Here are some tips about minimizing television watching and not making it an addiction.

Calculate how many hours you can invest in it

Don’t watch television unconsciously, without worrying about time invested in it. If you don’t have any specific serious purpose like educational purpose or research intention for watching television, calculate how much time you can devote in a day for television watching. Remember, the time gone in television watching casually won’t come back to you and you could do much useful work in that time. Knowing what you wish to watch, fix the hours you can invest in this medium watching. Make sure you adhere to it and don’t extend it by anyhow.

Shortlist programs of your wish list

Don’t watch television casually, unconsciously watching whatever is displayed on screen. Such practice leads to addiction to the medium, if not specific programs. Rather shortlist few good television shows of your choice and watch them only. Know their time of telecast. Such program will make you start television only at the time of the show and close it immediately after it’s over.

Skip it at times

To genuinely overcome your television addiction, skip your favorite television show at times. Replace television watching habit with something else like – book reading, going for a walk, playing sports, gardening, playing with pets, cooking etc. This is a practice to ensure that television watching is something you like to do but not become obsessed with. It will slowly make you feel comfortable even when you miss your favorite programs. Soon you will find television watching doesn’t matter much to you.

Don’t fantasize about your favorite show

Often young viewers start fantasizing about their favorite television show, its characters and think about them all day along, even after the show is over. They talk about the same with friends, read about them on Internet and even watch video. Such practice is none other than addiction. Make sure you don’t dream about your favorite show. Treat it as a television show only.

Try these tips today.

4 Writing preparation tips

One idea per post

Do not cram too many things in one blog post. It will confuse the readers, which will push them to move away from your blog. The more ideas you will insert in the post, the more users will move away from the blog. Find a core theme and stick to it. Do not wander off, or else you will never be able to finish your blog post.

Find the purpose of your blog post

Knowing the purpose of a blog post will help you draft your article better. Why are you writing the article? Do you want your readers to purchase something, or you want them to know more about the subject, or you want them to subscribe to your newsletter after reading it? Once the purpose is defined, writing becomes easier, as you choose mode, tone, and words on that basis only.

Who is your target audience

This is another important consideration. You need to define an ideal reader of your blog post. Find out what he does, how much experienced he is, and what is his qualification? You also need to find their interest level and intension. Is your ideal customer in the market to buy the thing you are writing about? Is he just researching, or reading casually? Knowledge of the intention will help you customize your language.

Write a draft headline

Write a temporary headline. It will give you a target around which you will organize your ideas. This, in no way, is the final headline that will go with your post. This headline is just the first draft. Revisit the headline, once you are through with the article.

You are much better equipped to write a headline after you are done with the article, as you are much more knowledgeable about the subject matter.

Follow the tips shared above, and you will produce better articles.

I will not tell you that you will get gazillions of benefits should you occasionally talk to your clients, but I can surely tell you about some benefits — that you will care about — of talking to a client on phone.

Benefits of doing business on phone

1. The fastest mode of communication: You may think chatting, texting, and e-mailing are the fastest modes of communication, but they are not. They are not real-time, in a sense that telephonic conversation is. You can ask questions and seek answers to them in real time. The movement of communication thread in telephonic conversation is very swift.
2. No ambiguity: It also reduces ambiguity. Unlike text, which could be interpreted in many ways depending upon the reader, spoken words tend to be clearer, as it gives away the intention of the speaker.
3. Get response without delay: In a typical e-mail or chat communication, you send a message, your client reads it, he takes his time, type a response, and send it, and then you get to read it. And if you need further clarification, you start the process all over again. This is time consuming. Contrastingly, question and answer is live on the phone. There is no time-lag between question asked and answer given.
4. You get to know your client: Knowing the nature of your client is very, very important. On e-mail, you get limited knowledge of your client. Of what kind of person he is, what he likes, what he hates, what he is fanatic about, and what he expects of you. This knowledge is a gold-mine. It will help you customize your offering.

There are many more benefits, but these are the ones that will help you increase your business. Do you still think you should not call your client?

How to avoid it?

Fortunately, there is a way out of it, which anyone of you can use to avoid distraction, regardless of your situation.

Assign yourself a place of work

This is the must-take action for any freelance writer. It is not good to carry your laptop and sit anywhere in your home to work, well occasional working-in-kitchen will not hurt but do not make it a routine. I know it sounds against the spirit of freelance writing—you can work from anywhere and anytime—but this is worth a deviation. Find a lonely corner in your house and turn it into a workplace.

Fix your work hours

I may sound like talking against the freedom of freelance writing, but my intention is not to drag you back into the 9-5 job that you left in the past, it is only to help you produce more. And as it is you can anytime pull the string and call it off.

Work, no matter what

Once you fix your work hour, you should stick to it, no matter what. Well, you can deviate from “no matter what” principle without any guilt feeling when you know you need to. Occasion deviation never hurts, at least not in our profession.

Talk to your family

At times, getting things write just need a word from us. Talk to your family and tell them that you are working around here, so not to create distraction. Well this might not work with a disgruntled spouse, but in most of the cases, this will be enough. Believe it or not, they understand the value of the work you are doing.

As you can see, fighting off distraction does not take so much of muscle power as much it takes discipline and tactics. What are your tactics to fight this monster off? Use the comment box and tell me your strategies.

