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6 Cs to Avoid in Life

- on 6/14/2014 09:17:00 AM - No comments

By Junaid Tahir:

Following Cs are suggested to be avoided in order to achieve extreme heights of contentment and happiness.   

Cursing:
Cursing is opposite of blessing which means the one who curses is away from blessing.  Both cursing and blessing are indirectly proportional to each other. The more you curse people the more you make yourself away from them and also from the blessings of Almighty. Control your thoughts to control your tongue. Daily audit at the end of each day will help improve your habit of cursing. This will improve your mental health and strengthen your inner powers. 
Complaining:
Your complaining attitude reduces your social circle. When you start complaining about circumstances, about people around you and so on, you give up your energies to strive and eventually you weaken your relations with others and also lose your grip on your goals. This act degrades you in your social group and eventually you lose respect. Try speaking positive or stay silent. 
  
Criticizing:
While healthy criticism helps improve things but most of the time you criticize with no clear positive intention. The more you criticize this way, the more you pollute your own mind and build up negative powers which back fires in terms of added stress due to negativity. Also criticizing is an indication that you are not part of solutions instead  you are part of problems. So if you would like to live a happy life then no negative criticism please. 
Complicating
Mind your own business. If you can't help don't complicate their problems. Don't confuse people by raising complicated questions.  Speak up only if you have a positive advice and neat intention. Remember, giving advice is a matter of honesty so put yourself in others' shoes; listen empathically and then advice in the best interest of your companion.   

Conspiring
This is one of the extreme ethical crimes I can think of. You conspire when you plan secretly (alone or with others) against someone to do something which is harmful and unlawful. In the court of humanity this is a punishable act and nature always takes revenge form you for the things you do against humanity.

Corrupting:
Corruption is a phenomenon of moral or economical deviation from the ideal. Corruption is a world-wide social disease which has spread like jungle fire and impacting millions of lives every day consequently polluting every society. May it be financial corruption, Ethical corruption or Relationship corruption, it is consistently polluting societies aDnd families. The more you earn with illicit acts the more you push yourself away from the state of contentment. Illegal acts always have reaction exactly equal or more than the magnitude of the actions you do. 

Some Article You May Like:
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7 Qualities of Highly Ethical People
Do You Keep People Happy?
6 Technique to Develop Empathic Skills
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Story of Lamborghini and Ferrari

- on 6/14/2014 09:13:00 AM - No comments


By Junaid Tahir


Mr. Lamborghini was born in 1916 to a working class farmer family. He grew up as a highly skilled mechanic and started his own tractor manufacturing  business. His business was very successful with the production rate of 400 tractors per month in 1960.


Being a wealthy man he bought a Ferrari 250GT and joined the league of those limited number of people who owned Ferrari at that time. He continually had mechanical problems with his Ferrari and soon he became embarrassed. After so many visits to Ferrari workshop he decided to meet Mr. Enzo Ferrari to complain in person. He went to Ferrari office and had to wait for hours to meet Enzo Ferrari. He told Mr. Enzo that their car is poor
.
 Mr Ferrari said to Elio Lamborghini that he can end up with driving a tractor but won't be able to handle a Ferrari properly.

That was the  moment Mr. Lamborghini decided that he would design his own sports V12 engine car and that's what he exactly did in coming days. Today we know Lamborghini company having €469 million Revenue in 2012. The company has produced several great cars including but not limited to Gallardo®, Aventador®, Sesto ELemento®  and Reventon®.



This is an inspiring story of the life of a person who established himself from a middle class farmer's family member to a billion dollar business executive. So what did he do differently to make himself a great success?
1-      He challenged the status quo situation and thought of doing something unique.  
2-      He took the initiative to design and produce something better than the best.
3-      He applied his creativity to produce V12 engine 

References:
Lamboweb, Wikipedia, Lamborghini, The National UAE


About Author: Junaid Tahir is a passionate blogger. He writes articles on Leadership, General Awareness, Stress Management and Life Enhancement subjects at his personal blog

Junaid Tahir 
www.DailyTenMinutes.com

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Twitter Jokes

- on 6/14/2014 09:10:00 AM - No comments
Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a flat tire...

Yawning is your bodies way of saying 20% battery remaining.

They say money talks but all mine ever says is "goodbye".

