Year 2010

Simple Power Point Feedback

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Have you ever sent someone a PowerPoint presentation and asked them for feedback? You are likely to receive the following type of feedback:

“Slide 15, line 3 from the bottom, text should be texts.

Slide 21, I am not sure Japan is a good example to use. Maybe try Spain.

Slide 22, headline is weird. Why do you use 55%?

Slide 23, Japanese does not sound right here as well; maybe you should use Portugal, two lines down second paragraph missing a link”

And on and on….

When you receive feedback like this you actually feel this is too much work and procrastinate as much as possible. Who can blame you? Who wants to sift through these dense comments and link them back to the main document?

For a lengthy presentation this can be up to a few pages long. You then need to print out this list, open the power point and work your way through the list. This is a tedious process and not the best way to polish a power point presentation.

Assuming a colleague sends you a power point presentation for review, how should you respond? How should you ensure that you are providing effective and simple power point presentation feedback?

Step 1 – Determine the feedback required

You first need to find out the kind of feedback they seek. Do they need you to review the styling, the overall messaging and positioning of the message, detailed review of the slides and text, review of the image, compatibility on your laptop etc? As you can see, the word “review” can mean many things and it is important you clarify this before proceeding.

If the co-worker needs a simple power point presentation review, then you can save yourself a lot of time by clarifying this in advance and providing the type of input that co-worker actually requires and not a more thorough check.

If they need a detailed review, then at least you know the requirements and can allocate sufficient time to meet such requirements. The ability to give effective and simple power point presentation feedback is part of your personal style. You will be surprised how these small things contribute to your image in the office.

Step 2 – Prepare feedback

The next step in giving effective and simple power point presentation feedback is to undertake the review and present it in the most effective way for your co-worker to use the feedback. The best way to do this is to place all your comments directly into the power point presentation.

You are probably thinking this will not work since your co-worker may want to review and change your comments. That is a wise assumption. However, when we say, place your comments directly into the presentation, we do not mean you should change the presentation. This is how you should do it.

1 – The reason all your comments should be placed in the presentations is to make it easy to work with the document. If your co-worker wants to forward the presentation and your comments, it is much easier to forward one document. When reviewing your comments and making changes, it is also much faster any more effective to work with visual remarks on the slides. Having to flip between the slides and comments in email is difficult. Time is lost and comments may be overlooked.

2 – When commenting on the overall messaging, styling or anything else where the comment pertains to more than one slide or all the slides, insert a blank slide at the very start of the presentation. In this slide or slides, insert a blue text box and write in your comments. This way your colleague can clearly see your comments. Mention clearly that they apply to all the slides. Write clearly and in bullet points. Succinct and clear writing is always appreciated over long and dense paragraphs of text.

3 – When commenting on each slide, it is advisable to insert a round colourful text box and write in your comments. The text box should be large and noticeable. It is okay if it covers parts of the slide content. It will be deleted later once the comments and corrections are captured. Now use an arrow to connect the comment to the text or image which needs to be corrected. This allows your colleague to quickly see the problem, make the adjustment and delete your comments and arrows once the proper corrections have been made.

4 – For simple spelling mistakes, you may simply highlight the text with a yellow marker or circle the text in a red circle. Whether you use a yellow highlighter, blue or red circle, the objective is to use a color which will not be confused with the rest of the presentation.

Remember the operating phrase is Simple Power Point Feedback. Simple feedback makes it easier for te user to work with your comments.

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Remember the operating phrase is Simple Power Point Feedback. Simple feedback makes it easier for the user to work with your comments.

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Great free online resources

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In our day and age it is so easy and inexpensive to access free online learning materials. One can learn and grow much faster if one absorbs the knowledge that other people spent years or decades to accumulate. One of the cheapest and easiest ways to access such knowledge is through free online learning materials.

Technology allows us to be mentored by the brightest and most influential people of our time, without them even knowing the impact they have on our lives. If at this point in your life your funds are very limited, this still cannot be used as an excuse to limit your development. You have access to the Internet where, with the right guidance and commitment, you can find specific and quality material.

Below is a list with some resources I found useful. In addition, the list below points out some of the influential people of our time that one can benefit from knowing a little bit about. All of them were or are successful in one way or another and each of them can be a source for one’s professional and personal development to a smaller or larger extent.

We will constantly increase the information on this page as we find more useful information and free online learning material.

http://www.fora.tv

This is an excellent free online learning resource. It includes lectures, live events and debates with some of the top minds of our time. The purpose of the project is as follows, – “helps intelligent, engaged audiences get smart. Our users find, enjoy, and share videos about the people, issues, and ideas changing the world.” Here are examples of some interesting videos:
Video on Paul Krugman and the Global Economy

Video on Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP-Compaq

EconTalk

This is a weekly podcast, which is provided by the Library of Economics and Liberty and hosted by Russ Roberts. The main subject of the talk show is economics and the format is one-on-one discussions between the host and the guest. Russ Roberts’ guests include Nobel Laureates, business leaders and well-known authors. All past podcasts are available on the website. This is an incredibly popular free online learning site and is of exceptionally high quality. Go to:
Econ Talk

The Harvard Business Review

HBR is probably the most prestigious source for business analyses. Although the site has a paid portion, there is a lot of free online material available. Blogs, some past articles and author contributions are all free. The style of writing is very easy to understand and the research is of the highest quality. Go to:
Harvard Business Review

Knowledge@Wharton

K@W is an online business publication of the Wharton School of Business. It is another excellent free online learning resource and open to all readers after registration. The articles cover a wide range of topics and also contain podcasts for downloading. Go to:
Knowledge@Wharton

Tony Schwartz

He is the founder, CEO and President of The Energy Project: Go to the project here. He is a professional speaker and bestselling author (see his presentation at Google).

