Office Plants to Up Your Productivity This Winter


@domenicoloia

Winter is officially here, but it's only getting started. With these short days, long nights, and frosty temperatures can come some seasonal sadness. A great way to fight that is to bring some nature indoors! Even if you have a home full of plants, spending hours in your office everyday can leave you missing mother nature. There's no good reason to keep plants out of the office! They improve your mood, productivity, and air quality. Here are some of the best plants to try out in your office or at your desk!

Spider Plant

Kremp

A versatile plant that is hardy enough to survive varied light, water, and temperature conditions. They thrive in partial sun and shade so windowless or not you can have a green companion. Just pop it in a pot with sufficient drainage and give it a little water once you see it's soil is dry. These do look best in hanging pots but they can sit on a desk. They come in a lot of different sizes so no matter your office's size you'll find the right fit.

Snake Plant

SydneyPlants

A nice sturdy plant, if you can find a small one it can work for any desk. It stands straight upright so it won't be growing all over your papers but will still provide plenty of beautiful greenery. This can handle some drought as well so it is a great fit for people who aren't the best at remembering to keep things watered.

Pothos

plantscape

A great plant for office, home, bathroom, anywhere! It's very forgiving with light conditions and won't get upset if you forget to water it once in awhile. It will grow full and long but don't worry too much about the roots because it likes to be a little rootbound. These are a great plant because of the variety of verigations and because they are great air cleaners.

Peace Lily

Conversational

A tropical plant that has gotten used to tree's stealing all of the sunlight, this plant is perfectly adapted to the shade. They like water so keep them moist, especially if you want to keep them flowering! The flowers bring cheer in the heart of winter and they are one of the best plants for cleaning toxins from the air.

Bamboo

smallofficeideas

Low and medium light works just fine for some bamboo, but the best part is that it can happily grow in water. No soil to check, just make sure you swap out the water every once in awhile and keep it filled up.

ZZ Plant

mycityplants

You know at the mall when you are wondering if that plant inside is real or fake? A lot of the time it's a happily growing ZZ plant. Great for people who can't seem to keep anything alive the ZZ plant can thrive on low light and water, in face they prefer it.

Ferns

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Ferns are great for low light but they do like to be kept nice and moist! These guys can't be forgotten about or they'll turn all brown and dry up. They can come in many different sizes and features a wide range or variations.

Cactus

lomets

If you have an office or cubicle with some sunlight then consider a cactus! They are famously low maintenance for anyone who wants some greenery but doesn't want to be constantly worried about them. There are plenty of varieties and sizes to choose from and all of them can work as long as you have the sunlight they need.

Succulents

Just Maggie

Another sunny option is a succulent. If you have the sun they need they will hardly ever bother you. They need minimal water but can provide a lot of color and comfort. With a ton of varieties you can mix and match to create stunning pieces of living art.

So brighten up your office this winter with any of these great options! Give your productivity a boost, clean up some stale winter office air, and make your mood a litter brighter this winter season.
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Santa's Bag: The App You Need This Holiday Season

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The holiday season can be a really stressful time, both mentally and financially. It is difficult to maintain normalcy when there's a number of people to think about, presents to buy, and gifts to wrap... all while life carries on around you. If you're looking for a great way to organize all the gifts you need to buy and keep track of how much you want to spend then check out Santa's Bag.

Santa's Bag

Santa's bag is a free app that has 4.5 stars, hundreds of reviews, no ads, and plenty of helpful Christmas cheer. Once you download it you'll understand why it's a favorite! With a combination of big picture and person by person planning you can get through the season remembering everyone's gifts with ease.

Santa's Bag

The main page is your overview. It greets you with a cheerful Santa, a Christmas Day countdown, and the breakdown of your budget. It will give you the number of gifts purchased already, the ones left to buy, and how that stacks up to your overall budget. All that is great but the main page is just the tip of the iceberg.

Import people from your contacts to seamlessly make your Christmas list, contact photos and all. This can make it easy to organize everyone you need to buy presents for like family, friends, and coworkers. Through contacts, you can put in budgets by person, keep track of gift ideas, the gift's prices, stocking stuffers, and the person's wishlist.

Santa's Bag

If you're not sure what you're getting someone then keep track of ideas on the app to come back to later! If two or more people are sharing a gift, then no problem! You can add multiple recipients to anything. Going person by person means that you can organize properly without leaving anyone out, getting too many or too few presents, and can stay on budget.

You've done the organizing and you know what you are getting everyone. Santa's Bag organizes each gift through the labels 'idea', 'need to buy', 'purchased', 'wrapped', and 'given'. That makes it easy to track each gift through the entire process.

Santa's Bag

Now comes the trip to the store, yikes. Nothing is worse than walking out with your bags to realize you forgot something! With Santa's Bag, you can go to the side menu and get your Quick Lists. Shop strategically by using either the total shopping list or go under favorites to see your list store by store!

Everything is pretty much bought online these days so don't worry, there's an online gift tracker as well. It seems like every year there is something that comes either too early or too late in the mail and can be forgotten, make sure nothing escapes your notice! Once you label a gift as online it will give you the new options of 'ordered' and 'received'.

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Santa's bag is here to help make everything easier this Christmas, so give it a try! It's made my shopping a thousand times easier and it can do the same for you. Be prepared this holiday season with the best app for making the holidays organized, on budget, and stress free.

