Overworked? 4 Signs You Need to Recharge

Sometimes it's obvious we need a break, but in most cases we figure it out too late. When you work double-digit hours and Sundays are no longer a day of rest, feeling overworked can become the new normal. Even so you'll eventually hit a wall, and when that happens it can take days and even weeks to recover the enthusiasm, creativity and motivation you've lost.

Fortunately a few of the same techniques endurance athletes use to detect the need for additional recovery can be used to indicate when you need to recharge your work batteries. Where elite athletes are concerned, chronic overtraining can actaully defeat the fitness purpose and result in decreased stamina, power and speed; sometimes the harder they work the slower they get.

The same thing happens to us when we're overworked. We put in more hours to compensate...and get even less done. So how can you tell the difference between feeling overworked and really overworking yourself?

I asked Jeremiah Bishop for some simple techniques anyone can use to avoid hitting a wall. Jeremiah is a professional mountain bike rider for Cannondale Factory Racing. He's a twelve-time member of the US national team and is to mountain bike racing what an NBA All-Star is to basketball.

Here are ways to ensure you stay at your professional best:

Check your resting heart rate. Every day, before you get out of bed, take your pulse. Most of the time your heart rate will stay within a few beats per minute. But when you're overworked and stressed your body send more oxygen to your body and brain by increasing your heart rate. If your heart rate is up in the morning, do whatever it takes to get a little extra rest or sleep that night.

Check your emotions. Having a bad day? Feeling irritable and short-tempered? If you can't put your finger on a specific reason why, chronic stress and fatigue may have triggered a physiological response and sent more cortisol and less dopamine to your brain. Willing yourself to be in a better mood won't overcome the impact of chemistry, and in extreme cases the only cure is a break.

Check your weight. Lose or gain more than a percent of body weight from one day to the next and something's wrong. Maybe yesterday was incredibly stressful and you failed to notice you didn't eat or drink enough...or maybe you failed to notice just how much you actually ate. Lack of nourishment and hydration can put the hurt on higher-level mental functions. And eating too much food - well, we all know the impact of that.

Check your, um, output. Urine color can indicate a lack of hydration. The lighter the color the more hydrated you are. Hydration is a good thing. Proper hydration aids in the absorption of nutrients and helps increase energy levels. If your urine is darker than usual the cure is simple: Drink a lot of water.

The key is to monitor each of these over a period of time so you develop a feel for what is normal for you. Pay special attention on weekends and vacations, and if you notice a dramatic change, especially a positive one, that's a sure sign you need to change your workday routine.

Don't say this sounds like something only elite athletes need to worry about. We all want to be the best we can possibly be, no matter what our profession, and whenever we slam into the workload wall we are far from our best.

And don't say you don't have the time to take a short break or get a little more sleep. You owe it to yourself to find a way.

Eventually your mind and body will hit a wall and make you, so why not take care of yourself, and improve your performance, on your terms?

Taken from www.inc.com  Written by Jeff Haden

The Top 10 Interview Questions to Prepare For

In general, job interview questions fall into two categories - Traditional and Behavioral

Traditional questions help potential employers evaluate your skills and experience. Behavioral questions help employers predict how you will react in future situations based on your past behavior.

To ace your next job interview, you need to be able to answer both types of questions in a calm, collected and confident manner. And to do that, you need to rehearse your answers in advance.

Take the list below and start preparing your answers now.

• Tell me about yourself.
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
• Why are you leaving your current job? Or why were you terminated from your last job?
• What interested you in this position?
• What do you know about our company?
• Why do you think you will excel in this position?
• What are your biggest strengths? Weaknesses?
• Describe your biggest professional achievement.
• Tell me about a time when you dealt with conflict in the workplace and how you handled it.
• Do you have any questions for me? (ALWAYS have questions prepared to ask the interviewer.)

Written by Laurie Ballow

Time Managment: Taking Stock of Your Most Precious Commodity

If you've been entrusted to manage a valuable commodity - whether it's the company's finances, the merchandise in your shop, or your own income - you start by taking stock of what you have to work with. Where and how are the resources being generated, spent, saved, and squandered? Is it possible to appropriate them more effectively? Where are the silent leaks? It doesn't have to be any different with time, our most valuable commodity. Time management is one of the most important activities when it comes to work.

Whatever value we place on money, investments, or merchandise, it is that resource of hours and minutes that's most elusive.

Time Management Tips and Tricks

Like money, you want to know how to make sufficient time to accommodate the world-changing things you want to do with your life. Do you complain you don't have enough time or are you easy prey to any gadget that promises to make you a multitasking magician? Altering your life to accommodate your goals and ambitions isn't easy, but the time-generating solution may be simpler than you think.

