Memory is the ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. There were numerous studies made to understand the mechanism of memory retention process and how to increase the memory power. Numerous medicines were introduced and many techniques were devised all to improve human memory power.
By increasing memory power we can achieve wonders. Mind power and memory power are two related entities, by improving memory power we greatly improve our mind power as well. These two tools together can bring out great results. We can invoke our inner thoughts so that our mind and actions remains focused on what we are doing. This way our efficiency in all areas will improve, thereby make us a better employee, better family man and all together a better personality for us.
Just practice this exercise for 15-20 minutes every day for 21 days. Your memory power and sharpness will be doubled. People around you can feel the difference. But the best judge of what you are is you; nobody else can understand you better than you yourself. So make a self assessment towards the end of the course and others will naturally feel the difference.
During my research days, my first effort was to find the best time for doing this exercise, finally I found late evening just before going to bed is the best time for doing this exercise. It hardly take 15-20 minutes, so it won’t affect much. It is not at all necessary that you have to keep some specific time for this, but the best time is before going to bed.
Before going to bed brush your teeth wash your face and clean your hands and legs. Now you are ready for the exercise. Sit straight and relaxed on your bed or in a chair. Make doubly sure that you are sitting comfortably and relaxed no tensions on your body. Now slowly take a deep and long breath, retain it for 5 seconds and slowly release. Repeat this for 10-15 times, nothing special here, by doing this you are providing more energy for your body. This energy is required after a long day’s work, which would have exhausted your mind and body. Now you are ready for the final step.
Start recapping all those things happened for the day. Start with your wakeup time, and then move on step by step. Initial days you may not be able to recap all events, but as the days progress you will be able to improve on it. No need to strain for finding the events, initial stages you can pick events randomly also. But as you progress order it well in the order in which it had happened during the day.
One most important care you have to take while doing this exercise is never follow the events, when you try to recollect the event your might get dragged to different directions, that should not happen. Tell all your thoughts to come later and finish this job first. Everything said here might looks simple but believe me the effect of this exercise is excellent. Once you do it for 21 days, you will be able to increase your memory and retention power by 25% to 200% depending on the kind of effort you put. If you can make it as a practice for the rest of your life, your efficiency will be improved many fold. So help yourself by spending 15-20 minutes a day.
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Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Innovative Leaders are Great mentors
There’s no better method for a person to learn and perfect a craft than by having a mentor guide them along the way. The increased worldwide interest and growth in project management has sparked an unprecedented need for mentors in the field. And many companies and organizations, as well as PMI chapters, are stepping in to help fill that need. But the demand for capable and willing mentors appears to outstrip the supply. I’d like to encourage you to consider adding mentoring to your toolbox of skills. You’ll find great benefits in taking on the role. Here are some of the most noteworthy: A good mentor can promote collective innovation, to help organizations to perform better.
Discover the rewards of helping others. There’s no greater satisfaction than giving to others in a way that helps them help themselves—and then, in turn, help others.
Pick up new skills. I may have learned more from teaching others than I have from doing things myself. When you handle tasks yourself, there’s only so much knowledge you can gain from the limited environments within which you work. But when you’re teaching others, many more challenges can emerge. Figuring out how to deal with those issues can help mentors sharpen and fine tune their own skills. New lessons learned or adopted by mentoring others some time leads to innovation. This type of collective innovation is a surprise output of good mentoring by Great leaders.
Make new friends and colleagues. One of the perks of mentoring is that you can often develop closer business relationships and meet people with whom you otherwise would not have had contact.
Improve your stock value. The respect people have for you will likely increase, as will your overall worth to the organization, company or community.
Contribute to the state of the art. The more you immerse yourself in the project management craft, the more you’ll experience opportunities to develop new tools, methodologies and thought leadership that can lead to the advancement of the field. You may find yourself not only assisting individuals, but helping full communities and industries. Are there downsides to being a mentor? Yes, but not too many, and they’re not as significant as the benefits. Here are two worthy of mention:
Mentoring can demand a lot of your time. You may find yourself wanting to give more of yourself than you have time for, especially because mentoring is likely only a small portion of your job.
