Visualized.Feel.Abundance

Procrastinating is thinking about
What you will be doing tomorrow
When it should have been done yesterday.

1. Your to-do list is getting too long. Clear them before you run out of paper or you would be guilty of killing trees.
2. Your health is heading south. Start exercising or you will need a wider door.
3. Your laundry basket is overflowing, soon you will run out of undies. You could wash them or buy more. Washing is the cheaper alternative.
4. If you spent the time doing the work instead of procrastinating, you would have completed the work already.
5. Taking action kills less brain cell as you concentrate on doing and not thinking!
6. You are not cool if you procrastinate! Have you seen a procrastinating celebrity? If they procrastinate, you won’t be hearing about them right?
7. Procrastination is Painful. Painfully slow.
8. You will be bored staring at the same thing day after day. Get it over with so you can stare at something new.
9. Your inertia is building up. If you don’t move now, soon you won’t be able to, even if you wanted.
10. You won’t be as successful as NIKE if you procrastinate. Stop Procrastinating, Just Do It!

Cheers
James

PS: If you notice that I am a bit quiet this couple of days, that’s because I am not feeling well. Too much work can be bad too, the long hours I drive myself couple with lack of water finally did me in. So I brought up my backup post to share it with you guys. It was meant as a humor but the content is still accurate enough

Popularity: 11% [?]

Hey Folks,

I have taken great pains (4 post) to set the stage for what I am going to share with you today. I did it not to “fill in” posts but I sincerely feel that to really appreciate what I am going to say in this post, you need to understand the real situation. So take some time to read them before you continue with this post:

Understanding The “Boss” Mentality
Understanding The Effects Of Globalization And Outsourcing
Understanding The Effects Of The New Economy On Our Salary
Misconceptions of Key Performance Indicators, Promotions and Pay Increments

Summary Of Prior Post

“We live in an era where the economy dictates that companies pay their employees what they are worth and that worth is determined by how much a company is willing to pay as cost of the products or services they produce. Anytime the an employee ceases to produce the value they were paid for, the company would be forced to reevaluate the need for that employee.”

Who’s Considered An Asset
To be an asset in a company, it doesn’t always mean that you need to climb the corporate ladder (although it is a common result of being an asset). Every company needs assets at every level of their company structure. You don’t always have to be a manager or departmental head to be an asset. For example:

A production line worker that is always on time, meets his daily production target, helps fellow colleagues in times of need and encourages and keeps the team in high morale is an asset.

A housekeeper keeping the office and toilets pristinely clean everyday creates an environment so comfortable and conducive to work that every employee feels good when reaching office is an asset.

How To Be An Asset
What I am going to show you is a series of thought provoking questions that will guide you to:

1) Discover and determine your current value in your company
2) Find your direction and balance in your company
3) Become a positive influence in your company

Discover and determine your current value in your company
First, you need to asked yourself these basic questions:

1) For what purpose where you hired for?
- You can check the job description for your position or alternatively, check with your boss. You need to know exactly what your role is before you can determined your value.

2) How do I determine the value I have created for my company?
- For some jobs such as sales, this is simple, the amount of sales they bring is their value. For some jobs such as accounting and human resource, it is not as simple to determine. In such cases, the KPI will be an invaluable tool to justify your value. If you do not have a KPI set for you, talk to your boss and get one.

3) What values have I produced for the company?
- Again for jobs such as sales, just check your figures. The rest will depend mainly on whether they have met their KPI’s set for them or their department. The minimum that every employee could do is to meet their KPI as this alone tells your boss that you are not a liability.

Find your direction and balance in your company
Once you have the answers to the above, you have to ask yourself these questions next:

1) What is your vision of yourself in the company 5 years from now?
- Would you like to remain in the same position or proceed to the next level? Understand what that vision of yours will implies. If you decide to stay at where you are, you will need to understand that there will be a cap to how much salary you can earn in the long run. And if it is higher salary that you desire, you will need to improve your skill set (management skill, communications skill, etc) to advance.

- For example, a production line worker will never earn $5000 a month but a production line manager has the capacity to do that. However, he will need knowledge of how to run a production line, quality control measures and procedure, people management, scheduling, etc in order to advance.

2) Are you happy with that vision and is that what your heart desires?
- I know some employees who are perfectly happy to stay where they are while some may decide to scale the corporate ladder. Whichever is your preference, you need to be at ease with that decision. A happy and grateful employee is productive, well liked and becomes an asset while a resentful employee spreads negativity and affects the productivity everyone else around him and becomes a liability.

