Are you an introvert enjoying working from home? Or are you an extrovert who can’t wait to get back to the workplace with interaction? Dressing down and working from home can be fun until you have to deal with neighbours doing renovation work in the middle of the day. I know right?
 
Whoever you are, there are some tips here that you can follow to ensure productivity and make the most out of working from home! Continue reading on!

​With the flexibility given from working from home, it’s tempting to complete work at your own pace and take breaks in-between without someone there supervising you. However staying consistent and keeping to a schedule can improve productivity.
 
If your normal working hours is from 9-5pm, you should stick to the same
routine when working from home. Following the same schedule can trick you into thinking that you’re at work, and your body would be more fixed to following what you’ve been doing in the office.

​It is important that you know what you want to do for the day, rather than taking the day as it is without an agenda. Following a planned schedule can help you prioritise which are the more important tasks that you’d have to complete first.
 
Take some time to write and plan everything out, and allocate a duration needed for you to complete each task. With a timeframe given, you’ll feel that there is a deadline for you to finish your work and it would lower the chances of you procrastinating as well.

​Working from home means working without supervision, but we should establish some rules that we follow to ensure maximum productivity. One such way to do so is to remove any forms of distraction that will keep you off track from what you’re supposed to do.
 
Cell phones should only be checked and used for work-related purposes. Else you’ll probably find yourself scrolling on instagram or facebook if you don’t focus on your objective. It can be hard to focus when you work from home especially if you have kids in your house. But establishing rules and setting boundaries can sure make it better.

​Prolonged isolation can lead to weakened productivity and motivation. Staying connected with your co-workers can help tremendously especially when working from home. It keeps you updated of current affairs and would also motivate you to complete your given tasks.
 
Share what you’ve completed with your co-workers! Check in and keep each other in the loop, celebrate achievements!

I am sure that every team wishes to have a sky-high performance, with talented individuals and leaders that lead the team. And more often than not, employers would rather find and hire people who have a well-crafted resume.
However, having a high-performance team do not always mean that your team already comprised of talented individuals but it requires time and effort to develop and nurture the team into one that suits your team culture and goals.
Below are the factors and traits that high-performance teams adopt and apply in their daily work.

#1 Team Goal - Direction and vision are guideposts to help members of the team know what they are working towards and allow them to recognize if there is a need for necessary modifications to work to stay on the same track with the team.

#2 Clear Instructions - Like a manual that comes with a newly bought electronic appliance, if the manual is unclear, confusing, and inconsistent, the manual will only cause unproductiveness and misunderstandings. For instruction to be crystal clear, check if the issued instructions describe and explains the what, where, who, how and why. Do not assume that the others always understand what your message and be clear and detailed, and if needed, clarify again.

​#3 Open-mindedness - This is to sort out misunderstandings, conflicts and feedbacks in a non-aggressive manner. Communication is unavoidable, having an open-minded heart and attitude allows the culture to be more approachable, understanding and accepting of the differences in our personalities, helping us to bring out the best in the team.

#4 Team driven Leadership - Having more authority as a leader, gives one greater power, but he/she must be ready to accept greater responsibilities and workload for members to follow and model after. A leader is also required to understand the work each team member to issue effective and clear instructions on how to proceed. Therefore, creating an effective team includes having a team-driven leadership.
 
#5 Proper Management - The management of the team requires to only sort out and clarify the roles and responsibilities but ensure that there are no discrepancies and inconsistencies to their job scopes. Management also includes managing the welfare of the team. Encouraging good team welfare helps the team stay motivated and driven as they could see how the company acknowledged their efforts and reward them.
 
#6 Trust - Trust can build or break a team internally. It takes time to earn but could be easily crumbled. At work, trust can be in forms such as transparency and consistency of company policies, rules and regulations, and a culture that encourages integrity by not short-changing the employees and taking advantage of the people working for the team.
 
#7 Flexibility & Adaptability
Variables are inevitable and could happen very unexpected at any moment during our work and lives. The team should have necessary capabilities, and skills to cope and manage the variables that are thrown at them in the moment, effectively soothing and resolving spontaneous issues that arises.
 
#8 Celebrates the Good and Encourages Failures
Celebrating the good gives acknowledgement to the team’s success, giving the team a boost in team’s morale and motivation. Encouraging failures is a culture that is not common yet it encourages the team to adopt a continuous learning mindset despite one’s or the team’s failures. When society is harsh towards the failures, seeing only the end result, fear of failure could become the norm in the team, impeding them from risking to learn and do something new. This could possibly kill off the growing potential of each individual in the team.
 