• Face the Data. As eager as you are to dive into time management, it's vital to assess the situation as it is now - the problem, if you will. Successful businesses are meticulous in taking stock of their resources. They know exactly how many pennies they have and where they're spending them. You need to do the same with your minutes.
• Remember: It All Adds Up. Minutes and pennies seem like such tiny quantities - throw-aways, really. But if you've ever seen the movie Office Space, you'll remember that even fractions of a cent can result in millions of dollars if you can gather up enough of them. Minutes are your commodity - start counting.
• Track. Set yourself up for a one week mini-project. Get a small notebook that will easily fit into your purse or pocket and then trade out your fancy wristwatch for a good old-fashioned Timex with a stopwatch. Now start timing yourself. Be natural as you go through the week, not making big sweeping changes so you look better on paper. Log each activity (in exact minutes) as you proceed through your day. For example: 

• Showering and dressing for work: 45 minutes
• Looking for keys and files for morning presentation: 8 minutes
• Trip to Starbucks: 17 minutes
• Morning commute: 25 minutes
• Checking and answering email: 19 minutes

Continue making notes in your log. A tad tedious perhaps, but the information is invaluable. You'll gain some surprising insight into how much time you have and where you're spending it. Don't forget to log eating, TV watching, and sleeping. Track it - all of it!

• Be Specific. Don't guess - we always estimate in our favor and we're usually off by quite a wide margin. Remember, your mission it not to see how fast you plow through your activities of daily living. This isn't a race. It is an opportunity for you to start to conceptualize the amount of time you have, and how you are choosing to use it.
• Analyze the Data. Add up the minutes spent in each category and assess. You may be surprised to find out that in a typical day you spend two hours actually working, forty-five minutes taking a shower, and ninety accumulated minutes doing Internet "research." Highlight trouble areas.
• Don't Squander Resources. When people complain about not having enough time, the issue (usually) is not that they are so busy, but that they use their time badly. Take the data from a typical week and multiply it by fifty-two to get an annual estimate. Think about the minutes you're spending on non-essentials - what could you accomplish with that time over the course of a year? 
• Make the Right Choices. Undoubtedly you are starting to realize that the issue is not time-poverty, but misplaced priorities. If you don't have time for an activity or endeavor, it's because you've chosen to spend that time elsewhere. The trick is not to try to multi-task more tasks or even work faster, but to clarify your priorities and make better choices.
• Tighten Your Belt. We hate boundaries, but savvy time-spenders know that there's freedom in the fences. That means putting some limits on the major minute munchers.

Tips for Minimizing Minute Loss

• Confine your use of social media to 2-3 times per day. Set a limit on those sessions.
• Disable Facebook and Twitter updates on your phone.
• Set up an email schedule. Log in for 2-3 sessions per day. The world can wait, trust me.
• Assess your TV watching schedule and weight it in light of other leisure activities - pick one or two programs you can't live without and spend the saved time on coffee with friends or those trips to the gym you can never squeeze in.
• Save video games for a special reward, say after you've finished the presentation or cleaning the bathroom.

Conclusion

For some, it will be a though they've just been asked to amputate their own limb. But here's the reality: time is a limited commodity and you make the choices. In three years so you want to boast great strides towards your life goals, or be able to say you saw every Lady Gaga tweet the moment it was released?

Raise the bar on yourself and on your level of discipline - no one can do this for you. Visualizing clear goals will help you stay on track when you have that overwhelming urge to tweet your latest brainwave. Trust me, the world can probably live without it - stay on task.

How you choose to appropriate your most precious resource is a decision you make - no one is a victim to some nebulous, time-stealing monster. We all have the same 1440 minutes to work with each day. How do you choose to get a better return on yours?

Taken from workawesome.com. Written by Jacki Christopher.

How to Overcome the Stress of Being an Overachiever

According to Dr. Phil, "we can't change what we don't acknowledge first." With this being the case, I have finally come to terms with a plaguing issue that I've denied for many years. My name is Jennifer, and I am an overachiever.

There. I've said it. The proof is in the pudding.

Adorning my bedroom walls are dozens of plaques, commendations, and kudos from just about every avenue of my life: from grade school awards, to college scholarships, to writing competitions, to community service.

I say this not to brag, but to make a point. In 2005, in the hit movie "Hustle and Flow," one of the main characters of the movie laments over how hard it is to be a successful hustler. This "baller" should try being an overachiever! Overachievers may not get the same street cred, or cool theme music, but they work just as hard and live in constant angst in their daily efforts to be the best at what they do.

