Education 2.0 & 3.0

Like thousands of professionals all over the country, you're trying your best to stay organized, keep your appointments, and still churn out the countless hours of work you need to keep pushing your company forward.

Most of us aspire to conquer more and more work in less and less time, but since none of us can cram more hours into the day (despite our best efforts), increasing our productivity is the best we can do. Even so, in some cruel twist of irony, most "productivity enhancers," like going to the gym every morning, seem to add more effort to our already busy lives. Instead, try one or more of these 15 productivity hacks--which you can execute and experiment with immediately:

Working from home is everyone's dream, right? If that's true, then why did 60 percent of the employees who participated in a Stanford University work-from-home experiment opt to go back to corporate HQ?

The 2013 study offered a sampling of employees in the air travel and hotel booking industry an opportunity to work from home for nine months. Surprisingly, many of them had a very lonely experience. After only a few months, 50 percent of the volunteers and 10 percent of the non-volunteer group asked to return to their cubicles.

Loneliness and lack of social interaction were cited as the No. 1 reason for abandoning home offices, but these aren't the only drawbacks. How can you have your cake and eat it, too? Because I've successfully worked from home for nearly 16 years, I consider myself an expert on the topic.