
Thank you at work
A friend of mine opens doors for strangers. And while I'm sure he's trying to preserve his gentleman-like nature and will be doing this until the end of time, he's always agitated when people don't say thank you. Sometimes he even sarcastically whisper-shouts, "You're welcome!" letting people know that they've forgotten to acknowledge that the door didn't open with special body sensors.
This always reminds me of when I was a teenager, and my mother gave me a small sheet of paper that said: "A smile and a thank you won't cost you a dime, but not doing either may cost you later." At the time, I thought it was a subtle fire-and-brimstone message for some ungrateful action I committed in my adolescence. What do you mean it will cost me later? Will the ghosts of Thanksgivings past come to haunt me, or will I be forever known as the frowning selfish girl?
But a decade later, the words have stuck with me, not only when people hold the door or elevator open for me, but in my professio
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The 1-3-5 Rule
Feel like you always have a hard time actually getting through your to-do list? We've come up with the perfect solution-the 1-3-5 Rule. Here's the gist: On any given day, assume that you can only accomplish one big thing, three medium things, and five small things, and narrow down your to-do list to those nine items.
Sound scary? Well, it is, at first. But like it or not, you only have so many hours in the day, and you're only going to get a finite number of things done. Forcing yourself to choose a 1-3-5 list means the things you accomplish will be the things you chose to do-rather than what happened to get done.
Of course, this can be flexible. If you spend much of your day in meetings, for example, you might need to revise this down a bit. If your position is one where each day brings lots of unexpected tasks, you might try leaving one medium and two small tasks blank in preparation for the last-minute requests from your boss.
But the point is, prioritization works. So,
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Talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael's iconic, over-sized red glasses were purchased out of necessity. She says that when she went to the optometrist, they only had red glasses, so that's just what she bought. Sally exudes confidence. "I knew from the day I was born what I wanted to do," she says. "I wanted to communicate, and I wanted to make a difference in the world."More on Shine: Sally Jessy Raphael reveals why she bought her famous red glasses
Sally says she grew up in a privileged family with very supportive parents; however, when her father became ill, her family fell on hard times. She says they slept in a car and learned to survive on what they had, but Sally pursued her dreams and went on to study theatre in college. She turned to radio and television when acting didn't work out. In her early career, she worked at 28 different TV and radio stations, often facing discrimination as a woman.After a guest appearance on "The Phil Donahue Show," Sally finally got her big break i
...Read More »by Marjorie Korn

Your boss flipped out; a coworker jacked your lunch, your job blows. So after happy hour, you Twitter-bitch. And then you remember: Your boss follows you. JSMN.
Delete the Evidence.
If your manager doesn't refresh her feed 24/7, she may not have read it. The next day: "Check your company's social-media policy," says Deanna Zandt, author of Share This!, to find out if you're even allowed to tweet about work. The fine print is a slog, but if your boss saw your post, you'll know if you broke a rule or just pissed her off.
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Hide Out.
Hold back on the wiseass jokes, whiny updates about how you're so hungover -- or basically any 140-character outburst that might draw more attention to you over the next few weeks, Zandt advises. And don't try to overcompensate for your screwup with any bull-twit about how much you lurve your job.
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Deal.
If you used your company's handle or hashtag in...Read More »By Lauren Le Vine, REDBOOK.
With the advent of smart phones, it's now harder than ever to disconnect from work. You have your phone with you at all times, and your email is on your phone, so what's the big deal about glancing at it from time to time? Unfortunately, those "I'll just see if anyone emailed" checks turn into "I'll just quickly respond to this; it seems urgent" matters in no time flat. We already know that spending more and more time buried in a screen decreases your vagal tone, which in turn alters our ability to empathize and connect with one another. That chronic stress of being plugged in 24/7 has hazardous effects on your health, too.
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A recent study done by the Mayo Clinic showed that being under constant pressure effects our body's natural fight-or-flight response to threats, which is only supposed to be for short-term, immediate stressors. If the stress-response system persistently remains active, it disrupts the body's natural pr...Read More »