- Both the happy and resentful employee is in similar situation, draws similar pay and is equally productive (quantitatively) but they are viewed in a differently in light of their actions, which is a result of their thoughts.

3) What are the values you need to create to get where you want to be?
- If you desire to escalate, find out the job description or KPI of that position and acquire the necessary skill. Talk to your boss, he should be able to facilitate. If that position is higher then where your boss currently is, helping him to get there before you could help you greatly.

- If you desire to stay put, create you own unique proposition. Be the most productive employee, most helpful employee, the most innovative employee, etc.

Become a positive influence in your company
What ever you choose, remember to deliver the basic value you were hired for (meet KPI) and be a positive influence on your team, department and company. By looking towards the positive side of things and events, you put yourself in a position to spot opportunities and capitalized on them.

Here are some positive influence tips:

a) Communicate In The Right Direction - If you have doubts or negative feedbacks, convey upwards (to your bosses). If you have positive ideas and encouragements, convey downwards (to your staffs, colleagues).

b) Volunteer First - When management asked for volunteers, be the first to volunteer for the task that you know you are proficient in. You kill 2 birds by getting brownie points for volunteering and avoid being tasked something that you aren’t able to handle.

c) Help Yourself First - Always complete your own task first, then extend whatever help to the rest of the team. If team work is part of your KPI, clarify with your boss which comes first (teamwork or own task and write it down).

d) Keep A Smile On - Maintaining a smile on your face at work can do wonders to you and all that is around you. It is like an infectious virus then everyone will catch and it make people happy

e) Share Abundantly - Share your experience, knowledge and skills with your colleagues. By sharing abundantly, you will attract others to share with you, even your boss. I assure you that you will gain more then you have given out. For example, I share 5 tips with 30 colleagues and 5 of them share with me 1 tips each. Net total is that I have 10 tips now, 25 of them have the 5 they had while the other 5 have 6 each.

f) Always Bring At Least One Solution For A Problem - Never give your boss problems. If you must, bring along some probable solutions. If you have only 1 probable solution, add a solution you know your boss won’t take so you give him a choice.

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy;
anybody can complain. - Henry Ford”

g) Don’t Leave Problems Alone - I have seen many clerks manually extracting figures from their system by printing out reports then manually collating figures into an Excel spreadsheet. They spent 2-3 days a month doing just that! An elegant solution is to get your IT department or vendor to create a automated report that will takes just minutes to get the same report. Even when a cost is involved, I believe it will be justified in the long run.

“Most people spend more time
and energy going around problems
than in trying to solve them. - Henry Ford”

h) Run It Like You Own It - Always think of how a certain decision, action, process, etc will benefit the company (not yourself). Only when you start running the company like you own it, the benefits will come a full circle to benefit you.

“If there is any one secret of success,
it lies in the ability to get the other person’s
point of view and see things from that person’s angle
as well as from your own. - Henry Ford”

i) Never Work Hard, Work Smart - Working hard without working smart is the dumb mans way of earning a living. An employee working smart can produce the same result in much less time then an employee working hard. Using the same example in (g), the smart employee with automate the report has 3 more work day per month then the other who works hard (hard manual labor). If you spot and solve a problem that saves 10 man-minute per employee per day for a company of 1000 employees, you save your company 48,000 man hour each year henceforth! That is roughly 18 years your annual value to the company, imagine that!

j) Work Hard Only When Necessary - Sometime the company finds itself in some situation where they need you to draw a little deeper into your reserves to help them out! Do it, you will be appreciated. What you don’t need to do is to work late everyday even when you don’t need too. It could be deemed as inefficient.

k) Never Say “No” Right Away - When given a task or problem to consider, ask for some time and think about it seriously. It lends credence to you that you have given it due thought, even when you know from experience that it cannot be done, and sometimes, you might just find a solution that you haven’t thought of.

“I am looking for a lot of men
who have an infinite capacity to
not know what can’t be done. - Henry Ford”

l) You Always Have A Little More Then You Think - When you thought you have given all you have, just empty your cup one more time, reset your objective view and take a look at the whole team, department, company, processes again. You are bound to find something more to improve on.

“The man who will use his skill and
constructive imagination to see how
much he can give for a dollar,
instead of how little he can give for a dollar,
is bound to succeed. - Henry Ford”

I have shared a great many tips with you folks and I do hope you have benefited from it. If you have other tips or opinions, please feel free to contribute here. And nope, I am not going to talk about liability. Talking about it will just get you focused on it and I would prefer that you focus on being an asset.

With this post, I end my series of 5 post on “Are You An Asset Or Liability To Your Company?“.

