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Microstressors are small pressures that seem like mere bumps in the road—a vague, worrying text from your teen while you’re in a meeting, the sight of a colleague who always wants to vent to you, or having to tell your team that the project they’ve been grinding long hours on has been scrapped. But these microstressors aren’t as harmless as they seem. Because they’re so small and brief, they don’t trigger the normal stress response in our brains to help us cope; instead, microstress embeds itself in our minds and accrues over time. The long-term impact of this buildup is debilitating: It saps our energy, damages our physical and emotional health, and contributes to a decline in our overall well-being. Through hundreds of interviews with high performers from 30 global companies, authors Rob Cross and Karen Dillon have uncovered the science behind microstress, where it comes from, and how our bodies respond to it. They share the most common sources of microstress so that you can learn to recognize how they arise in your life, and include a downloadable diagnostic to help you identify which of the 14 sources of microstress have the greatest impact on you. Finally, they offer strategies to push back on microstress. These include everything from learning how to say no to small asks, to being aware of the microstress we could cause others, to keeping perspective so you can rise above. Most important, Cross and Dillon’s research suggests that people with more diverse connections with others have rich, multi dimensional lives that inoculate them to microstress’s effects. INSET: What's Driving Your Microstress?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of "microstress" and its impact on individuals' well-being. Microstress refers to the accumulation of small stresses from everyday interactions that may go unnoticed but have a significant effect on individuals. The article identifies 14 sources of microstress, categorized into three groups: those that drain capacity, those that deplete emotional reserves, and those that challenge identity. It highlights that microstress affects both personal and professional lives, with certain groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, experiencing higher levels of stress. The article suggests practical strategies for managing microstress, including intentional interactions and a five-step plan to reduce microstress. It emphasizes the importance of addressing one microstress per week to build confidence and cultivating a resilience network of diverse individuals for support. The article also recommends engaging in activities outside of work and home to create a well-rounded life that helps put microstress in perspective. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses what happens to the atoms in living beings when they die. The atoms themselves do not disappear, but rather rearrange in less ordered ways through decay and entropy. Atoms can become parts of other molecules, break down, and combine again. For example, carbon atoms from a potato can be broken down and absorbed by the body, and then excreted and composted, eventually helping something else grow. The article also explores the age of atoms, with hydrogen atoms being around 13.8 billion years old and most other atoms being at least 4.6 billion years old. The lifespan of particles such as neutrons, electrons, and protons is also discussed, with some potentially being immortal or having extremely long lifespans. The article concludes that atomic particles are not lost but rather recycled. Additionally, the article briefly touches on the perception of time passing more quickly as people age, discussing various biological hypotheses and theories on the subject. [Extracted from the article]

Rita spends two hours of her early evening alerting her team and working on the request. Rita's team logs 20 hours after work to have materials ready the next morning. The moment you're asked to handle a major surge of work, renegotiate other work demands. And surges at home inevitably create stress at work - either because you have to work harder or because you need to manage disparate demands of work and home life. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the topic of burnout in organizations and its impact on productivity and employee well-being. The authors argue that burnout is primarily driven by the increase in collaborative demands, rather than overall workload. They suggest four strategies that leaders can implement to reduce microstress and improve the working environment, including reducing structural complexity, streamlining workflows, managing team growth, and fostering a sense of purpose. The authors emphasize the importance of addressing these issues to mitigate the negative effects of burnout on individuals and teams. The article also provides brief biographical information about the authors, Karen Dillon and Martin Reeves, who have written books on business and personal development. [Extracted from the article]

Jeremy Kasler, founder and CEO of CaskX, found himself stuck in Australia during the pandemic, which gave him the opportunity to reflect on his life and make changes. He decided to prioritize work-life balance and moved his company's base to Los Angeles. Kasler believes that this shift has had a positive impact on his personal life and the productivity and happiness of his team. The article emphasizes the importance of considering long-term happiness and making deliberate changes to achieve it. [Extracted from the article]

