Vision and dreams are the blueprints of soul and achievements.
-Mohammed Ahmed F

The change of your life starts tonight

After work, is what determines your future! Spend one hour per day doing these 5 things and your life will change forever!


You finish work at 6 pm, go to bed at 12 midnight.

Within these six hours, how do you spend them?

Watching TV?

In fact, the activities you do between 6 am and 12 midnight, the importance of it is beyond your imagination.

Too many people believe that, your career is determined by the 8 hours of hard work and effort you put at work, and your future and career progression depend on the boss and the company.

But the reality is that for most people, this thing, you are on your own…..

Read on…

“Cultivation”, it’s forever dependent by yourself.

If you found yourself not progressing in life, you cannot blame and put the responsibility on your company for not grooming you. 

1. What you do every night is important

My major in college was marketing, but I expect to become a designer.

So I practiced day and night,

picking up some freelance work to improve my design skills.

It took me a long time.

When I became a boss, I no longer need to involve myself in design work,

So I went back to the Marketing field.

Every day, when my children are sleeping,

I began learning to gain more knowledge, this again took me a long time,

But I begin to realise my returns. 

If I rely on my working hours to gain skills, then I will never have become a creative director and a product manager, or like today, teaching MBA students on Marketing.

What I rely on, is myself giving myself “lessons”.

And the most successful people I knew, walked the same path as I am.

I have a friend who is a History graduate, but he is interested in technical sales,

In the day, he does telemarketing, at night he learns how to code,

Finally, he became the vice president of sales in a startup company.

Now, he’s a CTO.

I have another friend, he received a degree in political science.

But he’s very interested in entrepreneurship. He learnt a lot of knowledge on how to start up a company, eventually, he founded a company and sold it,

Now he has reaped the rewards.

For them, what they do between 6 pm till 12 midnight, is what determined their future.

Clearly, we need to balance life and work.

If you have a wife and children, every night, you have to stay with them.

Even if you are single, you also need a reasonable allocation of time to go to the gym, to meet with friends, or be alone to meditate and so on.

Of course, watching movies, playing games is good.

But there are things you do not need to do.

For example, watching the new season of a Netflix drama, 14 hours per week watching television (This is the average amount of time watching television).

The time spent playing the game Candy Crush.

Or spending time stalking your high school alumni on Facebook, it does not seem to be good.

So what should you do?

2. Read more, anything will do!

My college mentor was born in Alabama,

A poor African family.

He was admitted to West Point Military Academy, and he became the first person in the family to go college.

Before going to Havard for his MBA, he’s a trained officer.

When I met him, he has already developed his career in the city of Colorado Springs.

I asked him, what’s his biggest success?

He replied, because he kept the habit of reading, and he never stopped.

He believed that if you want to get what you want in life, knowledge is the key.

He often asked his interviewees what book are they reading now, the excellent ones can give an answer immediately.

Reading can give you a good headstart, this is often what your peers cannot obtain. Compared to others, you are more likely to know other industries strategies and tactics,

and that may be helpful to your company.
You can transfer your knowledge within the organization, create new possibilities for your company. Moreover, your conversation topics will become more interesting.

Anthony Robbins said:

“If you spend one hour a day to learn about a topic, a year later, in this regard, the knowledge you gain will be more than 99.999% of the world’s people.”

Even if you have 30 minutes every night, each week you can easily read a book. You may not be an expert, but I promise, you’ll know more than what your peers know.

3. Do some projects

You can apply the knowledge learnt to real work scenario, this is only an ideal state.

If your company did not give you this opportunity, create opportunities for yourself.

You can do some volunteer projects. They can bring you fame. Working with a team, you’ll understand how things work.

In the practical application of the industry, and how it ultimately affect actual customers. You’ll learn how to perform the task and meet deadlines, and get feedbacks on what you are doing, and benefit from it.

When you are not strong enough, these experience may not have any value to you.

But you are still a novice. These experiences are far more valuable than the miserable pay you are getting. If you can really convince others of your pockets of fruits of labour, Then go try it. But do not let these private jobs affect your work.

4. Actively build your connections

In your career path, a strong network of connections will make everything accelerate.

If you have not set up your own personal connections, you’ll need to divide a portion of your time to do this.

A strong network of relationships, can enable you:

contact smart friends, and learn their opinions get information and knowledge that are difficult to obtain help the company look for more potential partners or income generating opportunities
Go get to know your work colleague or boss. 

If you are an entrepreneur, your network connections will be your early customers, your staffs are a source of capital rather than go home, or going to a bar, you should find some inner circles.

There are many small groups which are highly relevant to your career.

You should try to integrate into these circles.

Every week, you can drink coffee together with new friends, go drinking or have breakfast.

You can also look into everyone’s career developments on LinkedIn.

And establish a network with mentors in those professional industries.

They may be your next job employer, who knows?

Your connections will be your most powerful asset in the workplace.

Since you have time to watch “The Voice of China”, you have time to build a social network.


5. The CHANGE of your LIFE starts TONIGHT

6 pm to 12 am, you go home, though physically and mentally tired, you are free to do anything and do not have to take orders from others.

