As a clear sign of tough financial times, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) saw a record number of people emptying their PF accounts recently. In 2008-09, it rose by a record 32%, up from a 10 per cent increase the year before. The total number of withdrawal applications filed across India crossed the 1 crore mark. In Delhi alone, the average applications filed per month rose to 1 lakh between Oct 2008 and Mar 2009, from 30,000 between Apr and Sept 2008. According to a labour ministry report, about five lakh people lost their jobs between Oct and Dec 2008.
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Basic Skills
Tough times see higher PF withdrawls (Rise By A Record 32% in 2008-09) – How to manage your finances when without a job?
Azim Premzi – Wipro Chief takes Pay cut – Indian CEOs listening?
How can I improve my spoken English? How to speak with a neutralized accent?
Are you one of those candidates who have lost a job opportunity because you are not good in spoken English? Many candidates especially from India and China where English is not the first language (or mother toungue) are left behind in jobs – marked poor in communication skills. Even if they are good in English language – they loose out on the accent – when they try to speak English in their vernacular accent.
How can I improve my spoken English?
How can I neutralize my accent of spoken English?
You can do it with sufficient training – self directed or with outside professional help. In this article we will give some common tips to improve your spoken English.
How to train yourself in spoken English?
All you need is to incorporate some best practices in your daily routine which will take you closer to your goal of speaking English with a neural accent.
Watch Others
Watch other – be it a real person or a movie or news reader in an English News channel. You have to observe the movements of lips / mouth of the people you feel are your ideal English speakers. Watch them and try to imitate them – and do not feel bad – you are not doing anything worng in imitation – it is just learning.
Imitate
By imitating we mean you repeat whatever they say and try to maintain the clarity, rhythm and modulation of what they say. The key here is to start slowly and then increase your speed. If you star speaking very fast initially you will lose control. So initially speak slowly and then increase the speed.
Carry you iphone everywhere
Carry you iphone everywhere and listen to the English Music, English dialogues, recorded english conversations while travelling. This way you will save the time and also learinign this way your subconcious will be trained more effectively.
You may also record the stuff that you find difficult to speak and try to listen to it frequently. While listenins speak aloud with the player.
Use an audio dictionary
There are many audio dictionaries available in market. Use them to correct your phonetics and correct pronunciation of words that are hard for you to say. And if an audio dictionary is not available try
Read the books aloud – Make it a routine
Take your faviourite novel or book and read it aloud every day. 30-60 minutes every day should be your routine for reading aloud. It takes about 60-90 days to effectively start speaking well in English. So be patient with yourself and give yourself time to practice and be a good speaker in English.
Why time management fails? How to be successful at Time Management?
Despite all the tools and processes in the world time management fails. Why? We are just going to discuss same in this post.
Are you giving enough “Attention”
All of us have 24 hours in every single day. Some people seem to extract more out of this 24 hours while some seem to do much less. The distinction is human attention – focussed attention gets things done. Even for same person some days are very effective compared to some of the days when things are not effective at all. So the key lies in improving your attention span.
There are research reports which say average attantion span of an individual is about 15 minutes and beyoud this the attetion gets weaker. Here are some ways to increatese your attention span at work
Remove distractions
Put systems into place to ensure that you don’t get distracted
- Remove distracting things – keep you desk decluttered so that other things on desk do not divert your attention
- Use do not disturb sign on your door / cubicle when you are working on somethig important
- Always move the task at hand to logical conclusion befre you attend to the distraction
- Use voice mail and do not pick up calls when you are working on something (and make sure you call back people so that they know you are reliable)
- Keep healthy diet so that your hunger does not distracts you
Shall I shift my workplace?
Do not try to shift your workplace to manage distractions. This may work sometimes but is not always practicle. Many people “work from home” for few days in a week or month to get undistracted time for their tasks. This may not be very popular with your co-workers (because you are not available in next cube). However if you are able to be more productive their complain will go off soon. You just make sure that when you get back to work you attend to their question and query to their satisfaction.
Time management is dead – No! Give it some time
Understanding and implementing a new time management system takes time. By implementing this you are learning (or changing) a habit – so difficulty will be there. It may take about 10-20 weeks to ensure that new habit is learned and is in practice. If it does not seem to be working you may have to fine tune the system. Sometime things just as simple as moving from computer to paper solve the problem. So do not give up hope. Time management is not yet dead!
We recommend
Books on Time Management
- First Things First by Stephen Covey: If you still want to read a book on time management – we recommend Stephen Covey’s First Things First. We are no way related to him and are not going to benefit if you buy his book. Stephen Covey’s Matrix of prioritizing things is very popular.
Time management Tools
- Post it pads
- Diary
- Notebooks
- Importance Tags – like “Do it now” Tags or Tags which classify items
Time management software
- MS Outlook Tasks
- MS Outlook Calendar
- Google Tasks
- Google Calendar
Time management is not difficult. There is no one size fits all in the world of time management process or systems. So you will need to try out one or two before you find the perfect one that works for you.
Share your experiences in Time management – write your comments below.
Effective Time Management for your Career
Time Management is one of the most exploited topic on the web. There are so many web pages on Time Management published every month. It is this very difficult to find the time to read and understand all of them. The key about time management is to put the things in practice – reading alone will not help and you need to practice what you read.
I this post we are covering some of the Basic Time Management Tools for job seekers and who are busy in managing their career. What we are proposing are very simple tools and it is not something which you do not know. You may already know them – but not using them; or if you are using them – you may not be effectively using them. We are presenting it as a system to ensure that you pickup the approach and embed it in your daily routine.
