Tag: working

by James Adam

Creating an office experience in a new era of working


Business

Working from home has become reality for most of us in 2020. While working from home was already on the rise, the COVID-19 crisis has pushed it to new heights. Complete organisations are now working from home and start to see the advantages. No more commuting, time with the family and increased productivity. Although there are many benefits, some of us do miss the office. We have some tips to create an office experience at home provided by nomique.com. 

How to create an office at home?

We all know that office equipment can be quite expensive. Especially when you want to have an ergonomic chair and height adjustable desks. However, with the rise of home offices, we can expect to see these prices drop. Additionally, employers are increasingly willing to sponsor employees in purchasing equipment. When looking at companies that have been used to remote working, this concept has already been existing for years. New employees get several hundreds of euros or dollars to buy a suitable desk, chair and monitor(s). 

Create your own corner

Some people have the luxury of a separate room to use as an office, but others do not. How can you still create an office experience? Research by nomique.com shows that it helps to dedicate a small area of your living room or bedroom to become an office. Purchase office furniture such as a desk, ergonomic chair and other equipment. With this new dedicated space, you create a clear demarcation between living and working. Once you are done with your work, consider to remove the desk and monitors. Hereby your mind perceives the work day as being over and you can enjoy your living room area again.

Once you have a dedicated space, consider changing it on e.g. a monthly basis. Moving it from one corner to the other helps you get energised by a new setting. This is a simply trick that almost sounds too simple, but it does work.

Shared office space

If you want to create a physical distance between the office and home, shared office spaces could be something for you. These locations offer flexible working spaces for freelances, employers and employees. You can easily take a monthly subscription and visit the offices whenever you feel like it. Hereby you can work remotely for your company and still enjoy the office feeling. These shared office spaces are well equipped with e.g. meeting chairs from nomique.com.

What determines your productivity?

Working from home did pose a lot of challenges. On the contrary, it also helped is become way more productive. nomique.com research shows that there is more time to concentrate and work in silence, allowing for increased productivity in terms of output. This, however, can only be achieved when you have the right ergonomics in place. An office chair that is ergonomically designed and keeps you in an upright position is a factor of importance. Having monitors that are on eye’s height also help you to stay alert and prevent a stiff neck. Consider these elements and stay productive in any office, including your bedroom!


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by James Adam

3 Mistakes Preventing You From Working at a Relaxed Pace


People

3 Most Common Productivity Mistakes

Information and documents keep piling up, and you don’t know where to start? Are you having trouble concentrating? Can’t get enough sleep? What you need to do is relax and learn how to prioritize tasks.

There is an old rhyme, which lets you decide on different issues with the help of daisy, which would also be very helpful for self-organization. Namely, with the “to do or not to do” question. Because, again and again, the missing decision on how we deal with all the information and tasks becomes the reason for unnecessary stress. Therefore, here is our input on the topic: How to rely not only on the daisy trick to make relaxed work possible.

In this article, we would like to focus on three common errors that prevent carefree work.

#1 “It Looks Messy But That Does Not Stop Me From Working Efficiently”

Yes, we all know that common attitude — “Genius rules chaos.” That may also be true for one or the other. However, scientific findings have found the opposite of the general public.

In fact, the Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik had 164 test subjects solve various tasks in an experiment at the University of Berlin. The participants were allowed to finish some of the tasks and prevented them from completing others. That could be writing college essay examples, reading books, and accomplishing other tasks with different aims. After the experiment, Zeigarnik checked how many tasks the participants still remembered. It turned out that unfinished tasks were 90 percent more likely to be remembered than completed ones, regardless of the age, gender, or educational level of the participants. Since then, the results have come to be known as the “Zeigarnik effect.”

That is, we are actually distracted from all the physical and virtual aspects that we have not yet decided on how to handle it.

The film industry uses the Zeigarnik effect to build up tension at the end of a specific sequence. That way, the thoughts of the viewers continue to revolve around the events until the next sequence.

From that, we can conclude that having a ‘distraction-free’ work environment isn’t a prerequisite for concentrating on your daily routine. To keep up with a mounting workload, you should be able to deal with intersecting and overlapping tasks.