#9 Continuous Learning - Taking initiative to learn and giving opportunities for the team to grow and learn are great nutrition to enhance the team’s capabilities, developing talents and nurturing a learning spirit of the team. Some examples could be going for workshops, events and social gatherings to broaden their knowledge and hone their existing skill sets.
 
In Short,
Greatness cannot be attained within a short time span, it requires pro-activeness, time and effort on everyone’s part in the team. To lead this type of high-performance culture, a good and effective leader should be positioned to help and guide the team.
 
Workshops could also be another way of helping the team to work, bond and learn together. If you wish for a fun, interesting and interactive experience, you could give the Perfume Workshop below a shot.
It provides team building sessions that allows you to form deeper bond not only through mini team building games but also understand yourself and your colleagues better through a personality quiz. Furthermore, their fun and interesting perfume making process is great in building creativity as well!
To find out more or book a session, click on the links below!
Perfume Workshop Team Building links for more information:
https://www.perfumeworkshop.com
 
OR:
https://www.perfumeworkshop.com/perfume-team-building-singapore.html
 
Couple & Bridal Showers Perfume Workshop:
https://www.perfumeworkshop.com/goodman-perfume-workshop.html
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​Although our sense of smell is used every day, it is built so inherently well in us and often functioned without problems that we do not realize how much it is actually doing for us.
Like every part of our body, each one has their own specific roles and these roles are complex yet fascinating. Let’s find out what amazing facts our nose has.

​Although humans are not one of the best creatures with the best sense of smell, we are not too far behind, and are ranked 13th in terms of our sense of smell.
Studies have also showed that we are more sensitive to some scents than other animals. For example, the scent of amyl acetate in bananas could be perceived more easily by humans than rabbits and dogs. We are also more sensitive to the scent of blood than mice as well.
However, basing on the overall olfactory ability, humans would fall behind many animals. African elephants ranked the highest in the animal kingdom for the greatest sense of smell, holding the highest number of olfactory receptors of 1948. This is followed by rats, opossum, cows and Chinese softshell turtle.

​We are said to contain 6 million olfactory receptors with four hundred different variety. Research has been conducted to show that people can be differentiated according to our smell as well.
Scientist have yet to figure out the defining factor to identify the differences among people by our scent. However, brain scans are done with positron emission tomography (PET) and found that body odour provides much more information than normal odours.
Furthermore, with our advance computerized system, with just 28 odours registered, an estimate of 2 million people could be identified and 7 million can be differentiated with only 34 odours!

​Omitting the visual influence or personality attraction, we could also be picking our partners with our sense of smell. However, our unawareness of it is due to how innately built our olfactory senses are.
We also had it in us to smell out partners who are healthy, which is built instinctively in us to pass on our genes to future generations. This could be supported by a journal ‘Psychological Science’ published in 2014, where an experiment is conducted to display humans’ ability to pick out the people who smell sick.  
Researchers from Canada, McGill University also found that we pick out and feel more attracted to people who has similar genetics to us with our olfactory senses. This can be rationalized biologically that we can recognize our family by smell and also instinctively wants to protect our own gene pool, hence feeling more attracted to people who has similar genetics as us.

​Does this line, “The person smells dangerous” sounds familiar? Although this often meant in a metaphorical way of implying the impending trouble but research has proven it to be literal as well.
Electrodes testing the sweat samples of people who have watched a happy movie also showed to exude a different scent as compared to people who watched a horror movie.
The smell of emotions is also contagious, where experiments involve the scent of happiness or fear. If a person is feeling happy and watching a comedy movie can exude a scent of happiness and influencing the person near her to feel happy as well. fMRI scans also supported this claim, showing the brain’s amygdala lighted up when people smell sweat from first-time parachute jumpers, as compared to veteran parachute jumpers - alluding that fear is contagious.  

Learn more and personalized your perfume in a perfume workshop which allows you to experience the perfume making process which involves your personality and preference!
To book a class or find out more, head down to the links below:
Perfume Workshop General links:
https://www.perfumeworkshop.com
 
Team building:
https://www.perfumeworkshop.com/perfume-team-building-singapore.html
 
Bridal Showers:
https://www.perfumeworkshop.com/goodman-perfume-workshop.html
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