Love,
James

PS: Folks, the key points in this post is Perspective and Gratitude. To understand and be thankful, allow a soul to drop whatever resentment is holding you back and gives you room to achieve greater things in life even when your skills stays the same. Think about it.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Hey Folks,

Today I would like to ask you, How Do You Get Motivated?

There are basically 2 types of motivation:

Self Motivation
This is arguably the best form of motivation and it is commonly found in entrepreneurs. In this form, you create or find the reason(s) to be motivated. You know what you desire and usually, your goal or the results of achieving your goal IS your motivation.

People in this category are always looking for challenges, goals, objective, new things to achieve. It does not matter if they failed a hundred times, they will try new ways, new approach or new methods until they succeed!

Also, by being self motivated, you will tend to attraction opportunities as you are always on the look out for them.

Motivated By External Factors
This is the most common type of motivation. You fall into this category if your motivation is due to:

- Wanting to fulfill the expectations of other people
- Force by circumstances beyond your control to do something
- Promise of a great reward (Lottery falls into this category)

People in this category will not take any action unless there is a reason rewarding enough or more typically painful enough for them to take action and do something. Their motivation will only last long enough for them to achieve the minimum requirements to satisfy and remove the external factors (pushing or pulling them).

The people in this group tend to attract more external factors that will push/pull them by virtue that they wait for something to happen!

Illustration
Lets say if you have a kid who is self motivated, they study on their own, request for help if they need, join study groups and generally get good grades (because they put in the effort). Would you bother as much to push them? Probably not.

Lets say again that you have another kid that just study enough to pass test and exams and occasionally fails exam but do not put in the effort to study harder. Would you, as parent set targets for him, send him to tuition classes, nag at him, force him to study? Probably so.

Could you see how the the Law of Attraction is working here? I think you would

So Which Do You Belong Too?
I used to be in the second group. Now I am somewhere in between but moving slowly but surely into the first group of motivators. What about you?

Share your thoughts simply by voting in this small survey that I have set up.

Cheers,
James

PS: I’m still trying to figure out how to change the color of the button

Popularity: 8% [?]

Hey Folks,

Today I will talk about something that has been talked about countless of times but I will talk about it again based on my perspective of the subject and the subject for today’s post is the Law of Attraction.

There are many explanations or definitions for The Law of Attraction, from Quantum Physics point of view to New Age movement to New Thought philosophy. I shall offer my view of what Law of Attraction means to me, how it works and why it works the way it works.

My Definition Of The Law Of Attraction
To me, the Law of Attraction is nothing but the reflection of ourselves! Yes, you heard me right the first time. The Law of Attraction is nothing but a reflection of ourselves. What you think, you become. It is without prejudice and it does not know the difference between a positive and a negative thought. It reflects what you are thinking and helps you attract whatever you are doing.

That is why people with an abundance mindset always seemed to able to find solutions to a problem or get good deals where none seems to exist. While people with limiting beliefs always seemed to find more problems and get no opportunities at all! Same situations with different thoughts and they get different results!

Testing My Definition
You can test out this theory anytime you like and it will work every time. I like to use driving as an example. When I am in a happy mood with ample time to take a relaxing drive to my appointment, I will tend to focus on positive things I encounter on the road. I will spot drivers signaling before changing lanes, I will tend to give way willingly and be happy about it, I will keep within the speed limit and stay off the overtaking lane. In general, I will find everything enjoyable about driving.

When I am in a bad mood and especially when I am running late. I tend to curse all the way to my destination about inconsiderate drivers hogging the overtaking lane. Why? Because I am trying to overtake on that lane too while driving at excessive speed sometimes. I get even more frustrated as I focus on little things that gets me frustrated. Oh and I won’t even notice that 70% of the other road users were nice that day.

Go ahead and try it but it may be a good idea to bring a neutral party along (preferably someone who is close to you), they tend to see the difference clearly. Karen (my wife) is usually my mirror in all these situations.

Practicing The Law Of Attraction
There you go. No complicated explanations, just simple observations that even my grandpa will understand. So if you want to apply the Law of Attraction in the positive way to get a better life, here is how you can do it in 3 simple, yet practical steps:

Step 1: Understanding Your Thoughts
Before you decide that you want to change, you must at least know from who you are changing from. I cannot decide for you what you need to change, you will have to look inwards, sort them out, discard what you don’t want and keep those that you want. Then look at your “new self” again and decide if that is what you want.

