What to Do when You Are Laid Off

It should not come as a surprise if one day you find yourself jobless, as so many people are getting affected by the job cuts. You might think all you can do is to be on your toes 24/7 but you can do a lot more than being cautious. You can be prepared.

When the tempest hits you unexpectedly, here are your choices.

Use your welfare. If you’ve been laid off, filing for unemployment could save you from being downright penniless. Don’t be embarrassed. You’ve been paying your dues when you were employed and now that you need your privilege, use it.

Make a list of jobs you can do if worse comes to worst. Make a list of side jobs you can do while looking for your next career path. Some of the more usual choices include editing, proofreading, tutoring, consultancy, and other freelance work.

Apply for a temporary night shift job. Night shift jobs are great for people who need the day to look for the next big day job. Temporary agencies have jobs with menial work so you can get by without exhausting yourself.

Review your contract. You might have overlooked small texts in your contract which can move your company to shell out some separation pay or compensation for laying you off.

3 Tips to be More Casual with Clients

You always hear the principle, “business is business”. And we all know better than to be personal when it comes to anything professional. But then there are customers these days who are looking for more than just a negotiation, and sometimes a little informality is what it takes to close a deal. Find the right formula of personality and business, and you can hit the jackpot with your business.

People become customers when they start to relate to you. Once customers see something about your business they identify with, they get pulled in to your circle of potential market buyers or clients.

Add a little touch of personalization on your marketing tools. Some people are getting into putting their pictures in business cards. It might sound cheesy but you gotta admit adding a face to a name has more chances of recall.

Give gifts on special occasions. Customers and clients want to be taken care of so make sure you remember them on their birthdays and on important holidays. It doesn’t hurt to be a little more generous than your competition.

Make announcements. Nowadays, it’s easier to announce because of email, flyering and making phone calls. or even posting on your website. Why not making it a habit to update all your contacts about what’s new with your business? Make sure to include sales promos, upcoming events and company restructuring. The simple sentence, “Keep in touch.” will ensure that your customers will remain to be your friends, and vice versa.

How to Get More Time to Improve Your Work Output

How productive are you at work? The thing is, you spend most of your day at work but the amount and quality of work you deliver is probably not substantial enough. Take a look at these ways on how you can improve the quality of your output so you can really say that you’re worth your salt.

When you open your inbox, ignore the forwarded emails that are not related to work. Everyday we get a lot of these emails but make it a habit to check these personal emails during break time, after work hours, or best–on weekends. In the same way, don’t send out emails that are for “keeping in touch” with your friends and family. You can send personal emails on a weekday but limit it to very important ones.

Try to resist joining small talk for two reasons: (1) it steals precious time and (2) it makes you lose your momentum. Limit small talk when you’re just doing something menial like cleaning your desk but go back to work immediately.

Don’t waste time looking for files and searching for documents. If you know exactly where to find what you need, you will not be shuffling through everything and getting stressed in the process.

Freelancing: Protect Yourself through Legal Forms

I know I’ve written a little bit about this matter a few months ago but I’d like to re-emphasize the point. I have a lot of friends who are freelancing graphics artists and web designers. I am sort of a freelancer myself. One thing that I’d say that most freelancers tend to forget is to protect themselves legally from unscrupulous clients.

I had the pleasant experience of riding on gentleman’s agreement for most of my freelance work until I’ve personally experience one totally unmanageable client a few years ago, who, despite verbal agreements that there would only be a maximum of two revisions from an agreed design, pushed me on to make more than the agreed revisions. While I was able to assert myself over the matter, I knew that I would have had better leverage if I had the agreement on paper.

If you’re a freelancer and have experienced the same, then it’s quite obvious where you (we) have lapsed - we forgot to protect ourselves legally.

While lawsuits are not that common with freelance jobs (since most companies only outsource vital tasks to more established companies), it is still a wise move to be protected by a duly-signed agreement.

Depending on the nature of the job, you might need a set of legal forms that would guide you from the moment you’ve started officially talking to the client. While verbal agreements can stand in court, there’s no better protection than paper.

Here are some of the more common documents that you should have.

• Quotation
• Job specification sheet
• Copyright and release forms
• Final contract/agreement
• Billing statement
• Non-disclosure agreement
• Privacy agreement

Workplace Watch: How to Make Yourself Heard in the Office

What is your plan to achieve success in your work? If it’s kissing your boss’s ass every working day then forget it! We have way better methods. Work your way to the top by getting heard and be understood by your officemates. Know and learn what it takes to put forward your best ideas.

