Goa - Hindu Legends and Mythology

 [This is an article from local newspaper in Goa. ]


The origin of Goa or Gomantak as it is also known, is lost in the mists of time. In the later Vedic period (c.1000-500 BC), when the Hindu epic Mahabharat was written, Goa has been referred to with the Sanskrit name Gomantak, a word with many meanings, but signifying generally a fertile land.

The most famous legend associated with Goa, is that of the mythical sage Parashuram (the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu), who several thousand years ago created the entire stretch of Konkan coast by ordering the seas to recede. The Sea God gave up the lands on the the banks of the two main rivers of Goa viz. Mandovi and Zuari (then called Gomati and Asghanasini) for the settlement of the Aryans accompanying Parashurama.

Another legend, less well known, states that the coastal area of Konkan enchanted Lord Krishna, who was charmed by the beautiful ladies bathing in the area. The ladies in turn, were so taken up by the melodious music coming from his flute, that they kept dancing forgetting their daily chores. Lord Krishna, then named the land Govapuri after the cows (gov) belonging to the locals.

The history of the sacred land of Gomantak, 'land of the Gods' is well described in Sahyadri Khand of Skandha Purana, the ancient text of Hindu religion. According to this story narrated in the Chapter Shantiparva of Mahabharat, a Brahmin from the Saraswat family, Parashuram, annihilated the entire community of the warrior tribe Kshatriyas and gifted the conquered land to a sage named Kashyapmuni.

Unfortunately, the Kshatriya annihilation meant that the land was left unadministered and fell into anarchy and chaos. The worried sage Kashyapmuni, requested Parashuram to leave the area and settle elsewhere. Parashuram came south and reclaimed new land by ordering the sea to recede and give up the coastal land. This land known as "Aparant" or "Shurparak" is spread between the Sahyadri mountains and Sindhusagar.

The first wave of Brahmins to settle in Goa, were called Saraswats because of their origins from the banks of the River Saraswati, an ancient river that existed in Vedic times. The subsequent drying up of the river caused large scale migration of Brahmins to all corners of India.

A group of ninety-six families, known today as Gaud Saraswats, settled along the Konkan coast around 1000 BC. Of these, sixty-six families took up residence in the southern half in today's Salcete taluka which derives its name from the Sanskrit word "Sassast" meaning the number 66.

The other thirty families settled in the northern area in today's Tiswadi taluka which derives its name from the Sanskrit word for the number 30. The Saraswat Brahmins worked in partnership with the local indigenous people, the Kunbi tribals who still exist today. Around the year 740 AD, the Brahmins established their first Matha (religious centre of learning) at Kushasthali (present day Cortalim) .

An interesting sidelight in this legendary origin of Goa is that Lord Parashuram is supposed to have shot an arrow from the top of the western ghats into the sea to command the Sea God to withdraw till the place where the arrow fell and claimed that land to be his kingdom. The place where the arrow landed was called Bannali (in Sanskrit for 'where the arrow landed'; Bann: arrow, ali: village), or today's Benaulim.

Parashuram arrived in the new abode with other Saraswat Brahmins and sages in order to perform the Yadnya and other rituals. These Brahmin families of Dashgotras from Panchgoudas of Trihotrapura in northern India came along with their family deities and settled themselves in this land of Gomantak or the land of the Gods as it came to be known thereafter.

They initially settled at Mathagram (Margao), Kushasthal (Cortalim) and Kardalinagar (Keloshi). The main deities which also came along with them were Mangirish, Mahadeo, Mahalaxmi, Mahalsa, Shantadurga, Nagesh, Saptakoteshwar besides many others. According to local legend, the ash found at Harmal beach in Pernem Taluka is cited as the ash of the Yadnya or holy ritual performed in Goa.

Today a temple of Parashuram exists in Painguinim village of Canacona Taluka in South Goa. There is no concrete proof to determine the exact date of the arrival of Saraswats or Parashurama in the area, nor is it conclusively proved that Saraswats or other Aryans were the first to arrive in Konkan.

Even if the legends are considered as only myths, the residence of Saraswat Brahmins in Goa since ancient times along with their family deities is an undeniable fact. And most probably they arrived in Goa under the leadership of a towering personality named Parashuram.

The Art of Delegating - I

The Art of Delegating

When we talk of delegating, our thoughts mainly turn to work, and yet all areas of your life--personal and professional--can benefit from delegating. You can delegate numerous tasks and responsibilities, ranging from hiring someone to do your paperwork, to asking your children to help with household chores, to using a computer to automate certain processes.

What are the benefits of delegation?

You have certain skills and qualities in which you're especially gifted. When you delegate the remainder, you'll increase your effectiveness.

