The inability to focus can hurt personal relationships and lead to poor performance or mistakes at work. Ways to sharpen your focus include limiting your exposure to technology, working during your most productive time of the day and getting enough sleep and exercise.

Ideal days for employees to be most productive and creative include a mix of moderate time pressure and positive factors such as freedom and organizational support, according to research from Virginia Commonwealth University. This makes it incumbent upon leaders "to understand and manage these daily workplace experiences to improve employee creative performance," the researchers say.

The "quiet quitting" phenomenon may have more to do with poor management than lazy workers, writes Liz Kislik, who recommends having "a series of heart-to-heart conversations, in which both managers and employees" lay out their expectations. "Everyone expects that some aspects of their job will be annoying, but nobody wants to feel frustrated, resentful, or ill-used all the time," Kislik writes.

A survey by StrategicCHRO360 and the Society for Human Resource Management found 24% of HR executives have a bleak opinion of the business climate, and 35% expect the situation to get worse in the coming months as people deal with inflation, fear of recession and decreasing disposable income. More than 70% of HR leaders say labor shortages will have the biggest effect on business over the next year, according to the survey, which cites HR's emphasis on keeping employees engaged and finding and keeping talent.

UPS is preparing for the holiday peak delivery season by hiring about 100,000 part- and full-time workers, a figure in line with recent peak periods. UPS will focus on hiring personal delivery drivers, commercial driver's license holders, package handlers and driver helpers, and it intends to make job offers within 25 minutes of receiving an online application for most applicants, compared with two weeks in previous years.

Good manners are endangered in the workplace, with many citing issues such as people not replying to emails or notifications in an appropriate time, a rise in "ghosting," and language and dress that's too informal. While some see signs that workplaces are becoming more inclusive, others are lamenting a lack of etiquette they blame on the pandemic, the internet, remote working and Generation Z.

Evan Goldstein has been named the master sommelier for baseball's San Francisco Giants, a first for a US professional sports team. Goldstein will work with former and current Giants players involved in the wine industry, develop pairings at the team's stadium, and facilitate tastings for customer groups. The Giants are located so close to Napa Valley that it makes you wonder why they hadn't thought of this before now!