Communication techniques. Everyday, in the course of your work you talk to a variety of people. How do you become a good communicator and successfully adopt a communication aptitude that’s going to take you places? Number 1 — listen. Master your ability to listen and listen carefully. When your boss calls for a meeting, bring a pen and your notebook and take down key points in the discussion like you would in class. To make sure you are getting all your boss’ agenda, clarify these points before the meeting ends. Don’t hesitate to ask questions.

Pick your venue. You can’t just barge in your boss’ office and push your agenda. Not in his “house.” You have to pick spots. Perhaps subtle messages by the water cooler is a much better option. Remember that even in offices, territories exist. So pick more neutral grounds to get your message across.

Be aware if your boss’ expectations. Before anything else, know and keep in mind what your boss’ expects from you. Knowing what he wants and how he wants you to do your work will keep you focused on your deliverables. If you are strictly observing your duties and schedule then you won’t miss another deadline.

Planning and discussing a project effectively. When your boss suddenly announces that you have a new project but he’s not calling a meeting to plan and discuss the details, make sure to communicate using alternative methods. Email your boss about the project, ask specific questions about it, know when the deadline is for the whole preparations, and write these things down in your notebook. If you suddenly noticed that your boss has a few minutes to spare, ask if he can discuss with you the details about the new project. Nothing beats enthusiasm!

Workplace Watch: Is ‘Boreout’ Killing You?

Browsing over my reading backlog, I stumbled upon this great feature on what’s said to be the “new office disease” - boreout. Forget burnout, Times Online’s Roger Boyes says as boreout has replaced burnout as the workplace virus.

Symptoms are quite similar to burnout. You feel irritable, drained and staring blankly into space. The main difference? The reason why. While burnout victims blame being overworked and underpaid, the opposite reasons are found with boreout victims. Many workers today feel that they are underutilized and under-appreciated.

Boreout works like this: a boss refuses to delegate work, frustrated underlings ask for more to do but are trusted only with mind-numbing tasks. After a while they stop asking and enjoy the free time at their desk, stretching out the low-intensity tasks with a series of strategems.

But mimicking work day after day erodes self-esteem. Result: the boss hurtles towards burnout while at least some of his staff edge towards boreout. The symptoms are almost identical.

So what does this mean? We can definitely infer that workplaces today are volatile presenting new challenges for management and human resources. And this creates new dimensions in management. That means that every workload to every employee should be carefully assigned making sure that both match.

Help Workers Be More Productive with Ergonomics

Starting a small business may force you to beg and borrow rather than invest immediately on high-end stuff. And there’s a good reason for that. You really have to manage you cash flow first.

But what if you workers will be sitting on worn-out chairs? Sooner or later, they’ll be complaining about bad backs. Discomfort, even the slightest physical oneleads to stress.

One of the banes of the busy office is the strain caused by repetitive stress injuries (RSI). It’s supposed to cost US business owners $100 million in lost productivity in worker’s compensation yearly. Some states, like California, for example have their own ergonomic regulations that you need to abide by.

One of important investments that you might need to give your employee is a good chair, one with a lumbar or lower back support and adjustable height. But how do you keep spending at a minimum when good chairs can retail at a thousand dollars easy?

Keep it simple at first. Invest on the following items initially:

• Lumbar pillows
• Keyboard wrist rests
• Foot stools
• Good lighting

You can also teach employees some RSI prevention techniques like:

• Taking breaks every 50 minutes in front of the monitor to walk around (prevents eye strain)
• Proper posture
• Simple stretching exercises

The simple act of showing you care about your employees go a long way. They’d be less sluggish and more active in doing work. Something that a busy startup would need.

From then, you can always work your way up to great workstations!