It can be hard to say “no.” When you see great potential in people, you may wish that you could work with all of them.
A Working Relationship
There are many ways that a mentor can work with mentees. It can be as informal as being on “standby” should counseling be requested. Or, it can be as structured as working with the mentee to create a mentoring plan that outlines the goals, milestones and specific events to be undertaken. Depending on what skills mentees need you to teach them, you may want to attend some of their meetings and meet some of the people they frequently work with.I often perform what I call “shadowing.” I spend a full day with the mentee and attend all of his or her meetings. Then, we retire to his or her office to discuss the events of the day. I note all the good things the person said and did, but also offer suggestions for improvement where applicable. If there’s time throughout the day to reflect on events immediately after they occur, do so, but the person may be too busy. As a mentor, I have encountered two unexpected surprises. The first was related to the type of project management skills being requested. I expected most of the calls and contact time with mentees would be about the technical skills of planning and tracking projects, applying earned value techniques, and so on. What I discovered was that most of my time—at least 80 percent—was spent talking about leadership, people skills and relationships. Now, I devote about 95 percent of my mentoring time to those topics. The second surprise I encountered: When mentees contact me with a problem, I often ask them what they think they should do. More than 80 percent of the time, they come up with the appropriate response on their own. The greatest value I often bring to the mentor mentee relationship is validation that the mentee is headed down the right path. In other words, we often know what the appropriate action is in a certain situation, but having a trusted confidant as a check and balance or a sounding board can really boost a mentee’s confidence to move forward. Leaders always focus on innovation and collective effort of the team members. The best leaders are also teachers—and mentoring others can be a wise and rewarding investment. Now, go make a difference
Discover the rewards of helping others. There’s no greater satisfaction than giving to others in a way that helps them help themselves—and then, in turn, help others.
Pick up new skills. I may have learned more from teaching others than I have from doing things myself. When you handle tasks yourself, there’s only so much knowledge you can gain from the limited environments within which you work. But when you’re teaching others, many more challenges can emerge. Figuring out how to deal with those issues can help mentors sharpen and fine tune their own skills. New lessons learned or adopted by mentoring others some time leads to innovation. This type of collective innovation is a surprise output of good mentoring by Great leaders.
Make new friends and colleagues. One of the perks of mentoring is that you can often develop closer business relationships and meet people with whom you otherwise would not have had contact.
Improve your stock value. The respect people have for you will likely increase, as will your overall worth to the organization, company or community.
Contribute to the state of the art. The more you immerse yourself in the project management craft, the more you’ll experience opportunities to develop new tools, methodologies and thought leadership that can lead to the advancement of the field. You may find yourself not only assisting individuals, but helping full communities and industries. Are there downsides to being a mentor? Yes, but not too many, and they’re not as significant as the benefits. Here are two worthy of mention:
Mentoring can demand a lot of your time. You may find yourself wanting to give more of yourself than you have time for, especially because mentoring is likely only a small portion of your job.
It can be hard to say “no.” When you see great potential in people, you may wish that you could work with all of them.
