Monday, December 31, 2007

Positive Work Strategies: Good Work Habits That Will Set You Apart

If you wish to be set apart from the crowd and get noticed for what you do, then it is almost an axiom that you should be disciplined and be able to make the most of what you currently have.

As a worker, your most valuable asset is yourself, and how you manage yourself will determine whether you will be in the next wave of promotions or the next wave of firings.

Here are some of good work habits that will set you apart:

Think positively. In business, there will always be people who only see the difficulties involved in any undertaking. In contrast, there are those people who only see the possibilities and potential of any given venture.

If you had to choose between the two, choose the latter attitude it will bring you greater results. While you should not turn a blind eye to potential problems indeed, you should plan to either avoid them or deal with them you should not hold a pessimistic view of the world either.

This will only lessen your productivity and possibly spread an unwanted attitude among the people with whom you work with.

Plan your day ahead of time. When one is not aware of what needs to be done during the day, the day tends to be wasted in non-productive tasks.

But if one has a plan of action to follow, it becomes easier to mobilize the energy that is needed to make the day a success. Each evening before you go to bed, list down the five most important things that you must accomplish the following day.

Then, work on (and finish) the most important item before moving on to the second one. This will ensure that you will work on the most significant of your tasks and get a high-value return on your time.

Remember the 80/20 Principle. The 80/20 principle (also known as Paretos rule), was first formulated by the Italian thinker Vilfredo Pareto.

As applied to personal productivity, it postulates that 80% of your results come from only 20% of your efforts, and that 20% of your results are the product of 80% of your effort

Basically, the 80/20 principle states that we are usually inefficient. We do not devote as much time and energy as we should to our most important tasks.

Instead, we try to do everything ourselves, even though we may not be very competent in some tasks. If you wish to improve your productivity at work, analyze what it is you do that can make a dramatic impact on the growth of your company, and propose to your superiors that you be allowed to do that one thing.

If you chose an area wherein you can make a real contribution, your boss will not mind your level of specialization.

Charles Williams is a writer for http://www.lsft.org
which is an excellent place to find Motivation, Development and Self Improvment links, For more information go to:www.lsft.org

Be More Productive Now

Would you like to start being more productive right now? Want to stop wasting precious time and move your projects to completion? This article will focus on how to be more productive from this point forward.

The key to becoming more productive with your time is to concentrate your efforts on the task at hand. So how do you begin to concentrate your efforts? The key is to eliminate distractions.



Distractions come from two sources. The first source is outside things, such as phone calls, emails, interruptions from other people and so on. Pick a time when you feel at your peak, and sequester yourself, for a period of time each day, to give yourself a real boost in productivity. Develop your own methods to hide from the outside world, for a period of time each day, and you will see your output grow.

The second source of distractions comes from within. Unfortunately, this is the hardest source of distractions to control. It is hard to shut yourself off from yourself. . The key culprit for us is multitasking. Many studies have been done at this point, that show multitasking reduces productivity, instead of increasing it. Our minds can only hold one thought at a time, and switching tasks causes us to lose focus and momentum, and forces our mind to play catch-up over and over again. To become more productive, you must master the art of focusing on one thing at a time and give it your best effort and attention, until it is done. If boredom sets in while you are working on your task, give yourself a SHORT break, and remind yourself of what the ultimate objective is for what you are working on and what the payoff is to you.

You need to make sure the task you pick to concentrate on, is in fact your highest priority item. Many of us fall into the trap of staying busy, vs. staying productive. One task may clear mountains of paperwork off your desk ,or you might be better served by moving just one piece of high priority/high payback paper. Use the 80/20 rule to help find the true gems in your inbox. The 80/20 rule says that 80% of the gains you receive, come from 20% of your efforts. Find out what that 20% of high payoff project are and make sure you concentrate on accomplishing them first.

And of course dont forget the basics of time management. Say no to as many projects as you can to help streamline your workload. Try to cherry pick projects you know in advance hold high payback potential and try to pass on lower priority projects. Also delegate as much lower payback activity as possible. Calculate the value of your time and try to delegate low value activities, even if you have to pay someone. It is money well spent.

Increased productivity is as close as your next thought. Remember everything counts. Every action you take as well as those actions you don't take can help you move towards your goal of increased productivity. Constantly remind yourself of your need to be more productive and discipline yourself to do the right thing. Don't beat yourself if you have a setback, but be certain to reward yourself in someway, for each action that moves
your productivity up a notch.