The first thing you should do is figure out the nature of the question.  An illegal question does not refer to a question that is criminally liable, but rather just a question that an interviewer is not allowed to ask.  Questions like these are from topics that cannot legally have a bearing on whether or not you get a job.  Such as questions about race, sex, age, health, disabilities, and religion.  Any of these could be mentioned unintentionally in the forming of a question, but all are illegal for an interviewer to ask you.

It’s necessary for you to understand that in most cases an illegal question comes up as a mistake from the interviewer.  Oftentimes these are asked with no intention to discriminate against you.  But rather these are attempts by the interviewer to be friendly, or to relate to you.  This way the can get a better feel for how you would fit in with the company.  But usually through inexperience, instead of doing that through legal means, they accidentally slip into an illegal pitfall by asking you a personal question.

In this case you have two polite options for answering the question and moving the interview forward.  The first option is that you could answer the question.  But in answering, make sure that it’s a question you feel completely comfortable answering, and preferably answering n brief.  Then try to move on to a different topic.  The second option is to essentially ignore the question and move the interview forward by focusing on a different work related topic of yours.

Either option works well, and will keep an interview’s flow without making for an uncomfortable situation on either side.  Try to stay professional and courteous, with a positive disposition, as you always should during any interview.  If you can follow that model, and not flinch under the pressure of an illegal question, you’ll be just fine.

There is a certain structure you need to follow in order to build a strong argument that in turn will win over the recipient. Before discussing the structure of a persuasive letter, let’s first talk about the research objective. The following list will tell you what all you need to know before you can begin writing a persuasive letter.

• Define the target audience
• Purpose of writing a persuasive letter.
• Make a list of information you want to include in the letter
• Make a list of supportive arguments. The arguments will show the reader what is in there for him.
• Make a list of possible objections, or mental block that might be pushing the reader to decide against your proposal.
• Is there something peculiar about the problem you are going to address? Make a list of it.

Anatomy of a persuasive letter

Introduction: Introduce your product, services and request in this first paragraph. Outline the important changes in this new version.

Outline the benefits: The introduction paragraph should be followed by the paragraph that will talk about the benefit of the product, services and request you are making. In this paragraph write statements that will build case for you.

Call for action: Once the recipient knows about the benefit he will have by accepting your proposal, you need to tell him what you want from him, and what action he should take to help you.

Thanks: Thank your reader for the time he has devoted in reading the letter. Also include a conclusion in this final paragraph. The conclusion should be as forward thinking as it can be.

Close your eyes for a while and think, will you like to do business with the person whom you do not trust? Will you put your hard earned dollars in the hands of a person whose intention is not to help you but just to take money out of your pocket? No, you will not do that! Then why do you expect your customer to behave differently, just because you are on the opposite side of the table? Well, no matter how many times you turn the table, and how many people you bring on the other side of the table, you cannot be successful in making a sustainable customer base.

There is only one golden rule of selling and that is honesty. Be honest and sell only the product your customer needs, not the product your company wants to push to every customer. This is what we call integrity selling. Integrity selling will not only build a reputation for you, but it will also give you a rock-solid foundation made of loyal customers to stand on.

Integrity selling is the only way to maintain a long sustainable base of customers. In order to be successful in applying integrity selling in your business, you genuinely need to believe in solving the customer’s problem. I am saying believing, not feigning to believe, as most sales people do. This is how you can build reputation for yourself and your business. Till the time you are concern with just meeting your target for the month or the quarter, you cannot succeed in winning the hearts of your consumer. You need to win a significant share of customers’ hearts to remain in the business for the long run. Integrity selling is indeed tough, but the return it fetches makes it worth trying. As said, integrity selling will build a long term reputation for you, and the more you practice it the more equity gets deposited to your reputation-bank, which in the long run will mean more business for you.

Let’s think over a very famous quote: you can cheat a few people for a long period of time, you can even cheat many people for a short period of time, but there is no way in which you can cheat everyone (or many people) for the longer period of time, it isn’t possible. If you are salesperson, always remember this and never ever try to sell lie. A lie can help you meet the immediate goal, but it will hurt you badly in the long run. It is always wise to fix your eyes on the long term results, short term results will never last.

For Windows and Linux users both have a firewall is built in and is activated by default. The fact that the firewall is built into all Windows/Linux operating system does not limit the user from choosing another firewall that suits his needs once the original is turned off. One can easilty create exceptions if there is a need to recieve information from another soource eg Instant messaging, windows media player etc.

Firewalls do not protect your system fom viruses neither do they prevent you from opening e-mails that could damage your computer. In cases like these if is the user´s responsibility to install an adequate Anti-Virus program and to always update it´s signatures. Apart from this he should always exercise caution when he opens e-mails and do not know the sender.Even if one knows the sender care should be taken at all times when opening the contecnts of e-mails.

If there is not a built in firewall then there is the possibility do buy Software Firewalls to help protect your system. While this is a advantage software firewalls can only be placed on one computer and do not permit installation on various computers. In other words there can only be one software firewall for each computer and usually they are costly.

For homes that have an internet connection one generally uses hardware routers to offer protection while connected. Hardware routers offer protection to various computers and allow multiple usage.

Finally for those who use a wireless networks then there is are wireless routers that can be used. They allow one to connect laptops and generally do not use wires to connect, thus eliminating a clustered working environment. They however emit signals that can be intercepted with the right machine and generally do not come with built in firewalls, which indicates extra cost for the user.