For me, thoughts that I had decided to throw away are:

- Procrastination
- Laziness
- Shyness
- Arrogance
- Fear of Failure

Now decide if there is any beneficial thoughts that you are lacking that you want to have. Add them in your “new self”. For me, I have added:

- Responsibility
- Gratitude
- Perseverance

Review your “new self” again. If you like what you see, write the qualities of your “new self” down on a piece of paper, a reminder card, your vision board or anything that you can easily and conveniently remind yourself with.

Step 2: Change Your Thoughts
Now that you have decided the new qualities you would like to have in your “new self”, you need to let your new thoughts grow its roots while you weed out those thoughts you want to throw away. The first thing you need to do is to believe in yourself and believe that you can change for the better.

Next write down a list of actions/habits that would overcome those thoughts you decided to throw away and a list of actions/habits associated with those new beneficial thoughts that you would like to gain. Here’s my example:

Habits To Overcome (Thrown Away Thoughts)
- Just Do It (Procrastination)
- Do It Now (Laziness)
- Just Asked, No One Is Going To Eat You (Shyness)
- Empty Your Cup And Learn (Arrogance)
- Gain Knowledge And Just Do It (Fear of Failure)

Habits To Inculcate (For Thoughts Gained)
- Don’t Blame Anyone But Yourself (Responsibility)
- Be Thankful For Every Little Thing (Gratitude)
- If You Start, Don’t Stop (Perseverance)

Done writing them down like mine? Great! Now erase the bad thoughts (first section, in brackets) away leaving only the habits portion! It should look like this now:

Habits To Overcome
- Just Do It
- Do It Now
- Just Asked, No One Is Going To Eat You
- Empty Your Cup And Learn
- Gain Knowledge And Just Do It

Habits To Inculcate (For Thoughts Gained)
- Don’t Blame Anyone But Yourself (Responsibility)
- Be Thankful For Every Little Thing (Gratitude)
- If You Start, Don’t Stop (Perseverance)

Now you have to focus on drilling in your new habits. To do this effectively, you need to remind yourself that this are the habits you want, consciously, by reading what you have written daily. Reward yourself when you followed your new habits successfully - this actually strokes your sub-conscious mind and reprograms it to accept your new thoughts/habits.

Notice that we never even mentioned anything about bad thoughts? We only focus on the good habits that can overcome the bad thoughts. Why is that so? Because you don’t want to be reminded of the bad thoughts and in the process attracting them back again!

Step 3: Follow Your Thoughts
I have been told that it takes about 28 days to change one thought (completely) so does it mean that you need to change one thought at a time? I am not sure because I did it all at once. What I am sure is that you need to at least follow your new habits, keep track of your progress for at least 30 days, probably more. But once you cross that imaginary line where your new habits take hold. You will be surprise at the benefits it brings.

I believed that you have heard of the phrase “Birds of a feather flock together”. That’s what will happen once you are transformed, you will start to notice that you get to know more people with similar thoughts. If you got rid of procrastination, those “friends” that procrastinate will drift away from you and you get to attract new friends that are oriented towards taking action. The more you attract, the more you are motivated to do whatever is in line with your thoughts.

Summary
By now some of you may be asking “I thought this was about using Law of Attraction to attract things that I want?”, well, that is where most people got it wrong! Many believers of “Law of Attraction” just sit around trying to manifest their dreams. When their dreams are small and only requires a shift in focus to achieve, it comes true. But when the dream is beyond their current capabilities to attain, it will never come true no matter how hard they manifest. This is especially true when they have some limiting thoughts. Then they start to assign blame.

The natural path of “Law of Attraction” begins with changing yourself. When you are properly geared towards achieving success, even the sky won’t be a limit. This is my way of applying “Law of Attraction” practically. It is that simple and it has been around for ages!

I believe each human being has the potential to change,
to transform one’s own attitude, no matter how difficult the situation.
- 14th Dalai Lama

I believed that everyone can change and be successful if he allows himself to be. Nothing I say or do will have any effect until you are ready to receive. If you are ready, the way is open. Do leave me a comment to share your thoughts.

Love,
James

If you have benefited from the post, you could help us spread the word by stumbling, vote, digg or social bookmark it! Good things are meant to be shared not kept! I told you I got rid of being shy right!

Popularity: 14% [?]

The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose one thought over another.
-William James

Understand this - if you don’t change the way you work or improve your skills in stress management, it does not matter how many jobs you change, you will end up in same cycle again. In a way, you are attracting the stresses you are experiencing at work with the way your handle your assignments, colleagues and bosses.

Let us take a look at what are the sources of stress at work:

Assignments
Assignments are whatever task that is assigned to you by your boss and sometimes by higher management (anyone above your boss). You need to get this concept right. Only jobs assigned by your boss - yes, the fellow that does your appraisal - and by higher management counts as your assignment (since they matter to your boss) and NOT those from colleagues, other department, clients, suppliers, etc.