More on How to Write Power E-mails

E-mailing is a skill that doesn’t only entail knowing how to actually send e-mails or use BCCs. E-mailing is a communication skill, which means you got to know what to writer and how to write it. Here are a few tips on writing power e-mails:

• Check your address - You can’t expect to be credible with an email address likebadbigdaddy2007@domain.com. Better use your real name when registering an e-mail address.
• Be specific with your subject - Try to capture the gist “Sales figures for May 2006″ is much better than “Figures from last year.” Very generic subjects like “From a friend” might even be blocked by spam filters.
• Follow standard writing rules - Make sure you abide by the rules of grammar and good writing. Be sure to edit/proofread before clicking the send button.
• Start with your purpose - Just like any other professional correspondence make your purpose clear right from the start.
• Use lists - Whether it’s citing some points or asking questions, it’s better to use bulleted or number lists. It makes it easy for the reader to get your points. It would also make replying much easier since they could just insert their answers in between the lists.
• Emphasize - With today’s rich text editors for e-mails, you can now use boldface oritalics to emphasize points. Avoid using ALL CAPS because it gives off the impression THAT YOU ARE SHOUTING!
• Scrap the 1337 and TXT language - You have the luxury of using the whole keyboard so leave out the leet and text language.
• Emoticons - For some informal e-mails, you can use smileys or emoticons to convey emotion. People often mistake humor with sarcasm so a little smiling face to show that you’re just joking might help.
• Check your attachments - Some people might still have slower Internet connections and smaller inbox spaces so make sure that you keep attachments downsized. Most digital cameras with average megapixel ratings produce large file size images. So before attaching some of your vacation pictures, be sure to edit and scale them down. Or use a photo hosting service like Flickr or Photobucket.
• Use a signature - Most e-mail services allow you to create a signature file that automatically gets inserted at the bottom of your e-mail. You can already put your name, designation, and contact details in this file. This will save you a bit of time.

Presentations: How to Fend Off Nervousness to Perform Better

Don’t you hate it when you lose your nerves just before you’re about to do something very significant in your life like a recital, a speech, or a presentation? Getting nervous before a performance happens to everyone. Even famous singers get nervous before they go onstage. Go through these pointers which can help you become calmer when it really matters.

Help yourself lose the stress. I was into theater back when I was in school and there are a lot of ways fellow thespians would follow to get rid of nervousness. Here’s one interesting a friend does - he locks himself in the dressing room and screams his heart out. After his screaming fits, he’s good to go. If you’re going to do this, just be sure that you won’t hurt your throat or lose your voice. You’re feeling nervous not because you’re up onstage. You’re nervous because you’re making yourself nervous. Tell yourself that you’re over-reacting and you’re only giving yourself more unnecessary pressure. Your upcoming performance needs all your energy, so don’t lose your focus by freaking out.

Meditate. On the other hand, you can go the quiet route and just have quiet time. Meditate in order to focus. Purge all feelings of self-doubt and anxiety. Tell yourself that now is not the right time for negative feelings. Do some deep-breathing and some simple stretching so you can loosen up. Motivate yourself so you can get back in the winning zone.

By freaking out, you will only sabotage your own performance. Some people throw up out of nervousness. Some shake. Others even faint. Don’t feed your mind with negative thoughts and don’t worry too much about the outcome or the feedback of your performance. Give your all to your performance. You can worry about the results after.

If you fail because you let yourself loose your nerves, those who are counting on you will resent you. Of course while some might sympathize with your inability to control your nerves, the truth is you failed. If your performance is a part of a team’s performance like a team contest or a stage play, think about the people you’ll disappoint. While this might pile the pressure on, gather strength from your team by psyching yourselves up as a group. Reassure one another that each will be performing his or her best.

Don’t allow yourself to be intimidated. If you’re nervous because the people watching you are VIPs, remember that they’re just like you. They fart, and they also poop. So keep your cool and just do what you do. Imagining the whole audience in their underwear or them wearing goofy hats does work.

Workplace Watch: How to Deal with Sexual Harassment

At work, you like the closeness that develops between you and your colleagues. When workmates become friendlier with each other, work becomes more comfortable and easier. But when the usual pat on the shoulder by a colleague starts feeling more like he’s copping a feel, you should take action to protect yourself from sexual harassment.

Avoid flirting in the office. As much as you want to be friendly with your colleagues, you have to interact with everyone professionally. Some of us are natural flirts - we naturally touch people when we talk to them or sometimes we like to sweet-talk. But being friendlier than what’s necessary might cause some people to think that you want them to flirt back.

Ease up on the green jokes. Green jokes which turn out nasty should not be tolerated. React negatively to sexual harassment by stating clearly that you’re not amused, so that your officemates can try their green jokes to someone else.

Express your discomfort. Some people whom you feel are harassing you may not actually be doing it on purpose. Tell the person if a particular behavior is making you uncomfortable and make it clear that you’re not OK with it. If they do it again…

Approach HR. Most office human resource departments would have mechanisms on how to deal with sexual harassment. If you feel that a colleague perpetually goes overboard with you, then approach HR and file a complaint.