Tony Schwartz is working with many Fortune 500 organizations. See an article regarding Tony Schwartz’ work, which was published in the Harvard Business Review.

John Maxwell

He is an internationally respected and best-selling leadership author and speaker. He works with many Fortune 500 companies and foreign governments. I have listed some of his free online learning material here.
Additional Material
Free Chapters
Behind the Scenes
Maxwell’s Blog

Marshall Goldsmith

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority on leadership and works with some of the top leaders in business. He wrote a New York Times best seller “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”. The link to his presentation at Youtube is available here. Marshall Goldsmith’s website also provides a lot of useful and free online learning materials.

Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch was an amazing individual and professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. His last lecture and time management lecture are inspirational and very useful free online learning materials.

Aswath Damodaran

Professor Damodaran’s free online learning guide is the definitive source on corporate finance definitions, course notes and sample excel models. If you need a simple excel model, you are likely to find them here.

This list is by no means exhaustive or complete. Over time, we will add to this list and provide more material. Your contributions will be highly appreciated.

Focus! Read 11 tips to help you concentrate

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All students, even straight- A students, sometimes experience difficulties with their ability to focus. These challenges are exacerbated when the workload is too high, you do not have enough time in the day or you just cannot understand the material as well as you need to.

A strong ability to focus on study material, which is also commonly called the ability to concentrate, is one of the most important characteristics you need. As a skill, it can be acquired.

Below are 11 straightforward and helpful techniques on how to improve your ability to focus (concentration levels) during study times:

1 – Write down key points

Try to write down key points as you read or revise your work. This not only helps you to improve your ability to focus on the material but makes you an active learner and enhances retention of information.

2 – Work with a timer

Set a timer for 30 minutes or 45 minutes at a time. While you are working on a timer, do not allow yourself to get up or do anything other than study. Imagine that there is a connection between you and a task and do not break this connection.

Try to give 100% of your effort during the “timer period”. Then take a break, exercise or have some water. Thereafter, do another study session. Studies have shown that shorter periods of high concentration study advance comprehension and retention of the material.

3 – Summarize information

Make a deal with yourself that you will summarize in your own words every paragraph that you read as you read it. This makes you a more active learner and enhances your ability to focus on your reading. This also improves retention of new information. Students think this takes too long. In reality it takes less total time. Material you summarize usually requires less revision. While you may take longer to summarize the material you will take far less time overall.

4 – Test yourself

Create tests of the main concepts and formulas as you go through the study material and promise yourself to test yourself at the end of the day or week to check how well you are doing.

One helpful technique is to divide a page vertically into 3 columns:

1 – The first column should be small, enough for one number (from 1 to 5), leave it blank. This column is designed for rating your answers.

2 – The second column will contain the concept you are testing. For example, you can write down “Net Present Value” or “Internal Rate of Return”.

3 – The third column will have a brief answer for each concept from column 2.

While testing yourself using this technique, close the 3rd column and test each concept and formula in the second column. Compare each answer with the correct answer in the third column and rate your answer from 1 to 5. Rate an answer 5 if you answered it very well, 3 if your answer needs more work and had gaps and 0 if you could not answer at all. Be tough on yourself when rating your answers.

This technique allows you to identify gaps in your knowledge and allows you to specifically attend to questions which need the most work. For example, assume at the end of the week you have only 15 minutes available to test yourself on one subject, such as Finance.

This may not be enough time to test every question in your list, but you could go through all questions for which answers were rated between 0-2. This will allow you to attend to the biggest gaps in your knowledge.

Test yourself regularly. For example, you can briefly test yourself at the end of each week. Yes, it is difficult but you are making an investment over time so that before exams you can feel calm and prepared.

Moreover, it will improve the depth of your knowledge, retention of information and will positively contribute to your examination results.

5 – Water, sleep and exercise

Drinking clean water, getting good sleep and ensuring regular exercise will improve your ability to focus. Drink a lot of clean water. You need at least 5 to 8 glasses.

You also need to sleep at least 6-7 hours. Ideally you need 8 hours of sleep. Try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time. Try not to work after 12pm. This is when your body is designed to rest. Keep in mind that sleep that you may try to obtain during the day to make up for the lost sleep at night is not of the same quality as sleep that you obtain during the night.

You also need to exercise as much as you can afford. You don’t have to go to a gym. You can even run from one room to another and back for 5 minutes to get a good workout between your study sessions. Another good workout is dancing. Put on your favorite music during your study break and dance. Find an exercise which is not too time consuming, which you enjoy and which works best for you.

