“Between 25-50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work.”

Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of the Energy Project and author of Be Excellent at Anything, reveals in a 2012 Harvard Business Review article why multi-tasking kills productivity and ways to reduce work fatigue. Hint: Stop staring at your phone so much.

Here are 5 policies Schwartz suggest promoting in the office to fuel higher productivity:

1.Hold better meetings

Maintain meeting discipline by ensuring all meetings start and end at a precise time. Stay on tasks and keep a solid agenda with actionable next-steps. Schwartz recommend keeping meetings under one hour. Scheduling 45 minutes keep participants engaged and able tor reflect on what’s been discussed.

2.Stop expecting everything to be on-demand

Expecting instant responsiveness from employees forces your team into reactive mode, breaking their concentration and distracting them from finishing open tasks.

3.Take breaks

Take a walk, grab a nice latte from your local barista, or catch up on some leisurely readings. Intermittent breaks helps renew focus and reduce mental fatigue. Managers should consider organizing group workouts, mid-afternoon yoga classes, or creating a work-free zone where employees can relax or take a nap.

4.Distraction-free mornings

Keep morning meetings to a minimum and dedicate the first 90 minutes of your work day to catch up on important tasks, sans interruption. Take the first hour of your mornings to schedule routine times for open-ended thinking.

5.Use those vacations days

Breaking news: humans aren’t computers. Take time-off to completely disconnect from work, and encourage your team to do the same. Research shows regular vacations keep employees healthier and more productive.

Download the Infographic: Increase Productivity and Manage Your Energy from CRMD.

Remember, multi-tasking is a modern efficiency myth. Your work depends on quality and execution, not on your ability to juggle many things at once. It is far more important to be engaged at work, maintain focus and manage your energy efficiently.

CRMD compiles the 4 best free programming courses on the web.

Targeting a role as a data analyst or data scientist in the Salesforce ecosystem?

We’ve compiled 4 great resource to learn computer science that cost $0 dollars to start. Our criteria:

• Freely available
• Beginner-level courses that covers the fundamentals
• Online-accessible, no textbook requirements.
• Python-based with a robust curriculum (at least 15hours of study time)

So without further ado, here are CRMD’s 4 top free programming courses.

Coursera’s University of Toronto “Learn to Program” series.

Taught by University of Toronto’s associate professors Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries, this 2-part series walks students through designing, coding, and validating their own Python programs. It is an excellent course for people who have no programming experience and want to get into the meat of Python. This self-paced course is estimated to take 7 weeks and 6-8 hours commitment per week.

MIT’s “Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python” course on edX.

This is a great course offered by one of the world’s best consisting mostly of lecture videos broken into small chunks. Along with video lectures, there are programming assignments and standalone quizzes to test your knowledge. It’s a 9-weeks long course that will challenge students.

Dataquest’s “Python basics” course.

Dataquest is a newcomer on the MOOC scene but with a devout following. One of their most popular courses is this introduction to Python that help learners understand the programing language “as a foundation for effective data science, including syntax, loops, functions, classes, and more.” Intermediate and advanced Python courses are also available for those who want to graduate to the next level of data science.

Learn Python with Codeacademy.

Finally, we have Codeacademy. This popular course is great for complete beginners who want to understand fundamental programming concepts as well as how to run basic Python scripts. A paid upgrade will unlock 8 interactive projects, 9 quizzes, and 1 final project for further learning.

This is neither a definitive nor exhaustive list of free programming courses online, so we encourage all to go out and explore. Did you take a course you liked that we forgot to mention? Comment with your experience or ask CRMD’s very own expert consultants and developers your programming related questions below. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get top tips and tricks straight to your inbox every month.