How to Behave as Part of an Audience

Sometimes you find yourself stuck in the middle of a sucky performance. Or perhaps you’re in a movie with idiots. Or be in a concert where you’re with someone who thinks that yelling “Freebird!” in the middle of a song hasn’t gone way old. You’ve forgotten why you thought it was the best way to spend the night, and you curse yourself for buying the expensive ticket. When this happens to you, what do you do? Learn how to behave like a civilized member of the audience even if the show is not worth watching at all. We have reasons why you should show appreciation.

The performers might have family and friends in the audience. For all you know, the whole row in front of you consists of family and friends of the performers. Just think how many people you might infuriate if you don’t watch what you’re saying. To avoid any violence and threats against your life, just shut up, watch and endure.

Think how scary it is for these performers to be up on stage. Don’t intimidate them more by jeering, making loud nasty comments, or by expressing your disgust through facial expressions. Sure they may be pros but hey, not everyone can just forget such a common fear. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone devoid of nerves when performing in front of a crowd.

Be generous with your clapping. When the point comes where there’s a lot of boo-boos and slip-ups, you can help lighten up the mood by giving a little encouragement. Clapping is a very good way to encourage the performers to relax.

Don’t boo. Regardless of whether or not the show was indeed rubbish, booing is very rude. Control yourself even if others have already started booing.

When it’s time for curtain call, clap for the worst performer. Getting embarrassed on stage is traumatic. Don’t make it harder for him. A delightful audience will help him get over it. You don’t have to be over enthusiastic with it, just enough to be heard would be okay.

Productivity: Multitasking

For a person who has a lot of deliverables, it always seems as if there’s so much to do in so little time.
One solution for such a problem is a strategy known as multitasking. Although some people don’t like the idea of doing a lot of things simultaneously, when done properly, multitasking really gets more things done. It’s very effective to some people and this is why we’re helping you become better at it.

A lot of productivity gurus will frown at multitasking. Well, their claim holds much water since people often find it hard to effectively multitask that’s why they’re better off doing one chore at a time. However, if you can effectively segment the steps in a task and distribute your attention across these substeps, you can actually multitask.

If you’re planning to multitask, you have to identify your tasks. Some people misunderstand that multitasking defeats the essence of having priorities. That’s not entirely true. A more correct way would be to say that multitasking has more than one priority. If you want to accomplish three tasks in an hour, you have to set three realistic tasks that are indeed manageable in one hour. Example of three things you can do simultaneously, listening to a friend vent, texting someone else, and having breakfast.

It is also important that you write down all the things you have to do per task. For example, writing your essay will be a lot faster if you already listed down the step-by-step methods as such: researching your literature, making an outline, then actual writing of the essay. All these three steps should be written under the first task of writing your essay.

Set a scheduled time for the tasks. Multitasking has to follow a schedule. The best way to maximize multitasking is to prioritize the most important tasks first before taking on the less important ones.

Time yourself. If you find out that you’re doing less with the time that you have, maybe you are better of giving all your focus to one task at a time. Close all the other “windows” and just pay attention to the first important task at hand.

Related Posts

Tips To Get That Promotion

Dumb Little Man has a great list of 20 tips that got a person promoted, and I wanted to highlight a few of them here for you, as well as point out the article containing the tips, so you can work on some of them, and get the promotion you deserve.

• I will be the guy to speak out with new ideas in meetings. If it’s going to save money or increase revenues, I will never be out of line.
• I will study new trends so I am the guy with the good idea.
• I will know how competitors do things so I can suggest better solutions in meetings.
• I will be in the office before my boss’ boss 90% of the time.
• I will leave the office after my boss 100% of the time.

These types of “rules to live by” improve confidence and make you the person that stands out in the business (hopefully in a good way).

I can attest to the disadvantages of not following these, as I have had problems in a previous company I worked for, mostly due to my attitude. I thought I was too good for the job, and instead of aiming for a better job, I basically gave up and my lack luster performance was noticed.

I have also recently read reports saying that if you are the first person the boss has contact with as well as the last, he is more likely to associate you with the company, and help raise your standing in the company.

E-mail Etiquette: Writing an Effective Subject Line

To improve the way you communicate, take two minutes to write more effective e-mail subject lines.