6 – Deep breathing

Learn to breathe deeply while you study. This will help in reducing anxiety and stress levels. This will also help you to increase mental clarity due to increased oxygen and, therefore, will improve your ability to focus.

7 – Dealing with anxiety

Anxiety can be a very bad distracter. If it is something significant, such as an unanticipated family problem (eg your husband losing his job and he is the sole bread-winner), try to find some kind of solution or find a way to make a peace about the situation.

If uncertainty is involved and there is nothing you can do to improve situation, tell yourself “I don’t know how it will work out, but I know that it all will work out great”.

Every time you worry about this major problem – repeat this phrase to yourself.

If you have many little worries that keep on surfacing, put them in a worry list. List them as they come to you and set some time for yourself to think about all of those little problems and find a solution for each. You can use “dead” time for this activity, such as when you are taking a shower or as you are walking to classes or to the store.

8 – Find a trigger word

Every time you feel your mind starts wandering, tell yourself “be in the now” or “stop”. Find a word that works for you and use it to bring your attention back to the task at hand.

9 – Switch subjects

Switch from one subject to another as soon as you feel that your ability to focus is deteriorating. This will help keep your mind alert. This is especially useful when you start studying a lot for a prolonged period of time. Effective concentration becomes more and more difficult.

10 – Take breaks

Take breaks away from your study. Do something that will involve laughing and joy. Watch a comedy, laugh with your friends and loved ones or read a funny book. Although, you may be doing enough reading at the moment, so it is better to do something other than reading.

This will give you energy and will make you feel more rested. Stay away from sad or scary movies. This is not what you need right now. You need something where you can get emotionally rested. Once you take your mind of your studies for a few minutes, it increases your ability to focus on the material.

11 – Find a study buddy

You may be able to improve your ability to focus by finding a study friend. You need someone with motivation, expectations and ambitions similar to or higher than yours. You need a positive influence. If you are a straight-A student, a student who only cares about passing will drag you down. You need someone of your own caliber or higher, if you are inspired to do even better. Than together you can discuss points, search for information to fill the gaps in your understanding and test each other.

As with any relationship in your life, try to make sure that this relationship is mutually beneficial. It is the only kind of relationship that is productive and sustainable. Keep in mind that this strategy will work well if you are an extrovert. If you are an introvert than studying alone may be a better option for you. Introverts may find it difficult to work with someone and this will negatively impact their ability to focus.

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A strong ability to focus on the study material, along with mastering reading and other necessary skills for smart learning, is absolutely crucial for achieving academic success in business studies and for ensuring a superb business career . These 11 simple techniques are very effective in improving your ability to focus. Try them and choose what works best for you. Ultimately, you need to develop a bag of your own tricks that will help you succeed.

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Exam preparation done the right way

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Below are some very useful techniques to help you during your exam preparation:

From the core to filling in the gaps

It is always easier to continue with the study module if you already know some of the information. So you have to start from something. It’s okay not to know everything, just build a starting point and work your way out from that point.

Start from learning the most important parts of the study material first. As your body of knowledge grows, continue filling in the gaps. In other words, continue to cover material which is still not clear to you.

One great method to use is possible if you have access to past exam papers. In such cases, start by studying each part that was tested in prior years. As you do that, you will cover most of the critical aspects. Than, cover the gaps in your knowledge.

For too many students exam preparation is an unstructured process. Start by focusing on the main idea first and build your knowledge from there.

Channel your mind chatter

We all have a mind chatter. We are constantly thinking about various things. The majority of such thoughts are useless. During exam preparation it is important to control your mind chatter and to channel it into thinking about your subjects and linking the dots in your study material. Every time your mind chatter resumes, it is taking precious time away from your exam preparation.

Find the ways to channel your mind chatter in a way that is beneficial to your exam preparation. For example, when you doing something that keeps your mind unoccupied and useless mind chatter resumes, start thinking about your material.

Ask yourself which parts of the material are the most important and why. Than ask yourself questions about how different parts of material are connected. Ask yourself what do you understand clearly and what are the biggest gaps in your knowledge. You need to make subjects that you are working on the focus of your mind chatter. This way you take a lemon and make a lemonade out of it.

Give 100% of your effort

When you study, give it 100% of your effort. Read attentively, be focused and use every second you have to do something to improve your knowledge about the subject.

When you study, focus 100% on the task at hand. Be an active learner and not a passive learner. Do something with the material. Be creative. For example, write information down or explain it to yourself in your own words.

Do not allow yourself to become lazy and simply read the material without paying much attention to what you are reading. In this way you are just cheating yourself, no one else. It is your time, your life. As Steve Jobs once said, “you could be doing anything else with your life right now but you have chosen to do this, so give it 100% of your effort… Life is brief and then you die, so you have to be damn good.”

Be self-disciplined

At all times, and especially during exam preparation, you need to be strict with yourself. Demand from yourself to be efficient with the time you have. Do not allow yourself to give in to laziness and weaknesses.

The more you do it – the harder it is to fight giving in. The less you allow yourself to be ineffective and lazy – the easier it is to fight it. As Zig Ziglar likes to say, “If you are hard on yourself, then life will be infinitely easier on you”.