By: Edward W. Smith

How To Improve Self Confidence At Work?

Coworker problems, problems with the boss, less job satisfaction, no chance of promotion, insufficient salary, damaged self-esteem and so many other problems create work a pain for many of us. Some of us are very frustrated with our jobs and are always looking for a change in job. But this change in job may not always help. The other company may have different set of problems. What are the issues that trouble us at work? Let us talk more.

Skill-
Skill at whatever we do is the most important factor in any job. If you have lesser skill, you cannot compensate that with anything else. You will have to get more skill by joining some programs or changing your work profile. Get yourself tested again for your aptitude and decide if you wish to continue doing same work or change to any other. For example, you may be working as a content writer in a website company. If you think that you can do better with website design, shift to that. Find out your true skill and improve that everyday. This is the first key.

Co-workers-
Working with people is the toughest job. A person may be very happy working alone. Put them with a team and you may find that the team is going in different directions. The team members may not be working best with each other. Difference in temperament, working style, skill ego issues, communication gaps and many other such factors make a team a bad place to work. You will have to therefore look at all the problems you are having with your co-workers. Then decide about who is creating the problems. For some of them, you may be responsible. Change that immediately. Join some course in communication and conflicts. Understand how to avoid any conflict and work as a team. This will pay you very big dividends.

Employer or senior-
Unless you are sure that you cannot work with your employer/senior, you have no choice but to work under them. You may have to forget some differences and fall in line to create a smooth working partnership. You may have many issues with your boss. But so does he/she.

Try to improve yourself in the above three key areas and you will find your confidence increasing at your work.

Memory Improvement Skills Can Be yours Today

Have you ever seen someone in town and you knew you should know there name but could not recall it? Have you ever gone to dial a telephone number that you dialled hundreds of times before and just could not remember? Did you ever walk into a room but forgot what you went to do?

In these situations we can sometimes feel useless, distracted and unable to connect with our brain properly. That phenomena that is often referred to as 'tip of the tongue.' Then maybe your memory improvement skills need working on!

In July 1998 the University of Florida published some research findings that showed that elderly people should ignore stereotypes about memory loss.

Older people are much less likely to have major problems with their memory improvement skills if they believe in themselves and work to improve their recall, this University of Florida study finds.

The elderly are more likely than younger people to buy into the stereotype that they can't control their memory, and it affects not only their self-esteem but also how hard they try to remember, said Robin West, a University of Florida psychology professor who did the research.

In the study conducted by psychology graduate student Monica Yassuda, more than 200 older and young adults were divided into two groups. One group was told memory is a skill that can be improved with effort, and the other group that the ability to remember is fixed forever at birth, she said.

"There is some indication in the literature that older people tend to see memory as something they can't control -- you either have a good memory or you don't," West said.

"The results show that we need to encourage older adults to think of themselves as a group that has the potential to have a better memory if they work at it," she said. Other studies, which were conducted by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, have found the belief that people can control part of their lives is a good predictor of whether they age well mentally and physically, West said.

This way of looking at memory improvement skills of course does not have to only be applicable to the older generation, of course it applies to us all.

Let me give you some examples of things people say to me individually or in my seminars:

- I do not have a good memory.

- That is too much for me to remember.

- I have a memory like a sieve.

- I am afraid my memory is failing now that I am getting older.

My Granddad said something to me recently that really made me think. He and I were in his local village pub and we were joking about the fact that my Nana gave him a hard time for coming to the pub and ordered him not to drink too much, despite over 65 years of marriage.

My Nana has been quite ill for a number of years and she does not go out much and I mentioned to my Granddad that I noticed her struggling for her words every now and then, or struggling to remember a name and he said that it was nothing to do with her age, they are both well into their eighties, but rather it was that she has very little communication with others anymore. That was his opinion.

These quotes I just mentioned are beliefs but too often people say them as if they were facts. There are some very common misconceptions about memory and memory improvement skills: that it is an ability that cannot be changed; that you only have a certain amount; that it relates to age, and declines as we get older.

Memory is not about volume and it is not about content, it is about processes. It is about something we do, not something we have: it is about remembering.

