Today I came across an article ( 6 Phrases Secretly Sabotaging Your Team's Productivity ) with a bit of an odd mix of information, but all of it was really good. Opening things, Karla Cook covers some stats regarding productivity killers for workers. This is based on a study conducted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and their American Time Use Survey completed for 2015 . One of the things that I liked about the information from this study is that it quantifies some truths that we all know.
Late December and early January have turned out to be very busy, so my plans to put together a post outlining my 2017 reading list has been languishing on my to-do list. No longer though as I have finally found a few minutes to stop and put together the list. Why did I bother to put together a list for the upcoming year especially when I almost always have a book "in progress" at any given time? It was mainly driven by the suggestions on goal-setting that I recently wrote about. One of those tips was putting your goals in writing, so I did that with regard to what I hoped to read in 2017.
Earlier this summer I ran across an article in the Journal of Accountancy about gamification and how it can be used to help engage Millenials in the workforce. I thought it was an interesting take on the concept of gamification, which is a topic I have been keeping my eye on for years. Although the article included some examples that leaned very heavily on game type activities, my interest lies more in the area of gamification being the "psychology of game design" for purposes of improving performance, both personal and for an organization.