This is #2 out of 25 Tips to Become More Productive and Happy at Work.

Today we’ll look at this this suggestion:

Accept That You’ll Never Finish Your Task List. For perfectionists and overachievers this is as frustrating as a greyhound forever chasing the mechanical bunny around the track. Get off that track. Just make sure you work on your most important stuff first. Let the fluff slide, not your priorities.

If you didn’t waste valuable time going down little roads to nowhere, pursuing activities that just don’t really matter, you would have more free time.  Then you would be able to say what ButterBeeHappy user mrsdonnad says in her happy thoughts: I’m enjoying “me” time.  Maybe like garyk, you would feel “gratefuller for waking up feeling calm,” because you’d accomplish your greatest priorities without allowing insignificant details to gnaw away at your mind.

Don’t forget to click on the picture above to read the cute story about that to-do list!

-MJ

I found an article called “25 Tips to Become More Productive and Happy at Work” and decided to go through the tips one by one to see if they work for me.

Throughout the month of September I will chronicle this experiment right here, in this blog.   Are you ready for the first tip?  Here it is:

Power Question. Keep a question like this at your desk to help you stay focused: “Am I making the most of my time right now?” or “Is this the most productive use of my time?”

I have to ask myself questions like that all the time, because I tend to multitask too much and lose track of what’s most important.  But would spending .5 seconds every 5 minutes or so re-reading such a question actually make me more productive, and therefore, more happy?

What if you had to complete a task that, in your opinion, was a total waste of time?  Wouldn’t asking yourself that question frustrate you?

I’ll tell you what would make me feel good: instead of a power question at my desk, I would place a sign reading, “What you do is important.”  Feeling important and believing that we matter to the people around us is vital to our happiness and mental health (Dale Carnegie expresses this in his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People“), and may have a more positive direct impact on our emotional well-being than constantly questioning each of our jobs and tasks.

-MJ

Although some people may spend part of the Labor Day weekend complaining about their bosses or about job burnout, most Americans are satisfied with their jobs, a new University of Chicago study shows.

The survey found that job satisfaction increases with age, with workers over 65 among the most satisfied. The study shows that 86 percent of the people interviewed between 1972 and 2006 said they were satisfied at their jobs, with 48 percent saying they were very satisfied. Only four percent reported being very dissatisfied.

In addition to older workers, those with more education, those earning more money, and workers in the South Central states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississipi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee were the most satisfied. Blacks, Hispanics and people doing unskilled labor were the least happy, according to the report “Job Satisfaction in America: Trends and Socio-Demographic Correlates” by Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Center at the University of Chicago.

Click here for the full article.

People looking for jobs that bring satisfaction and happiness should concentrate on professions that focus primarily on serving other people, according to a new report from the University of Chicago, which found clergy to be the happiest and most satisfied of American workers.

“The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching, and protecting others and creative pursuits,” said Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey (GSS) at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The survey is the most comprehensive of its kind to explore satisfaction and happiness among American workers. The GSS asks a large variety of questions of a representative sample of Americans in face-to-face interviews. In the 1988 to 2006 GSS surveys, interviewers asked people how satisfied they were with their jobs. The interviewers also asked them about their general level of happiness and Smith correlated those general happiness findings with the jobs people held. People’s feelings about their work usually have a significant impact on their happiness, he said.

Click here for the full article.