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Showing posts from February, 2012

Volunteer Employees

Read today from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness. PC [Production Capacity] work is treating employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best part--their hearts and minds.   The people I admire most in my working experience have been the ones who were excited about the work that they were doing. They treated their employment as more than just drudgery to be finished with each day, but as a challenge to be grappled with and enjoyed. In this quote, Covey seems to be getting at the right way to treat people so that they can flourish in that sort of work environment.

Sitting or Standing at Work

I've read some stuff about the negative effects of sitting for prolonged periods of time. As a consequence, I've been experimenting with standing more at work when the task will permit it. I've been enjoying it. I think the next step to make that work even better would be to get a desk that can quickly raise or lower. (The glacial speed movements of some electric raise/lower desks would discourage much use.) Here are some resources I've found interesting. NY Times article is a good summary This piece from Exercise and Sport Science Reviews is co-sponsored by Steelcase, the furniture makers, so I must take it with a grain of salt, but it recommends standing as an activity that should be categorized as superior to sitting, whereas they have been both lumped together as "sedentary" in previous literature.  An abstract with says standing or sitting on a therapy ball are about the same, and both more active than sitting in a chair.  This survey of papers s