Focus on specific words or sentences

One effective way of speedy reading is not reading the whole of a paragraph, but in bits in pieces. Pick up the important words, phrases and sentences. You can skip conjunctions and elaborations. They don’t carry much significance. Rest will automatically bring the essence.

Know your capability

Figure out your capability and grasping power of words, how fast can you read and understand in a minute. It will help you to know your average standard which you can improvise. Timing yourself will help you to improve every time and motivate you to beat the old score. Check how long it takes for you to finish one page of book. Jot down the speed in a paper. Don’t forget you shouldn’t read it blindly, you need to understand the meaning too.

Take speed reader tests

To gain mastery participate in computer based online or offline speed reader tests. Don’t lie to yourself about the output. Cheating won’t improve your performance. Also measure your comprehension level, to re-assure that you are not merely competing with fast reading but also comprehending the message and retaining the same. It will give you a realistic idea and steady improvement. You can search for such tests on search engines.

Let fingers guide you

Let your fingers scan the text, it will increase your reading speed.

Remove distraction

Make sure you remove distractions like television noise, music, pet’s disturbance, too much of talking and noise in your surroundings. Such distractions won’t give you the picture of your actual speed. Make sure you are at peace and not pre-occupied by tension and thoughts which can hinder your learning.

Speed reading learning is definitely not a child’s play. But consistent efforts do show results.

One of the best ways to get your name out there, and get some vital skills with IT and people skills, is through volunteer work.  Go local and find places in your community that could use your help.  Word of mouth can spread far, and you never know what sort of a connection you could make by donating your time.  So keep an eye out, or inquire at some local non-profit groups in your community.

Also be sure to brush up on your certifications from time to time.  You have to make sure that your main certifications are always up to date on the latest technology.  Falling behind means you’ll also fall behind in the job market.  It’s pretty hard to get ahead, and find a good job when you don’t have the necessary skills.

Explore new opportunities.  If you hit one glass ceiling, move on to a different company, or try out a different type of work within the field.  Sometimes you have to feel out the territory to find the task that you are best suited for.  But once you find that aspect that you can excel at, that’s your opportunity for advancement, and the best jobs available.

The real key is just not giving up, and always trying to get better.  Only by constantly updating your certifications and obtaining all the experience you can will you be successful.  Use those opportunities to network yourself among your peers, as the friend you make today could get you that dream job tomorrow.

But there’s more to the exercise to be a better worker concept.  Studies also show that those who find time to exercise at work also kick out better performances on the whole.  There’s a reason Japan has made it a habit to provide for exercise time for every worker during the work day.  Often times taking the entire work force to the roof of their office buildings for a period of cardiovascular activity, before returning to work.

Physical activity has a way of resetting your mind if you’ve been having trouble working through a particular issue at work, giving you a reprieve to reset yourself, and better focus on something else.  Your mind will be better off for it, and when you return to work you’ll feel more relaxed and you’ll be able to concentrate much more effectively.  Exercising works out stress, and emotional tension that you may have, freeing yourself so you can continue in the grind.

A few exercises you can do at the office with ease include:

You could sit on an exercise ball instead of a chair for a period of time.  This will strengthen core and back muscles, improve posture, and burn a few extra calories.

Stand up once every hour or so, flap your arms around a bit and walk around, even if you only have a small space to walk around.  Pace back and forth, and move your arms, this will get your blood pumping, and help you refocus, and calm yourself.

Get a wireless headset for your phone so you aren’t stuck being stationary at your desk while you’re talking.  This way you are free to move about, and motion is always a good thing for keeping you focused and exercised.

Finally, anytime you need to navigate between floors at work, try using the stairs instead of an elevator.  This will help you get in much more physical activity than you would normally be getting, keep your heart working, your blood pumping, and your stress as far away as possible.

Of course on of the easiest strategies is to take a short break if you’re feeling particularly frustrated.  Take 5-10 minutes to yourself if you’ve been frustrated working on the same problem for a long period of time without making any headway.  This way you can leave the problem, focus on something else for a minute, and you can then reenter the situation with a new perspective.

Another way to keep relaxed is to clear out any unnecessary clutter from your environment, to create a clean and concise work area that makes you feel more productive.  Bogging yourself down with cluttered items just makes you feel more trapped and overwhelmed adding to you stress level.  Which is exactly why adding plants is a good idea, as it will provide you with fresh air and more healthy natural feel to your office area.

Get a comfortable chair, it’s no use having to work for 8-9 hours in a day on an uncomfortable chair.  A comfortable body is a more relaxed body, and the more calm and relaxed that you can be, the better you’re going to feel, and that will translate into your performance.

Finally personalize your workplace.  Find out what you are able to bring in, or hang up around your cubicle, and make sure everything is office appropriate, but still make the area yours.  By letting your personality flow throughout your surroundings your identity remains unique and true to your character, taking away a little more of the corporate world stress.

If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys; if you pay carrots, you will get rabbits. This adage has nothing new to offer but it still amuses, and in this laughter and gag, management misses the point. They keep on paying peanuts and they keep on getting their back itched. This is the reality of the corporate world. Companies have lost the trust of employees and thus the loyalty is waning out. What is the reason behind this depleting loyalty? Well, one of the answers could be, or more precisely the answer could be a lack of a proper recognition and reward system in companies.

