The buzz of creativity
If creativity had a soundtrack, what would it be? One study suggests that it probably the busy hum of activity, neither too loud nor too quiet. A 2012 study found that subjects ask to perform a creative task generated more and better ideas when sound levels were around 70 decibels, similar to the buzz of café or restaurant. In contrast, quieter conditions, more like a library, produced fewer creative solutions and louder conditions, more like a busy city street, also inhibited creativity.
Says lead researcher Ravi Mehta, professor of business administration at the University of Illinois, “An increased level of distraction makes you think ‘out-of-the-box’ – what we call abstract thinking or abstract processing, which is a hallmark of increased creativity.”
He adds, “But when you start to go beyond that moderate level of noise what happens is that distraction becomes so huge that it really starts affecting the thought process.”
Source: “Too much, too little noise turns off consumers, creativity,” news.illinois.edu
Look before you leap into college
A survey of community and technical college students found they were significantly less stressed about finances than their counterparts who attended for-profit schools. Nearly one in three graduates of for-profit colleges said the high costs of school weren’t worth it, according to a 2014 report by the non-profit research group Public Agenda.
One reason why is the difference in debt loads. A 2012 Senate investigation found that 96 percent of students at for-profit schools took out loans—a rate more than seven times that of students at technical and community colleges!
Many students don’t know the vast cost differences between colleges before enrolling. Only 39 percent of students at for-profit schools looked into more than one institution before attending, and only 20 percent considered a not-for-profit school before signing up for classes, Public Agenda found.
Want to compare colleges by cost, size, awards, and other criteria? Try the White House’s College Scorecard: Whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/college-score-card.
Sources: Publicagenda.org,
Whitehouse.gov
A staple crop of career sites
The web can be a maze of information about job hunting and do-and-don’t advice, some of it contradictory. Here are a few good sites to begin your job search:
Consider this one an obligatory stop early in your job search. Indeed collects job listings from those “living fossils” of the Internet, CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com, as well as hundreds of other smaller job sites.
Rather than sifting through sites one at a time, you can do it all with a simple search on Indeed and hone your results by salary, title, and location.
The outlook here is that a career is a process, not a destination. Dedicated to “the millions of people who have had their personal lives disrupted by the loss of a job,” Job-Hunt guides jobseekers back on track. Here you’ll find advice on surviving a layoff, building a résumé, networking, succeeding in an interview, and other challenges along the way.
The indispensable social networking site for all things career, LinkedIn is where a majority of big employers begin their talent-scouting. Create a professional profile and start making valuable connections here.
Lifehacker is an eclectic advice aggregator that is bursting with ideas on lowering stress, increasing productivity, and innovative fixes – “life hacks” – to tricky problems. This is the place to find a surprising shortcut you never knew you needed.
Happy workers, happy company
Besides the obvious health and quality-of-life benefits of happiness for employees, job satisfaction produces tangible returns for companies, too.
A study by risk management firm Towers Watson found that companies with high levels of employee “engagement”—that rightful sense of worth, belonging, and importance—saw a 19.2 percent increase in operating income.
Companies with low levels of employee engagement, on the other hand, saw a
32.7 percent decline in operating income.
The takeaway? Something good bosses already know: Positivity boosts productivity.