A Working Relationship
There are many ways that a mentor can work with mentees. It can be as informal as being on “standby” should counseling be requested. Or, it can be as structured as working with the mentee to create a mentoring plan that outlines the goals, milestones and specific events to be undertaken. Depending on what skills mentees need you to teach them, you may want to attend some of their meetings and meet some of the people they frequently work with.I often perform what I call “shadowing.” I spend a full day with the mentee and attend all of his or her meetings. Then, we retire to his or her office to discuss the events of the day. I note all the good things the person said and did, but also offer suggestions for improvement where applicable. If there’s time throughout the day to reflect on events immediately after they occur, do so, but the person may be too busy. As a mentor, I have encountered two unexpected surprises. The first was related to the type of project management skills being requested. I expected most of the calls and contact time with mentees would be about the technical skills of planning and tracking projects, applying earned value techniques, and so on. What I discovered was that most of my time—at least 80 percent—was spent talking about leadership, people skills and relationships. Now, I devote about 95 percent of my mentoring time to those topics. The second surprise I encountered: When mentees contact me with a problem, I often ask them what they think they should do. More than 80 percent of the time, they come up with the appropriate response on their own. The greatest value I often bring to the mentor mentee relationship is validation that the mentee is headed down the right path. In other words, we often know what the appropriate action is in a certain situation, but having a trusted confidant as a check and balance or a sounding board can really boost a mentee’s confidence to move forward. Leaders always focus on innovation and collective effort of the team members. The best leaders are also teachers—and mentoring others can be a wise and rewarding investment. Now, go make a difference
Friday, August 1, 2008
Lateral thinking a way towards Collective Innovation
Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician and a writer. Lateral thinking is a deviation from vertical thinking; it is a way of innovative thinking. In lateral thinking, thinking pattern is not predictable, as in the case of vertical thinking. But at times the result of lateral thinking turns out to be an innovation.
There are numerous tools or methods that can bring about lateral thinking.
Random entry: Choose an object at random, or a noun from a dictionary, and associate that with the area you are thinking about.
Example: The world today is facing energy crisis, most of the developing countries have acute electricity shortage. Currently we depend on hydro electric projects, thermal projects, nuclear projects, wind projects etc for generating electricity. We never thought or explored some mechanism for generating electricity by human beings. Yes a bicycle like device with dynamo attached can be used to generate electricity in small quantity, but in a regular manner.
Provocation: Declare the usual perception out of bounds, or provide some provocative alternative to the usual situation under consideration. Prefix the provocation with the term 'Po" to signal that the provocation is not a valid idea put up for judgment but a stimulus for new perception.
Example: The usual way of software development start with requirement gathering, preparation of documents, sign off of documents etc. But this approach often land into failures, especially when the client is not aware of pros and cons of computerization. Few circumstances are even worse as the client may be good in business knowledge but can’t express it properly to software designers and leads to a project failure. Let us take a different approach here, to start with make an overall quick study and come up with a proto type with basic functionalities. Make user work on prototype and improve proto type with new requirements. This approach may help to reduce time and rework involved in the project development.
Challenge: Simply challenge the way things have always been done or seen, or the way they are. This is done not to show there is anything wrong with the existing situation but simply to direct your perceptions to exploring outside the current area. This approach some time leads to evolution of wonderful innovations that can give the vital competitive edge to business organizations.
Example: Military service around the world follows a uniform specific to their countries norms and a strict reporting time and a set of routine jobs. There is nothing wrong in doing that but we can think of a scenario where in military people are given with a set of tasks rather than orders and let them finish it at their own convenience.
Mostly people depend upon lateral thinking when they want to think out of the box. Thus always collective innovations will be possible when there is lateral thinking from all or a session of people in a group.
Lateral thinking Managers to Promote Collective Innovation among team members
Conventional approach to the problem solving was based on taking requirements from clients, design the requirement and develop the solution in a given technology. Solution then tested and implemented. This is a vertical approach to the problem solving, here it’s a routine job, and no innovation only technical expertise of the developer is involved.
Today’s managers think differently, they ask their work force to look for a different approach. Developers get an opportunity to think aggressively and come out with some solution, that solves the current issue and add some other value to the system and to the customer. This kind of collective innovation helps to improve the goodwill of the company and there by succeed in the competition.
An example for lateral thinking that lead to value addition to the organization
There are many organizations functioning in technology front, real estate, tourism, transportation and many governmental organizations, all with huge human resource and most of the people with full or part time access to computers. These organizations will have a well maintained intranet and some may have access to internet as well.
