A holistic approach to increasing your get-up and go, from the productivity expert whose previous books showed people how to Find More Time and Leave the Office Earlier. If you want to be productive but are just too tired all the time, you need to read this book! Laura Stack combines invaluable insights and practical advice in this guide to becoming more energetic and more productive in every area of life. Stack describes the factors that contribute to low energy (the "energy bandits") and explains how to reduce their effects and build up or renew sources of positive force (with "energy boosters").

Available now from Amazon.com and at better bookstores everywhere.

Leave the Office Earlier, Laura shows you how you CAN get more done than you ever thought possible and still get home to your real life sooner.Available now from Amazon.com.

More of The Productivity Pro's Resources

Subscribe to feed:http://blog.theproductivitypro.com

Recent posts:

Workplace Productivity: Tips for Maximum Enjoyment as an Administrative Assistant

Productivity Minute Video: Prevent Crisis By Planning in Advance: Time Management

Business Productivity: Concentrating On Your Work

Time Management: Getting People Out of Your Office Quickly

Office Productivity: Go Over and Above What's Expected: Become and Indispensible Assistant

Getting Things Done: Saying No Allows You to Say Yes: Productivity Minute Video

View Laura's Demonstration Video

Memo to boss: 11-hour days are bad for the heart

What CEOs Really Want

Be the One Who Gets the Promotion

These are all private client engagements with Laura Stack. At this time, Laura does not offer open enrollment seminars to the general public. If you're interested in bringing Laura to your organization to present a training seminar for your employees on the day prior or the day after one of these engagements below, please contact John Stack for special "piggyback" pricing.

June 2010

23-25::Black Hawk, CO

28::Denver, CO

29::San Diego, CA

July 2010

13-16::Orlando, FL

17-20::Orlando, FL

28::Denver, CO

August 2010

9::Denver, CO

10-11::Philadelphia, PA

13::Phoenix, Arizona

23::Denver, CO

26::Denver, CO

28::Albuquerque, NM

September 2010

11::Cologne Germany

14::Cary, North Carolina

18::Birmingham, AL

27::Denver, CO

October 2010

1-2::Overland Park, KS

6::Chicago, IL

9::Nashville, Tennessee

15::Tinley Park, IL

19::Palm Desert, CA

23::Adelphia, ML

25::Denver, CO

29-30::Philadelphia, PA

Visit Laura's Calendar On-line for her complete availability.

SUPERCOMPETENT® KEY #6: ATTITUDE

This month's article correlates to the sixth key in my newest book SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best (Wiley), to be released on August 9: ATTITUDE.

Attitude is your motivation, drive, and proactiveness.

The most effective people in any endeavor are those with a hard-working, positive, can-do attitude. Their attitudes exude the kind of passion that commits fully to a course of action and sees it all the way through. It's infectious, and it keeps them and others in their team moving forward, even when the way becomes difficult.

In order to succeed in a competitive work environment, you have to be a self-starter, consistently driven, consistently flexible, and consistently innovative. You must also learn to be a good communicator in all directions: up to your customers and superiors, laterally to your coworkers, and down to your subordinates.

On top of all that, you have to be willing to accommodate different personalities, points of view, and the various vagaries of emotion and circumstance that affect other people's behavior on a daily basis.

Having trouble honing your Attitude to a SuperCompetent® level? Keep these five tips in mind:

1. Keep an eye on your stress level. It's a mistake to ignore your emotional health. Negative emotions, stress, worry, and your temper can all conspire to bring you down--especially if you don't take the occasional break to recharge your batteries. Don't let them cause you to boil over and impair your productivity.

2. Even when a task is monumental, keep working at it until you whittle it down to size. Most tasks can be broken down into manageable subtasks. Don't look at that mountain of work and just give up. Dive in, find an efficient way to do what needs to be done, and move that mountain.

3. Don't be afraid to unleash your creativity and apply it to problems at work. If you try, you just may discover a new, simpler way of doing things. Without creativity there is no progress, no change, no experimentation, no innovation. Creativity, properly used, opens up new worlds of possibility and profit.

4. Learn to communicate clearly. People can't read your mind. Clean communication is necessary in all directions in order to avoid misunderstandings and mistakes. Learn to deal with difficult personalities, emphasize teamwork, and play nice--even when others don't seem willing to do so.