Assignments are stressful, even when we define it in such a narrow scope because they can be unending. You finished one and get another two! You finish two and get another four! So accept it. In a way, you may have attracted it by being too efficient. Be proud of it, don’t get stressed over it. But you need to do something to manage it. We will talk about it later.

Noises
Noises are any task that are not assignments! But they look just like assignments to your and the fellow who assigns them usually make a hell of a lot of noise if you don’t comply!

Commonly:
- Your colleagues asking a favor
- A colleague from another department demanding that you finished their task first even when the dateline is 2 months away
- You client demanding for a certain report/listing that you never heard of
- Your company’s dance society asking you to join them for practice for a upcoming dinner and dance

Well, you get the drift! In general, anything not stated as part of your Key Performance Indicator (KPI) as defined to you by your boss are noises. They can stress the hell out of you because you tend to do them first because they make noise consistently around you and won’t stop until you are done with them. But IF you comply, you end up having no time to do what you really needed to do. Now you are doubly stressed. And since they got you to do it once, you can be sure they will be back for more. See, you attracted it.

Need It Yesterday
Another huge factor of stress at work place is the date lines given for the task assigned. I call it the “Need It Yesterday” Syndrome. It typically goes like this, “James, I need this piece of assignment done, NOW! Actually I need it yesterday but now it is really urgent so get it on my desk in an hours time.” Sounds familiar? I bet you do.

Feeling Responsible
This last one is the difference between being stressed and not knowing what stress is. Responsible people feel more stress than people who don’t take responsibility. So what am I preaching now? Don’t be responsible? Hardly. You just need to know what you are responsible for and the answer is, Not Everything!

So I have listed 4 things that contributes to stress at work. So how do we manage them and make working an enjoyable experience? Well, maybe not totally enjoyable but definitely less stressful.

Knowing What Is Important To Your Boss
Most people know that working smart is better then working hard but how do you work smart? To me work smart is working on things that counts towards your goal. Your goal at work is, of course, getting a good appraisal that will result in a good pay increment and a promotion! So what you need to focus on are assignments that counts, such as those we defined earlier on.

Focus on assignments that counts towards your KPI. If an assignment is not listed as part of your KPI but your boss insist that it is important, get him to include it into your KPI so they count! If you have to do the work anyway, make them count! Oh, if you boss never set any KPI for you, you are in deeper trouble then you will ever know. Since you have nothing to measure your performance against, you WILL NEVER get a fair appraisal.

But the most important factor here is to know what IS really important to your boss! Find out which assignment matters most to your boss and put your heart and soul to it. You must have heard of those cases where a boss promotes and all his underlings promote together with him, right? That’s what you are aiming to do here. The trick is to ASK him what is important, never assume or second guess!

Eliminate Noise
As defined earlier, any assignments from people who could not possibly appraise you or affect your appraisal in any way are noises. Entertained where necessary and more importantly when you are free to do so.

Noises from supplier and clients are a little trickier. It is a common practice for clients to sometimes ask for anything under the sky, especially at the clerk-to-clerk or executive-to-executive level. Some are routine request that are completely within the contractual obligation for you to provide (your boss would have told you so), but very often they are not! The best way is to ask your boss if you should comply with an incoming request from clients or supplier. Let him decide so that you only do what is necessary and your boss gets to be responsible for all the “NO’s” to the clients and suppliers.

Get Your Responsibility Right
Remember your goal at work is to get a good a good appraisal that will result in a good pay increment and a promotion! So your responsibility is to yourself and to your boss. When you get your responsibility right, you would not feel responsible to noises or feel obliged to respond to them.

Managing Boss’s Expectations
Last but not least, what if your boss is the one that is stressing you out with too much assignments? You manage him, of course! The simplest way is to inform him of your current work load to make him aware of what you have on hand and the estimate time of completion. If you need more time then was scheduled, tell him so and explain the reasons.

When he assigns new task to you, ask him of the importance of the task. If it is real important, ask him which other current task would he like to knock off the schedule? If you let him do the talking and he will convince himself of the new schedule. You won’t even have to provide a reason for shifting any dateline, if he is reasonable.

Oh, for unreasonable bosses that never rewards their staffs, do yourself a favor and change them. They are not worth your effort and you will never meet your goal at work. This is just being responsible to yourself!

So there you have it. 4 factors of stress and 4 simple ways to manage them. It’s your turn to talk

Cheers,
James

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