Business Tips Guides

I have 2 young boys. The oldest is in Kindergarten. A couple of months ago my eldest had a field trip with his class to go skating at a rink.

Now, in his short life, he had never skated before ; )… but, as most young boys of 6 years believe, they can do anything and do it as well as someone who’s been doing it for years!

They have a ‘take on the world’ attitude that makes all possibilites possible!

The day arrived. With the entire kindergarten class, we arrived at the rink. We collected our skates, got them on and my Son quickly discovered that -first-
you have to learn how to *balance* on skates!

Then…, you have to learn how to *walk* in the tightly laced up boots with thin metal blades on the bottom of them!

Once we mastered that, the next part was stepping onto the ice…

Have you been back on the ice, after a long period of time of NOT being on the ice? The ice is a lot more slippery than you remembered, right!

My son saw some older kids get on the ice, and just start skating. So, he immediately concluded that he could do that too.

Down he went, from the first step onto the ice, and then every step thereafter.

One thing about my son - he’s not a quitter. When he wants to do something of his own free will, there’s no helping him… No one can help, not teachers, not other parents, not me, no one.

So, I had to be patient, love him and let him struggle at it for a few minutes. Countless times I asked him if he wanted to accept my help; to which I would get a very frustrated “no!”

Now this went on for about 25 minutes like this… Him trying to get his feet under him… him losing his footing and landing on his stomach on the ice…
Him finally getting some footing, and promptly falling down. On and on it went.

After 25 minutes of him “swimming” on the ice trying to get his footing, and then failing to stand up for more then 5 seconds on the ice, he finally accepted my help. But, just to help him to stand up.

He wanted to skate in the center of the ice rink and refused to hold on to any of the side boards - much too childish for him!

And, he certainly was not happy with the fact that his male counterparts from class were seeing his Mother teaching him how to skate, and helping
him to get up off the ice, time and time again.

Eventually, he learned that a little help goes a long way, and he let me help. With my knees and back bent, holding most of his weight, flailing arms and legs; I was able to coach him on how he needed to get his balance centered on the middle part of the skate blades [thank God, I used to Figure Skate!]

After about an hour of this, we managed to get a grip on the movements and strokes needed to perform the “art” of skating!

And, after that hour was up, he could skate on his own, get up from a fall, balance and carry on skating.

I was so proud of his perseverance, and his commitment to completion - as stubborn as he was during the whole thing!

I am so thankful that I was able to be there to give him the one-on-one coaching that none of the teachers had time to give him. And, none of the other kid’s parents would have been able to give him.

More importantly, experiencing the day with my son
re-confirmed that my decision to be a parent at home for my children was the right one. Because that is where my precious children need me to be.

I am thankful that I found a home based Program that
allows me the TIME-FREEDOM to raise my kids from home, while it works for me in the background making sales and providing what I need to support my family financially.

That’s my passionate “WHY” for being in an Automated Passive Income Program. What’s your “WHY”? And ‘WHY’ aren’t you using PAS’ automated, passive income Program to make your dreams YOUR reality?: Visit Here For More Details

Let me be the first to tell you, if I can fit exercise into my busy schedule of being on the road flying all around the US for 20 out of 30 days a month, YOU CAN TO!

Did I hear you say fitting exercise into your busy schedule? That’s as absurd as saying that there are eight days in a week right?!

First, you’ve never exercised before or engaged regularly in a sport; second, you’ve never been into the fitness crowd and have had meager time for such pursuits, and third, you’re far too busy to even think of exercise.

In other words, YOU’RE JUST NOT INTO IT.

Of course your friends talk about it and rave about the latest fitness craze, but you’ve seen it too often: some of them are on the “on-again-off-again” treadmill / stair master mania, and you wonder why they haven’t shred the fat that they’re desperately still trying to hide.

Seeing what your friends go through and not seeing any results, you cling to the notion that your total lack of interest is justified.

You’re not the least bit inclined to engage in these circus-like contortions or do those mindless freestyle strokes in the water. That would only encroach into your already busy schedule of juggling family, home and career. These three combined - husband/children/work are your exercise.

Yup, we’ve got a problem.

That mindset is like a seething volcano that’s about to erupt. If you stubbornly cling to the notion that the “fat to trim” concept is merely a myth and a figment of the imagination of a handful of oddballs, your health could be going into “eruption mode” soon, like a restless volcano.

Have you looked at your body lately? Have you taken stock of your overall physical well-being?

Before tackling the idea of fitting exercise into your busy schedule, it might be better if we start with the concepts of self-assessment and then familiarize ourselves with the disease-prevention aspect of exercise.