Basic Time Management Tools
How to keep To-Do Lists
To-Do Lists are a great way to manage time. Keep a diary or a notebook and maintain a To-Do List. Then do them in whatever order they are in. Once you complete a task it can be can be ticked off regularly (yes this boosts motivation). The simple To-Do Lists however do not gel if you have a tight schedule to be maintained. If you have lot more tasks then the time available to you you may land up in doing the unimportant taks.
How to prioritize your To-Do Lists
Once you have tasks on hand written then put them in order of priority. You can mark the priority in front of the item and rewrite again. Alternatively if you are little tech saavy, you just maintain a spreadsheet and then sort them according to priority. Then you do them in that order. However note that if you have more than 20-35 tasks everyday them they may cause confusion. You can use the Tasks feature of Microsoft Outlook or Gmail to manage your tasks effectively.
Using “Do it now” Tags
If you handle a lot of paper you can use a method called “Do it now”. This prevents you from procastinating the task. You basically use “Post IT” slips with “Do it now” written on the tasks or papers which are critical. You the do these tasks immediately. This is very good for those who have habit of procastination. Many people even use this method if they fear doing domething – so they try to “Do the thing they fear most first”. This works because once the most-feared thing is done, the rest will be easier in comparison. Is is very good for conquering fears at work. If you have joined the workplece new and fear something – try to ‘do that now’.
More complex tasks – start Scheduling
Scheduling is very very simple – you the task list that you maintain just put the time along with it. And now act on them according to the time specified. This is very good where you have many people involved such as meetings etc. However it is difficult if you are not actually estimating the time realistically – which may lead to one task extending into time of other task. Some of the best ways is to use a Calendar – like MS Outlook Calendar or Google Calendar. They are some of the best ways to manage the schedule.
While all of these are very useful in particular situations, and for particular people, they often work best in combination. Individual tools may not work always.
We will be talking more abou time management in our next post.
Effective Personal Finance helps in managing your career better?
Effective Personal Finance has a very important role to play in managing your career. here are few reason why managing your finances will help you in managing your career better:
Save to avoid compromise in your career: A good kitty in savings will prevent any desperate measures to compromise in career. Just compare the case of two executives who are being laid off – one is having one year’s take-home pay in the bank and while other is no savings. the second executive will immediately try to settle for a job (whether he likes or not) to save himself from financial distress. Savings are a big relief for the desperate feelings of needing a job when you don’t have cash in the bank. Savings allow you to better choose a position that meets your needs and not taking any job because you need the money right now.
Lower debt helps in more disposable income: If you have lower debt (loans) means you will have lower monthly installments to pay. This will give you that extra flexibility and while working you can enjoy more from life by having more disposable income. Also if your job is in danger, having lower debt means your payments are low and will help you in preserving your cash flow from your savings. This means you can survive without a job for a long time if required.
Credit Rating reflects your capability: Your credit rating will have a great influence on your ability to be hired. Some of the companies, with your written consent (background check), can see your credit information. Hence the companies can use that that information for not hiring you. If the candidate can not manage his finances how will he manage the job?
More savings means more money for the future like – retirement etc. Not having enough savings will significantly reduce your choices about your life and career. For instance if you want to make a decision to choose to no longer work – your savings will be a determinant factor.
Can take more career risks: How well you manage and invest your money and finances will sure have an impact on your career options. More savings cushion will help you in taking more risks – which may help you in earning more (higher risk – higher returns).
One of my sincere advise to candidates is to make a personal finance plan while making career plan. They go hand in hand together as our savings come out of our earnings from job and our future jobs may depend on savings.
Time Management for a successful career
Time management is an important building block for foundation of your career. Effective time management helps in improving overall personal effectiveness. Time management is something that could be limiting your success level today. The skill of time management is about knowing what to do and when to do.
Why manage your time
Good time management skills helps you in bringing you in control of your time, your life, your stress & energy levels, and helps in maintaining a balance between your work & Personal life. Time management is easy as long as you commit to action, you can improve your own time. One of the major irritant in time management is lack of commitment to stick to your schedules. Management of time by – better planning, delegating, controlling your environment, understanding yourself and identifying what you need to change about your habits and routine will go a long way in improving your effectiveness.
Multitasking OR One-at-a-time
When you are faced with the lot of things to do, go through them quickly and make the list what you are going to do. Prioritize your tasks and tackle the important one’s first. Do not starts lot of jobs at a same time, if you keep the weekly work schedule you will be able to control the time allocated for your tasks.
Decide your Time Management Strategy
Delegate: As with the rules of delegation and authority given to you, try to delegate as much as it possible for you, this make your job more easier by avoiding the wastage of time and duplication of efforts.
What to do / What not to do: Some questions you should ask
- What is the most important thing for you to be doing right now?
- What deadline you got?
- What happens if you don’t do this?
Some quick tips to save time
- The key to successful time management is planning and then sticking to the plan
- Review all work you are doing and check its usefulness. Whether you are doing some waste effort which is no use?
- Setup templates for your regular tasks as this will avoid the wastage of time.
- Use the time management tools & Template or create some work charts.
- Delegate as much as possible for you because delegating your work to other is a great and appropriate way to save time.
- Avoid picking up phones and stop keep checking emails every 10 minutes. You can decide when you will take calls and look up yours mails.
- Avoid unnecessary meetings and conversation.
- Get it right the first time. Take your time to do a quality job. It may take more time to complete the task, but there is a lesser chance of errors. This way, you can avoid making time-consuming corrections.
- Whenever you complete important tasks within a stipulated period, give yourself a little treat. This will give you an incentive to complete work on time.
Further Reading: For advanced reading we suggest you to go through the masterpiece of time management – a book called “First Things First” by Steven Covey.
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