Internalize information

Motivate yourself to absorb and internalize information from each subject you study. It must become part of who you are and what you care about, almost to the point of short-term obsession.

You need to sink into it and build a relationship with it. You need to know it to the point that you can confidently teach someone the knowledge covered in the study material. Only then are you be really prepared.

These points are not a complete list of everything you could do in your exam preparation, but it will put you on the right track to success. Remember, the marks you get will stay on your record for the rest of your life and will likely significantly influence your career  journey.

You are at “war”

If you want your exam preparation to result in A or A + results, you have to take drastic measures. The only exception to this advice applies to people with out of the ordinary intelligence who can gain such results without doing significant amount of work.

To get really high marks, you need to disconnect yourself from all the distraction during exam preparation. Work, work and work, day and night. Your exam material needs to be what you think about when you wake up and when you go to sleep, when you eat and when you taking a shower. And the closer it is to the examination date – the more you need to operate in this manner. Exam preparation must engulf your life.

If you are a straight A student, it sets you apart from other students who are less diligent and driven. When all of you will be applying for the same jobs, who do you think will have a huge advantage over whom? Of course you! Therefore, the first step you need to take to help ensure that you have a great career is to finish your degree as best as you possibly can.

It you already have a degree with average results then consider continuing your education part-time and finish the next level exceptionally well. Academic excellence will always set you apart. It is really hard, especially while working full-time, but it definitely worth it if you want to have a great future.

Good luck with your exam preparation. Give it your 100% and, as Zig Ziglar likes to say, he “will see you at the top”.

Effective Reading

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Effective reading is yet another skill that will serve you well during your studies and throughout your career. Whether you are a student or already pursuing a career, mastering effective reading techniques is a worthy investment of your time and effort.

There are various effecting reading techniques you can use to improve your “uptake” from reading. Below we present 9 effective reading techniques.

1 – Have a conversation with the author

One of the effective reading techniques is an imaginary conversation with the author. Try to see reading as a conversation between you and the author. Listen, make suggestions, pose questions and ask for clarifications. This will enhance your concentration and improve the retention of new information.

You can even take this step further and not just imagine the conversation, you can also imagine the author. Make him/her funny looking or a very unusual looking character. Our mind remembers such things better than ordinary things.

This will make your learning more active and will keep you alert. Write down your suggestions, questions and clarifications. This will help you to develop your own viewpoint.

2 – Prepare test questions

As you study, write down possible examination or test questions and the page where you can find an answer. This makes you an active learner as well as gives you a list of questions that you can use to test yourself on an ongoing basis and prior to examination. You can use this reading technique for mastering a skill necessary for your career as well.

3 – Read out aloud and walk around the room

When we see and hear information, we understand it easier and retain it better. You can combine reading out loud with walking around while reading. This will help you stay more alert and more involved.

4 – Link information

Another effective reading technique is linking information. Try to link information within a study module (subject or section). Also try to link information with other study modules. Purposeful creation of such links improves retention and enhances understanding.

5 – Find answers

As you study, there may be parts of the material that you will not be able to understand immediately. If you feel you cannot understand it even after studying it few times – get help. Do not wait for the final few days before your exam.

6 – Draw mind maps

Some students find it very helpful to draw mind maps as they read a chapter or section. This allows them to have a “big picture” of the chapter in a way which is easier to remember. You can make each mind map unique so your mind maps are easier to remember. For example, you can use images relevant to the concepts you are studying. Use your imagination.

Drawing mind maps also makes you an active learner because you are doing something with information rather than just reading it. This, as always, enhances concentration and retention. It is important part of mastering reading.

7 – Form mental images

As you are reading, make sure you imagine what the author is trying to communicate. Mental pictures automatically formed in our minds and differ from one person to another. Images that appear are unique to every individual and can resemble a movie or power point slides, as an example. Try to enhance the kind of mental pictures that you experience while reading. This will improve both concentration and retention.

8 – Look for the main ideas

Yet another very effective reading technique is to focus on the main ideas. It involves identifying and absorbing the main ideas before going into details. For example, you can start by reading a summary of the chapter before reading the chapter itself.

In the text itself, the main ideas are usually expressed in the first sentence of the paragraph. The main idea of the paragraph is the main point the author is trying to get across. For example, in this particular paragraph, the main idea is to “look for the main ideas” while reading.

9 – Review, review, review

Finally, you need to retain new information. To ensure prolonged retention of new information, you need to revise information you learned. Otherwise you will have to relearn it.

According to some experts, revision should be done within the first 24 hours, than within 7, 21 and 31 days after the first encounter with the information. Thereafter, revise information every 30 days or, better, every 7-14 days. Every subsequent revision becomes progressively shorter.

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As you can see from the above, the techniques recommended for effective reading are very simple and intuitive. Yet all of them are very effective and will certainly help you, if followed correctly.

In mastering effective reading, remember to be alert, vary your approaches, learn what works and does not work for you and focus on the core before going into details. Don’t settle for ineffective reading. With the amount of information that we need to intake on a daily basis, ineffective reading is a luxury you cannot afford.