#2: “I Always Have to Work Everything Out.”

No, you don’t always have to finish everything! That would be unrealistic. But an attitude should be taken over the loose threads in terms of information and requirements. The problem with a piling workload is that we have not yet decided what to do with it. We still don’t know:

  • What this information means to us
  • What goal we pursue
  • What the next step is

Of course, the same applies to emails. We often see mailboxes overfilled with incoming messages. How can we expect our brain to distinguish 53 important messages from 1,653 unimportant ones?.

One possible way of handling that problem is using color-coding. However, you stop recognizing your own color-coding in a short while, and that is another serious issue.

#3: “I Have to Do As Much As Possible.”

Creating a relaxed working environment is all about determining strategically important tasks!

Instead of focusing on minor daily assignments, you should identify activities that are really important for your business or your customers. Of course, it will always be a mixture of both. However, determining the priorities will certainly make a big difference. It is important that the decision is made in writing because written commitments are 28% more likely to get anchored in the brain.

These questions help in deciding priority levels we should assign to each task:

  • Does it benefit my client?
  • Does it benefit my business?
  • Does it benefit me?

One more question you can ask yourself is: “What is it that brings the greatest benefit to my customer/my business/me?”.

Conclusion: The Key to Relaxation is Your Willpower

The attitude towards everything that flows into you and the conscious decision on how you want to handle it is crucial for a more relaxed feeling about the large number of tasks that you face daily.

Ideally, you should take each case separately and decide immediately if any action is necessary. If so, it’s important to understand which one deserves your attention the most. The complexity of the decision can be reduced quite well at this point. Because there are only four options for the next steps:

  • Action: If it does not take more than 2 minutes, you should do it immediately. 
  • Prioritize: Determine what actually benefits you.
  • Delegate: Creativity and willpower can free up important new resources.
  • Archiving: This requires having an intuitive and uncomplicated filing system.

If you follow the above four steps, you’ll have no trouble relaxing at work and make it efficient.

by James Adam

5 Working Tricks For Writing A Statement of Purpose


Business

A statement of purpose is a very crucial document for most grad school applicant. However, not all who apply know how best to write their SOPs. The pressure when writing your SOP can be very intense if not well handled.

When writing a statement of purpose, always try to retain a sense of direction verbally. Ensure that there is a flow to your work and capture as much as you would like to in your statement.

Below are guidelines and tricks on how to complete your statement of purpose successfully.

Preliminaries to writing a statement of purpose

  1. Instructions

Always remember that whatever you are writing will be presented before a committee of academics. As such, always remember to follow the given, and these go well beyond the written rules. There are unspoken rules that you should maintain.

In sop accounting rules, for instance, you will be given the regulations specifying the due date and probably the format; however, it is an unspoken rule that whatever you include in your work be relevant to the accounting field.

The other unspoken rule is that you must show interest when writing your SOP. Your chances of getting admitted significantly reduce if they do not feel your passion and desire.

  1. Preparation before the actual writing

The quality of your SOP is directly proportional to the amount of effort you put in before your book. When writing a statement of interest internship, for instance, you need to get as much information as possible regarding the placement you seek.

As such, the first thing to do is to choose your angle of approach. The primary goal is to present your life to the admissions board in a manner they did not see before. Your perspective of strategy, if well selected, will propel you to your success.

The next thing is to develop a draft for your SOP. It will be your compass when writing. It offers an additional advantage of ensuring that you do not miss out on anything when writing your final document. It is an exemplary way of succeeding in your SOP.

Writing your sop accounting

  1. Peel back layers

The mistake that people make when writing their SOPs is writing it like an essay. A statement of purpose should be personalized to ensure that it depicts what you feel. It should not just be a shallow description.

As such, try and find the deeper meaning in everything you write as you advance in your SOP. As you out down your work on paper, you will begin to see patterns that you did not see before. Maximize on these patterns to bring out your personality.

