It's important to know that if you give yourself more time to complete a task, you're likely to take more time to finish it than you would have otherwise, writes Jamie Mercer. Instead of trying to work for long periods of time, work toward 90-minute periods of more intense focus separated by 30-minute breaks.

Business professionals, much like Major League Baseball players, during performance reviews need to know their stats in order to demonstrate their value to the company, writes Scott Gilly, a former lawyer who participated in MLB salary arbitrations. Professionals should be ready to emphasize their long-term value in order to receive the compensation they're after.

If you use LinkedIn's InMail messaging system, you should personalize your messages and mention what you have in common right away if you want to get more responses, writes Neha Mandhani. Users who mention a common group have a 21% better chance of receiving a response, while those who point out a common former employer improve their chances of a response by 27%.

A growing number of companies are abandoning the distinction between vacation and sick days and offering employees a single quantity of paid-time-off days. The option is particularly advantageous where laws dictate a certain amount of sick time annually.

Some teachers are relocating in order to be paid higher wages than they could receive in their home states. At $82,020, Alaska offers the top annual mean wage for high school teachers, with New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and California ranking just behind.

A recent study found that individuals who feel that their lives have meaning are 63% less likely to have sleep apnea and tend to enjoy better sleep quality than those who haven't found their purpose. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Rush University Medical Center polled 823 adults between the ages of 60 and 100 on both their purpose in life and their sleep habits as part of the study.

A "living drug" that has helped leukemia patients survive when facing death has been recommended for approval by a Food and Drug Administration panel. This is the first-ever treatment that genetically alters the patient's cells to fight cancer in what Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Chief Medical Officer Gwen Nichols calls "an exciting therapy."