Tidbits, titbits or tipbits?

Some days you get to work early, work nonstop, and head home without being able to figure out what you actually accomplished. Everything rushes past you in a blur of emails, meetings, and errands, and your to-do list remains more or less untouched. You’re always going to have a few workdays like this no matter what you do. But if they start happening regularly, you may have a problem on your hands.

If that’s the case, then it’s time to start looking for systematic failures, not just one-off fumbles. And ironically enough, the best place to look may be at your to-do list itself. What better record do you have of the tasks that you’re consistently failing to achieve? These are a few common to-do list items that might be getting in the way of your more important goals. If you can cut them out–even just for a day or two–you may be able to regain your footing.

What skill will we need for the future? This infographic perfectly illustrates the skills needed to succeed, including the most sought after jobs.

To effectively lead and motivate employees, you don’t need charisma and a grand vision. Research from Michigan State University (MSU) found that being a successful boss was more about mind over matter.

The study, published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, found that a leader’s focus, or mind-set, affects his or her own behavior, which in turn affects employees’ motivation. And the good news is that your mind-set can be changed to produce certain outcomes from workers, from creativity to loss prevention.

“Effective leadership may be based in part on a leader’s ability to recognize when a particular mental state is needed in their employees and to adapt their own mental state and their behaviors to elicit that mind-set,” says Brent Scott, MSU professor of management and study coauthor. “Part of the story here is that you don’t have to be Steve Jobs to be an effective leader. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing.”

Millennials are starting to take control in the workplace. There are now more than 75 million millennials in the workforce, more than baby boomers (just shy of 75 million) and Gen Xers (66 million). Now entering their late 20s and early 30s, the oldest members of the generation are starting to take more leadership positions in major organizations.

Despite the fact that millennials are sporting one of the lowest rates of entrepreneurship in 25 years, 60% see themselves as entrepreneurs, and 90% recognize entrepreneurship as a mindset.

Combined with their natural tendencies toward independent thought and mild to moderate anti-establishment vibes, this is making millennials a strong force of direction and leadership—and an even stronger one to come in the next several years.

First-time managers often ask themselves how to develop a leadership style that suits them: “Who should I model myself after? What kind of leader should I be?” It’s great to think critically about your approach to managing others, particularly when you’re new to it, but these questions won’t exactly help you.

That’s because they assume that leadership is something you try on and show off, a “style” that’s curated and intentional. But especially in the beginning, your style will be based far less on mirroring others’ habits and behaviors and far more on instinct and intuition. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

You don’t need to be told why it matters to be transparent and honest at work–that much is a given. So is the overall usefulness of expressing yourself clearly, confidently, and with as few filler words as possible. But in the effort to do that, many of us fall back on common expressions that might sound totally fine in social situations but can do some quiet damage in the workplace. One of them is “I’m sorry.” Another is “to be honest.”

The latter turn of phrase–and versions of it, like “honestly,” “frankly,” “if I can be honest with you,” or “let me be frank”–is easy to resort to when you want to cut through the crap, come clean, or offer your unvarnished opinion. But these expressions also tend to attach themselves to–and subtly encourage–certain messages that are either better left unsaid or ought to be rephrased. Here are times when “to be honest” can make you sound less authoritative around the office.

You can feel it start to happen–at first slowly, then all at once. You get a little bit tired and before you know it, you’re mindlessly scrolling your Facebook feed. You’re distracted and spent–you just can’t handle another minute of real work. You’ve hit the mid-afternoon slump.

“Most of us are sitting all day, staring at a computer screen highly focused… you can’t sustain that for long,” says internist Lorraine Maita, MD, author of How To Live Younger. “At about 3:00 or 4:00 p.m., your cortisol starts to drop.”

While our automatic reaction might be to reach for a bag of Sun Chips and watch a random YouTube clip,  those behaviors will only prolong the slump. You will be better off if you try to reset your body and mind to help you regain focus.  Maita recommends a number of activities, including listening to upbeat music or breathing deeply for a few minutes, to re-energize the body. Below are few more examples of how to get your focus back.

Getting smart people into your company is hard enough. Turning them all into great collaborators and risk-takers is even harder. Even on the most high-performing teams, coworkers don’t just openly share feedback and challenge each others’ ideas all on their own–managers need to create a culture that encourages this. And that usually requires building your team’s collective emotional intelligence. Here are a few straightforward (and entirely low-tech ways) to get started.

The world's largest retailer said Wednesday it's working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items from laundry detergent to Legos for voice shopping through Google Assistant. The capability will be available in late September. It's Google's biggest retail partnership — and the most personalized shopping experience it offers — as it tries to broaden the reach of its voice-activated assistant Home speaker. And it underscores Walmart's drive to compete in an area dominated by Amazon's Alexa-powered Echo device.

We all know that the work landscape is changing. The jobs that will be in demand are shifting as more are automated by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots. Teams are becoming more disparate and globalization has added new collaboration challenges. At the same time, more millennials are taking on management roles, and even our work spaces will undergo changes between now and 2025.

“Change will be happening so quickly that 50% of the occupations that exist today will not exist 10 years from now. So we’re going to be living in an environment that is extremely adaptable and changing all the time,” says Liz Bentley, the founder of Liz Bentley Associates, a leadership development consulting firm.