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Can you lead yourself? If not, don’t expect others to follow you

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Author, life coach, and motivational speaker T...

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To be a better leader, the first thing you need to do is to learn to lead yourself. Leadership and learning to lead yourself go together. If you cannot learn this important skills, you will not be able to lead others. Below are some ideas on how to develop this skill of internal leadership.

Ask: “what is the right thing to do?”. Then do it!

Learn to guide your choices, big and small, by asking yourself: “What is the right thing to do?”. And then do it.

At first, it may take extra time. Thereafter, as you will continue with this activity, the new healthier habits will form and you will not need to spell this out question to yourself. You will do “the right thing” by default.

Moreover, as the habit develops, it will become easier and easier, and you will begin to feel and see the difference it makes in your life.

Remember that, most of the time, you already know what is the right thing to do. The trick is in actually doing it. This is what separate top performers at work from under-achievers, great life partners from inferior ones and straight-A students from C students. Imagine the difference it will make in your life if you actually do it?

More importantly, you are doing it and not just expecting others to do the right thing. You are behaving as you expect others to behave. You are taking steps to effectively lead yourself.

Determine the “musts” in your life

This advice is intuitive but was clearly verbalized by Tony Robbins. The reason some people do not go above a certain physical weight or the reason some students do not get B’s but only A’s is because a certain weight or certain academic performance is a “must” for them.

Everyone has things they should do. They know they should do it, they know how to do it, but they just cannot find strength in themselves to do it. The reason for this is because it is a “should” for them, not a “must”. When something is a “must” for you – failure is not an option.

Therefore, examine your life and determine which aspects of your life must be classified as “musts”. Then reinforce those “musts” every day as an activity where “failure is not an option”, until it becomes second nature. Once you break the old habit – based on research old habits take 21 days to break – the new approach will feel more natural to you than the old approach. This simple technique can significantly contribute to success in your life.

For example, imagine that instead of “you should study at least 5 hours a day” you determine that “you MUST study at least 5 hours a day”. Then make sure that you follow it vigorously. Do not allow yourself any excuses.

You are developing your discipline now, so you have to be strict with yourself. You will see that in 2 or 3 weeks it will become a habit. You will also notice how your new positive habit brings you to new levels of achievement, which will give you further strength to continue with your new positive habit.

Thereafter, as you develop the new “must” in your life, you will have the first victory to keep on giving you strength in disciplining yourself.

Determining “musts” in your life and vigorously ensuring that you keep up with them is part of an effort to lead yourself. Incidentally, the goal to lead yourself needs to be a “must” for you as well.

Use one small improvement as leverage for change

Part of the “lead yourself” endeavor is understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and determining the causes of your strengths and weaknesses. If leading yourself and leadership are not your strong qualities at the moment, you need to change your beliefs. Your beliefs affect your actions and your actions affect your results, which further reinforce your beliefs.

If you have a belief that you will not succeed in your “lead yourself” goal – you need to change this belief. One way to change this belief is to achieve a result that will strongly contradict this belief. It does not need to be a big change. It can be something very simple. Just do it to prove to yourself that you can change and that your belief is wrong. Your mind needs evidence.

After you succeed with providing contradictory evidence to your belief, you have a leverage point. Every time you feel that you just cannot do something, always think back to this example to remember what is possible.

For example, take an area which is a struggle for the majority of people. A good example can be waking up in the morning. So many people struggle to wake up in the morning. If you will be a person who always wakes up at the very same time (whichever time this may be) every single morning, on weekdays and weekends, you will have at least one result which contradicts your current belief of not being able to lead yourself.

It may sound like a really simple example, yet it means something to you and that is what is important. You need simple examples to build your confidence and this creates a snowballing effect.

Above are just some thoughts on improving leadership and attaining your “lead yourself” goal. This will give you a good start. Remember that it will not be easy. If it were easy – everyone would be successful.

Now that you have read the article, ask yourself these two questions:

  • Can you trust you to lead yourself?
  • If you cannot lead yourself, why are you learning to lead others?

Take some time to think about this and write down the answers. Use the guide provided above and develop an action plan to lead yourself.

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Drowning at the office…improve your time management with these 15 tips

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The Alarm

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To understand time management, think about what a wise person once said, you can live your life any way you want, but you can live it only once.

We could adapt it to:

“you can live your day any way you want, but you can live it only once.”

If you don’t have an effective time management approach, your days are going to zoom by while leaving you with the feeling that nothing really gets done. Theoretically, it is not possible to manage time. But one can manage what one does with their time. Effective time management approaches are therefore needed. Below are some of the main principles that can significantly improve your time management and productivity.

1 – Do not deviate from your schedule

There are many distractions around you throughout the day. The more you deviate from your schedule to do something unproductive, the less you will accomplish. Be disciplined, develop a daily schedule and follow it. This is crucial for effective time management. If something comes up that is important, incorporate it into your schedule. If something is not important, then stick to your schedule. Remember that more often than not, your daily activities determine your success.

2 – Have programmed decisions

Programmed decisions are decisions made about recurring activities. Such decisions are made once and used every time the need for such a decision presents itself.

