6 Tips to Motivate Yourself

I am such a sucker for questions. So how could I resist when Mahindra Experience (@MahindraExp) tweeted to my handle, “@manishmoCan you share some tips that will motivate one to work harder and help them reach their goals?”Here are 6 tips to motivate yourself to work towards your goals:Write your goals and make them visible to you all the time (e.g. pin them on your soft board).Break down your goals into smaller goals with timelines.Celebrate small successes in your journey to reach your goals.Share your goals with someone you trust.…

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Are You Having Fun?

The eight irresistible principles of fun from Box of Crayons, “an irresistibly funky animated movie designed to help you create more fun in your life” Stop hiding who you really are. Take the time to figure out what makes up your DNA.Start being intensely selfish. Get hungry for things that are truly important to you.Stop following rules. It’s no longer about what you can’t do, it is about what you can do.Start scaring yourself. Explore the edges; dip your toe in the outrageous.Stop taking it all so damn seriously. Lighten…

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Convergence on Social Media – When Not to Use

So LinkedIn now allows you to update your status with your Twitter updates. There are already applications that help you post your Twitter updates to Facebook. And then there’s FriendFeed that allows you to consolidate all your social activity and push that on Facebook and other social media sites. Not to mention other aggregation services, RSS feeds, email alerts, etc. etc.Seems like a cool thing, surely. Well almost. If your social network across different social media services looks like below, then posting the same update on different services makes sense.…

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First 5 Steps to Get Started with Corporate Micro-blogging

“Okay, I am on Yammer. What next?” That’s the question most new users to corporate micro-blogging ask. As I wrote earlier about my experiments with micro-blogging in corporate environment, one of the challenges in micro-learning adoption is training. A lot of your colleagues may have joined your corporate micro-blogging network but that’s no guarantee of participation. This may have to do with folks not really knowing what to do next after signing up for the service. Here’s what I suggest you do after signing up for your micro-blogging service: Set…

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5 Reasons Why You are Not Being Promoted

I came across Dan McCarthy’s blog recently. Dan is a practitioner in the field of leadership development for over 20 years and is currently the Manager of Leadership and Management Development at a Fortune "Great Place to Work", "Training Top 125", and "High Impact Learning" (HILO 80) company. He has a great blog on leadership that I would encourage you to subscribe to. Dan wrote a great post Head’s Up – You are About to be Promoted or Fired where he shares why you might get promoted or fired. I…

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10 Tips for Better Meetings

A question was asked on Twitter for some tips on running better meetings. I sent out a series of tweets and then added a few more to make this blog post.Here are my tips for better meetings: Question the need: Ask yourself, do you even need the meeting? Do what you can over email to avoid meetings.Have an agenda: Not points to discuss but decisions to be made. If the meeting is to review progress, make sure you have status against goals.Keep'em short: Schedule shorter meetings. Force participants to take…

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How to be a Successful Technical Writer

Swaminathan Moothy of Society for Technical Communication (STC) invited me to speak at their regional conference in Chennai. I shared what I think is needed to be a successful writer. I spoke about skills companies are looking for in a technical writer, tips on how to manage technical writing projects, and career options for a technical writer. It was quite a learning experience. The audience was a group of technical writers with varied experience and I got to learn new things. Here’s my presentation on being a successful technical writer.How…

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Why an Updated LinkedIn Profile is Important

I recently discovered how I can effectively use LinkedIn to find potential candidates for recruitment. I simply update my status message with what I am looking for and get responses from interested candidates. Okay, I know this isn’t really new but hey, it’s new for me. Anyway this post isn’t about this discovery of mine. I received a few responses to my status updates. These were from people I know and have worked with in the past. Unfortunately, a few of the people who responded did not have an updated…

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Solve a Business Problem or Create a WBT?

I had an interesting chat conversation over the weekend with a budding instructional designer.ID: I wanted to discuss about Instructional approaches ID: Suppose there's a client who says " they have been using ILT that has not been successful, their mentors are not motivating enough& nw wants to change it to a WBT.......and target audience are senior &middle level managers well versed with sales, dealing with retailers etc..... And I've to give them 2 approaches.....do u hv any ideas? Me: why is their ILT not successful? ID: their mentors are…

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Rules for Kids and Teenagers for Facebook Usage

So I succumbed to pressure and signed up my daughter on Facebook. Most of her friends are already on Facebook. In just a few hours, she has 7 friends and 3 more pending requests. Her FB wall is now active and flowing. I browsed her wall updates and some of her friends’ profiles and I am… PETRIFIED, and that’s an understatement. So I plan to give her a printout of the following rules for Facebook.   Don't talk to strangers. Just as we tell you not to talk to strangers…

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