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5 Habits to Supercharge Team Productivity

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Lebron James had a historic, MVP-level performance in the 2017 NBA Finals, but in the end, his team lost the championship.

At work, we sometimes get caught up analyzing individual performances when the metric that really matters is the overall team productivity. As the traditional silos quickly disappear, our day-to-day work has become a cross-functional, team sport.

Vince Lombardi, the famous NFL football coach, summed up what makes a successful team: “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Managing a group of diverse personalities and skill sets can be daunting, let alone trying to figure out how to set everyone up for combined success. Luckily, we’ve compiled several research studies with insights that your team can incorporate to help them jell and improve their productivity:

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The Biology Behind Productivity

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Superb time-management skills are worthless when you’re feeling unmotivated, distracted or tired at work. Until robots take over our day-to-day workloads, our productivity is directly linked to our mental and physical well-being.

biology of productivity

via GIPHY

The expectation at work to remain competent, motivated and attentive for the entire workday puts a huge strain on our biological resources. Thankfully modern science has given us a better understanding of how our bodies work, which can help us leverage our physiology to work smarter.

By implementing a few biological disciplines, you’ll be able to work with your body and avoid unproductive behaviors like impulsivity, sleep deprivation, and stress.

Here are some hacks based on the biology of productivity that can help you and your team perform at their best:

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7 Unconventional Co-Working Spaces That Are Raising Eyebrows

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If you thought it was too early for the co-working industry to experience disruption, think again.

unconventional-co-working-spaces

A new breed of co-working spaces is emerging focusing first and foremost on the tenants’ interests, needs, and values. Each space is built around one core idea, and it’s meant to attract tenants who align with its single-minded purpose, creating a work environment where everyone in the building shares a common bond.

For example, if your startup cares about sustainability, you can find co-working spaces that are certified green and all of the tenants have a similar desire to help the environment.

This personalization enables you to integrate your lifestyle with your work style and plug into a like-minded community. When you work alongside people that share a similar passion, it creates an instant camaraderie and support system that is hard to find in the traditional co-working spaces due to their size and diverse priorities.

Here are seven unconventional co-working spaces pioneering a work movement that focuses on people first:

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Managing a Remote Team – A Leader’s 7-Step To-Do List

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Managing a remote team is about employee empowerment, not oversight.

Remote employees that excel are self-motivated, reliable and results-driven. As a manager, your job is to create a supportive environment that encourages employees to manage their own projects so you can focus on building a culture of trust and communication.

managing-a-remote-team

Here are seven things a remote leader must have to set their team up for success:

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Work From Home: How to Create a Home Office That Works for You

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If you’re one of the lucky software engineers working at Google, you get to design your own workspace. And since everything the company does is done to increase productivity, you can bet this freedom to dictate how and where you work isn’t all just for fun.

You may not be a Googler, but if you’re lucky enough to work from home, you have the ability to customize your office and then some. Everything is in your hands, and you can set things up for maximum personal productivity.

While this degree of freedom can be empowering, it can also be overwhelming, especially when you consider that your performance depends on it. So here are some steps to help you out when customizing your home office to suit your style.

Use Your Home’s Limitations to Your Advantage

Unless you’re in the market for a new house, you’ll be limited by the square meters and style of your home. However, working within certain confinements can lead to surprising results.

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Can Gaming at Work Increase Productivity?

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I Done This helps you and your team increase productivity

[Source]

Games tap into our inner desire to challenge ourselves. We love the thrill of scoring points and getting to the next level.

But games don’t always have to be a distraction from our everyday lives—they can actually make us more productive when used properly. Using a gamification strategy, you can help your employees get more done at work.

We’ve used psychologist Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory to explain how games can help your employees perform better. The theory includes three variables—expectancy, instrumentality, and valence—that describe how motivated employees are to do their job.

We broke down these three variables to help you design a gamification strategy that helps motivate your employees—instead of distracting them.

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When Is It Time to Move to a Co-Working Space

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Google, Mattel, Apple, Disney and Harley-Davidson all have something in common: they started in someone’s garage.

Today, technology disguises the fact that your startup is operating out of your house, which buys you time before you need to start thinking about office space. You can hire a virtual receptionist, employ a remote workforce and implement enterprise-powered tools to run your business like an established company.

co-working space
This is an amazing time for startups to grow without worrying about burning through cash for rent and equipment. But for many, there comes a point when the work-from-home lifestyle begins to stunt progress. There is no formula based on headcount or revenue to determine when you should consider a change, but there are a few telltale signs.

Here are three indications that it’s time to consider moving your team into a co-working space.

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When Notifications in the Workplace Can Increase Productivity

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increase-productivity

A few years ago you might have been scolded by your boss for goofing off at work. Nowadays smartphone usage seems to have become an accepted practice in the always-connected workplace. Whether it’s through two-factor authentication verification codes or JIRA SMS notifications, texts and push notifications have become a standard part of your workflow.

Even with the broadening acceptance of messaging and smartphone usage at work, the impact of this shift on one’s productivity is still unclear. Constant pings may offer essential info, or they can overwhelm you and reduce your efficiency. These outcomes surely differ by industry and personal preference, but it is up to you to figure out if this new notification paradigm is truly helping you get more done.

In this article we’ll examine how a notification-heavy workflow can impact and increase productivity, as well as learn about some of the most innovative implementations of text-improved workflows from platforms such as JIRA and RingCaptcha.

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Humor in the Workplace: What’s Funny or Not?

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Sending great gifs to your co-workers gives you more than just a laugh.

Humor in the workplace benefits:

Creating an office culture of humor can help you cultivate all these benefits. Keep in mind that humor can also go sideways fairly quickly, too. The wrong type of funny can lead to serious HR problems—there’s a thin line between goofy and unprofessional or between delightful and inappropriate.

Humor in the Workplace

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You want your company to be a fun place to work, but you also want to make sure that it’s fun for everyone.

Here’s our guide on how to improve office humor that makes everyone feel included and unified.

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3 Stages of Successful Team Bonding

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3 stages of team bondingYour team won’t stay together just because they work together. If you don’t give your team a chance to bond, you’ll spend more time handling workplace drama and politics instead of getting work done. You can use team bonding activities to encourage cooperation outside of the office and strengthen workplace bonds.

Team building helps everyone get to know and trust their fellow coworkers, but you don’t build trust overnight. Your team goes through gradual stages as they grow from a collection of strangers to efficient collaborators. Psychologist Bruce Tuckman’s team building model describes three stages — forming, norming, and performing—to show how teams can become more united over time.

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