For example, if you are a very ambitious and driven individua, a time management programmed decision can be:

“I decided that I must only watch TV up to 5 hours a week, only between the times 6pm to 10pm on weekends”.

Now, all you have to do is to follow it.

Initially every time you think “should I do my report or watch a show on TV?” you will remember that your time management programmed decision does not allow you to have this option. As long as you are disciplined in following through, it will become a habit, and eventually you will not even have this question in your mind.

This example of programmed decisions also offers you an additional time saver – less TV. Another example of a programmed decision can be:

“I must exercise 30 minutes, 3 times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 6.30pm”.

Now you no longer have to spend any time planning and deciding on when you should exercise. The decision is already made. Time management programmed decisions can save you an enormous amount of time, which can be invested in value-adding activities.

3 – Manage your energy

It is important to do the most challenging tasks when your energy is at a high level.

4 – Respectfully say, “I wish I could help but I do not have capacity”

It is very important not to take on more tasks than you can handle. It is an important skill to learn to say “No” when you do not have the capacity to incorporate additional activity into your schedule.

5 – Keep a positive attitude

This may sound irrelevant to time management, but it is. If you have a positive attitude and see opportunities rather than problems, you will not waste time and energy on worry and regret. Instead, you will focus on solutions rather than problems, and opportunities rather than threats and unpleasant events.

6 -Email routine

Emails can be a significant time waster. It is vital, if at all possible, to set a specific time during the day when you will attend to your emails instead of continuously checking them as they arrive.

You could, for instance, make a time management programmed decision about allocating 10 minutes in the morning to attend to urgent emails and 20 minutes in the afternoon to attend to the rest of emails.

Only respond to emails addressed to you or where your input adds value. The novelty of being copied on thousands of emails soon wears out but the time you already wasted on them can never be recovered.

The morning is generally when you have the most energy. Therefore, it is not productive to spend this time handling non-urgent emails. Do not let other people decide how you should spend your most productive time. You should spend it on the high priority tasks.

7 – The “Pareto” rule (80/20)

The “Pareto” rule refers to the tendency for 20% of your effort to account for 80% of the impact. For time management, it refers to the tendency of 20 percent of your activities to account for 80 percent of the positive impact from your work.

Therefore, it is an advisable and smart thing to identify those activities with the highest impact. Spend the majority of time on them while cutting down or cutting out unnecessary activities (activities with no or very little impact).

For example, if you are a student and your main job is to earn a degree, then you should be spending the majority of your time on things which help you obtain your degree. Focus your time on your studies and cut out things which add no value to your studies. You should definitely not be spending less than 50% of your time on your studies if this is your main objective.

8 – Delegate and delegate often

It is important to delegate what can be done by others. This will save your time for high priority items and gives lower level employees an opportunity to grow. When delegating, it is critical to delegate some authority together with responsibility. That is, you need to delegate the task together with the appropriate level of authority to make decisions. Only such delegation brings real value to both parties. If only the responsibility is delegated but every minor decision about the task is still made by you, then your time will still be used up on this task and the lower level employee will not gain the true developmental benefits that delegation can offer.

In fact, you may spend more time on the task should an extra problem be created due to the poor delegation of authority.

9 – Lower standards for lower priority tasks

Some tasks should just be done at “Good enough” level. Striving for perfection in low priority tasks is generally a waste of time that can be spent on more important goals. Time management is also about eliminating the obsession to make everything perfect, even things that do not need to be perfect.

10 – Alarm snooze time waster

Many people search for ways to get up in the morning. You probably know that resetting the alarm or putting it on snooze in the morning can lead to significant time wastage. Moreover, the quality of your sleep during such periods is very bad so you do not get a good rest.

It is, without doubt, very hard for many people to get up in the morning. It is customary not to hear the alarm or not remember any of the reasons why you should get up before you absolutely must get up. Yet, later in the day, many people regret  lost hours that they could have spent more wisely.

The best way to break out of this insanity is to train yourself to wake up exactly at the same time every morning. Our bodies go through what is known as basic rest activity cycles. When you awake a few days in a row at the very same time – your body will adjust your basic rest activity cycle so that it feels natural to be awake at specific time.

It may be helpful, especially in the beginning, to leave the alarm in another room so you physically have to get up when you hear it.

After you start waking up at the same time every day, a pattern develops, and you may not be able to sleep beyond the  time set by your “body-clock”.

If you miss a day or two and will wake up later than your normal set time, you will have to again train yourself to wake up at the set time and it may be almost as hard to train yourself as the first time. Therefore, it seems better to take a nap during the day if you need extra rest and get yourself out of bed at a set time in the morning.

11 – Group similar activities together

It is important to group similar activities together. For example, if you need to make a few phone calls, it is better to do them all at once. One simple rule that can be used to save time is never to leave your desk for just one thing. In this way, you are forced to group a few activities together before your work is interrupted and, therefore, work will be interrupted much less. This is a simple but very effective time management technique.

12 – Work passionately

Time management can be improved not only by reducing the time spent at the office, but also by enjoying the time spent at the office. Constantly look for ways to be interested and passionate about your work. This way you can do your best work and you can be more focused and accomplish the task faster.

