Personal Development Blog

Goal Setting

Do Your Own Talent Management

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If you have ever been employed by a large corporation, you’re probably familiar with the concept of talent management already: it’s a documented and closely followed process of attracting, integrating, developing and retaining highly skilled workers.

One of the main ideas behind talent management is that we all have talents. By definition, being part of a talent management process makes you a talented person. You may need help and time to identify and perfect your talent, but that’s exactly why your company has a talent management process.

If you’re new to this topic, I think you will really like the Wikipedia article on Talent Management” – it provides a great introduction to the many processes involved, and gives you a few really good pointers. If you’re looking for software, there are many vendors providing solutions to address every imaginable aspect of managing talent with your company.

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Productivity

5 Ways to Stay Organized with Dropbox

Don’t know about you, but for me Dropbox has become one of the irreplaceable tools in the last few months.

Dropbox may be a bit pricey for syncing large amounts of data, but for most things the free 2 GB account is more than adequate (click here to get your account setup).

Here are just a few things I’m using Dropbox for:

• Research notes for blog projects – there aren’t that many files that one would usually need for preparing the next blog post or a summary page. Dropbox helps a lot cause I can store all the photos/images/PDF docs/doc files in folders named after projects.
• eBooks on the go – GoodReader app for my iPad supports many cloud storage solutions, Dropbox is one of them. This means reading any book on iPad is always just a few clicks away. Just drag-and-drop the file into the Dropbox folder and it will appear on iPad upon next sync
• Passwords and secure notes – I’ve been a happy user of the 1Password tool which I highly recommend for storing passwords if universal access matters – 1Password has clients for iPhone/iPad and also desktop clients for both Windows and Mac. Since adding Dropbox support the password sync became even easier.
• Study notes and assignments – because I never know where I might find next half an hour to spend on one of the assignments for my college, I use Dropbox to store all the current study notes and active assignments – this way I can review or update documents during my lunch break at work or from any of my home computers.
• MyLifeOrganized synchronization – although I’m not using Dropbox for MLO sync anymore (I’ve been using MLO Cloud sync feature for quite some time now) – it’s been a valid option to sync MLO files for the last few years and I’ve never had any issues (and if I did there’s always way to roll changes back).

Are you using Dropbox yet? If not, you should really consider! If you decide to sign up, please use this Dropbox affiliate link so that I get some free space as your referer. If you ever need help with Dropbox on Windows or Mac I’ll be happy to help – just leave a comment or drop me an email using the contact form.

Motivation

Staying Positive When Going through an Illness

In the absence of time to write my own posts, here’s another post written by someone else…  Stay positive!

Being sick, no matter the illness, is never fun. Instead it’s scary, or worrisome, or annoying, or painful. You likely also feel out of control, both of your body and over the Medical Billing that may be yet to come. Unfortunately, there’s no way to eliminate all those negative feelings, besides getting healthy. But this doesn’t mean you can’t be positive – or at least as positive as possible – as your illness runs its course. Not only can doing so make you feel better about yourself, but it can also help you get better in the first place. Here are a few approaches I’ve taken in the past when dealing with an illness:

Appreciate Those Who Care for You

Whether it’s a friend, a spouse, a family member, or a nurse, the person helping you through your illness cares about you, is there for you, and wants you to get well. For this, that person should be appreciated. You can also take it a step further, and consider all those people who care about you all the time, even when you’re healthy. While your illness may bring out their support and concern, it’s always there under the surface. Use your illness as a way to stop taking that for granted.

Contextualize Your Situation

No matter your illness, there’s a good chance it could be worse. There is someone out there in worse pain than you, with a worse prognosis than you, and receiving care that is inferior to yours. While this may seem like a morose way of staying positive, the ultimate aim is to focus on yourself. Think about what your body is doing right, how hard it’s working to fight the illness, and the ways in which things could be worse. If we don’t value our bodies enough when we’re healthy, we can still appreciate how they fight for us when we’re sick.

Try to Relax

When you’re sick, there’s a lot that is outside of your control. You can’t develop a new medication or go inside your body and battle an infection, and it’s easy to get regularly caught up in these uncontrollables. The best approach, for both your mind and your body, is to try to relax. Get rest, read a book, and don’t attempt to stress yourself back into good health. Trust your body and the medication to do its job, and work to tune out your mind as much as possible. It’s not always an easy task, but I’ve found that it’s worth it.

Whatever your approach, it’s important to stay as positive as possible when battling an illness. Being sick is difficult, but all of us are better off with some sanity and peace of mind. To those of you out there suffering from an illness: stay positive. And get better soon.

 

Happiness

Simple Steps to a Better Life

This is a guest article by Willie Horton, www.Gurdy.net

Websites like Gleb’s are a superb resource for anyone who has decided to embark on life’s most exciting adventure – the journey of personal development and self-discovery.  Why?  Because personal development is a lifetime’s work, it’s an ongoing journey that will take you to places that the normal mind cannot imagine.  Too often, people are under the false impression that, once they embark on this journey, their lives will be changed immediately and irrevocably – as if struck by lightning.   Unfortunately, even if you are struck by lightning, its effects will eventually wear off.

On the other hand, I have seen people “struck by lightning” where, having decided that they wanted to change their lives, their lives changed for them very quickly – they immediately saw real and concrete benefits from being more focused, more mindful, more tuned in to the opportunities that life is offering you and me today – if only we had eyes to see.   But, even for these people, the effects wore off and they found themselves gradually return to “normality”.  And normality is a dangerous thing because decades of psychological research prove that to be normal is to be mad.

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