Remembering is dependent on the connections we make between things. Imagine you are constructing an index. If you have referred to a book, or a person, by only one attribute, you will have only one data point and hence only one way of accessing that information. If you have used a number of different data points, each capturing a different aspect, you will have more ways to access this information.

Anyone can achieve enormous memory improvement by focusing on two particular aspects of memory: encoding and storage on the one hand and recall on the other. Today I write about encoding, next week I write about recall.

If you want to improve your ability to encode accurately and store information, you will need to check out your attitudes, beliefs and feelings:

Joan was an in-house business trainer who used to be great at remembering names. Over the past couple of years, she had come to resent an increasing workload and an ever-growing number of delegates. One day she was heard to say to a colleague: There is no way Im going to remember the names of all these delegates. Joans feelings of disappointment and resentment were affecting her beliefs about how much she could remember yet within her area of expertise she was quite capable of remembering vast bodies of information and new research. She did not actually want to remember the names of all the delegates, because in her view there were too many of them. Not surprisingly, she did find it difficult, though many years ago she had made it a matter of pride to learn all their names. But she had felt differently then.

So, consider how you think and feel about what it is you want to remember.

Feelings can affect encoding and storage in other ways too. Do you remember your first day at school? Many people do, often in considerable detail. But what about the second day? Probably not. The reason for this is that day one at school is a special day: you may have looked forward to it, or dreaded it; you may have a had a wonderful or an awful time. The teacher may have been really kind or expected you to be able to do things that you had not yet learnt. The playground may have been a great place to run around in or a terrifying place where giants a whole year older than you rushed past you and around you, yelling loudly and playing boisterously. There may have been a lot of feeling and strong feelings can make for vivid encoding.

Therefore, engage your feelings to make what you want to remember vivid.

Routes to lost information; some memory improvment skills:

1. One way to recover information is to recall the circumstances in which you first gained it. Maybe it was the name of someone at a party? Or something you heard on the radio? Remind yourself of s many details as you can of that party, involving information from all sensory systems. Who did you talk to? Where were you sitting, or standing? What music was playing? And so on. As you fill in the context, you may find the detail you want pops up or that search processes are triggered so that it pops up later.

2. Are you forgetting because you felt uncomfortable, uneasy or unhappy about something? If you need or wish to recover the information, pay attention to your feelings in the here-and-now and imagine they are like beads on a string. Very similar to the other times you have felt the same, feeling like this now is linked to all of the other times you have felt the same, feeling like this now is linked to all the other times and because the mind stores like things together, your attentiveness to these feelings now can lead you back along the string to the time and circumstances you forgot.

Paying attention as an integral part of your memory improvement skills:

From this day forward, think about how you encode every piece of information and how you experience life each day.

How much attention do you pay to the information you want to store? One of the most striking things about people who claim their memory is not very good is how good they are at remembering poorly! Suppose you are introduced to someone but as you are told their name you are pre-occupied. When later you try to remember their name all you can recall is what was bothering you then and what they looked like. In such circumstances there is nothing wrong with your memory. Your way of remembering the process of encoding that you employed has faithfully encoded exactly what was going on.

You were preoccupied and this meant you had your own internal dialogue running. So any additional auditory input like the persons name would be competing with your internally generated auditory signal. What they looked like is more memorable partly because visual data is generally easier to recall it is more vivid but also that element was less cluttered with internal signals at that moment.

What you attend to will affect what you actually commit to memory. So often, poor encoding is confused with poor memory. Be aware of this when looking to enhance those memory improvement skills.

Self Improvment Tips

Sometimes when you want to improve your business and earn money online, the first thing that you have to do is to improve the way you think and the way your behave..

Here are a few self improvment tips that can help you see more success and have more freedom in your personal and business life.


1. Make sure you don't become a workaholic. Your mind and your soul need some time away from your business routine. This will help your brain think more clear while working. The best time to get profitable ideas is when you're not thinking about them. They just pop into your brain.

2. Create and follow short/long-term goals for your business. The short-term goals can create early success and the long-term goals can create future success. Design each goal so they all add up to your ultimate goal. Don't make your goals too unrealistic otherwise depression and frustration could move you farther away from them.

3. Stay away from being too comfortable with your income or life. You should always be making new goals for yourself and developing new sales ideas. The world keeps changing and if you pause too long, you might miss out. You only live once.

4. You have to have a coach/mentor to help you improve you and your business. Doing this can motivate you, help you make more sales, etc. This is going to make you a better thinking person. This is another great self improvment tip that many have used and are still using it today.

