Feb 20

There is no such thing as a mundane task, only a mundane mindset.

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Feb 14

Results Vs Process Driven.

The title of this topic might be a tad bit misleading so straight away let me clarify what I mean by results Vs proccess driven. When I refer to results I’m referring to people who do focus on the end result only and their mind stays focussed on solely that throughout the entire task. The one who is process driven is focussed solely on exactly that, the proccess, which ultimately meanders away from the result and it is they who end up being the ones who experience lethargy and entropy. It’s not always the case but from what I understand of the way the mind works more often than not it is.

When you focus on the result or outcome, your vision and purpose remain clear. You keep, in the forefront of your mind, the reason why you undertook the task at hand. When you remember the purpose or the “why” and you remain focussed on that, you eliminate any trace of burden, of worrying about the specific tasks that you need to do to attain the result you desire. You’re fully aware and still get on with them, but you no longer get caught up in, shall we say, the menial stuff.

When you focus on the process, more often than not, you lose your drive because you can often forget why you’re doing the task your doing and thats when you start to feel the resistance and the drag co-efficient of your lack of purpose. It’s happened to me and I’ve seen it happen to many people. We create a grand idea, dream or vision and then during the process the dream is forgotten about and then suddenly, unconsciously it’s all become about the process and you’ve forgotten the the very thing that was driving you in the first place.

Get back to the result. Make it grand and lucid. Write it out in big bold letters on a huge sheet of A3 and put it somewhere you see it every single day! Remind yourself of it every single day! Keep a small notepad with you wherever you go and regularly write down and remind yourself of the vision and the purpose that initially got you jump started and into gear.

Ready? Tomorrow I’ll talk about how to enjoy the process! ;-)

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Feb 13

Here’s a small idea for you especially if this is something that you have never done before.

Find a young person and offer to take them under your wing. Offer to become a mentor to them. There are plenty of organisations out there that run such schemes. All you have to do is step forward and offer your time.

It easy to put yourself forward and it only takes a hour or two of your time every week. I’ve seen first hand and been someone who’s made a difference, in a young persons life, just by taking an interest and offering them not only the time, but also just being someone that listens to them. You don’t have to offer experience, advice or guidance. Just being there is enough and if you feel confident enough, then you can offer more in the ways of wisdom and leadership.

I’ve always said and I continue to maintain that this world would be an extremely different and a much better place if we just offered our time to the younger generation. You may think that they’re not ready to listen but you’ll be surprised by how much you can enhance the quality of a teenagers life by working with them on a one to one basis.

I’ve also always said that every single child on this planet is my child and I have a responsibility to them. I can’t necessarily reach all of them but even if I reach a few, a handfull, it will make all the difference to them in the world and to the world.

Mentoring is a gift. It gives the person you’re mentoring a sense of belonging, of being respected and acknowledged. They want to be listened to and they appreciate the time that is given to them. Not only does it give them something but the amount you get back is immeasurable. You’ll also feel a deep sense of personal empowerment which you will then be able to carry to over to other areas of your life. You’ll need to make a plan though. When you meet your mentee for the first couple of times find out where is it exactly that they need personal expansion. Use lots of open questions that being with: How, what, who, where or when to get them to talk and fully express themselves.

I was recently interviewing a young girl, she was only 15 and I was doing a mock interview with her as she was getting ready to go off and search for work experience. I didn’t know this beforehand but apparently this young lady had a phobia of school and yet she managed to draw the power from somewhere to turn up for that particular day. I interviewed her as if I was interviewing her for a real job. She did extremely well and at the end I gave her lots of encouragement but balanced with some useful constructive feedback. I only found out afterwards but apparently what I said to her really made an impact and she left the room beaming and went to her teachers elated as she felt like she’d done so well! All I did was spend five minutes at the end offering encouragment and advice and who knows how much of a difference those few short moments have made in that young girls life.

So what are you waiting for? Go now and find out if your local council runs an EBP (Education Business Partnership) or some other kind of mentoring scheme where you can give something back to others.

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Feb 11

Time for yourself?

In this day and age we all become innundated with task lists; things to do; people to see; places to go; goals to achieve; deadlines to meet; people to please; etc etc! The list just goes on and on! Then people get to a point where they’re so overwhelmed that they feel like they need some time for themselves.

Time for yourself is great, but what do you do with that time for yourself? What’s your objective of getting time for yourself? What do hope time for yourself will achieve and how do you intend to get to that point?