Once you’ve accepted the fact that your body needs overhauling, and that exercise is good for your health and business - then we can talk about some of the ways that you can include exercise into your roller-coaster existence.

This article is part of several articles that I will be posting and submitting over the next several days is your KEY to fitting exercise into your life. And rest assured, this article along with the rest that I will be submitting, already assumes that you’re a busy person with a life to lead; and that’s why the tips that I present to you are specifically designed to fit in with your busy lifestyle!

To keep things organized and simple, the articles will be broken down into five easy sections:

Section 1: Assessing Physical Damage And Accepting the Importance of Exercise

Section 2: No Matter How Busy you Are, there are Ways you can Exercise

Section 3: Busy Traveler? You can Fit Exercise into your Trips

Section 4: Exercise Aids To Go

Section 5: Information / Resources for the Hurried and Harried

Read them in order, or if you wish, focus on the section that is most relevant to you right now. Regardless of how you choose to read these articles, you can be confident of one thing: once you apply the advice within these pages, your busy life will include something new and important: exercise!

Dwayne Garrett is the author of several eBooks and popular software applications, he also offers a FREE Internet Blog that will help you to make sense of doing business on the Internet over at http://www.dwaynegarrett.com

To have freedom of time, (and other kinds of freedom as well), you need to be organized. It’s one of the many paradoxes of life.

People often think that the processes of getting and being organized take away from their available time, and it’s true - as far as it goes. There is a commitment of time involved in bringing order out of chaos and then maintaining order.

Unless you’re already perfectly satisfied with the organizational state of your office or home, it will take some effort to bring things to the point where being organized is clearly saving you time, energy, and money.

The question is whether the effort is worth it to you.

Another way to frame the question is to ask what is the price you’re paying for being disorganized. Does it cause conflicts in your relationships - business or personal? Do you have a pattern of being unable to quickly locate things you need, resulting in daily doses of irritation and stress?

Disorganization certainly wastes time and energy. It also costs money.

Sometimes the cost is indirect: missed opportunity from not having your act together. But there is also the direct cost of having to replace things that have permanently gone missing in the midst of chaos.

On the other hand, being organized allows you to find what you want when you want it.

The payoff of being organized goes beyond merely saving time, energy, and money. Organization also results in better relationships. An orderly environment helps reduce conflicts among household members. At work, the image you present by being organized advances the respect that colleagues and clients hold for you.

Organization also increases the likelihood of success in achieving your goals. A productive environment is a setting in which everything around you supports your goals and who you want to be. It is an intentional environment.

If you’ve decided to get organized, make a commitment, a specific plan with a deadline and some accountability. Start small, but start somewhere because organization is a process, not a destination.

Step by step, you can bring your home or office to the point where it supports your life, as your environment should do.

1. Identify something to organize. A suggestion of where to begin is to eliminate clutter in a specific area: a drawer, a closet, a room.
2. Give yourself a deadline by which you will have it done. Make the deadline feasible - the point here is to achieve success, no matter how large or small the initial project is.
3. Build in some accountability or consequences: what are the positive consequences of getting it done on time (reward yourself in celebration); or the negative consequences of missing your deadline.

Once you’ve accomplished your first objective, then build on success. Choose your next small but specific area, and so on until you’re satisfied.

Organization is a practice, not a natural tendency as so many people believe. It’s true that there are those who enjoy the process of putting things in order more than others do, but anyone who chooses to be organized can be.

Lila Norden combines 14 years experience in education and consulting to offer valuable information and insights for advancing your business, education, or career. For helpful resources, strategies, and additional articles, visit FT Office.

We all have a tendency to put things off for various reasons and believe me, I’ve been the master of this one in the past. Understanding why you procrastinate helps you to do something about it.

How often have you made yourself ‘busy’ just because you’re putting off doing something you’re resisting? Well, here are few things you can do to prevent procrastination.

When you put off a task it can start to develop almost ogre-like proportions before we’ll get round to doing it. The longer you leave it, the harder it becomes. Usually by that time, it’s become urgent or critical rather than just important.

What is the benefit of your procrastination?
What is the pay-off you get from putting something off?

It may be the easier route in the short-term but what is the long-term impact? When does procrastination have consequences on your pocket, health or emotional well-being?

If you leave it too long, the task gets to the point where it can no longer be ignored and demands your attention. Now you have to get it done - which somehow, you now find the time or inclination to do, so what was stopping you in the first place?