I named my cat "5 miles" so I can tell people I walk 5 miles every day.

Always love a woman for her personality. She has ten you can choose from.

I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.

Just changed my Facebook name to ‘No one’ so when I see stupid posts I can click like and it will say ‘No one likes this’.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.

Ford - "Fix Or Repair Daily".....

Take my advice, as I don't use it anyway, it may be of use to you.

I was trying to explain the concept of Twitter to my friend. He finally said I don't follow you.

Never allow your self to be an option in someones life when you allow them to be a priority in yours. Remember you are worth more then that.

There's two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither one works.

You know you're really broke when... American Express calls and says: "Leave home without it!"...

Flight Attendant's comment on a less than perfect landing "We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.

Boy: What will you give me as reward if I climb Mt. Everest?... Girl: A push!

You should know, when someone pisses you off, it takes forty-eight muscles to frown but only two to pull the trigger...

A guy shows up late for work. The boss yells, "You should have been here at 8:30!" The guy replies, "Why? What happened at 8:30?"

Interviewer: Just imagine you are in the third floor, it caught fire. How will you escape? Man: It's very simple i will stop my imagination.


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A Brilliant Idea to Help Villagers

- on 6/14/2014 09:04:00 AM - No comments
This is a prime example that somebody from outside cares more about the poor people in India to invent this kind of simple and very useful tool!

 

 
When Cynthia Koenig, a young social entrepreneur from New York, learned that millions of girls and women around the world spend hours each day collecting water from distant sources, she decided to create a new way to help people in poor communities transport water and it's called the Water Wheel. Koenig's Waterwheel allows people to roll water in a 50-liter container versus carrying it in 5 gallon (19 liters) jugs. Koenig estimates that the Water Wheel can save women 35 hours per week in water transport time, as well as prevent the physical strain that comes from balancing 40 pounds of water on top of their heads for hours each day.

 
Every day around the world, over 200 million hours are spent each day fetching water, often from water sources miles from home, and this task usually falls to women and girls. By freeing up valuable time, the Water Wheel allows women to spend time on income-generating activities that can help pull her family out of poverty. The time savings also means that there is a greater likelihood that girls will be allowed to stay in school, further reducing the rate of intergenerational poverty.

 


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Story: Man Locked In Cold Room

in - on 6/13/2014 08:15:00 AM - No comments


Juan worked at a meat distribution factory. One day, when he finished with his work schedule, he went into the meat                               cold room to inspect something, but in a moment of bad luck, the door closed and he was locked inside with no help in sight. 
Although he screamed and knocked with all his might, his cries went unheard as no one could hear him. Most of the workers                    had already gone, and outside the cold room it's impossible to hear what was going on inside.
Five hours later, whilst Juan was on the verge of death, the security guard of the factory, eventually opened the door and                      saved Juan's life.
Juan then asked the security guard how he got to open the door, as it wasn't part of his work routine, and he explained thus:              "I've been working in this factory for 35 years, hundreds of workers come in and out every day, but you're one of the few who            greets me in the morning and says goodbye to me every night when leaving after working hours. Many treat me as if I am invisible.
Today, like every other day, you greeted me in your simple manner ' Hello ' at the entrance when resuming for work. But curiously,          after working hours today, I observed I've not heard your ' bye! see you tomorrow '. Hence I decided to check around the factory.           I look forward to your ' Hi ' and ' bye ' every day. To you, I am someone. By not hearing your farewell, I knew something had happened.

Then I Sought and found you! 

"Moral Lesson to reflect upon":
Be humble, love and respect those around you. As life is too short! Try to have an impact on people in ways we can't even imagine, especially the people that cross our path every day. Someone seemingly so insignificant and irrelevant today could be the only help you can get tomorrow.
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How to Reduce Business Costs

- on 6/13/2014 08:14:00 AM - No comments

By Junaid Tahir:

Business costs are sub-classified into two categories; Fixed Costs and Variable Costs.
Fixed costs are defined as the expenses which do not change as a function of business such as salaries of employees, rents of the office, facilities and equipment costs. However, please don't get confused that Fixed Costs cannot be changed. Indeed they can be changed but their prime definition remains the same that these costs are stable for longer duration of time and do not usually get impacted due to on-going business volume. On the contrary, the Variable Costs are the ones which keep changing due to multiple factors.
Below is the list of several domains and recommendations (minor tweak for SMEs and major ones for large scale companies) in the form of questions in order to give you a personalized experience and to invoke the thought process for the business cost reduction:

1-  Marketing, Advertising and Business Development:
i-             How much budget was utilized for marketing  in last 6 months? How much the marketing has been effective? Is there any need to re-evaluate the marketing strategy?
ii-            How much investment is done on customer's entertainment?
iii-          Do you do a monthly expense analysis audit? Do you know specific techniques to optimize your marketing budget such as AdSense, affiliate marketing etc?
iv-           Do you consider B2B marketing, email marketing, banner advertisement, pay per click, video marketing or SEO optimization?  

2-  Leasing and Rental Management:
i-             Does the company's office and warehouse at different locations? Why not having both at same location to reduce renting and transportation costs?
ii-            Any recent audit done to determine if the current rented space for office or warehouse is worth its expenses? Is the size and cost in sync with the requirements of business? Can this be moved to a less costly area?
iii-          Is there any tools, machinery or other resources which can be leased to earn some extra cash? Any marketing plans to do this?

3-  Staff Management and Optimization
i-             Are there any underutilized employees? Can some extra tasks given to these employees to make them more productive or 'earning' resources?
ii-            Can some of the permanent staff be converted to contract based? This will save extra benefit and reduce your long term liabilities.
iii-          Can some of the tasks/ resources be outsourced? (HR services, Visa, documentation, maintenance etc.)
iv-           Did any re-evaluation of resource responsibilities happened in last one years? Are there any employees with duplicate roles?
v-            Company sponsored mobile phone packages are fairly used? The packages are carefully selected based on the role of each employee? Any audit happened for the utilization of mobile and other resources given to employees?
vi-           Are the employees trained enough to perform their duties so that they make less errors and mistakes?
vii-         Right policies are in place so as to reduce the reworks? What is the accountability mechanism?
viii-        Mature and error free databases are in place for efficient and accurate reports generation and to avoid errors in data entry?
ix-          Is there any scheme available through which employees are given suggestions for the improvement of organizations and get rewarded if their suggestions are implemented?
x-           Any specialised use of tracking employee online activities such as Manic Time?
xi-          Employee lay off should be last thing to do as it impacts your organization in many ways such as loss of sincerity, productivity and efficiency of the rest of the employees.



4-  Vehicle Utilization and Fuel Management:
i)             How vehicles are utilized in a day to day work? How much company is flexible for the utilization for personal use?
ii)            How vehicles are maintained?  Is this task given to any agency to avoid corruption and in order to enjoy free benefits  such as car replacements ,free wash, oil, and tuning services?
iii)          How vehicles are tracked for the daily utilization (how many kilo meters travelled, how could multiple visits or same kind of visits be reduced?
iv)           Pick and drop of employee is happening on bulk basis or at individual level?
v)            Restriction of some of the travel (local and abroad) possible?

5-  Energy Conservation
i)             Motion detection Sensors installed for turning lights off during off hours?
ii)            Sleep mode enabled on laptop computers?
iii)          Older bulbs/fans/computers are still being utilized which are poor when it comes to energy efficient devices selection?

6-  Hard Resources Utilization and Audit
i-             How many printers & Scanners are in place? Can we reduce some of them?
ii-            How many pages are printed per day? Any mechanism to control it?
iii-          Is there any over utilization of pantry products? Employees are encouraged to use non-recyclable things?
iv-           Which of the policies and processes can be converted to paperless by avoiding photocopying/ printing/ reproducing ? Can you run a paperless company altogether?
v-            Is there any strong mechanism of inventory management? Any products lost because of poor control on hardware resources ?

With these recommendations, I believe any company can optimize their business costs consequently improve their profit margins.
How do you optimize the costs in your organization?