The Problem
Too many people fall into the trap of writing vague e-mail subject titles like “Hello”, “Hi” or even forget to bother with a title at all. The trouble is that junk mail tends to look pretty much the same. When writing e-mails to friends, you can probably get away with being vague or sloppy; however, professional correspondence like at work or college requires more thought. Especially if you want a reply.

Example 1
If you’re applying for a job, leaving the subject field of an e-mail empty is a definite no no. Your mail is likely to get picked up by a spam filter or possibly ignored - especially if it arrives in a busy mailbox.

“Job” is also vague because the company could be advertising a number of posts. It might also imply that you are actually offering a job.

Suggestion
It’s far better to state the post you’re applying for: e.g. “RE: Maths Teacher Required”. But even this might seem like you have a question about the post. If you’re actually applying for the position It would be better to write: “Applying for position of Maths Teacher”. The recipient would immediately understand what the e-mail is about and would know whether it was worth opening.

It’s important to bear this in mind if you’re writing speculative e-mails: “Do you have any short-term vacancies?” is informative and direct. It’s far more likely to earn you a reply than simply leaving the subject field blank or going with the embarrassing “Hello”.

Example 2
If you’re employed in an office or company it’s likely you will have seen e-mails arrive in your In Box entitled “Meeting”. Again, this kind of title is incredibly vague and not really useful. “Meeting” might be used to announce:

• the cancellation of a meeting
• the scheduling of a meeting
• the distribution of the minutes from a meeting or even a request for a meeting.

SuggestionAll the examples in example 2 could be expressed far more clearly with very little thought:

• “Tuesday’s meeting at 10 is cancelled”
• “Staff meeting is this Wednesday at 14:00″
• “Enclosed: the minutes from last week’s Board meeting”
• “Can we meet to discuss your coming trip?”

Be a Super Student: Productivity Tips for School

There’s an ongoing myth claiming that you have to sacrifice a lot of free time for your studies. Nothing could be further from the truth. Education isn’t just about listening to lectures – it’s also about experiencing new things outside the confines of a classroom. This means that you shouldn’t spend your growing-up years solely involved in your studies. The quantity of your studying hours isn’t nearly as important as how you make use of your time.

Don’t put equal amounts of effort into all of your subjects

Not all your subjects are labor intensive. Don’t give the same amount of effort for all your subjects. Think of what your goals are for each subject, and organize your study habits based on these goals. For example, if your goal is to simply get a good grade, then put in the right amount of effort that will give you the grade you want. If you need a recommendation from your teacher or if a subject is relevant to your chosen career path, then put in a lot of extra effort.

Recover wasted time

Wasted time is a part of daily life, especially when we’re not aware of it. The minutes you spend walking between classrooms are wasted time. Idly brushing your teeth in the morning is wasted time. Sitting in a class where your teacher is rambling on about his personal life is wasted time. Instead of letting your mind stay inactive, try the following:

• When walking between classrooms, listen to podcasts or audio books that will entertain, inspire, or inform you.
• Post lecture summaries in the bathroom mirror so that you can read them while brushing your teeth.
• Make a list of things you can do during boring classes that seem to be time-wasters. Your list may include doing your homework for other subjects, or reading a book relevant to your career path. Just make sure that you pay attention once in a while to jot down important points in the lecture.
• Exercise while watching TV. It boosts your energy and prevents you from dozing off in class.

Learn new lessons immediately

Whenever your teacher introduces new lessons, understand them the second they come up. Memorize facts as soon as they are presented, and comprehend your notes as you write them. This requires a bit of discipline, but it will eliminate your need to do lengthy review sessions before exams. Knowing all the material as soon as it is presented also gives you an edge during surprise quizzes.

By applying these techniques, you’ll be able to manage your studying time more wisely. Once you’ve created a successful study pattern for yourself, you can spend more time with your family and friends and do the things that really matter to you.

Training Your Subconscious Mind

The subconscious mind is an extremely powerful mechanism. Each individual has an unique perspective and opinion on what success means to them. If properly trained, utilized and enacted; subconscious thoughts achieve success.

In my previous article I enlightened you on how extremely important goal-setting is. In an effort to elaborate on these details I am going to infuse your brain with something in a slightly different direction. How to maintain the mindset to achieve success.