Positive results of delegation include:

• 
  
   You'll have more time and energy for the most important things.

• 
  
   You'll have less to do, less clutter and less pressure.

• 
  
   You'll be supported by responsible people working together.

• 
  
   You'll benefit from others' experience, wisdom, thoughts and perspectives.

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   The people you spend time with will feel more confident and increase their skills.

• 
  
   You'll demonstrate to others your professionalism and effectiveness.

• 
  
   You'll get tasks done rather than adding them to your to-do list.

• 
  
   You'll achieve your results in less time.

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   You'll create a win-win situation.

Why aren't you delegating?

What's keeping you from delegating? Probably, it's either believing you're the only one who can do a task correctly, feeling like you need to be in control, attempting to address unmet needs, desiring the adrenaline rush of being busy or feeding your ego.

Have you ever said, "No one can do it as well as I can." The truth is, there are many experienced people who can perform certain tasks as well as, or even better than, you. Another statement would be more effective: "I can find someone who can do it as well as me." When you stop trying to do everything, you can focus more on your true gifts.

Sometimes your need to be in control stops you from delegating. When you need to be in control, you're effectively giving away much of your personal power. You can reclaim this power when you let go of your need to be in control. Then you'll be able to delegate more easily.

If you really want to free up some space and time, look at the areas in which you're controlling and see how you can change. You'll know if you're trying to control others if you try to take over, have your own personal agenda and get other people to do what you want whether it's right for them or not. You're wanting to control when you believe that it has to be done your way and aren't open to other suggestions or possibilities. What will it take for you to let go of being in control?

Delegating can also be difficult for people who have unmet needs, such as the need to please everyone, to keep people happy, to be liked by everyone, and to do everything. You'll be able to delegate better when these needs are satisfied. When you resist delegating, ask yourself, "What is my need in this situation that's stopping me from delegating?" If, for instance, your answer is the need to please everyone, consider in what other ways you can meet this need and free yourself to delegate the task.

Another reason you might avoid delegating is that you enjoy having lots to do and are always pushing yourself. You end up relying on adrenaline to keep going. This is unhealthy. Using adrenaline to get through life causes lots of ups and downs. You need to shift from adrenaline to a healthier and steadier source of energy.

Your ego may also be stopping you from delegating. When you expect other people to agree with you, when you stop listening to feedback, when you have disregard for people, and when you need time, money and attention from others to feel fulfilled, your ego's getting in the way. You need to set aside your ego and start living from your true self. Invest in your mind, body and spirit for a healthier life. You'll receive what you really want in your life in a healthy way without demanding from other people. Where in your life is your ego getting in the way of delegating? What will it take for you to shift from your ego to your true self?

How to delegate effectively

Now that you've identified what's stopping you from delegating, you need to learn how to delegate. Before you decide to delegate a task, make sure it's not one that could be eliminated or automated instead. Also, don't delegate tasks that you're really good at. You want to continue handling the tasks that call on your brilliance.

Great delegation is about delegating an outcome rather than dumping a problem on someone else. So, when you're delegating a task to someone else, give them plenty of information about your desired results. Offer clear and measurable objectives. When you're discussing how the task can be achieved, listen to the other person. They may have different ideas on how this can be handled fairly for everyone involved.

To whom should you delegate? Choose a person who would really enjoy the task and who has the appropriate skills or willingness to learn them. Also, select people that you trust rather than choosing just anyone and hoping it'll work out okay. Trust them to do their best and leave them feeling an important part of the process.

Be available to receive reports on how the delegated task is going and let the person know that you're there to discuss any problems early on, rather than letting the problem get out of hand.

Start by delegating small tasks and when these have been done correctly, increase the tasks. Teach the person the tasks and assist them in discovering the best way to carry them out for themselves. Allow yourself three times as long with this, so that you can really be with the person, understand their concerns or challenges, and assist them as fully as possible. Encourage them to set goals as they progress with the task. This will increase their ownership of the process. Let them know you confidence in them. Establish a deadline to build responsibility in the other person and to allow them to see the importance of the task. Communicate fully the consequences to everyone involved if the task is not carried out successfully. Let them see the end understand the bigger picture. Celebrate with and acknowledge each person's contribution. We all like to hear that we've done well.

Did you know that delegation doesn't just make your life easier--it also helps those to whom you delegate? Consider what you give to other people when you choose to delegate:

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   Responsibility

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   A sense of achievement

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   Enjoyment and fun in the sharing process

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   Income

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   Trust

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   An opportunity to grow, learn and contribute

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   An opportunity to be part of a team

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   The chance to increase their skills and self esteem.