13 – Avoid disruptions

Avoid all kinds of disruptions such as drop-in visitors, telephone calls and emails, magazines and newspapers, and news websites. Those activities can take up a large part of your time if you are not careful. Allocate some time from the least productive part of your day to deal with these type of activities.

14 -Avoid procrastination

There is a saying, if you have a frog to eat, eat it the first thing in the morning and, if you have two frogs to eat, don’t start from the small one.

It is a good time management habit to do the most difficult and unpleasant activities earlier in the day. This way it will be done once and for all and you no longer will have to occupy your mind with the thoughts on how unpleasant and difficult it will be do engage in such activity.

15 – Assign a “dollar” value to an hour of your time

You need to assign a “dollar” value to an hour of your time. Time is an even more precious resource than money, but, for some reason, people are generally more careful with their money then with their time. By keeping in mind how much each hour of your day is worth, you can be much more accountable for the way this time is utilized.

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Presentation Skills: Stand Up and Present with Confidence

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Effective presentation skills are vital for most business roles. Many people never master presentation skills. Therefore, you can really set yourself apart from your colleagues by developing strong presentation skills. Steps to enhance your presentation skills are outlined for inexperienced and semi-experienced presenters below.

Inexperienced presenter

If you have never had any experience in presenting your work to an audience, the first few times will most likely be really uncomfortable and scary. What could help you greatly is to prepare what you can say. This resembles writing a script. Later, as you will acquire experience in presenting your work, you will no longer need scripts. The next thing you need to do is to practice, practice and practice. Start from practicing alone. Divide the presentation into manageable and logical parts and practice each part separately. Then practice each part together in the correct sequence. When you feel you can get through the presentation more or less adequately, start videotaping yourself. When you will see yourself presenting your work, you may likely notice things that you had no idea you were doing. An example can be noisily clapping your hands together when you are trying to make a point. To avoid embarrassment it is, of course, much better to find out about this problem while you are alone. Since you know that you do particular things with your hands while presenting, you can keep one of your hands on your leg and break the habit. After you have videotaped your presentation a few times and you will see a significant improvement in the quality of your presentation and will be ready to set up dry runs. Dry runs are practice presentations to a friendly audience. You can start with your family and, when you are ready, you can ask some of your colleagues to come in for a dry run and afterwards give you feedback and make suggestions on how to improve your presentation. After about 5 dry runs you should be ready to give a good presentation.

Semi-experienced presenter

If you have some experience in presenting your work to an audience, then the preparation steps described above can be shortened in frequency and depth to reflect what you feel is necessary to adequately prepare. However, if you do not feel confident about your presentation skills then it is better to go through all these steps to ensure you are really well prepared.

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Presenting your work to an audience can become one of your favorite activities as you gain more experience. It is exciting. It allows you an opportunity to show your competence, intelligence and reliability. Presenting your work is an opportunity to shine, it is not punishment. You need to embrace it and make the most of it. The ideas above are very helpful and, if followed, will greatly help you in improving your confidence and effectiveness when engaging an audience.

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Six ways to enhance your personal style

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Your personal style significantly influences perceptions that people have of you. Moreover, it rolls up into being your brand or personal image. Often perceptions that people have of you are very one-sided and heavily affected by one negative or positive characteristic which is the so-called “halo effect”, which is one of the biases that people have when forming perceptions of others.

You can definitely influence how people perceive you. You need to adjust your personal style to build your brand the same way as Coca Cola and amazon.com builds theirs. You can be anything you want to be and make people think anything you would like them to.

You just need to consciously manage your brand. It must be of the highest caliber, consistent and credible. You can call it your personal style, your personal image or personal brand. It does not matter. Everyone has one and you need to control your own.

Below are six ideas which can significantly help you build your personal style and, hence, your brand.

1 – Over invest during the first 6 months

You probably noticed when you join a new company or when you start a degree in university, a perception about who you are and what you are capable of develops and is usually based on what you do over the very first few months. Therefore, if you give everything you have over those first 6 months, you will lay a great foundation upon which to build your success.

2 – Appearance counts

Numerous studies have indicated that people prefer attractive and neat people. The way you dress, the way you walk and the way you communicate are all part of your personal style and contributes to the way people see you.

3 – Dress a level higher than the majority

You need to always dress for your next job. If you are a business analyst in a consulting firm, dress as a consultant or even a senior consultant or a manager. Even if more senior people in the work place are dressed very casually, but the overall dress code is business casual, you should be dressed just a level higher than the majority of your colleagues and superiors.

This generally will show that you take your job and career seriously, that you are here to do business and you intend to go far in life. This sends a message that you come to work not to socialize and make friends but to bring great value to the company and the customers. This will make you stand out.

Of course, there are exceptions. Some companies specifically stay away from a professional dress code. A good example is Google, employees of which follow a very casual dress code. But in most cases, this guideline will make you stand out and get noticed. Of course, your other actions, such as the quality of your work are also ingredients of your personal style and should support your overall message of excellence.