Achievement becomes an addiction in which the "high" of success is often chased by additional acts of excellence and emotional and physical over investment. And to be quite honest, it can be rather exhausting.

Sure, for those of us who suffer this malady, we can say that it makes our moms proud, earns us a few bragging rights, and reasons to reward ourselves with chocolate and periodic shopping sprees, but somehow, somewhere, we have to draw the line.

For example, I was competing with a little girl at a close friend's daughter's birthday party, in a jump rope competition, and let's just say that this kid proved to be a poor loser. But I was determined to outdo her.

Could You Be An Overachiever Just Like Me?

According to the Overachiever Coach, "Overachievers are ambitious, driven, and influenced to do (and be) the best. They have a unique mindset that keeps their brain on overdrive and a work ethic that keeps them one step ahead. High expectations and focused intensity are definite characteristics of overachievers. They are always pushing themselves for more - whether it's professionally, academically, personally or in a sport or hobby."

Sound Familiar?

Here are some other tell-tale signs of overachievers, based upon my own experience and observations:

• Overachievers have a sense of urgency about things that makes them unique comparatively. They view time as a commodity.
• Overachievers often come from successful families where parents or other family members were doctors, lawyers, actors, teachers, bankers, or military personnel. In other words, achievement was as much a part of their family blood line as their DNA.
• Overachievers typically do well in school, often skipping a grade or two, or earning scholarships along the way.
• Overachievers tend to be their own worst critics. They impose high standards and subject themselves to personal scrutiny on various levels.
• Overachievers are very results-oriented. They are very diligent in their day-to-day functioning, and often set goals by which they measure their overall performance.
• Overachievers often feel pressured to do well.

Now that we've identified what it is, here is how to look at this condition more objectively - and use it to enhance our lives rather than encumber it.

If you, like me, have decided that 2011 will be the year to be less stressed, less anal, and more balanced in your personal and professional life, here are some savvy ways to walk the talk:

1. Realize that we were designed to be "human beings". not human doings. Keep things in proper perspective. We are more than our titles and Facebook status updates. Our value as human beings should never solely be tied into our value in the workworld, or the value of our achievements.
2. Know that the stress associated with "driven personalities", grueling work hours, and extremely high self-imposed expectations can contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, and poor sleep habits. It can also adversely impact our personal relationships, if we apply the same high, rigid standards. Act accordingly.
3. Take heed to the saying, "all work and no play makes Jane a dull girl." Balance is crucial. Work hard, but play hard too when time allows. Tap into some personal hobbies like cooking, or writing, or sports for recreational outlets and a greater quality of life.
4. Give yourself a break. There's nothing wrong with having a "marginal mindset" or weaknesses in some areas. For instance, I really suck at bowling, but enjoy it immensely. Everybody needs an activity that allows them to relax and release. What's yours?
5. Realize that life is not a competition. Run your own race. Don't get caught up in comparing your successes to your siblings, friends, or co-workers. We each have different skills, circumstances, and goals.

Follow these timely tips and you'll achieve something much greater than "status." You'll enjoy a greater quality of life, and better mental and physical health. And that's something worth boasting about.

Taken from workawesome.com. Written by Jennifer Brown Banks.

Overachiever

Latin Name: Strivum excessivus

Notable Characteristics: Felt like a loser when Stanford was his best option. Spends 15 hours developing a recruitment presentation for the kids' PTA. Regularly sends 27 work-related emails between 8 PM and midnight.

Songs and Calls: "Just one more revision." "Try harder!" "I heart all-nighters!" "I bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, make homemade 'this little piggy' hand puppets for my kindergartner's classmates, run five miles daily, and, in my free time, raise and sell free-range chickens."

Whether it's CEO status or a seven-minute mile, we're all driven to accomplish goals. And whether we have the skills to be the next Jimi Hendrix or the best damn bass player at Mad Dog's Open Mic Night, there is a healthy way to approach any objective: namely, by striving for self-improvement or for a boost in our environment or relationships.

But the normal drive to accomplish tasks has a dark counterpart. People driven to overachieve are motivated by an unhealthy compulsion to show they are worthy. "Overachievers have an underlying fear of failure or a self-worth contingent upon competence," says University of Rochester psychologist Andrew Elliot. "Rather than setting and striving for goals based on a pure desire to achieve, their underlying motivation impels them out into the world to avoid failure."