With emerging-market giants such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China experiencing slowdowns, investors, entrepreneurs, and multinationals are looking elsewhere. They’ve been eyeing frontier economies such as Nigeria and Pakistan with great interest—and enormous trepidation. Can one find serious growth opportunities amid extreme poverty and a lack of infrastructure and institutions? The answer, the authors argue, is yes. The key lies in market-creating innovations: products and services that speak to unmet local needs, create local jobs, and scale up quickly. Examples include MicroEnsure, which has made insurance affordable for 56 million people in emerging economies, and Galanz, which has brought microwave ovens to millions of Chinese consumers previously considered too poor to buy such an appliance. What’s more, the essentials of development can be “pulled in” by market-creating innovators— and over time, governments and financial institutions tend to offer their support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create offerings that people truly want to buy, firms instead need to home in on the job the customer is trying to get done. Some jobs are little (pass the time); some are big (find a more fulfilling career). When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, we’ll hire it again. If it does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look for something else to solve the problem. Jobs are multifaceted. They’re never simply about function; they have powerful social and emotional dimensions. And the circumstances in which customers try to do them are more critical than any buyer characteristics. Consider the experiences of condo developers targeting retirees who wanted to downsize their homes. Sales were weak until the developers realized their business was not construction but transitioning lives. Instead of adding more features to the condos, they created services assisting buyers with the move and with their decisions about what to keep and to discard. Sales took off. The key to successful innovation is identifying jobs that are poorly performed in customers’ lives and then designing products, experiences, and processes around those jobs. INSETS: Identifying Jobs to Be Done;Doing Jobs for B2B Customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Marines are looking for the few, the proud -- people who can scale walls, strike hard with lightning speed, and make life-or-death decisions in the heat of battle [...]

Lafley, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, is regarded as one of the most successful chief executives in recent history. But like everyone else, he’s had his share of mistakes. Politicians and winning sports teams draw their biggest lessons from their toughest losses, he says, and the same has been true for him. P&G learned more from its failed new brands and products than from its successes. Among Lafley’s favorite examples is the color-safe, low-temperature bleach that the company test-launched in the 1980s under the brand name Vibrant. P&G chose Portland, Maine, as the test market, hoping to escape notice from Clorox, which was headquartered in Oakland, California. But Clorox got wind of the plan in time to distribute free gallons of Clorox bleach to every household in Portland, making all P&G’s advertising dollars, sampling, and couponing irrelevant. “Game, set, match to Clorox,” Lafley says. But the good technology behind Vibrant remained, and when Clorox tried to enter the laundry detergent business a few years later, P&G modified that technology to create Tide with Bleach, which grew into a business worth more than half a billion dollars. Lafley also talks about systematically analyzing 30 years’ worth of failed acquisitions to uncover five root causes for their lack of success: no winning strategic reason for the acquisition; integrating poorly or too slowly; expecting synergies that didn’t materialize; incompatible cultures; and company leaders who “couldn’t play together in the same sandbox.” That analysis led to changes that informed P&G’s highly successful acquisition of Gillette in 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raj Gupta had led the specialty chemical company Rohm and Haas without drama for years when some of its most important shareholders asked him to orchestrate its sale. Surprised but determined to do his best for the company, in July 2008 he arranged an $18 billion deal with competitor Dow Chemical, which the industry press called the "deal of the century." But Dow was relying on cash from a planned joint venture of its own with Kuwait Petroleum, and when the stock market plummeted, the joint venture--and Dow's financing--fell through. Then things got really interesting. Would Dow try to walk away from the deal? Could Rohm and Haas insist that it go through in spite of the unforeseen global meltdown? How airtight was that agreement? Gupta, who learned he had cancer in the midst of all this, had to find a way through the complicated financial and economic issues. In this first person account he talks about the most difficult deliverable ever asked of him--seeing through the sale of his company as the world economy was collapsing. INSET: How Did the Deal Work Out for Dow?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A personal narrative is presented which examines the author's experience of building an international network of business enterprises called Reckitt Benckiser company.

Three entrepreneurs compare notes on surviving tough times, making smart decisions, and knowing when to walk away. For many company owners, the best that can be said of 2002 is [...]

Best of breeders Some people think business incubators exist only to nurture high-tech companies. Others see them as mere sources of cheap office space. Wrong on both counts, says Dinah [...]

At a Glance Karen Dillon, 38 Arlington, Mass. Problem: The symptoms of my premenstrual syndrome, like headaches and irritability, were so severe they interfered with my daily life. Obstacle: My […]

The article discusses how several workplace disagreements are caused from several sources including different agendas, perceptions and personal styles and also offers suggestions including separating emotions from outcome, identifying conflict and not making it personal to manage conflicts.