  1. Be clear and concise

A statement of purpose, though it allows you to discuss your being, is still an academic paper. Avoid writing long unnecessary stories. Write clear and concise comments, ensuring that you put forward your information in the most direct manner.

Concise statements allow communication of your information efficiently and effectively.

Concluding your statement of interest internship

  1. Review and revision

Proofread your work and iron out all mistakes. The admission board will be more impressed if your work is spotless and without errors. If possible, give your work to another person to review it.

The final take on writing your statement of purpose

Though writing your SOP is not an easy task, the above will prove very helpful when writing your SOP. The critical thing to remember is, to succeed, you must put the effort in your work.

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by Incredible Planet Staff

4 Uncommon Practices That Benefit Your Home Business


Business

If you operate a home business, you are more than likely taking advantage of the many tax deductions available for a home office, like utility payments and depreciation on your vehicle. However, it is important to remember that taxes are not the only area you need to pay attention to when you want your company to grow. These four practices are often ignored by home business owners, yet they can be critical to your success.

Take Time for Marketing

When you operate a home-based business, you usually do not have a sign out front letting people know your business is there. Marketing is more critical for home-based businesses than it is for other companies as people won’t know you exist if you don’t tell them you do. Just like any other business, you need to create a marketing plan and update it annually. For online marketing one of the most cost effective solutions for a long term business is SEO, a practice that essentially helps land your website in front of people searching for services you can offer, instead of your competitor. There’s a lot of tricks out there, but according to Tayloright, an established company in the business, one of the most important things is for other websites to link back to yours. This means your website will show up more often than rival websites, and thus gain you more clicks and revenue down the line.

Set a goal to contact ten new clients each day, five days per week. You can do that through email, social media, fax, letter or phone calls. Send coupons, brochures, updates or thank-you notes each day. Printing and mailing five letters will cost just $2.75 while phone calls or faxes cost less than a quarter. If you do use email to reach clients, keep your message to less than 250 words and use a subject line that catches attention.

Economize Easily

Sometimes, it is not what you purchase for your business that makes a difference, but how you make those purchases. In some cases, you may be able to avoid spending cash by using barter with another company. For example, you could provide your accounting services to a web designer who agrees to setup and maintain your website.

Check to see if suppliers offer discounts for early payment. If not, pay them as late as possible without incurring a late fee to keep your money in your account as long as possible. Seek three bids on purchases, even small ones, to be sure you are getting the lowest price. Even small office purchases can lead to big expenses. Use recycled printer cartridges or print your own forms. If you need a floor mat under your desk chair, simply purchase sheet plastic from a supplier, like Plastics For Industry Pty Ltd, as this is less expensive than pre-made floor mats from an office supply store.

Manage Your Time

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they run a home business is blurring the line between work and home. Schedule set work hours whenever possible. For example, if it is easier for you to work from 10 AM to 3 PM when the children are at school, make those your set work hours. Be at your desk at 10 AM and, at 3 PM, shut everything down and leave work for the next day. At the end of the day, write down a to-do list of what you want to accomplish the next day. Prioritize all tasks by asking yourself:

  • Is this task critical to my business?
  • Is this task going to increase my income or get me more customers?
  • Is this task helping to achieve my goals?
  • Could someone else handle this task?

If your answer was no to any of those questions, make that task a lower priority or assign it to someone else. If you are finding yourself getting behind on a regular basis, keep a log of what you do each day for one week. At the end of the week, sit down and evaluate where you are wasting time and how you could adjust to accomplish more.

Work Space

Another mistake that home-based business owners make is to use their entire house as their “office.” If your dining room table is your desk, requiring you to clear it every night for dinner, you are probably having difficulty creating set work hours. An office does not need to be an entire room. You can create an office space in a corner, such as the corner of your family room or your bedroom.

Put a small table or desk in the space you want to use, add a few baskets or shelves and a comfortable chair. Explain to family that when you are at your “desk,” you are working and should not be interrupted. If your home-based business requires inventory, store it in just one location in your home or garage to avoid “home inventory takeover” throughout your house.

These are just a few tips that can help you keep your home-based business on track and could help you grow your business more quickly.