Why Motivation Matters

Some of us skip through life with our eyes on the prize while others skulk along dodging loser status. As we set out to accomplish things, that fundamental distinction between approach and avoidance motivation - between a positive and negative orientation - leads the overachiever to adopt certain types of goals that directly affect performance.

"The goal and motivation together result in overachievement," says Elliot. There are three basic ways to go after an objective. Approach-mastery goals are pure, focused on self-improvement for its own sake and predictive of learning and deep processing: "I'll memorize spelling bee words because it'll be fun to know what guidon means!"

Performance-approach goals are more complicated, focused on competition with others and predictive of strong performance: "I want to kick butt in the spelling bee to show that bespectacled dweeb I'm a genius!" But performance-avoidance goals are a troubled stew, focused on preventing bad outcomes and predictive of worse performance. "I must win the spelling bee or my girlfriend will dump me for the bespectacled dweeb."

Overachievers are likely to adopt competitive performance-approach or fearful performance-avoidance goals because of an underlying motivation to "be better than other to avoid rejection," Elliot says. That negative underpinning can turn an otherwise useful performance-approach goal into one that causes stress. But avoidance goals are even more problematic, he adds, because they "create worry and distract people from the task due to self-concerns." Those self-concerns, in turn, can cause low self-esteem, feelings of incompetence, and life dissatisfaction.

The Perfection Paradox

Perfectionism is a key feature of compulsive overstriving and being driven to achieve, says psychologist Gordon Flett of York University. Painfully high self-standards may compel overachievers to obsessively pursue success - picture the college student with the 3.9 GPA who can't stop self-flagellating over that one B+.

The irony: Though they strive for greatness, most perfectionists are destined for disappointment. "The data on perfectionism and actual performance show little payoff in terms of objective achievement," Flett reports. And when perfectionists do perform exceptionally, he adds, "many evaluate themselves quite harshly and don't feel especially good about their accomplishments."

But high self-standards in one domain do not an overachiever make, and your decades-long quest to play "Little Wing" like Hendrix is not necessarily neurotic. "It's maladaptive when someone is striving to be a perfect person, but it's natural to want to be perfect in the one or two areas that matter most to you," Flett says. So fly on, Little Wing.

Taken from Psychology Today. Written by Jill Coody Smits.

Weighty Personalities: How Character Shapes Your BMI

Your personality influences many life experiences. Now comes word that it might be making you fat...then thin, then fat again.

The Big Five measures of personality are associated with different patterns of weight gain, according to researchers at the National Institute of Aging. A team led by neuroscientist Angelina Sutin looked at data tracking 2000 people for more than 50 years. "We know personality traits are associated with other health indicators, like smoking," Sutin says. "We wanted to see if they're also associated with weight." Here's what they uncovered.

Haste Makes Waist

People who score in the top 10 percent on impulsiveness weight 22 pounds more than those in the bottom 10 percent, on average. Impulsive people have trouble planning ahead and resisting temptation. "An impulsive person intends to go to the gym, but then something pops up and they follow that impulse instead," explains Sutin.

Another predictor of having a large waistline is low agreeableness, aka antagonism. Antagonistic people tend to have stronger physiologic responses to stress, and other studies have associated higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol with weight gain. Could packing on the pounds make you surly? Since temperament is stable over time, Sutin believes personality influences weight, not vice versa.

Sad Cycle

Some people yo-yo between losing and regaining weight. Sutin's study found that this cyclical pattern often occurs in people both high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness. Two dispositional elements that lead to negative emotions, depression and impulsiveness, were especially associated with weight fluctuations.

Depressed people frequently experience changes in appetite, which may explain some of the seesaw effect. And a 2009 study showed that when impulsive people restrict their food intake, they're even more likely to overeat when faced with temptation than impulsive people who aren't dieting. Coupled with the lack of self-discipline associated with low conscientiousness, these traits can be a recipe for a lifetime of weight fluctuations.

Strictly Slender

Highly conscientious people have the easiest time maintaining a healthy BMI. They tend to be thin and keep the same weight over time, according to the study. That's because they have more self-control and are often more conscious of their weight.

Taken from Psychology Today. Written by Rose Pastore.

Infomaniac: How to Transform Yourself into a Node of Knowledge

Though we love talking about our oh-so-cutting-edge Information Age, sharing info is nothing new. Before the Web - even before your Olivetti started gathering dust - knowledge sharing was integral to getting the job done.

But now more than ever, we're analyzing the play of information: how people swap it, who's milking it best, and which bits we should soak up. And, as always, we're looking at how our bailiwick compares with that of our peers. Certain roles rely heavily on playing catch with ideas, but everyone from a nurse to a pianist is, in a sense, a knowledge worker. And we can all use help refining our expertise.