Entirely understanding how much strength ones subconscious thoughts hold, you must first realize that there is no truth behind the term, “coincidence.” Basically, nothing in life occurs just by chance or out of luck. Absolutely nothing is predestined; you hold the power and tools to control your lifes outcome, both success and failure.

Incidents and occurances occur as a reaction or reason behind one another. The statement, “everything happens for a reason,” however, is true. The reason behind you winning four-hundred and sixty one million dollars in your local statewide lottery is because you took the initiative to purchase a lottery voucher. That ticket held the key to your current success. Therefore, you achieved success and reached your goal.

Though, there is no discouraging to the fact that individuals, at least those of us of the homo sapien race, are able to, at all times acquire everything he or she desires, however, it is true that we can utilize our subconscious power to overcome situations and events and cause them to move into the desire direction, more often than not.

It is important to remember that you subconscious thoughts are derived from your beliefs, actions and effects of situations occuring around you. Once a standard belief is drilled into your head, it becomes available via your subconscious, anytime a scenario requiring that belief occurs. For example, you believe a specific car manufacturer is unreliable, partly due to personal experiences with that brand and the fact that you have only heard negative rumors about their vehicles.

Hypothetically, this specific manufacturer makes a technological break-through with their vehicles and has a super-standard for driving performance. They are guarenteeing their automobiles will out-perform all others, yet you still believe they are horrible and unreliable means of transportation. This is because yoursubconscious is telling you so.

You have become so set in your methods and beliefs that you automatically develop thoughts around your subconscious. Once you have negativity surrounding a topic, extreme difficulty can be experienced when trying to remove it.

In terms of blogging, starting a blog can be extremely time consuming and difficult. It requires enormous amounts of attention and planning. Through your previous attempts you beliefe you have failed. However, with those thoughts and beliefs you will begin to imagine you will always fail in terms of your blogging endeavors.

Therefore, be courteous to yourself and your subconscious. Remember that your actions, thoughts and believes have an enormous effect on success. Always worrying about specific subjects such as money, fitness, not enough content on your blog or a lack of visitors will force you to believe you will never be healthy enough, wealthy enough or obtain the statistics to prove your blog is popular.

Set realistic goals and once accomplished, reward yourself. Kick back in your easy chair, pour your favorite beverage, be it cold tea or hot coffee and relax. Illuminate your thoughts with positive thoughts of how easy and stress free your goal has become. Ensure you spend enough time patting yourself on the back that your subconscious remembers its benefits for succeeding.

Every goal, small or large is just another step in the direction that you want to take. Everyone loves to succeed.. always!

Aim to Be an Active Learner

With high schools and colleges kicking off with the start of another academic year, it’s important to remember that teachers can’t be solely responsible for what we learn. We ourselves need to decide to learn something and work actively towards achieving our goal. To put it another way: we need to aim to become active learners.

Active learning:
Let’s say your teacher tells you that you need to improve your pronunciation in your French or Spanish class. The teacher can highlight your errors and point out what you need to improve on, but only you can actively work towards changing your pronunciation. In other words, you need to accept the challenge of becoming an active student rather than a passive student who relies on her teacher and classwork when learning something.

An active student, however, will set about implementing a set of active learning strategies designed to overcome the passivity of much school work.

A creative and active language student might, for example, write their own French/Spanish lesson and record it onto Mp3 player so it can be reviewed and revised at will.

The very act of producing work like this is likely to benefit the student as he/she will need to go through a certain amount of material.

Mp3 players are excellent tools for learning, but you can’t rely on your teacher or college professor to show you how to make the most of them. You have to create active ways of learning that play to your strengths.

Another example of this is setting aside 20-30 minutes each day to review your class notes. Students who do this learn and remember 60 percent more than their peers who do not regularly review class notes.

In short, learners who take on the responsibility for actively working with their subject both inside and outside of the classroom perform better than their peers.

So don’t be a couch potato: set yourself goals and, just as importantly, set about actively achieving them.

Blogging and Setting SMART Personal Goals

Blogging has become so popular that massive amounts of people are setting up new blogs and establishing a presence in the blogosphere.

Unfortunately, despite beautifully themed pages, outstanding development, plug ins and precision content, many fall short of success. Potentially successful blogs fail due to numerous conflicts and reasons; however, one of the main reasons tends to be a lack of clear and achievable goals.

Scanty goals tend to leave people with the feeling of frustration, due to the organizational nightmare they have created, which is then followed by an extreme lack of focus.

