Archive for September, 2006

Things That Matter Most: Becoming a Great Leader #6

This is the last in a series of articles on becoming a great leader. It is a collection of the staples of great leadership and is compiled from many sources.

Great leaders KNOW it is PEOPLE not PROGRAMS that create a quality organization.
Great leaders have clear, consistent expectations.
Great leaders take into account the impact of their decisions on those they work with.
Great leaders plan a purpose for everything they do.
Great

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September 29 2006 | By Reginald | Tagged: Communication, leadership, managememt | no comments»

How to Power Nap

Gnorb writes in and introduces his post on power nap. There are couple of resources available on power nap, but Gnorb has a pretty good overview on this topic. Power nap is great from people who suffer through days of fatigue and need some quick ways to recover. He talks about the advantages of power naps, and go through all what, where, and how questions for it:

How much… » Continue

September 29 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: nap, sleep | 2 comments»

Get Motivated With An Excite List

Achieve IT! suggests a way to motivate and gain traction on a stalled project. Identify what is the reason on stalling. Next drop down some very simple todo onto the list. The excitement will come when you complete those very trivial todo items and cross them off:

… Underneath the reasons, begin a simple list. Jot down everything you need to do to get that one stumbling block out of the… » Continue

September 29 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: problem, procrastination, Productivity | no comments»

Book Review: You Were Born Rich

A book review by Reg Adkins. You Were Born Rich (1997 LifeSuccess Publications), by Bob Proctor.

I read Bob Proctors landmark book some years ago, and I continue to see the message it contained proclaimed over and again by successful people (Sam Kalenuik, Grant Sylvester and many others). When I saw that the book was made available in December as a free PDF download at Insight of the Day
I… » Continue

September 28 2006 | By Reginald | Tagged: book, entrepreneurship, finance, self-help | no comments»

Use Webcam as a motion-detecting and recording security camera

There is an application called Dorgem (Windows Only), which has motion detection function on normal webcam. This is a pretty cool feature because you can convert webcam to a security camera. Dorgem also has couple of other features that are useful for security camera, such as capture images and store off-site (i.e. FTP site), and supports unlimited number of simultaneous cameras.

Dorgem is a webcam capture application for Windows… » Continue

September 28 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: camera, security, software | 7 comments»

10 Ways To Recover After Physical Exercises

Swift recovery after exercise is important especially regular training during the week. For me, I only know stretching after exercise will help reduce muscle stiff and post-carbohydrate drink will help recovery. A blog called Uncommon Body gives me 10 more ways to increase the recovery rate:

Take a post workout shake
Take a contrast bath after training
Do not drop carbohydrate intake too low
Take naps
Sleep eight to ten hours a night
Stretch on

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September 28 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: exercise, recovery | 5 comments»

The Cost of Convenience

The crazy prices we’ve had to pay for gasoline in Hawaii have revived a debate I have with my husband every so often:

How much are we willing to pay for convenience, and how much do we value our time?

My husband is one of those people who will drive all the way down the coast line, about 30 miles from our home, just to save a few nickels at the gas… » Continue

September 28 2006 | By Rosa | Tagged: convenience, decision-making, value | 9 comments»

Defusing Tantrums

Gretchen Rubin brings us a necessary list of tips to help us deal with those moments in life when our children decide they’ve had all they can stand, and they can’t stand any more.

The secret is to acknowledge the reality of children’s wishes. This sounds obvious, but think about how easy it is to deny their feelings: “You can’t possibly want another Lego set, you never play with the… » Continue

September 27 2006 | By Chris | Tagged: children, Lifestyle, living, parenting, tantrums | 3 comments»

Advice for students: Twenty uses for a Post-it Note

[T]he Post-it Note was more than just a practical tool — it was also a psychological one. Compared to the clunky machines of the 1980s that generated all those documents, it was a vision of high-tech minimalism. Its edges were sharp and square, with no ugly binding, no perforations, no metal rings. Its color, a subtle but attention-getting yellow, was somehow like the color of thought itself, a lightbulb going… » Continue

September 27 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: note, organization, sticky | 50 comments»

Advanced Gantt Charts in Spreadsheet

Gantt Chart is useful. It tracks tasks start and finish dates, dependencies and resources. Unfortunately drawing gantt chart usually requires a project management software. Alternative? Peltier Technical Services shows a way of doing it in Spreadsheet (i.e. Excel):

Gantt charts are useful tools in program management, which help to show graphically when tasks must start and finish, and which tasks are underway at any given time. Gantt charts help in… » Continue

September 27 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: chart, gantt, project, spreadsheet | 5 comments»

The 7 deadly sins of resumé design

We’ve covered articles about how to improve your resume’s content. How about the design aspect of it? It is equally important to give a professional feeling. Another problem is that the design gets too fancy. LifeClever describes 7 deadly sins of resume design:

Fancy “resumé” paper
Times New Roman
Teeny tiny font size
Grey text
Excessive decoration
Weird paper size
Horizontal format

What do I care about resume design? - Don’t do fancy stuff; Font size… » Continue

September 27 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: design, resume | 4 comments»

Pre Conference Travel and Logistics Planning

In my new role, I’ll be attending and hosting lots of conferences and meetups. This means traveling probably as much as twice a month to other places, and that means lugging all the stuff a technological nomad needs to take along to stay viable. Here’s a list that I’m compiling that contains some obvious and maybe not-so-obvious pre-plans.

Pre-Conference Travel Checklist

Clothes. This is a given to TAKE clothes, but

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September 26 2006 | By Chris | Tagged: 15secondpitch, bloglines, conference, howto, industry+conference, Laura+allen, planning, PME, pulvermedia, technorati, tips, tradeshow, travel, von | 6 comments»

The Power of Praise: Becoming a Great Leader #5

Effective leaders treat others with a positive regard. Specifically, effective leaders understand the power of appreciation. This goes beyond the Carnegie precepts of “Be hardy in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”

Effective praise is a skill set that must be learned like any other. As leaders we often find ourselves spending and inordinate amount of time identifying what is wrong, identifying mistakes, and concentrating on errors. Effective leaders… » Continue

September 26 2006 | By Reginald | Tagged: behavior, business, effectiveness, leadership, managememt | 6 comments»

Get Organized: on Spices, TV, Mail and Conversation

Meryl Evans at her blog shares some quick organization tips on conversation, mail, TV, spices. To save time and be organized in a small little section in your life will add up and save you a lot of time in long run. I like her conversation hack (yup, I need to keep reminding myself to drop everything down, now):

You run into someone who asks you for information or gives you… » Continue

September 26 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: hack, Productivity | no comments»

How To Get People To Trust You

Lisa Lerer at Forbes has a short article on how to get people to trust you in a short period of the time. This is a pretty good hack in term of business, because usually your customers or contacts will not be your friends or know you for a long time. The article includes bits and pieces on different situations:

… The same idea applies in different business cultures, which often… » Continue

September 26 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: Communication, trust | 2 comments»

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