5. You should also develop a good and solid relationship with all your visitors and customers. Tell them how much you appreciate them visiting your web site or buying your product. Be a friend to them and help them get the most from you and your business

6. A person's business will never be more successful than the life they live. Creating a balance in your life is as important as creating more business and more money. That is another self improvement tip. You really just have to step back and think about what you are doing everyday both in your personal life and your business life.

When you run a business, you have got to take some time out for yourself. Many who take time off, recharge their internal batteries. If you work too much, it may not be so good for you and your mind. Your brain is like a battery. It may run out and not work so well after a long period of time.

By:

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Success - 2 Tips To Help You Achieve Your Dreams

The fact is anyone can achieve success however many people dont, simply because they fall at the first hurdle which we are going to discuss in this article. The trait we are going to look at is the one that all success is built but if you do not know how to channel it you will never achieve success.

Lets look at it and how to achieve success in anything you want.

1. Realistic Desire

To achieve anything you need to have a burning desire to achieve it however there is a big difference between desire and dreaming.

Many people dream of success and because their ambitions are to optimistic, they can never achieve them they simply remain dreams.

For example, I have always had a desire and a dream of being an astronaut, but its unlikely to happen! However, I have had the desire to be numerous other things in life and achieved most of them, because they were within reach with me applying myself to achieve them.

The reason I achieved them was not only did I Desire them but they were realistic.

What you need to do is stop dreaming and get realistic goals it doesnt matter if their financial or spiritual, but you must have a vision of actually being able to achieve them.

Now you have realistic desires its time to turn desire into action.

2. Realistic Goals & Motivation to Achieve

Many people set out to achieve success and do have realistic aspirations, but lack the motivation and drive to get to their goals and fall by the wayside.

To avoid this, the first thing you need to do when setting your goals is to make sure you motivate yourself to reach them.

You do this by reaching them in small achievable steps and this means setting out a roadmap to success.

In advance you plan the time you are going to spend realistically each week moving toward your goal.

Dont be too ambitious in your time allocation and set sub goals and reach your journey in specific steps.

We all Have it

Desire is an innate trait in all of us The real key is to channel this desire to achieve success. If you focus on realistic desires you will achieve success in your life, by channelling desire to action and achieving set goals.

By: Monica Hendrix

Self Improvment Month - Is It True That There Is Something Called A Self-improvement Month?

If we try to find out of all the months which is best for self improvement, the answer is the month of November. It is believed by many as the month of self improvement. It is also believed to be the best time to engage in different types of works which would help us improve over all as a person, for example registering for writing or for the personality enhancement classes, learning a different hobby or learning about arts and craft, reading books, watching educational and inspiring shows or going for a vacation with the family to spend time with them.

The confusion lies in, is there really something like self improvement month? For those whose answer is in affirmative, it certainly is the month of November.

Going at a deeper level, actually every month should be for self improvement and improvement of anyone should not be confined to time and period rather whenever the need for improvement is felt, the person should work on it head on. Anytime is the best time for improvement and improvement doesn't depend on any particular time of the day, week, month or year rather every second and minute is right for improvement.

Man is bestowed with intellect, that's why man is above all creations of God. Man is superior to all beings. Therefore we must improve every single day and use our intellect and energy towards improvement. Keeping all such endeavors for a single month amounts to limiting ourselves, which is an insult to us and our abilities.

Since its been ruled out now about a particular month being best for our improvement, so we must focus our mind on improving ourselves and our surroundings. How do we so this? Change is of various types, whether we should opt for physical change, emotional change, improving skills or psychological change or anything else that we would want to change to improve. Whatever one decides, they should stick to it and make it take shape.

Do you want to manage stress? Read articles to get information regarding its management or take part in a stress management program .Do you want to learn knitting or the way a basket is woven, once you have decided, just do it. Nothing can stop you from doing only if you make up your mind to do it. Have you desired to go for surfing, then go for it, and do it now, what should you wait for to do so?

Don't prepare to live just live the life you have always wanted to, and the best way you have ever wanted to. This builds self confidence in people and guides them to more fruitful life and these people engage in things which would eventually take them to fulfill what they always dreamt about and always have been wanting. To live a life more fulfilling and satisfying should be enough to motivate you.

By Abhishek Agarwal