During this time, you can switch off like switching off your computer at your workplace, switch off your brain.

But you can also do something, make you smarter, stronger, have a wider network of people.

From the start tonight, take an hour a day to do these things,

I guarantee that after a year, your career, and life will change.

6 mistakes freelancers need to avoid

Freelancing gives you freedom – freedom to work, freedom to make decisions, freedom to choose. But this freedom can be expensive if you don’t avoid the inevitable mistakes. Some mistakes you learn from and some you can avoid from the beginning. If you are already committing these mistakes, it’s time to correct them. Here are the six most common mistake freelancers must avoid:


1. Undervaluing Yourself

Do you feel that charging low for your work will attract more clients? It isn’t entirely true. Good clients look for good quality.   They seek value for their money. If you can provide good quality work to your clients, do not charge less. You could charge based on your education, skills and experience. Also, consider the costs you incur towards completing the task. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced freelancer, know your worth.

2. Ineffective Client Handling

The first impression is the last impression. But you must also strive to maintain that impression to get continuous work. Your focus should not be on just delivering quality work. Client servicing and meeting deadlines are equally important. Live by the rule – under promise and over deliver. A delighted client always comes back with more work and recommendations.

3. Improper Time Management

As a freelancer, you have the opportunity to work at your comfort. But your work will be affected if you neglect time. It is easy to push your task for later. On the flip side, it is not wise to work continuously. So, it is better to fix work timings for personal discipline.

4. Taking Extra Work

Unlike a salaried job, your freelancing income is variable. Extra work means more income. But overloading yourself is not a good idea. It is likely to affect quality. Know the limit of assignments you can take. Do not compromise on quality. Boredom and saturation are also related to overworking all the time. 

5. Restricting Yourself

You must know your limits, but also try to exceed them. Do not restrict yourself to taking up a specific kind of work from a specific category of clients. For example, if you are a graphic designer, don’t restrict yourself to designing brochures. Consider learning video making or digital painting to enhance your skillsets. Reach out to a new set of clients. The most successful freelancers are those surrounded by a strong supportive network.

6. Falling Prey to Distractions

When there is no one to supervise you, you are distracted. While working, you may be inclined to check your Facebook feed or see if someone has texted you. Control your urge to get distracted, especially during your working hours. Make the most out of the time available. This will help you grow as a freelancer.

Post Courtesy: Yahoo!

Internship teaches you professional skills

Benjamin Franklin once said – “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn”. Internships are a great opportunity to learn application of the theory learnt in school and college. It allows you to cultivate some of the crucial skillsets of work-life no books can teach. Here are some professional skills you will develop during an internship.


Formal communication

As a student, you develop your own jargon which is carried forward to your workplace. The work environment is a formal setup. Hence, your language and grammar should be appropriate. An internship is an eye-opener before a job. It teaches you how to convey your point correctly.

Networking

During an internship, you get to know professionals in your area of interest. They could be your colleagues at the office, fellow-interns, vendors, or agencies. Your friends, relatives, and professors are a part of the network too. But the real work lessons can be learnt from a professional set-up. You learn to build long-term relationships.Your network is a valuable learning source. It is an important tool that comes handy throughout your professional life.

Work-ethics

College life makes a student complacent. To have a successful career, you need to inculcate some values like right attitude, hard work, and discipline. When you are marked late, you realize the value of punctuality. When your mentor points out the cut, copy, paste in a weekly report, you know your approach was wrong. As internships offer a glimpse of your working life, you realize the importance of these values and work-ethics.

Balancing work-life

To be truly happy and satisfied in your personal and professional life, you must learn to balance both. As you move up the career ladder and responsibilities increase, personal time becomes dearer. There is an important family function to attend at 6 pm and you have to submit aPowerPoint presentation or a report by 6.30 pm. Situations like these are common in the work place. Only when you face these situations do you learn to manage both aspects of your life.

Valuing deadlines

During college, the deadlines are either those set by the teachers or the ones you think are important. In the workplace, deadlines are set in stone. Project submission deadlines are fixed and cannot be changed. Especially, if the deadline is given by your customer or a third party. If you have delayed finishing your work, your mentor is likely to make you sit through the night to finish it. A forcefully cancelled movie or dinner is all it takes for you to value deadlines.

Problem-solving

At every stage in life, you have to find solutions. But when solving a work problem, you are required to operate with some restrictions. These limitations are company policies, beliefs, and values. They could also be client’s expectations. Internships are an insight into a world of problem-solving within boundaries.

An internship teaches business etiquettes in a real-life situation. The experience gained during an internship gives you confidence about your chosen career. You can set realistic targets based on your learning and choose to specialize further in your area of interest.

This work is produced by Simplus Information Services Pvt Ltd. Customer engagement through content.

Post Courtesy: Yahoo!

Tips on how to learn

Six etiquettes of learning:


1. Remaining quiet and listening attentively.
2. Asking questions in a good manner.
3. Understanding the concept well.
4. Memorizing.
5. Teaching.
6. Acting upon the knowledge and keeping to its limits.