it?

The more this interview advice is followed, the more the advice has to evolve to become more cutting edge because when everyone is becoming schooled in the 'art of interviewing', job seekers are not standing out in interviews but blending in with one another! These days, job seekers look the same, sound the same, dress the same, ask the same questions, and answer the questions the same. They appear to be masses of drones applying for positions. They hide their greatest asset- their individuality- in order to become what the "general store" thinks it is looking for in a candidate.

How to Nurture Happy Workers.

A coworker said to me one morning, "Do you ever feel like alls you ever do is get up and go to work?" Well, yeah, I'm sure everyone feels this way but interestingly that is usually as far as it goes: A complaint. And it's no surprise. We go to work under the idea that working 40+ hours a week is normal, even though it's a form of 'enforced normal', or the 'going rate' of our society.... we rationalize that it's just 40 hours, everyone else is working that much or more, this is just the way it is.

So why does our body and attitudes about work tell us something different from what our willpower and society tell us?