4/30/2009

Task Management and Personal Productivity

If you have been assigned to manage a large project, only to become overwhelmed at the sheer scope of time and effort required, you're not alone. Managing long-term, large-scale projects is a challenging prospect, even for those experienced at it.

And what if you are expected to manage three, four, or even five or more projects at a time? For many people the mere thought of simultaneously managing multiple projects is mind boggling, even frightening.

Yet, as you look around your workplace, you can probably spot someone who seems to thrive on doing it and actually does it exceptionally well. And while that person may not seem to be any more intelligent or hardworking than you are, for some reason they (read more)

4/28/2009

How to Become a Life Coach

Life coaches help their clients discover what is most important to them, help them perform at optimum levels, and achieve what it is they most desire. They work one-on-one with their clients, either in person or over the phone, and help them in their personal development and in meeting personal goals.

If you like helping people and are a charismatic and energetic person, then life coaching might be a good career choice for you. Let's first examine what a life coach is and does, then we'll go into more detail on the process of how to become a life coach.

The practice evolved out of executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in leadership training and management consulting. It also borrows from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, career counseling, mentoring and other types of counseling. Coaches may apply mentoring, behavior modification, behavior modeling, values assessment, goal-setting and other techniques in their practice.

According to a survey of coaching clients, (read more)

4/26/2009

Stress Breathing' Techniques - Do NOT Take A Deep Breath

Coaches and athletes understand the need to practice proper breathing habits to keep metabolism in balance. Those of us who have poor breathing habits can experience a drop in our body's energy by up to 85%. This is a significant decline in aerobic energy production.

The physiological changes caused by poor breathing habits throws off our pH balance, the ratio of O2 to CO2 in the bloodstream, diminishes energy, and can create a feeling of anxiety or poor health in general. Although we naturally breathe automatically, over the course of our lifetimes we actually learn to breathe incorrectly.

When we begin to feel stressed, we have a tendency to also begin breathing faster and shallowly. This reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in our blood causing blood vessels to constrict. This often leads to hyper-ventilation, throwing our metabolism completely out of balance!

It's a behavior that can be unlearned given time and effort.

So, first thing we need is to become aware of our breathing habits by actually (read more)

4/24/2009

How to Relieve Stress

Stress can have both short-term and long-term negative affects on your health. Feelings of anger, fear, or helplessness are common indicators of stress, as is insomnia.

It can cause headaches and pain in the jaw, neck and back. Habitual smoking, drinking, overeating and drug abuse are also caused by stress.

If you're experiencing these symptoms, it's very likely that you could benefit from some advice on how to relieve your stress.

Stress is how your body responds to change. Situations that cause stress in one person may not cause it in another. It's a very individual experience. One person may become tense when driving over high bridges, while another may enjoy the view. The thought of skydiving terrifies some people, but others find it thrilling.

It's nearly impossible to classify any particular situation as stressful, because what causes stress in one person could be a source of enjoyment for the next. The key is to identify and manage what is stressful for you personally, because letting stress go unmanaged can have life-threatening health consequences.

Things you feel that you have no control over can be upsetting. However, it's (read more here)

4/22/2009

The Big Benefit of Time Management

Don't have the time to save time? Too busy?

It seems a bit of a paradox, but exercising time management requires--you guessed it--time. To develop effective time management skills, you must take more time out of your busy schedule that already contains more tasks than you have time to accomplish. But the investment of time used to schedule your time will create more time available to you in the long run.

So if you're already overwhelmed by your to-do-list, and you find yourself making excuses - procrastinating - for not doing what you know must be done, then you need some motivation. You can find that motivation in the Big Benefit of Time Management.

And what is "the Big Benefit of Time Management?" (More Here)

4/21/2009

Goal Setting - In Theory And In Practice

Creating a clear vision of what we want to accomplish in a business plan involves the cardinal task of establishing goals.

Setting goals doesn't appear to be that difficult. You establish a specific goal, one that's measurable and has a defined timeframe for completion. You implement the plan, measure progress towards reaching the goal and then evaluate the outcome objectively to refine the process.

On the surface, it sounds easy enough to do. But it rarely seems to work out that way for numerous reasons; primarily because we often fail to establish realistic goals.

Additionally, we often casually set goals with only a hazy view towards how they'll actually be accomplished. And while we're typically motivated at the beginning of the process, it's not at all unusual to lose this drive somewhere along the way.

When preparing your own goals, it's important to first understand that every goal must be realistic and readily achievable, given an appropriate amount of time and resources. For example,
(more here)