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In an age of information technology where we have a plethora of gadgets for this and that, a new study has revealed that more people than ever are working overtime.

This new trend is driven by employer purchased phones and laptops, which leave employees feeling pressured to remain on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Things are getting so serious that the study by the Australian Institute has created a new term: Time Pollution.

Time pollution
The Australian Institute study has shown that the line between personal time and work time is becoming more and more blurred, leading to a phenomenon it dubs ‘time pollution.’

According to the Institute, time pollution occurs when a worker’s personal time is eaten up or ‘polluted’ with work demands, driven by the creation of flexible work hours.

Workers on call 24/7
Despite our long-held notion of a 40 hour nine to five working week, many employees are now finding themselves on call 24/7.

As the demands of work and employer expectations rise, employees spend more time working from home in addition to the office.

The main culprits of time pollution and round the clock work hours are bosses themselves. The Australian Institute study found employees provided with  laptops or smartphones by their bosses  were more likely to feel they were constantly on call – often producing devastating effects on their health.

In fact, the study found that more than 6.8 million Australians are working during their personal hours.

Work life intrudes on personal life
One of the advantages of gadgets like smartphones is that they allow you to access emails anywhere, anytime.

The biggest disadvantage, of course, is that means you can access your work emails during your private time.

Thanks to technology, the line between work hours and personal hours is extremely blurred. We no longer start and finish at a set time or only have access to work information while in the office.

Technology now allows us to work from home or other remote destinations – which means we are more likely to work  in personal settings.

While the ability to work from home is certainly advantageous for some, for others it means always being at work.  It can therefore become difficult for employees  to distinguish between being at work and being at home.

The distraction of technology
Today’s technologies are often addictive and distracting. Email, SMS and phone calls, not to mention Facebook and Twitter, can make it more difficult for us to focus on our work, regardless of whether we’re working from home or in the office.

We’re regularly required to answer emails immediately regardless of the time of day, while the need to check our friends’ Facebook status can prove an addiction all of its own.

At no point in recent history has there been so many distractions fighting for a worker’s attention. This could be a primary reason why many employees find themselves working overtime at home in order to ‘catch up’ on work left unfinished during work hours.

Email over family
According to a study by Cambridge University, family life is taking a backseat to email and social media.

Gone are the days of family dinners to catch up on the family gossip – these days emails, SMS and status updates are used to keep family in the loop.

As a result, family members spend too much time each day catching up on personal emails and social media, distracting them from valuable family time.

Whether we like it or not, more of us are spending more time at work (unpaid) even when we’re at home. This not only impacts on our health but our social wellbeing too.

While it can be difficult to ‘switch off’ from work, especially if you’ve got a company phone and laptop, it’s important to do so for your physical, mental and social health.

So next time you find yourself checking your work email on a weekend, stop and tell yourself you’ll deal with it on Monday. You’ll be glad you did.

Written by Andrew Talati

Given the crazy, hectic lives most of us now lead, we all need some strategies to make life more enjoyable and less stressful.

Here’s some ideas to keep you on track:

1. Write a to list and prioritise
With so many tasks to do in our everyday lives, it’s easy to become overwhelmed.

A great way to manage this ever expanding list is to write it down and prioritise from 1 to 4 – where one is very urgent and very important and 4 is non-urgent and not important.

If you’re having difficulty trying to pigeonhole a particular task or everything seems very important and very urgent, then ask yourself, ” If I only had one day to achieve everything, what would really need to be done first?”  Then put those top priorities on your level 1 list.

2.Identify the noise
Quite often we get easily distracted  by things that seem important in our lives but can easily be downgraded to remove stress and anxiety.

This includes constantly checking e-mails, updating our social media status or other trivial tasks that consume a lot of our time but make little difference to our quality of life.

Try turning off the computer, phone or iPad for a while.  Use your extra time to relax by reading a book or listening to music.

Alternatively, if you’re at work, try to resist the temptation to hit the send and receive button on your e-mails. Multitasking has been scientifically proven to be less productive so concentrate on the task at hand instead and extra minutes will magically appear in your day.

3.Use the 80/20 rule
The universal concept that 80% of what you achieve comes from only 20% of what you are doing seems to hold well for both work and personal tasks.

Basically that means most of us spend 80% of our time on stuff that really doesn’t matter.

Relating it back to our 1 – 4 task list, we spend most of our time on tasks we think are of low importance but urgent.

4. Take time out
We’ve become working machines.

We rarely down tools during the day, work through our lunch break or, even worse, eat our lunch in front of our computers.

It appears as if we’re being more productive, but we’re not.  Taking a break every hour – whether it’s getting up to grab a glass of water from the kitchen or going for a lunchtime walk – gives our brains an opportunity to relax and recharge.

In the long-term, high-volume working is far less productive. We become mentally fatigued, lose concentration and become more easily distracted. There’s even even a growing body of evidence that suggests that working in excess of 8 to 10 hours per day causes our level of coherence, concentration and focus to deteriorate proportionately for each additional hour we spend at work.  Overwork impairs our behaviour. The resulting mental fatigue can be likened to the effects of alcohol consumption.