Okay, so now you know the benefits of delegating, you've unblocked what's been stopping you delegating in the past and you know how to delegate effectively. What's the next step? My suggestion is to just take that next step, the action that's going to move you towards delegating more. This step will be different for all of you as you are individuals. It may be making a list of what you could delegate, thinking about what you would want in your life when you delegate more or finding someone to support you in this process. What are you now willing to delegate or automate in your life? You can all get to the place of delegating effectively and it's up to you to make that choice.

The Gift of leadership

The Gift of leadership

 
1.       “Leadership does not happen, it is taught, learned and developed,-I don’t know whether foot ballers are born or made. But, I do know the more I practice, the better I become

2.       Leaders relentlessly upgrade their teams, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence

3.       Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it

4.       Leadership has 3 dimensions and is product of: Vision x Inspiration x Momentum

5.       Vision is the positive image that Leader possesses of what organization could become and its path towards destination.
 

6.       Inspiration for individuals, team and what moves people to take action.

7.       Momentum to carry organization to its destination and meet goals with successful projects, initiatives

8.       Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism

9.       Leaders enroll, Leaders have a shine in their eyes

10.       Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit-Leaders create an environment where every member is able to speak out his/her thoughts honestly, sincerely and without any reservations- Leaders work with a focused group of individuals to establish trust with candor, transparency and credit and encourage the group to take forward the values to every member in the team

11.       Leaders prefer to include every members opinion in a decision making process on critical issues faced by team

12.       Leaders believe in promoting the strength of every individual, rather than enforce members to be a well groomed professional in every aspect

13.       Leaders are principles centered and they live by principles or interchangeably values. One of the principles is “being proactive”. Leader knows if he is proactive when he has full control on whatever he wants to achieve. It makes him predictable and as planned. He enjoys joy and peace. If he is not proactive, things fall on him and he becomes reactive. This is stressful leading to no control and no predictability.

14.       Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls

15.       Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.

16.       Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example

17.       Leaders celebrate

How to be “The Best Manager You Ever Had”

How to be “The Best Manager You Ever Had”

By Martin Z willing

Everyone can recognize a great manager a mile away, so why is it so hard to find one? We all remember a few that are “legends in their own mind”, but that doesn’t do it. In fact, the clue here is that the view in your mind is the only one that matters, rather than the other way around.
 

Almost every one of us in business can also remember that one special manager in their career who exemplifies the norm, who commanded our respect, and treated us like a friend, even in the toughest of personal or business crises.

I’ve asked many for the traits or attributes they saw in that person, and most will list the positive functional traits of a good manager:

• Leadership - outstanding skills in guiding team members, encouraging them towards attainment of the organization’s goals and the right decisions at the right point of time. As Drucker said "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."


• Plan and delegate – foresight and skills to understand the relevant capabilities of employees, and then scheduling tasks and delegating to get tasks done by the employees within deadlines.


• Domain expert - complete knowledge of his field and confident about that knowledge, with the common sense to make quick productive decisions and think outside the box.


• Set clear expectations - employees should always know what is expected of them. One of the easiest ways to do this is to set deliverable milestones for each employee over a set period of time. Then review the performance vs. the roadmap or deliverable at least six months prior to a performance review and discuss ways to improve and set new goals.

• Positive recognition - when employees complete something successfully or show initiative, recognize it. Congratulate them on a job well done. Most employees are not motivated by sheer money. They need recognition even if it is not public. Good managers know that employees feed off acknowledgement that their job is being done well.


In my view, these are all “necessary” attributes, but are not “sufficient” to put you in that ‘great’ category. Most people recognize that it takes more to be ‘great,’ but the attributes are a bit more esoteric, and harder to quantify. Here are a few:


• Active listener - shows traits such as listening with feedback, an optimistic attitude, a motivating ability, and a concern for people. Listening to what is said as well as what is not said is of the utmost importance. Instrumental in the listening process is the environment. It can be most demoralizing to an employee to be speaking to a supervisor and be interrupted for a phone call. All interruptions should be avoided.

• Shows empathy - refers to the ability to "walk in another person's shoes", and to have insight into the thoughts, and, more importantly the emotional reactions of individuals faced with change. Empathy requires that you suspend judgment of another's actions or reactions, while you try to understand them, and treat them with sensitivity, respect, concern, and kindness.


• Always honest – simply put, today’s managers live in glass houses. Everything that a manager does is seen by his employees. If a manager says one thing and does another, employees see it. Managers must be honest and straightforward in words and in actions. A manager must “walk the talk.” That also means recognizing weaknesses, and admitting and learning from mistakes.


• Sense of humor - people of all ages and cultures respond to humor. The majority of people are able to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and see an irony. One of the most frequently cited attractions in great personal relationships is a sense of humor.

