Employee Coaching ROI: Is It Worth It?

What is the return on investment (ROI) of employee coaching for an organization?

Offering coaching for employees – especially at the executive level – has become a widespread management tool. Companies often hire coaches with the goal to improve performance and develop talents,



Career Decisions Are Complex: How to Organize Your Thoughts

This is a guest contribution I’ve been invited to write for the Portland career counseling blog “Career Transition: The Inside Job – Insights from Portland, Oregon Career Counselors”.

How can you tell when you’re oversimplifying your career decision because of information overload?



How to Nurture Your Brain

I’m happy to announce the publication of a literature review from a collaboration with my colleagues Raffaella Misuraca and Silvana Miceli from the Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy:

Misuraca, R., Miceli, S., & Teuscher, U.



Workshop: Job Stress Management

Wednesday August 16, 11am-1pm (Portland, OR).

Is your job causing you a lot of unhealthy stress? In my last post, I wrote about the “Sort and Tackle” Technique, and how and why it can improve your stress levels at work.



How to Manage Stress at Work

If your job is causing you a lot of stress, you’re not alone. In a 2014 survey in the US, almost a third (31%) of the workers reported that they typically feel tense or stressed out during the work day.



Summer Reading List 2017

My latest picks: (mostly) recent books about decision making and goal achievement.

The promise of a long summer ahead makes me very happy, and so does the knowledge that no matter how much I read, there will always be books out there that I haven’t read yet,



Self-Assessment: How Awe-Struck are You?

In a earlier post, I wrote about how feelings of awe can affect our decision making. Here you can take a quick self-assessment as to how often you experience awe in your own life.



Inspired: How Awe Affects Our Decisions

Feelings of awe and wonder make us feel smaller, but richer in time. This affects our decisions in several interesting ways.

Awe is a powerful emotion that we feel when we encounter something so strikingly vast (grand, beautiful,



German Translations of Decision Coaching Methods

(And you’ll also find some similar resources in English.)

I’m excited about my upcoming opportunity this month to teach several postgraduate seminars to career counselors in Switzerland again. The topic will be decision coaching methods: how to apply decision support tools in a career counseling setting. 



Valentine’s Special: Chocolate and Coaching

I’m offering a new coaching package for couples. Could you use some help improving your shared time management, figuring out priorities, getting better organized together? If you sign up for your first exploratory Strategy Session before Valentine’s Day,



Consumer Decisions: Should we Invest into Possessions or Experiences?

If your finances are limited at all as a consumer, you are constantly faced with the decision: how should you spend your money in order to get the most lasting happiness and satisfaction from your purchases? 

With the holidays and the gifting season coming up for many,



Are You Scared of Your Next Decision?

Scared of Your Next Decision?

Edvard Munch (1893): The Scream. Oil, tempera & pastel on cardboard. [Image rights in the public domain.]

Tonight will be a scary night for the bravest of us, with countless children roaming the streets,



Binge Working and Procrastination

Thanks to all of you who shared your experiences and thoughts about binge working and procrastination! Your insights have given me food for thought and an opportunity to make an addition to my hamster-wheel image. It now includes an additional stage: what one of my readers called the “tidal wave of joy and relief when you finish the thing and it is a success!”



Binge Working and Procrastination: Your Experience

Last-minute stress and binge working will improve your future procrastination as much as a hangover will improve your drinking habits.

At least that’s my hypotheses.

Guilt, Binge Working and Procrastination

Or what do you think?



Am I a Procrastinator?

Am I a procrastinator?“I know that I am a procrastinator, but taking this survey made me realize just how bad it is!”
– One of my students.

Clarry Lay, a psychology professor at York University in Toronto created the “General Procrastination Scale” as a research tool.



Decision Skills Matter

To what extent do decision skills matter in real live? Do these skills actually lead to better decision outcomes and fewer unpleasant life events?
Decision Skills Matter
Or, more specifically: do people who perform better on hypothetical decision tasks also make better real-world decisions,



New Productivity Coaching Group

Productivity Coaching Group
Time is our most precious resource – are you getting the most out of yours? Or are you ready for a change? 

My next productivity coaching group will come in a new format,



Productivity Wallpaper

Organize Your Desktop Strategically with this Productivity Wallpaper

Productivity WallpaperLoosely inspired by Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle, I designed a Productivity Wallpaper that  you can download here as a template. It is a customized desktop background that helps you stay focused by organizing your tasks in a spatial layout.



Summer Reading List 2016

Some book recommendations on decision making, innovation and productivity:

Kayt Sukel (2016) The Art of Risk: The New Science of Courage, Caution, and Chance
A very readable overview of current research on the neuroscience of risk, 



Where Can You Be Generous?

A Different Way to Look at Your “Unique Value Contribution”

In an interview with Chase Jarvis, Seth Godin gave me a lot of food for thought when he suggested that we all ourselves this question:

“Where are you being generous –



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