5. Work to live not live to work
No matter how fantastic your job may be, never forget it only represents one part of your life.

Humans are social beings. We need to regularly interact in a social environment and develop nurturing relationships with our friends and family.

Set aside time to catch up with friends and family every week. You rarely hear of people on their deathbed expressing regret at not having spent more time at work.

On the contrary, when we reflect on our quality of life we reflect on our relationships and how they enrich us. We spend less time reflecting on how great we feel about a hard-earned promotion for extra income or a new job title.

Written by Andrew Talati

A few years ago a book was released called “The Secret.” It spawned a movie by the same name.

The underlining premise was to think about what you wanted and you would receive. However, the missing ingredient was that you must also “do.”

The notion behind “The Secret” was  based on the laws of attraction. It claimed that the projection of your underlying thoughts can influence and determine future or present events.

The book uses the term “universe” to embody what we cannot quantify, what we are project our thoughts onto and what we deliver or how we determine our outcomes.

While  quantum physics is only starting to quantify how changes in  molecular structure at the sub atomic level can influence surrounding elements, we can still apply this theory to something that we can comprehend and understand.

It’s all very well to say: “One day I want to be rich or win the lottery” and expect that the next day that your numbers come up. What you really need to change is your underlying thought patterns. You must reprogram yourself for success.

It’s all about the thoughts that you project on an ongoing basis, whether at a conscious or subconscious level. Once thought of as hippie mumbo-jumbo, the idea is slowly gaining acceptance and momentum in the mainstream.

Lately, the business world has starting applying the term “the universe” to business processes.

Even motivational speakers like Anthony Robbins are saying it’s all very well to gain information – we must still act upon it.

We can believe in abundance, or that there are adequate resources in the universe for everyone to receive everything they want. Yet, if we don’t take the necessary steps to tap into abundance it will elude us.

So, to “do” is to focus on all the positive stuff and to create a foundation that predisposes you to all the good things happening. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet that will miraculously change your life. Rather, you should pursue a  positive reinforcement of your thoughts and actions over days, weeks, months or even years.

It’s about all the experiences we have on the way to achieving our goals.  The necessary potholes on the road to success only make our achievement all the sweeter.

Written by Andrew Talati

Cadel Evans Tour de France win was an amazing effort from a truly inspirational person. It’s also a great story that highlights the importance of never losing sight of your goals.

After coming overall second in the 2007 and 2008 Tour de France by tiny margins (23 seconds and 58 seconds respectively), even Cadel admits most people had written him off.

Yet his refusal to give up, no matter how extreme the situation, shows us all that we, too, can be triumphant when we focus on our goals. I like the saying:
perserverance overides resistancee.

It was a do or die moment. Cadel faced a seemingly insurmountable task that could have lost him the race. After three failed attempts at the Tour de France, and with only the narrowest of losing margins, it would have been quite easy to give up.

But this was moment that Cadel’s fighting spirit, self belief and extraordinarily strong-minded determination allowed him to overcome a very desperate situation and excel.

We all have our personal battles, small or large. However, we can climb those personal mountains if we truly believe in our abilities and the possibility of success.

Too often our limiting beliefs stop us from achieving levels of greatness, even if the challenge is as small as making simple changes to our diet to reduce the chances of diabetes or cardio vascular disease.

I really like the idea of using Cadel’s “never give up” philosophy as a tool to believing in ourselves.

Life can be as wonderful and awesome as you make it. Cadel’s win is testimony to the fact that years of heartache, anguish, frustration and anxiety can lead to a wonderful crescendo of happiness and fulfilment.

Written by Andrew Talati

The roller coaster style diet where you totally deprive yourself of all enjoyable foods is not sustainable over the long-term and will ultimately lead to failure.

Like anything in life, from spending money on little luxuries to indulging in yummy food including the usual suspects such as ice cream or chocolate, it’s okay to treat yourself every now and again. However, once you’ve crossed that line from occasional treating to consuming these sugary/fatty foods on a more frequent basis, then you start going into energy surplus.

If you’re trying to lose weight by removing all the indulgent food and beverages from your diet you will tend to consume this type of food excessively once you reach your goal, if you haven’t already given up your diet because it’s just too hard.

It’s all about balance and control, that is having lots of fruit and vegetables, lean meat and cereals with the occasional treat.

I like the traffic light labeling system as it provides a good summary of what we should be aiming for in regards to moderation. ‘Green’ foods are the healthiest choices with and should be a big part of our diet. ‘Amber’ foods are a less healthy choice that we need to consume in moderation, while ‘red’ foods are, not surprisingly, the most unhealthy food choices and we really need to minimise or reduce consumption of these.

When eating, and especially when you’re on a diet, choose foods that have moderate levels of calories, sugar, fat, saturated fat and salt but make sure you give yourself treats along the way, and enjoy!