• Keep your cool - does not lose his/her cool even while facing a difficulty. He/she is able to correct the team members without emotional body language or statements. A good manager is an effective communicator and a composed individual, with a proven tolerance for ambiguity.

Whole books are written on this subject, but hopefully you get the picture. Great managers must do the technical job well – and they also must do the people job very well. Now that you understand these things, I’m not sure why it is so hard to find a great manager. I guess an even harder question I should ask is why is it so hard to be one?


Marty Zwilling, Founder & CEO, Startup Professionals, Inc.

IT: It's Not Just About Technical Skills

IT: It's Not Just About Technical Skills

by Mike Schaffner, 11.11.09, 06:00 AM EST

Why interpersonal skills may be more important now.

 

While perusing the online versions of some of the more well-know information technology journals recently, I was surprised to find one that had quite a few stories on the stupidity of users. While these stories ostensibly were presented as humor, they also represent a dark side of IT behavior: The IT guys really are the smartest guys in the room, and users are dumb and annoying.

 

A closer reading of some of the stories shows the fallacy of this: Users were having problems, and the IT person was more concerned with showing his superiority than in providing customer service. This type of stereotypical behavior has long been an impediment to IT's success and acceptance in the corporate world.

 

The good news is that this attitude among IT workers isn't nearly as prevalent as it used to be. We've made great strides in improving customer service. These stories, however, show that our job is not complete. There is more to do.

The biggest part of developing the right attitude is realizing that it isn't all about us. The IT guys really may be the smartest guys in the room, but nobody cares. It is more about what gets done than about what you know. It is more about making the team (IT and business) successful than it is about individual accolades.

Information technology has become more self service. It used to be that you had to get everything through the IT department. IT built the databases, and you could only get the data out or get it analyzed by asking IT to do it for you.

Over time, the role of IT has shifted from knowledge provider to knowledge facilitator. We no longer extract and analyze data. Instead we provide tools enabling users to do this themselves.

 

With this shift in roles, IT support must shift from doing to enabling. This means IT has to focus on understanding the user's needs and providing training and tools. It also means understanding the business in order to suggest ways to use technology that meets needs. It involves, dare I say it, empathy, a word not always associated with IT.

Being successful in this role depends on personal skills, such as:

 

--Being a good listener to learn what the user needs and a willingness to listen completely without jumping in with the answer.

--Being a good interviewer to draw information from our users.

 

--Being good at explaining and teaching.

 

These skills can be as important and perhaps more important than raw technical skills.

Accordingly we, as IT leaders, need to change our perspective. We need to work to develop these skills in our people. Technical ability alone is no longer enough. We cannot continue to hire people and do personnel evaluations based solely on technical skills. Likewise, the training we provide has to go beyond just technical training.

When we do personnel evaluation or are hiring, we should include our user community in the process. Having our users interview candidates can provide some useful feedback on how the candidate relates to people outside IT, how well they communicate, how well they listen.

Users also can provide valuable insight into just how good our customer service really is. Getting this insight is extremely important for personnel evaluations. Perhaps we should rate this just as highly as technical skills.

If we expect people to change, we also have to help them. Rather than sending people to a software conference or the latest programming class, perhaps we should send them to classes on team dynamics or finance for non-financial people.

As the role of IT has shifted over time, the skills of our people need to shift, and we as IT leaders need to be actively involved in making this happen.

 

Mike Schaffner directsinformation technology for the Valve and Measurement Group of Cameron in Houston and aims to infuse a business-based approach to IT management. He also blogs regularly at Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms, and you can follow him on Twitter at mikeschaffner.

Eat That Frog

Eat That Frog
BY: Brian Tracy

Introduction

This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more possibilities and opportunities for you to achieve more of your goals than exist today. As perhaps never before in human history, you are actually drowning in options. In fact, there are so many good things that you can do that your ability to decide among them maybe the critical determinant of what you accomplish in life.

If you are like most people today, you are overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. As you struggle to get caught up, new tasks and responsibilities just keep rolling in, like the tides. Because of this, you will never be able to do everything you have to do. You will never be caught up. You will always be behind in some of your tasks and responsibilities, and probably in many of them.

For this reason, and perhaps more than ever before, your ability to select your most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop.

An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who talks a lot and makes wonderful plans but who gets very little done. It has been said for many years that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your "frog" is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment. It is also been said that, "If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first." This is another way of saying that, if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.

Think of it as a "test." Treat it like a personal challenge. Resist the temptation to start with the easier task. Continually remind yourself that one of the most important decisions you make each day is your choice of what you will do immediately and what you will do later, if you do it at all.
There is one final observation. "If you have to eat a live frog, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long."