THERE IS ONE IMPORTANT WORD OF CAUTION. Dressing well must make you feel better internally and present a confident and positive message. Never ever confuse dressing better to acting better than your co-workers. Your professional dressing will generate attention, so it is very important you go out of your way to indicate that this is your preferred dressing style only and you DO NOT think you are better than your co-workers. Show this in your actions and be sincere about it. If you dress well but act better than your co-workers then you will harm your reputation.

4 – Reputation

Your personal style should be aligned with helping you to build a reputation of credibility, competence and reliability. Your superiors need to know that if there are trouble and they need someone reliable and competent, they should go to you.

5 – Always keep your word

Staying true to your word must be an important part of your personal style. Take on only what you can handle and feel free to renegotiate deadlines, where necessary and where possible. Your personal style must clearly show that you are someone who takes requests and promises seriously.

Your attitude should be one that if you promised to do something – you will do everything in your power to ensure that it gets done, one way or another. For example, if you promised to deliver a certain document by the deadline, and an unexpected and more important assignment came up, you need to do everything you can to find someone to do the first deliverable for you, and be accountable for its quality.

After you find such a person, you need to approach your superior and confirm with them if they feel comfortable with the other person taking responsibility for the deliverable that you were assigned to do.

If you have done everything you could to find someone and there is just nobody available, than you can approach your superior and describe the situation. He or she may then make a decision on how best to proceed.

The bottom line is, you need to be proactive, reliable and feel ultimately accountable for any work you promise to do. Keeping your word must be seen by others as an important ingredient of your personal style. It is also important to be consistent in your personal style across different parts of your life, which includes your personal style in your relationships outside of work.

6 – Under promise and over deliver

This simple technique can help you greatly in establishing an image of competence and excellence. Furthermore, this technique is useful in any area of your life: in your studies, in your career and in your personal life. By following this simple rule, you will consistently exceed people’s expectations and will, therefore, have the reputation of someone who always exceeds expectations.

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The above ideas are really important and rarely implemented. If you will adapt it to enhance your personal style, this alone will set you apart from the crowd.

Business ethics

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Strong business ethics is vital to ensure a successful long-term career. One single thing that you can do that will make you stand out in life and in business is to cultivate very strong fundamental values and make it define who you are.

In practice, strong business ethics is not a common trait in employees, as you may have noticed yourself. If ethics were common we would not need so many laws and enforcement agencies. We could simply expect employees to do what is right. This, however, gives you a competitive advantage. In business, strong fundamental values could include many things but the underlying value is integrity at all times. Integrity must guide all dealings with internal and external stakeholders.

More important than integrity is the image of having integrity. It is a halo which can protect you from accusations. It takes years to develop this halo but it can be lost in one act, lasting just one second.

To cultivate strong business ethics, one needs to acquire or strengthen several business values that are vital for anyone who would like to succeed as a professional and as a leader.

Guide to business ethics

Be ethical regardless of the consequences in dealing with stakeholders of an organisation.

Do what is the best for the company. Sometimes it can mean doing what is the best for the client, if you work on projects for specific clients, such as in management consulting. Doing what is best for the company sometimes means forgoing immediate profits for the company, and even upsetting your co-workers.

  • Take pride in your work at all times.
  • Do your best work at all times.
  • Never say anything negative about someone behind that person’s back. If you have issues with someone, approach them directly.
  • Do not gossip or spread rumours. Do not take part in gossiping. Rumours have many untruths to them and you do not want to damage anyone’s reputation.
  • Be professional at all times.
  • If you promise something – deliver it as promised, but when needed, use opportunities to renegotiate the deadline.
  • Do as you advise others to do.
  • Respect your time and that of others.
  • Promote justice. Give people credit for their work and never accept credit for work done by somebody else.
  • Stand up for what you believe in. If you see wrongdoing, especially the kind that can be damaging to a company’s reputation or performance, do whatever you can to change it and refuse to be a part of it.
  • And last, but most importantly, remember that family and the people you love always come first. This does not mean that one can miss a deadline if there is a birthday coming up. In such situations you will have to negotiate with both parties and use your best judgment. What it does mean is that, in all your decisions, you need to keep your family’s interests as a highest priority. For instance, you cannot neglect your husband, wife or children for a few years while you are building your career. This will cause irreparable damage to your life. You have to incorporate their interests now into your schedule.

 

Ethics vs. Personal Commitments

Take care of yourself. Always remember that if you work yourself to the point that you will get ill, regardless of how outstanding your performance was, you will be replaced. Your employer and management may feel very sad that you are leaving, and may even have to hire two people to do your job, but they will replace you and in time forget about you.

Therefore, always remember to put your health and your family first. Those are the real assets of your life, not your title and the corner office. If you cannot reconcile the needs of your family with those of your career, then you need to think long and hard, and possibly walk away from your career.

Do not go against your values to accommodate behaviour which is not ethical.

The above points on business ethics were probably just a reminder, as they are intuitive. As you go forward, you can incorporate other guidelines that you feel are important. However, it is important to make sure that your values are not negotiable. That is why we call them values. As people often say; if you don’t have values – you don’t have anything. Values and moral principles only count when they are tested. Everyone has them unless they are put to the test. Then only a few truly have them.

Strong values will always make you stand out and are vital for your long-term success and happiness in all areas of your life.