When the pain of not doing something becomes greater than the pain of doing it, resistance will magically disappear and more often than not we find that it wasn’t so bad as we thought after all.

To help reduce procrastination, try breaking a larger task down into smaller tasks, so it doesn’t seem quite so onerous. For instance, if you need to write a report that you think is going to take days to write - take five minutes just to get a few ideas on paper. Next time - add a bit more, refine it, add a bit more content. Schedule time to come back to it later either in a few hours or the next day or later in the week and complete a bit more. Once you get started it’s surprising how much easier it can be to keep going.

The easiest way I have found to tackle many things is by spending just 5 or 10 minutes on a task. You’ll increase your productivity when you give yourself a time limit and it’s less daunting than needing to spend an hour or more on it and less excuse to procrastinate.

Putting off that pile of filing? Spend 10 minutes tackling the top of the pile or start to reduce the pile by sorting out all the papers that go into the same file or relate to the same subject. Repeat this at regular intervals throughout the day or set aside 10 minutes at the beginning or end of every day to do a little bit more or to keep on top of it.

Just do it! Putting something off like a phone call or an email? Instead of saying to yourself, ‘ I’ll do it in a minute, or I’ll do it later … do it now. Just go for it and get it out of the way and then you can move on and stop worrying. I find this technique works really well. Catch yourself putting something off and just do it.

Sometimes we put things off because something doesn’t ‘feel right’. How many times have you had a decision to make or something that needs doing and by delaying the need disappears? That’s not an excuse to procrastinate, just an indication to look at where the resistance is coming from and why.

When you procrastinate, what are you resisting? The more you resist the harder it becomes, so assuming the task is worthy of your attention in the first place, take action sooner rather than later.

If it’s worth doing - do it now! If it’s not, then just let it go and stop worrying about it.

Clare Evans works with busy, stressed individuals and small business owners to help them plan and organise their time more effectively. Contact her now for more details and a free consultation. http://www.clareevans.co.uk

Re-entering the work force after a long hiatus gets you into a spot tighter than would otherwise be. Your apprehension is not entirely without reason. There will soon be complex questions staring you in the eye concerning your adaptability after a long time off from the workforce. This situation applies equally to both women and men. You have to sharpen skills you probably lost or acquire new skills if you are changing careers.

Assessing What Awaits You

As a first step in your preparation you need to assess what may be awaiting you. Think about these points:

1. Are You Too Old For The Job you are seeking now? Job profiles keep changing and if workloads are heading north, the average employee age for any job is dashing south. This may not have been the case when you first started your career or left it.

2. Has Your Lifestyle Changed Drastically? Your value will have changed with your part time or stay-home job which is definitely unsuitable for a full time day job. You need to change or improve your adaptability, which will in turn improve your chances of landing a new job.

3. Realize That You Are Being Perceived as having lost skills when you were out of job. Be realistic; things naturally change in all areas, such as working styles, technologies, your own confidence level, etc.

4. Most New Mothers who want to re-enter the workforce may that their appearance hinders them. This is not so prevalent among men. It isn’t right, but unfortunately, that’s the reality. Weight gained over the short period is one of the points you should take care of if you are planning to re-enter the workforce.

Tips On Preparation

What you must remember at this point in time is that it probably won’t help having job interviews without confidence, regardless of your prior experience. Do everything that you can to boost your confidence; keep fit, brush up on your knowledge and relevant skills, dress neatly, etc.

Tips On Re-Entering The Workforce

Here are some tips that help get your career back on track.

1. Use A Composite Resume that highlights your carefully sequenced functional abilities. This is important to reduce any potential negative aspects that help employers disqualify you for a job. A composite resume also lists your normal qualifications in reverse chronology.

2. Old Connections Help a lot in this regard. Use your contacts with friends and your old bosses and do networking to locate job opportunities. A good number of companies believe in referral recruitments more than standard recruitment methods. Your networking could uncover new opportunities.

3. Women Have A Different Set Of Things To Worry About. If you have a babysitter at home or someone who can care for your child, you probably won’t worry about the commute too much. If you don’t have this privilege and daycare is not nearby, that limits your opportunities. If you must, be prepared to accept a lower position than you had previously.

4. Self Evaluation helps a lot in preventing you from accepting a job you that you would leave a little later out of frustration. Planning a career that suits you well is important. For example, if you don’t enjoy sales or a job that involves traveling, just wait for the next opportunity instead of having to leave fairly quickly.

5. Know What You Want. If you have to accept a smaller salary in a job that promises a good future, perhaps you would not want to pass up that opportunity.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution’s Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.