The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is for you to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning. You must develop the routine of "Eating your frog" before you do anything else, and without taking too much time to think about it.

In study after study of men and women who get paid more and promoted faster, the quality of "action orientation," stands out as the most observable and consistent behavior they demonstrate in everything they do. Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single mindedly until those tasks are complete.

In our world, and especially in our business world, you are paid and promoted for getting specific, measurable results. You are paid for making a valuable contribution and especially, for making the contribution that is expected of you.

"Failure to execute" is one of the biggest problems in organizations today. Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold endless meetings and make wonderful plans, but, in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required.

Fully 95% of your success in life and work will be determined by the kind of habits that you develop over time. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again, until it locks into your subconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your behavior. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes both automatic and easy to do.

You are designed mentally and emotionally in such a way that task completion gives you a positive feeling. It makes you happy. It makes you feel like a winner. Whenever you complete a task, of any size or importance, you feel a surge of energy, enthusiasm and self-esteem. The more important the completed task, the happier, more confident and powerful you feel about yourself and your world.

Important task completion triggers the release of endorphins in your brain. These endorphins give you a natural "high." The endorphin rush that follows successful completion of any task makes you feel more creative and confident. Here is one of the most important of the so-called "secrets of success." It is that you can actually develop a "positive addition" to endorphins and to the feeling of enhanced clarity, confidence and competence that they trigger. When you develop this "addiction," almost without thinking you begin to organize your life in such a way that you are continually starting and completing ever more important tasks and projects. You actually become addicted, in a very positive sense, to success and contribution.

One of the keys to your living a wonderful life, having a successful career and feeling terrific about yourself is for you to develop the habit of starting and finishing important jobs. At that point, this behavior takes on a power of its own and you find it easier to complete important tasks than not to complete them.

You remember the story of the man who stops the musician on the street of New York and asks how he can get to Carnegie Hall. The musician replies, "Practice, man, practice." Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary.

You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration. They are all learnable. They are decision, discipline and determination. First, make a decision to develop the habit of task completion. Second, discipline yourself to practice the principles you are about to learn over and over until you master them. And finally, back everything you do with determination until the habit is locked in and becomes a permanent part of your personality.
There is a special way that you can accelerate your progress toward becoming the highly productive, effective, efficient person that you want to be. It consists of your thinking continually about the rewards and benefits of being an action oriented, fast moving, focused person. See yourself as the kind of person who gets important jobs done quickly and well on a consistent basis.

Your mental picture of yourself has a powerful effect on your behavior. Visualize yourself as the person you intend to be in the future. Your self-image, the way you see yourself on the inside, largely determines your performance on the outside. As professional speaker Jim Cathcart says, "The person you see is the person you will be."

You have a virtually unlimited ability to learn and develop new skills, habits and abilities. When you train yourself, through repetition and practice, to overcome procrastination and get your most important tasks completed quickly, you will move yourself onto the fast track in your life and career and step on the accelerator.

Eat That Frog!

Putting It All Together

The key to happiness, satisfaction, great success and a wonderful feeling of persona power and effectiveness is for you to develop the habit of eating your frog, first thing every day when you start work.

Fortunately, this is a learnable skill that you can acquire through repetition. And when you develop the habit of starting on your most important task, before anything else, your success is assured.

Here is a summary of the 21 Great Ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster. Review these rules and principles regularly until they become firmly ingrained in your thinking and actions and your future will be guaranteed.

1. Set the table: Decide exactly what you want. Clarity is essential. Write out your goals and objectives before you begin;

2. Plan every day in advance: Think on paper. Every minute you spend in planning can save you five or ten minutes in execution;

3. Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything: Twenty percent of your activities will account for eighty percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top twenty percent;

4. Consider the consequences: Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive or negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all else;

5. Practice the ABCDE Method continually: Before you begin work on a list of tasks, take a few moments to organize them by value and priority so you can be sure of working on your most important activities:

6. Focus on key result areas: Identify and determine those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long;

7. The Law of Forced Efficiency: There is never enough time to do everything but there is always enough time to do the most important things. What are they?