Some articles you may like:
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Begin Your Leadership Journey
The New Manager's Fundamentals
How to Evaluate Managers
Employee Feedback System

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Management: How to Delegate Effectively

- on 6/12/2014 01:23:00 PM - No comments

By Junaid Tahir:


Delegation is the art of asking a person to perform a task or series of task with full or partial ownership. In a professional domain, a typical organogram is a visual demonstration of delegation flow. Delegation Process in management is a critical thing all managers must consider because it's a known fact that employees do not leave organizations, they leave managers which is usually a result of poor delegation process the managers follow.  The management must consider the fact that replacing an employee costs from 50% to the annual salary of the employee hence they are required to be vigilant so as to retain the employees. From my recent training on Delegation Process I learnt that there are 4 phases of every Effective Delegation Process:
   
1.     Evaluation
2.    Handover
3.    Support
4.    Debrief

All phases are linear which means you need to complete one to move on to the next one.

Evaluation:
This phase requires you evaluating the task and evaluating the pool of mangers you have.  
First, consider the high level tasks for the project in hand. Now, map the skills, response time, importance and criticality with the short listed employees in order to select the right person. Low importance tasks can be given to any employee so you can save time by considering this approach. For selecting the right person consider his/her task management skills, people skills, analytical skills and general management skills. You can also consider delegating a project to multiple people to cross train your employees to become better future managers. Remember, the quality of a good manager is not to produce more followers but to produce more managers.

Handover:
Prepare, discuss, handover.
Consider the deliverables of the projects, required resources, frequency and format of project progress reporting, authority level to be given for making decisions during project execution.  By authority level I mean, when the delegate can take action at his own and when he needs approval from you. During handover phase, ask for suggestions instead of one-way information flow. This will boost confidence and improve your relationship with the employee. Appreciate the employee on why he/she has been selected. If delegating multiple people, delegate in one session so that everyone is sync about his/her role.


Support:
Monitor and counsel during execution.
Call for meeting when any risk occurs. Advocate for damage control by being a coach. Start with 'appreciative inquiry' method in which employee replies in terms of project success. Examples: What part of the project you are happy about? What's going good in the project? Etc. Ask questions to encourage not to desperate. For problematic parts, ask how do you think I would handle this situation? Avoid micro management unless it is seriously required because micro management kills the productivity of employee.

Debrief:
This phase of delegation happens when the task is completed.
Review the summary of project, associated documentation and general achievements. Discuss new issues; how were they resolved and what lessons were learnt. Consider the level of efforts and hard work the employee have put in and finally appreciate, honor and reward the delegatee.

About Author: Junaid Tahir is a passionate blogger. He writes articles on Leadership, Stress Management and Life Enhancement subjects at his personal blog

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How to Handle Frequent Mood Swings

- on 6/12/2014 01:21:00 PM - No comments
In a particular day, you may pass through several mood swings depending upon your circumstances. For instance you are sad, happy, irritated, annoyed, stressful, depressed, cheerful or angry at different moments of time. As long as you are happy, everyone around you is fine with that however if you have a lot of mood swings in terms of being irritated, annoyed, sad, angry, reactive or stubborn it becomes a challenge for others to move along with you. Because of your swift mood swings your personality becomes unpredictable. The more unpredictable you become for others, the more likely you have the chance to lose your respect within your friends, family and colleagues.

So how to control these mood swings? Below are some points which you need to ponder on:
1-    Analyze yourself on what are the triggers which cause your mood swings? is this an event, or comment or act or presence of a person?  Fix the problem or start loving it. 
2-   Respect the fact that every single soul is a unique in terms of thinking and acting. You cannot order people to follow your way of thinking and living. Relax. Give respect to earn respect. It takes two hands to clap.
3-   Write down your triggers on a paper. You will notice that your problem is not that much big!
4-   Discuss your issue with the person and find out a solution. Be flexible. You may not be right in your demands or you may be completely wrong in your demands. Be honest, analytical and logical while you share your comments and desires.
5-   Observe others on how they react in different kind of circumstances. Find out a mentor in your life you can follow. Or even you can observe everyone because everyone has something to teach you. Closely observe. 
6-   Avoid taking stress. The more you take stress the more you lose control on your emotions and become unpredictable. Read my article on Stress by clicking here  and clicking here 
7-   Develop Trust in your relations so that people feel easy to get along with you.

What are your thoughts in controlling your mood swings? 
About Author: Junaid Tahir, a telecom engineer and a blogger, writes articles on wisdom, happiness and stress management. His articles can be read Here
Follow me on Twitter View my profile on LinkedIn Like my page on Facebook Read my articles on my personal blog Subscribe to my Feed Visit my Google+ Page
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