Employees of such establishments may be coming from different parts of the world and may not be familiar with people, culture etc. Most of the time employees find it very difficult to find out good hotels, cinema halls, place for worship, places of tourism interest, contacts of local people who can repair two wheeler, car or may be a small work like changing water tap etc.
This is where we can add value to the organization by providing an intranet portal, which can list each of this information, separately. For this purpose a database of all these people and institutions maintained with clear map and detailed information. So this innovation will become a big help for the employees. But there are more advantages like organization can charge these people to publish their details in the site, as this will become a good advertisement for them, they will be always happy to pay. This way a collective innovation can lead to a great help to the employees and a way to generate revenue as well.
There are numerous tools or methods that can bring about lateral thinking.
Random entry: Choose an object at random, or a noun from a dictionary, and associate that with the area you are thinking about.
Example: The world today is facing energy crisis, most of the developing countries have acute electricity shortage. Currently we depend on hydro electric projects, thermal projects, nuclear projects, wind projects etc for generating electricity. We never thought or explored some mechanism for generating electricity by human beings. Yes a bicycle like device with dynamo attached can be used to generate electricity in small quantity, but in a regular manner.
Provocation: Declare the usual perception out of bounds, or provide some provocative alternative to the usual situation under consideration. Prefix the provocation with the term 'Po" to signal that the provocation is not a valid idea put up for judgment but a stimulus for new perception.
Example: The usual way of software development start with requirement gathering, preparation of documents, sign off of documents etc. But this approach often land into failures, especially when the client is not aware of pros and cons of computerization. Few circumstances are even worse as the client may be good in business knowledge but can’t express it properly to software designers and leads to a project failure. Let us take a different approach here, to start with make an overall quick study and come up with a proto type with basic functionalities. Make user work on prototype and improve proto type with new requirements. This approach may help to reduce time and rework involved in the project development.
Challenge: Simply challenge the way things have always been done or seen, or the way they are. This is done not to show there is anything wrong with the existing situation but simply to direct your perceptions to exploring outside the current area. This approach some time leads to evolution of wonderful innovations that can give the vital competitive edge to business organizations.
Example: Military service around the world follows a uniform specific to their countries norms and a strict reporting time and a set of routine jobs. There is nothing wrong in doing that but we can think of a scenario where in military people are given with a set of tasks rather than orders and let them finish it at their own convenience.
Mostly people depend upon lateral thinking when they want to think out of the box. Thus always collective innovations will be possible when there is lateral thinking from all or a session of people in a group.
Lateral thinking Managers to Promote Collective Innovation among team members
Conventional approach to the problem solving was based on taking requirements from clients, design the requirement and develop the solution in a given technology. Solution then tested and implemented. This is a vertical approach to the problem solving, here it’s a routine job, and no innovation only technical expertise of the developer is involved.
Today’s managers think differently, they ask their work force to look for a different approach. Developers get an opportunity to think aggressively and come out with some solution, that solves the current issue and add some other value to the system and to the customer. This kind of collective innovation helps to improve the goodwill of the company and there by succeed in the competition.
An example for lateral thinking that lead to value addition to the organization
There are many organizations functioning in technology front, real estate, tourism, transportation and many governmental organizations, all with huge human resource and most of the people with full or part time access to computers. These organizations will have a well maintained intranet and some may have access to internet as well.
Employees of such establishments may be coming from different parts of the world and may not be familiar with people, culture etc. Most of the time employees find it very difficult to find out good hotels, cinema halls, place for worship, places of tourism interest, contacts of local people who can repair two wheeler, car or may be a small work like changing water tap etc.
This is where we can add value to the organization by providing an intranet portal, which can list each of this information, separately. For this purpose a database of all these people and institutions maintained with clear map and detailed information. So this innovation will become a big help for the employees. But there are more advantages like organization can charge these people to publish their details in the site, as this will become a good advertisement for them, they will be always happy to pay. This way a collective innovation can lead to a great help to the employees and a way to generate revenue as well.
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