8. Prepare thoroughly before you begin: Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance;

9. Do your homework: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them and the sooner you get them done;

10. Leverage your special talents: Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well:

11. Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or chokepoints, internally or externally, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals and focus on alleviating them;

12. Take it one oil barrel at a time: You can accomplish the biggest and most complicated job if you just complete it one step at a time;

13. Put the pressure on yourself: Imagine that you have to leave town for a month and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left;

14. Maximize your personal powers: Identify your periods of highest mental and physical energy each day and structure your most important and demanding tasks around these times. Get lots of rest so you can perform at your best;

15. Motivate yourself into action: Be your own cheerleader. Look for the good in every situation. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive;

16. Practice creative procrastination: Since you can’t do everything, you must learn to deliberately put off those tasks that are of low value so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count;

17. Do the most difficult task first: Begin each day with your most difficult task, the one task that can make the greatest contribution to yourself and your work, and resolve to stay at it until it is complete:

18. Slice and dice the task: Break large, complex tasks down into bite sized pieces and then just do one small part of the task to get started;

19. Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks;

20. Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become known as a person who does things quickly and well;

21. Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task and then work without stopping until the job is 100% complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.

Make a decision to practice these principles every day until they become second nature to you. With these habits of personal management as a permanent part of your personality, your future will be unlimited.

Just do it! Eat that frog.

An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

By Peter Bregman How We Work

2:27 PM Monday July 20, 2009

Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people's problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer. I'd been ambushed. And I know better.

When I teach time management, I always start with the same question: How many of you have too much time and not enough to do in it? In ten years, no one has ever raised a hand.

That means we start every day knowing we're not going to get it all done. So how we spend our time is a key strategic decision. That's why it's a good idea to create a to do list and an ignore list. The hardest attention to focus is our own.

But even with those lists, the challenge, as always, is execution. How can you stick to a plan when so many things threaten to derail it? How can you focus on a few important things when so many things require your attention?

We need a trick.

Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru, knows all about tricks; he's famous for handcuffing himself and then swimming a mile or more while towing large boats filled with people. But he's more than just a showman. He invented several exercise machines including the ones with pulleys and weight selectors in health clubs throughout the world. And his show, The Jack LaLanne Show, was the longest running television fitness program, on the air for 34 years.

But none of that is what impresses me. He has one trick that I believe is his real secret power.

Ritual.

At the age of 94, he still spends the first two hours of his day exercising. Ninety minutes lifting weights and 30 minutes swimming or walking. Every morning. He needs to do so to achieve his goals: on his 95th birthday he plans to swim from the coast of California to Santa Catalina Island, a distance of 20 miles. Also, as he is fond of saying, "I cannot afford to die. It will ruin my image."

So he works, consistently and deliberately, toward his goals. He does the same things day in and day out. He cares about his fitness and he's built it into his schedule.

Managing our time needs to become a ritual too. Not simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That's not consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing process we follow no matter what to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day.

I think we can do it in three steps that take less than 18 minutes over an eight-hour workday.

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you've been productive and successful? Write those things down.

Now, most importantly, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do something.

In their book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz describe a study in which a group of women agreed to do a breast self-exam during a period of 30 days. 100% of those who said where and when they were going to do it completed the exam. Only 53% of the others did.

In another study, drug addicts in withdrawal (can you find a more stressed-out population?) agreed to write an essay before 5 p.m. on a certain day. 80% of those who said when and where they would write the essay completed it. None of the others did.

If you want to get something done, decide when and where you're going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don't let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

The power of rituals is their predictability. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. And so the outcome of a ritual is predictable too. If you choose your focus deliberately and wisely and consistently remind yourself of that focus, you will stay focused. It's simple.

This particular ritual may not help you swim the English Channel while towing a cruise ship with your hands tied together. But it may just help you leave the office feeling productive and successful.

And, at the end of the day, isn't that a higher priority?

* * *

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults about how to lead and how to live. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and advises CEOs and their leadership teams. He is the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

* * *

Information and Study Skills

Information and Study Skills

Good information skills are essential for successful professionals.

Early in your career you must successfully study and digest a huge volume of information, simply to become effective. As you become increasingly successful, you will need to digest huge numbers of documents, data and reports just to do your job, as well as assimilating all the information you need to keep up-to-date in your field.

The articles on reading help you to increase your reading speed and become highly selective in what you read. The item on review techniques helps you to keep information fresh in your mind. The article on note-taking gives you a powerful tool for recording useful information.

Enjoy the articles!

• Introduction to Information and Study Skills
• Effective Note-Taking with Mind Maps
• SQ3R - Increasing your retention of written information
• Speed Reading - Substantially increase your reading speed
• Reading Strategies - Reading efficiently by reading intelligently
• Review Techniques - Keeping information fresh in your mind
• Learning Styles - Learn in a way that suits you
• The Conscious Competence Ladder - Making learning a happier experience

Introduction

The techniques in this section help you to manage information better. By using them you will be able to improve:

• Your reading skills, so that you can find the information you need quickly and easily
• The way you make notes, so that they become clear and easy to understand, and quick to review
• Your review techniques, so that you can keep information fresh in your mind.