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How Millennials Are Changing Office Fashion


@huntersrace

Office fashion can be a little confusing in the modern age. The business world is changing and a lot of industries are redefining their office culture. A new era of much more casual atmospheres is changing the way business is being done, but office attire is changing with it. The uniform is changing. Here's how it's changing and why.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that with more casual workplaces comes more casual office attire. The days of wearing stiff suits 9-5 is changing for a lot of businesses. This generation is dressing for comfort much more than anyone before them. Sneakers that are both stylish and comfortable are taking over for the formal shoe. There's more stretch to clothing than ever before, so while clothing might not be necessarily tighter it is more flexible.

Even color is being revamped and the traditional grey, blue, black, white, and tan are making room for new colors. Men are choosing trendier colored suits that don't stick to the traditional color scheme. Women are embracing the same trend, with colorful pantsuits which can vary in cut, style, and color with endless possibilities.

@willpower

Personality is being expressed more than ever before. This can be a little tough for women because the man wearing jeans and a grey t-shirt is being perceived differently than his female co-worker in matching attire. Women suffer more dress-code stress and while it might seem like there are more options and more flexibility that often is a double edged sword. Women's looks and attire is judged much harsher than men and it can be expensive to keep up appearances while keeping the focus off your wardrobe and on your work. This is where women have to be careful.

So why is this happening? Well, a big part of the change is being fueled by Silicon Valley. The technology industry is young, hip, and exciting and taking over the world. Companies are taking note and beginning to try and mimic that aesthetic hoping it will bring the same cultural changes. Also it's just a reflection of our relaxation of the concept of 'social decency'. We aren't holding men and women to the same social restrictions of the past. If you look at other times of upheaval that were relaxations from previous norms you can note fashion shifts. Women were fighting for suffrage and the corset, both a literal physical and a figurative symbol of restriction, was removed from their wardrobes. The second wave of feminism saw the rise of women wearing pants. Social change is reflected in clothing.

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So what does this shift mean for the business world? Honestly, it depends on the industry. Younger industries will reflect these changes much more than industries where formality is the law of the land. It also means, the casual atmosphere will most likely spread and offices are going to be more casual in the future. These trends of more active comfortable clothing isn't going anywhere. Clothing is going to get more personalized as people step away from the general notion of a uniform and instead embrace their unique style. It's about personal branding and expression, not fitting in.

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Could Your Makeup Be Affecting Your Career?

@malvestida

In recent times there has been a push for body acceptance, and makeup has been a big part of the discussion. Some women love wearing makeup, and others don't. So while you should always be making the best decisions for yourself, there is something else going on here. How is your makeup being perceived in the workplace? Is it helping you get ahead, or is it holding you back?

In a 2016 study by Jaclyn S. Wong and Andrew M. Penner published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility looked at how attractiveness affected income. Their findings confirmed long held beliefs that attractive people, they just make more money. In fact they found that an attractive individual can earn roughly 20% more than an average attractive person. However, makeup has to be added into that equation and the study accounted for 'grooming'. They found that beauty can be 'actively cultivated' which means, yes wearing makeup can help you be seen as more attractive and therefore your salary can reflect that.

Does this mean that men should take 'grooming' into account, yes actually. It helps the overall perception of attractiveness and competence, but men aren't judged nearly as much on that as their female counterparts are. So yes men should be grooming, but it isn't nearly as important for them as it is for women. Lucky us.

Competent, trustworthy, approachable? What Do You Think?@malvestida

In a different 2016 Dr. Viktoria Mileva and her team looked at the way makeup was perceived across gender lines with their results published in the aptly named journal, Perception. The study was done using computer software generated standardized makeup looks. Volunteers rated these looks according to attractiveness, dominance, and prestige. This is a clear example of where we can see the gender divide when it comes to opinions of makeup in the workplace.

Men and women both agreed that the makeup wearing faces were more attractive, but when it came to dominance and prestige the opinions differed. Women rated fellow women as more dominant while men rated them as more prestigious. The researchers found it likely that men don't see women as physical competitors and therefore didn't rank them as dominant. A follow up study found that the women's rankings were more based on jealousy, and they saw the made up women as more promiscuous and attractive to men than the non-makeup wearing counterparts.

Prestigious, in control, untrustworthy? What Do You Think?@malvestida

This leads to an interesting dilemma for women in the workplace. How do you do your makeup, for the men or the women in the office? Is it possible to please both? Should you shift your makeup looks depending on the situation? To look at that, there is even more you need to know about office makeup.

A study by Nancy L. Etcoff and her team, published in 2011 here, studied people's perceptions based on how much makeup a woman was wearing. Offered three looks from bare to heavy makeup the results show how tumultuous the 'Survival of the Prettiest' can be. There is no foolproof makeup look, and it has to change based on the situation. Cosmetics can wildly change people's perception of you from how smart you are, how approachable, how in control, and how competent. Your makeup can make you more attractive, but you could also be perceived as more untrustworthy.

Who would you hire? Figure 1 - Plos

So really, what does it all mean? Well really it's good and it's bad news. It really means that at the end of the day, women are judged on their appearance more than men are. It means to get ahead of a man with equal skills, you have to take your physical appearance into account. It means that makeup can help women be perceived as competent put together people, but with the double edged sword that too much makeup can give you a very different reputation. It means women can use makeup to their advantage while the world uses it as a weapon against them at the exact same time.

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