Creating and maintaining a blog is a great example for an article covering the important of setting goals because so many topics and questions must be asked and answered to determine how your new site is going to be managed, including such things as what clothes you wear while you blog. (We all know there are many pajama bloggers out there.)

Setting goals is an important factor in any endeavor you choose to take on. Basically, the objective is simple, within your head you say something along the lines of, “I want to setup a new website.”

Obviously though, stating the aforementioned comment is almost like saying, “I want to buy a new car.” At some point in the decision making process, you are required to narrow down the scope of your newly created product of excitement and ask questions that will give you definitive answers. What size automobile would you prefer? Does the size of the new transportation device reflect the fact that you have children in your family currently or the near future?

Blogging is essentially the same. Picking what software you are going to use to publish your blog is very much like asking yourself what transmission you are going to use in an automobile. What niche you decide to write about and the surrounding audience it targets is similar to what size car and perhaps even the color.

Once you have asked yourself questions to give you a mental path for success, dig even deeper to determine what steps will be required to achieve such goals. If you want to use WordPress as your blogging platform, what modifications to your existing web site layout must be completed before such integration could be performed?

Professional blogging is only a single example of how goals should be realistic and simple. Individuals set goals extremely high, buy into the theories set forth by other success stories and forget that their predecessors are simply examples.

If you are going to step into the realm of blogging or any other professional services industry, ensure you have performed adequate research and study to compete. Far too often, individuals spend their time reading about the success of a few big names and forget or simply ignore the fact that, what works for one, will not always work for another.

There are more resources on personal goal setting than one would want to believe; however, the SMART system seems to work wonderfully! Best of luck with all your newly generated, goal-oriented projects and tasks!

How to Make Work Just a Bit More Bearable

When stress creeps in, there’s only one thing you blame and that would be your work. It takes most of your time, it exhausts you, and it gets the fun out of your life. But some people find ways to make their work enjoyable and in a nutshell, fun. Try these tricks.

Play music. Believe it or not, the MP3 player serves a higher purpose. People need music when they’re stressed because when you listen to music you like, you feel relaxed. If your boss is not the type to mind you playing songs in your workstation, then play your fave album while making that presentation. Watch the volume, though.

Be competitive. Your work might seem boring to you because you don’t take it seriously. Revive your passion for your work. You can achieve this by adopting a different concept of your work. Look around the department, and choose someone you will secretly compete with. From this day on, make sure that every report you do is better than his. There’s nothing else that can rev you up than working your way up a promotion.

Don’t underestimate those 10-minute breaks. You are given a break because you need it. If there’s less than a health benefit in it, your company wouldn’t give you a break. Go outside during your breaks and use it to stretch, eat, or get some fresh air. Don’t use your breaks to smoke because it’ll only make you more stressed, not to mention foul-smelling.

Work on your relationship with your teammates. Work can definitely get a lot stressful when you feel like you’re working alone. But working is about teamwork. So work on those people skills because they can help you make your work a bit lighter. And then maybe you can hang out

Be More Extroverted

If you are a natural born introvert - shy, timid, bashful, and demure — you might agree if I say that there are times you regret being the way you are. Why? That’s because being an introvert translates to being inhibited. You end up being the natural wallflower instead of being the life of the party. And then that’s all you know - limits. Get more than what you were getting before! No more settling for anything less.

The world at present is going through a movement called expanding network. Everyone is concerned about knowing more people and building a network of contacts. People skills is not just for those who work in marketing anymore. It’s for everyone who’s out to get everything and knowing all the right people.

Get over the trauma. Being shy can be traced all the way down to something in your past. Have you had a bad experience in your past attempts at self-expression? It’s difficult to get over the fear of being humiliated for speaking up. But you will have to do this to help yourself be more aggressive when opportunities come knocking on your door.

Get a makeover. Be a snappy dresser. Dressing up like a bum doesn’t only affect how people view you as, it also affects how you think of yourself. You can be stylish without breaking the bank anyway.

Get a confidence boost. If you’ve been acting (and even talking) as if you haven’t escaped the jaws of high school where you had always been the beta dog, then try acting like you’re the alpha dog. At work, think as if you own the company. With people, think as if you’re God’s gift to humankind.

Don’t be insecure anymore. Help yourself become more used to talking to people by engaging yourself in small talks. Have confidence in yourself that you can talk about a vast scope of topics and believe that people find you interesting to talk to.