These techniques will help you to assimilate information quickly. This may involve keeping yourself up-to-date on events within your field, absorbing information within reports or learning specialist information needed to complete a project.

These are also very useful tools for mastering course material where you are studying for exams.

Techniques discussed are:

• How to take notes effectively - Mind Maps
• Fully absorbing written information - SQ3R
• Speed Reading
• Reading faster by thinking what to read - Reading Strategies
• Keeping information fresh in your mind - Review Techniques
• Learn in a way that suits you - Learning Styles
• The Conscious Competence Ladder - Making learning a happier experience

Mind Maps are powerful tools for recording and organizing information. They do this in a format that is easy to review. Once you understand and start using Mind Maps, you will never again want to take notes using conventional techniques.

The next three techniques (SQ3R, Speed Reading and use of Reading Strategies) help you to assimilate and understand written information quickly and efficiently.

The section on Review Techniques will help you to keep information that you have already learned alive in your mind.

Finally, the article on Learning Styles will not only help you develop the ways in which you can learn, but you'll be able to tailor what you do so that others can learn from you more effectively.

Leverage

Achieve Much More with the Same Effort

"Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the Earth."
- Archimedes

To lift a heavy object, you have a choice: use leverage or not. You can try to lift the object directly – risking injury – or you can use a lever, such as a jack or a long plank of wood, to transfer some of the weight, and then lift the object that way.

Which approach is wiser? Will you succeed without using leverage? Maybe. But you can lift so much more with leverage, and do it so much more easily!

So what has this got to do with your life and career?

The answer is "a lot". By applying the concept of leverage to business and career success, you can, with a little thought, accomplish very much more than you can without it. Without leverage, you may work very hard, but your rewards are limited by the hours you put in. With leverage, you can break this connection and, in time, achieve very much more.

Note: We're not referring to financial leverage here. Financial leverage, using "other people's money" to grow your business, can be a successful growth strategy. However, it's outside the scope of this article.

Levers of Success

So how can you apply leverage to your career? And how can you achieve much more, while – if you choose to – reducing the number of hours that you work?

To do this, you'll need to learn how to use the leverage of:-

• Time (yours and that of other people).
• Resources.
• Knowledge and education.
• Technology.

Time Leverage

Using the leverage of time is the most fundamental strategy for success. There are only so many hours in a day that you can work. If you use only your own time, you can achieve only so much. If you leverage other people's time, you can increase productivity to an extraordinary extent.

To leverage YOUR OWN time.

• Practice effective time management. Eliminate unnecessary activities, and focus your effort on the things that really matter.
• As part of this, learn how to prioritize, so that you focus your energy on the activities that give the greatest return for the time invested.
• Use goal setting to think about what matters to you in the long term, set clear targets, and motivate yourself to achieve those targets.

To leverage other people's time.

• Learn how to delegate work to other people.
• Train and empower others.
• Bring in experts and consultants to cover skill or knowledge gaps.
• Outsource non-core tasks to people with the experience to do them more efficiently.

Providing that you do things properly, the time and money that you invest in leveraging other people's time is usually well spent. Remember, though, that you'll almost always have to "pay" up front in some way in order to reap the longer-term benefits of using leverage.

Tip 1: This is why delegation is such an important skill: If you can't delegate effectively, you can never expand your productivity beyond the work that you can personally deliver. This means that your career will quickly stall, and while you may be appreciated for your hard work, you'll never be truly successful. Use these skill-builder resources to learn to delegate: Delegation, Successful Delegation, The Delegation Dilemma, and Bite-Sized Training: Delegation. It's also one of the reasons that micromanagement is such a vice: You spend so much time managing a few people that you constrain the amount of leverage you can exert. See our Avoiding Micromanagement article for more on this. Tip 2: As you learn to use the leverage these things give you, you'll find that using them involves some up-front costs, such as the investment of time and resources you'll need to make to get someone started with a job that you'd otherwise need to do. While it's natural to want to conserve these resources ("I don't have time to train him - it's got to be done by next Tuesday!"), if you don't make these investments, you'll lock yourself into the old way of doing things - and this will limit you to achieving only those things that you can do by yourself.

Resource Leverage

You can also exert leverage by getting the most from your assets, and taking full advantage of your personal strengths.

You have a wide range of skills, talents, experiences, thoughts, and ideas. These can, and should, be used in the best combination. What relevant skills and strengths do you have that others don't? How can you use these to best effect, and how can you improve them so that they're truly remarkable? What relevant assets do you have that others don't? Can you use these to create leverage? Do you have connections that others don't have? Or financial resources? Or some other asset that you can use to greater effect?