It is not uncommon to find people who complain about not getting credit or rewarded for the role they played and the benefits they bring to the company. Hence, the employees’ morale weakens over the period of time, and they hop to another job as quickly as they can. The reason behind this job hopping is the absence of any intangible (read quality) benefit, in the absence of which employees look for the money and money alone. If money becomes the sole criteria for taking up any job then there will be nothing like loyalty and long-term commitment.

A proper reward system is one of the things that can stop quality employees from leaving. A reward should acknowledge the importance of the work the recipient has done for the company. The person should get due credit for the work he or she has done. This will infuse quality at the workplace, and the appreciation they get in return of the work they have done will motivate them not only to stay with your company but also to better their performance. If your company provides better work environment, and promptly return the employees’ dues then the importance of money gets belittled. Money only works wonder if everything else is indistinguishable.

A proper reward system should be responsive and customizable. No one-size-fits-all strategy should be used for rewarding the employees. If your company indulges in this then always expect the same mediocre result from the people on the other side. You pay peanuts and you get monkeys! There will not be even a single star performer if all a best performer of your company gets are peanuts and carrots.

Star performers do not just help satisfy more customers but they also help in securing good investments. We should understand here the triangular relationship between, employees, customers and investors. One better employee will fetch at least 10 loyal customers and 10 loyal customers will bring 100 more like them. This way the customer base of your company will grow and with it will grow sale of your products. The more you will sell the bigger your company will become and the better employees you will attract. These high quality employees will breed more sales that give investors more confidence in your company and the more confident the investor will have the more he or she will invest in your company.

For investors, the size of the customer base of your company is indeed important but the quality of the team that you have assembled to satisfy the needs and wants of your company’s customers are more important. Employees, customers and investors are three sides of a business triangle, weaken one of them and your business will tilt and tip over.

]]> http://itlist.com/pay-peanuts-get-monkeypay-peanuts-get-monkey/feed/ 0 http://itlist.com/writing-when-you-can%e2%80%99t/ http://itlist.com/writing-when-you-can%e2%80%99t/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 16:18:18 +0000 bikram http://itlist.com/?p=1321 There are times in the life of every writer when he or she doesn’t feel like writing. All the possible subjects seem to have written about, and if after much struggle a subject comes to you, the first line of the article, blog post or essay wouldn’t come. This happens to all of us and happens quite often if you are a daily blogger or a free lance writer. We call it writer’s block. We all suffer at its hand but the good news is that there is a way out of it. We can save ourselves. You do not need to remain stuck in there. This post will tell you how.

Let’s face it. You got stuck here because over the days, months or years, you have become stale. You are out of new ideas and this happened because you have closed the door on incoming new ideas. You stopped reading. The lesser you read the quicker you run out of ideas and it happened to you. Writing took more time than its fair share can permit and thus the time you devoted for reading shrank. Well, by reading I do not strictly mean, reading books. Reading journals, magazines, blogs, newspaper reading and participating in forums and newsgroup etc. also qualifies.

As Stephen R. Covey would put it, it is about maintaining “P/PC Balance,” where P stands for production and PC stands for production capability. Let’s understand it in a bit detail. If you are focused solely on the P part of the equation then you are focusing on getting the proverbial golden egg while neglecting the PC part of the equation. By ignoring the PC for prolonged period of time you are killing the proverbial goose that laid golden eggs for you. It is necessary for us to keep on investing in increasing our PC.

On the other hand, if you are more focused solely on the PC part of the equation then all you are doing is enhancing your ability to work, and not doing the actual work; that is to say, you got all the goose you require but not getting them lay golden eggs for you. P/PC Balance is the key. However, you should not strive to achieve a perfect P/PC balance but moving towards perfection hasn’t hurt anyone.

One strategy to save oneself from this writer’s block could be to maintain an idea-book. You can keep a small notebook with you in which you should jot down all the small and big writing ideas that come to you during the course of the day. The list thus prepared will be your savior in the time of need.

Confession time: I decided to write this post when I myself got stuck. For more than a day I found myself confronted with this damn thing, writer’s block. It immobilized me. I did not know what to do and what to write on, and then I thought why not to write on this only, on how to write when you cannot write. This post opened up many new avenues for me and I am again full of ideas. I am out of my writer’s block, are you?

First off, it’s not like you’re going to be getting to play your favorite game for hours on end, having fun and making a living wage from your efforts.  In actuality you’re forced to play something that’s likely to he horrible, for long periods of time, and analyzing every second of the experience.  Game testers are around to spot the smallest things, such as graphical errors, or collision detection issues with a game’s physics engine, and these require a massive amount of time to completely figure out.  So instead of playing through a level and getting paid for it, you’re really critiquing every pixel in the level to a daunting extent, and reporting back to development teams so that they can fix and edit the game accordingly.

Not exactly a party.

Not to mention a game testers schedule becomes increasingly more grueling as deadlines begin to loom.  Meaning a tester could end up putting in 12 to 14 hour days, playing the same levels and portions of gameplay over and over again, with the same repetitive movements and requirements, in an effort to nit pick every single detail.  Not exactly a dream job, and you can see why most testers burn out in a relatively short period of time.

I’m thinking most people misjudge the opportunity as a dream job, and then find themselves shocked into reality when they see just how much work playing videogames can be.