Whether you're hoping to remain a fixture at your current job or break into a whole new field, here are expert tricks for defining your province and standing out.

The Local Lockbox

You know him: the coworker who can tell you the name of that guy who worked on that project that you think was in 2003 - though you're not sure when...or which project exactly. "Peterson, '05!" he'll declare with the certainty of a Jeopardy champ. You can depend on him to click through his institutional memory or connect you to someone else helpful. But if you're that go-to-person, you might want a break.

"You can be too cooperative for your own good," says Jessica Pryce-Jones, CEO of iOpener and author of Happiness at Work. What's more, a go-to person often isn't valued enough. He's almost never a higher-up, so his intangible leadership, though appreciated by peers, is mostly overlooked by the boss. If you're the generous one, start talking about it: "I helped Maria last week and she ended up connecting with a great new client - I was happy for her that it worked out!" If you've got a little more chutzpah, ask the person you're assisting to let the boss know you pitched in, says Pryce-Jones. Word of your expertise will trickle up.

Sociologists label people as "local" and "cosmopolitan," adds Ezra Zuckerman, an economic sociologist at MIT's Sloan School of Management. The first type is quite knowledgeable about his organization, whereas the latter has established herself across contexts. Cosmopolitans risk appearing fickle, but locals risk depending on one workplace. If your company is indelibly fixed in your memory, ask for projects that keep you marketable.

The Savvy Specialist

Typecasting is known as a career killer. Yet when Zuckerman studied film actors over the course of several years, he found that those who were boxed-in fared better: By fitting into character constraints, they were able to land gigs that generalists couldn't. In many fields, renaissance men and women are idolized, he says. But in reality, "you've got to turn yourself into a very specialized commodity."

Academics, too, need a fresh niche. You might meet a prof who specializes in 10th-century spider metaphors - she's into it because nobody else is.

The catch-22, Zuckerman admits, is that a niche can get you into a field but be harder to climb out of later. Still, specializing is part deep knowledge, part branding magic. Define yourself narrowly to appeal to a prospective employer's needs, but maintain a broader set of skills so you can wow your boss later.

The Ingenious Generalist

"There's a seduction to being an expert, an assumption in society that credibility relies on deep (and narrow) expertise," writes Jess McMullin of the Information Architecture Institute. "However, for people operating at the edges, intersections, and overlaps where innovation thrives, being a generalist is far more powerful."

In the world of business and design, broad skills lead to opportunities. For the last few years executives have buzzed about "T-shaped" people: those who pair a deep, narrow expertise with breadth in other areas. Some folks are even expected to branch out. To become a master chef, says Zuckerman, you must learn how to be a pastry chef, a cold chef, and a host of other specialists. Limit your expertise and you may never run your own kitchen.

Generalists also tend to be good people-people, says Pryce-Jones. One man she knows used to work in advertising and was always strategically introducing colleagues within the agency. Though he helped huge projects blossom, his work was largely intangible. Realizing that his know-how went beyond the confines of the ad world, he left his job and now works connecting people across industries.

The Navigating Newbie

It doesn't matter whether you've been working for a decade or more: You're still uninitiated when you start a new job. Ben Dattner, author of The Blame Game, suggests tuning in to how your colleagues like to share knowledge. If you're in need of a tutorial on, say, the office's wiki page, but your new boss keeps ignoring your query-stuffed emails, consider a new move. Might your boss prefer a face-to-face lesson over typing everything out? It may seem like a minor difference to you, but asking for help the right way means you'll get the info you need. You can also offer insights that you've gained elsewhere to initiate subtle bartering.

The Part-Time Techie

Your position is outside the tech realm, yet everyone calls you when their computer crashes or if that hamster video on YouTube won't load. Psychotherapist Michael Fromica, an informal techie himself, suggests teaching them how to problem-solve on their own - and learning how to say no when you need to.

"If you grab the mouse and do it for them, you're not doing them a favor," he says. Instead, give them new skills - and tell them when you're too busy to help.

Hoping to gain recognition for on-the-side troubleshooting? Do it by being, well, helpful. "From time to time, send out a little missive to everyone saying, 'You know, I've discovered that if you press control-F6 you get such-and-such in your spreadsheet,'" says Pryce-Jones. Small tips every once in a while remind people that you're savvy and help them in tiny but crucial ways.

Just don't broadcast your knowledge too often. You wouldn't want to become known as That Guy Who Has All The Answers But Is Too Annoying To Ask.

Taken from Psychology Today. Written by Michele Lent Hirsch