A good way of thinking about this is to conduct a personal SWOT analysis, focusing on identifying strengths and assets, and expanding from these to identify the opportunities they give you. (An advantage of SWOT is that it also helps you spot critical weaknesses that need to be covered.)

Tip: As you do this, think about how you can help others with your strengths and resources. Remember, when you can give to others, the more you're likely to get in return. (Just make sure that you're clear as to how you will be rewarded!)

Knowledge and Education Leverage

Another significant lever of success is applied knowledge. Combined with education and action, this can generate tremendous leverage.

Learning by experience is slow and painful. If you can find more formal ways of learning, you'll progress much more quickly. What's more, if you select a good course, you'll have a solid foundation to your knowledge, and one that doesn't have high-risk gaps. This is why people working in life-or-death areas (such as architects, airline pilots, medical doctors and suchlike) need long and thorough training. After all, would you want to be operated on by an unqualified surgeon?

While few of us operate in quite such immediately critical areas, by determining what you need to know, and then acquiring that knowledge, you can avoid many years of slow, painful trial and error learning.

In the same way, it's inefficient if many people in an organization have to learn how to do their work by trial and error. A much better way is for organizations to capture the knowledge gained by the first few in some way and pass it on to others. This is the core of the "knowledge management" concept. Premium Members of the Career Excellence Club can hear more about this in our Book Insight on The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management.

The keys to successfully leveraging knowledge and education are: firstly, knowing what you need to learn; secondly knowing to what level you need to learn it; thirdly, being very focused and selective in your choices; and fourthly, in taking the time to earn the qualifications you need.

Even then, having more education or more knowledge isn't necessarily a point of leverage. These become advantages only when they can be directly applied to your career goals and aspirations--and when they're used actively and intelligently to do something useful.

By hiring, consulting with, and outsourcing to other people, you gain the leverage of their knowledge and education as well as their resources. This only works if you choose the right people - the wrong ones can slow you and drag you down. Don't let this happen!

Technology Leverage

Finding technology leverage is all about thinking about how you work, and using technology to automate as much of this as you can.

At a simple level, you might find that all you need to keep you in touch with home and work is a laptop computer. Alternatively, a personal digital assistant (PDA) can help you maintain a single, convenient, properly-backed-up time management system. Cell phones that access email and browse the web are handy tools for making the best of your downtime during working hours or while traveling.

If you're a slow typist, voice recognition software can help you dictate documents and save time. Tools like Google Desktop Search can help you manage and find documents in such a way that you no longer need to file digital documents. And Google itself provides a great, quick way of finding relevant information online.

At a more sophisticated level, you may find that you can use simple desktop databases like Microsoft Access to automate simple work processes. If you do a lot of routine data processing (for example, if you run many similar projects) you can find that this saves you a great deal of time. More than this, you only need to set up a process once with a tool like this - afterwards the process will be executed the same way each time, by whomever initiates the process (this reduces training, meaning that new team members can become productive much more quickly, meaning that you can scale your operations – and your success – more quickly.)

Businesses can choose from a wide array of software solutions. Some of these can automate or simplify tasks that are otherwise very time-consuming. Customer relationship management (CRM) databases can bring tremendous benefits for sales and customer service organizations, as can point-of-sale (PoS) inventory systems for organizations that need to track and manage inventory. Websites and web-based catalogs can give clients easy access to up-to-date product information, and help them place orders simply and easily. And blogs and email-based newsletters help people stay in contact with thousands of people quickly and easily. All of these use technology to provide tremendous leverage.

Key Points

Using leverage is the art and science of getting much more done with the same, or less, effort. At a simple level, this can free up your time to concentrate on things with the highest priority. At a more sophisticated level, it helps you achieve at a much higher level.

When you invest time and resources to leverage technology - as well as to leverage time, resources, and knowledge (both your own, and that of other people) - you have a recipe for unprecedented success. Use what you and others have to your advantage, and see how far it will take you.

Apply This to Your Life: Complete a personal SWOT analysis. This will help give you a real sense of what you're good at and what activities might benefit from some outside help. From there, you can start to build a leveraging strategy to maximize your productivity and performance. Look for a mentor who understands and uses leverage, and learn from his or her experiences. This is an example of using leverage to learn more about leveraging - so that exponential factor kicks in again. Increase your personal expectations. Take a look at your current goals, and ask yourself how much further you could push those goals by using leverage on a consistent basis. You may far surpass your pre-leverage goals once you commit to "working smart." Surround yourself with a network of great people who have skills, knowledge, and expertise that you don't possess. Look for opportunities to create synergy, and leverage the talents of everyone involved. When you work together, you can accomplish so much more than going it alone.