5. Look for a silver lining in every situation. Do your best to be positive at all times. Wherever it's possible, try to reframe challenges and problems as opportunities. Sure, maybe it's not what you were looking for, but some of the world's most spectacular successes started as spectacular failures.

Your attitude is your state of mind, the way you perceive the world about you. So be upbeat; be positive; and always have a can-do attitude about work and what you can accomplish there. A particular task may seem outrageously difficult, and it may seem impossible for anything human to accomplish it, but here's one thing that's certain: if you don't try, you'll definitely never get it done.

On the other hand, if you jump right in, show your willingness to be part of a team and to make the proper effort to accomplish whatever needs to be done, you'll become insanely productive. Do this right, and you'll end up so far ahead you'll wonder when you passed the finish line.

Make it a productive day! ^(TM)

(C) Copyright 2009 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.

Have Laura speak to your company, conference or organization. How do you know if Laura would be perfect for your next event, meeting, or training? View the "Laura Stack Is Perfect For This Group" fact sheet.

To be featured in this section of our newsletter and get a free eBook with our thanks, send your productivity tip or trick to Becca@TheProductivityPro.com with "Tips and Tricks contribution" in the subject line.

Intercall recently published the 2010 study on Technology In the Workplace. The findings of the study make it clear that today's workers are feeling the pinch of tough economic times and increased pressure to do more with less and stay connected to the office even in off hours.

Almost half of American workers who use technology at work believe that in this economy they must produce more even though they have fewer resources. Twenty-five percent of American workers feel their job security "is partially dependent on their supervisor seeing they are connected to work even after hours."

Even with the increased workloads, Americans do see technology as a key part of productivity in the workplace. Job satisfaction increases when companies provide technology tools to help workers do more in less time and most workers believe technology does help them be more productive on the job.

Click here to find out more.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, click the link provided on the bottom of a recent newsletter.  If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to interested associates so they may subscribe.

NEW!  Piggyback Requests

We have clients in several cities who would like to split a day of Laura's training fees and travel expenses (if outside Colorado) with another company or organization in the local area. If you live within one hour of these locations and are interested this shared model, please email Becca@TheProductivityPro.com.

Buffalo, NY
Chicago, IL
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Miami, FL
Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis, MN
Richmond, VA
Salem, OR
Tampa, FL
Winston-Salem, NC
 

Reprint Information

All Articles (C) 1999-2008 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. This information may not be distributed, sold, publicly presented, or used in any other manner, except as described below.

Permission to reprint all or part of this article in your magazine, e-zine, website, blog, or organization newsletter is hereby GRANTED, provided:

1. The ENTIRE credit line below is present,
2. The website link to www.TheProductivityPro.com is clickable (LIVE), and
3. You send a copy, PDF, link, tearsheet, etc. of the work in which the article is used when published.

This credit line MUST be reprinted in its entirety to use any articles from Laura Stack:

© 2009 Laura Stack. Laura Stack is a personal productivity expert, author, and professional speaker who helps busy workers Leave the Office Earlier® with Maximum Results in Minimum Time®. She is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., a time management training firm specializing in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations. Since 1992, Laura has presented keynotes and seminars on improving output, lowering stress, and saving time in today's workplaces. She is the bestselling author of three works published by Broadway Books: The Exhaustion Cure (2008), Find More Time (2006) and Leave the Office Earlier (2004). Laura is a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, and Day-Timers®, Inc and has been featured on the CBS Early Show, CNN, and the New York Times. Her clients include Cisco Systems, Sunoco, KPMG, Nationwide, and 3M. To have Laura speak at your next event, call 303-471-7401. Visit www.TheProductivityPro.com to sign up for her free monthly productivity newsletter.

** The above website link to www.TheProductivityPro.com MUST be clickable to receive permission to reprint the article.

Monthly Productivity Webinar:

JUNE 28: I Love My Inbox; I Hate My Inbox: Email Best Practices To Save You an Hour a Day.

How many hours do you spend wading around in your email inbox each day? Email isn't a toy--it's a tool--a means of making yourself more productive. If you let yourself be chained down by your email instead of letting it help set you free, you're never likely to get much done. I will present my top ten best practices to take advantage of your email, without letting it take advantage of you. As a Microsoft Certified Application Specialist in Outlook, I will give the instructions in Outlook. If you're using a different email platform (such as Lotus or GroupWise), the principles remain the same.

Laura Stack, MBA, CSP
Publisher

Messages from Laura