Personally, I hear people say that they need time for themselves for all sorts of reasons e.g: to recover; to re-energise; to get away from it all; to have “me time; time for reflection; time for planning; time alone; time to re-evaluate life and a whole host of other reasons too.

So what do these people do with the time alone? Well most of them end up watching T.V. and at the end of their marathon T.V. session they feel worse off then when they began because they realise they have yet to do anything that they wanted to do, or think about, with that time alone.

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of T.V. on occasion. I like watching my favorite shows from time to time or catching my fav flicks on the tube, but as a rule of thumb, if it’s time alone to recover, re-energise, or any of the other reasons I mentioned above, T.V. is the least constructive way to make use of that time.

Firstly ask yourself: How am I feeling now and how would I like to be feeling after this time alone? What is it that you want to get from spending time alone? What was it that caused you to feel like you needed time alone? Was it because you felt like you were giving to much to others and not yourself?

There could be a whole host of reasons and whatever the reason behind your feeling a need to be or have time alone there is simple suggestion you can do to enhance the results of what you get from that time alone.

However you choose to spend that time alone what you must firstly do is consciously acknowledge that this time is for you. Bring it to the forefront of you mind and set a clear intention or choice about what you would like get from this time alone. For many people the time alone passes and by the time they realised that they’ve had some time alone it has already passed and they have to get back to whatever it was they were doing before. It’s essential to get this vividly emphasise this to yourself and know the purpose of this important time for you.

When you’ve got it clear in your own mind what the purpose is you can then decide what it is you want to do with this time alone. You could do any of the following starting with the least productive all the way to the most essential for your well-being:

1) Watch T.V.
2) Listen to Music
3) Go to the gym
4) Go running
5) Read
6) Write
7) Visualise
8) Meditate

Those are but a few suggestions but the biggest key here is to consciously acknowledge what the purpose of that time is. When you do that, it will make a huge difference and the time you have alone will then begin to shift the way you feel and you’ll start to actually feel like you’ve had some time alone and that you do feel more energised and more prepared to tackle the things that you need to do.

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Feb 5

I would just like to wish SilverButterfly truly magnificent 30th birthday! For those of you who’ve been regular readers of my blog, you’ll know that on occasion SilverButterfly has posted articles while he was travelling around India. No one I know, quite has the adventurous, fearless spirit that he does. He once told me about a trek he took through a jungle in India, only to return safely and find out that, that jungle in particular, was infamous for Bear and wild cat attacks!

Mowgli…eat your heart out! ;-)

Happy birthday!

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Feb 1

It’s been over a year since I gave away my first business idea and I thought it about time to give away another one. This idea only occured to me recently after trying to pass my CCNA. I personally find, that reading material, that I don’t necessarily enjoy, truly painful to say the least and the CCNA was no exception! I found it rather agonising reading through the books and manuals and found it to be a poor use of time and highly frustrating! :oops:

Even though I created mind maps and I covered a lot of ground I think where I failed was lack of understanding with regards to the application of certain priciples of networking. I find that certain topics within the I.T. world, for example: subnetting, tend to have extremely long winded explanations where it truly isn’t necessary can could be explained with very simple analogies or illustrations.

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So this is my idea:

As far as I can see, there are very few, if any at all, I.T. audio books that can be used as study aids when people study for exams such as the CCNA. I.T. text books generally are about 400 - 700 pages long and as I mentioned previously, are dominated by truly long winded explanations and technical jargon, that can be replaced with very simple analogies and illustrations. So why not create simple MP3 I.T. audio book summaries or revision notes that people can listen to while also doing other activities e.g. running.

When creating the audio books, they don’t necessarily have to be the entirity of a text book from start to finish. They could easily be revision notes that people can listen to while they’re at work or as they’re going to sleep!

This whole area has yet to be tapped and would need thorough exploration and experimentation but I definitely feel that this has the potential to be a lucrative idea! In many ways it’s a paradox that the I.T. world, the industry at the leading edge of technology, has yet to catch up with the rest of the world with very a simple application of technology that already exists. It could even be used in conjunction with lab software that you might purchase

So there we have it! A very simple idea with limitless potential. I would love to be able to explore this idea further but it simply isn’t a passion of mine. But who knows, maybe this is something that you might love to do and try out? ;-)

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I.T. geeks are people too you know! :lol:

Related article: First give away business idea…

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