SELF IMPROVEMENT AND MOTIVATION

Choosing a career path (or changing one) is, for most of us, a confusing and anxiety-riddled experience. Many will tell you to “follow your passion” or “do what you love,” but as Cal Newport argues in  So Good They Can’t Ignore You , this is not very useful advice. When I graduated from college, I liked lots of things. But love? Passion? That would have been seriously overstating it. We all want to choose a career that will make us happy, but how can we know what that will be? Research suggests that human beings are remarkably bad at predicting how they will feel when doing something in the future. It’s not hard to find someone who started out thinking that they would love their chosen profession, only to wind up hating it. In fairness, how are you supposed to know if you will be happy as an investment banker, or an artist, or a professor, if you haven’t actually done any of these things yet? Who has ever, in the history of mankind, taken a job and had it turn out exactly as they i

Self-discipline is one of the most important and useful skills everyone should possess. This skill is essential in every area of life, and though most people acknowledge its importance, very few do something to strengthen it. Contrary to common belief, self-discipline does not mean being harsh toward yourself, or living a limited, restrictive lifestyle. Self discipline means self control, which is a sign of inner strength and control of yourself, your actions, and your reactions. Self discipline gives you the power to stick to your decisions and follow them through, without changing your mind, and is therefore, one of the important requirements for achieving goals. The possession of this skill enables you to persevere with your decisions and plans until you accomplish them. It also manifests as inner strength, helping you to overcome addictions, procrastination and laziness, and to follow through with whatever you do. One of its main characteristics is the ability to re

Discipline is a way of life, where one tries to be on time and live in a systematic way. Discipline is not limited to money, riches or by poverty but it is just a personal orientation towards life. It is a habit and not an adaptation in life. So one can  practice discipline  for better life. Many successful people attribute their success to discipline. For them more than knowledge, communication or skill, discipline played a key role in their way to success. Discipline in life has many virtues like being focused, staying healthy and also avoiding problems. As per the current life style and social trends, discipline techniques seems to be one of the essential life skills. Discipline is one of the factor by which people judge others. Those highly talented and hard working people cannot be successful if they are not disciplined. Discipline extends to personal life, career,work, study, life style and even social life. So it is good to inculcate student discipline in s

One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur is always having to be “switched on,” to be constantly vigilant and on the lookout for new opportunities that will build brand awareness and promote a product or service. Except being “in the zone” all the time is tiresome. The brain, just like any muscle, gets tired the more it’s used. Heck, mine is already tired from writing this article. The point is that learning  how to manage your mental throttle control  is critical if you want to stay at the top of your game. Every athlete, speaker and entrepreneur needs rest because  that’s  when new insights and reflections come to mind. Daniel Goldman, author of  Focus , said it best: “A failure to focus inward leaves you rudder-less, a failure to focus on others renders you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided.” To mitigate the potential for suboptimal focus -- and hence, diminished productivity -- here are six ways to build more rest and renewal int

Those of you familiar with Stephen Covey's  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  will recognize the term Quadrant II manager. This ideal manager recognizes that time spent on the important but non-urgent aspects of her business are the most vital for success. The Quadrant II manager spends time during the work day on long-term planning, developing relationships and training staff to take on delegated tasks. Note that she spends virtually no time answering e-mail, plowing through an inbox or attending meetings. Many entrepreneurs are operate solo; they're the cook, maitre d', busboy and bottle washer of their business. Many have families to attend to and are desperately trying to keep all the plates on the tray without dropping any. I believe that's why so many startups fail. There's no way to manage that kind of chaos the way most of us try to manage. If you find yourself working night and day and still feel you're accomplishing nothing, stop, take sto

Productivity is all about efficiency -- doing more, faster and with less.  And with increasing demands from today’s anytime, anywhere workplace, it is has never been more important. To get the most out of your day, you need to focus on these three segments of your life: Time Humans are notoriously poor multitaskers, so managing your time is critical to improving productivity. The biggest time suck is unexpected (and usually unimportant) tasks. We all know that urge to read the email that just came in or to peek at the latest notification to pop up -- an inclination psychologist Daniel Levitan, author of  The Organized Mind , calls the novelty bias. This unintentional task-switching eats up more time than you might think. University of California information scientist  Gloria Mark  found that it takes an average of 26 minutes to recover from trivial interruptions. To avoid this, plan out your day and compartmentalize unexpected interruptions: 1. Start the day with structured 

Chances are good that, at some time in your life, you've taken a time management class, read about it in books, and tried to use an electronic or paper-based day planner to organize, prioritize and schedule your day. "Why, with this knowledge and these gadgets," you may ask, "do I still feel like I can't get everything done I need to?" The answer is simple. Everything you ever learned about managing time is a complete waste of time because it doesn't work. Before you can even begin to manage time, you must learn what time is. A dictionary defines time as "the point or period at which things occur." Put simply, time is when stuff happens. There are two types of time: clock time and real time. In clock time, there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. All time passes equally. When someone turns 50, they are exactly 50 years old, no more or no less. In real time, all time is relative

Most of the stresses and challenges of entrepreneurship are well-documented. Entrepreneurs go into the game knowing that it’s difficult to raise funding, it’s hard to find good employees, decision fatigue will catch up to them eventually and so on. But one of the most common problems in entrepreneurship is also one of the least outwardly discussed -- time management. Time management is critical to your long-term success for two main reasons. First, it’s a determining factor for your overall productivity -- essentially, the better you can manage your time,  the more tasks you’ll be able to get done in a day . Second, it bears a massive impact on your psychological disposition -- the worse you are at time management, the more stress you’ll experience, and the more easily exhausted you’ll be in your position. Mastering time management is a crucial component of entrepreneurship, and these eight secrets will help you pursue that path. 1. Segment your time. How you schedule

We all are too busy. There is no doubt about that. Thanks to internet and smart phones, everybody is available all the time.  However, did you ever notice that the people who constantly mention that they are very busy are in fact the least effective ones? Being very busy is not an indicator of being effective or successful. Some people like to tell everyone around themselves how busy they are so that nobody asks them to take on another task. Also, some people like to seem very busy because only then they can feel important. If you also feel very busy or tell around that you are too busy, you probably cannot manage your time properly.  Below are some helpful tips for being more effective and less busy. 1. Don’t say yes to every task.  If you have more on your plate than you can actually complete, don’t say yes to another task just to please your boss. This will decrease your effectiveness and success rate because you have to divide your energy between different projects inst