Time Management....for all friends of my AGe

Time Management

It is not just about me and you but about so many successful people, we all have one common problem - "How do I manage my time?" As we grow we find that 24 hours, 60 minutes or 3600 seconds are not enough. Now we play less, cry less (disliking for food, chocolates, new jeans, toys and cartoons), watch less (TV), but all complain that I do not have time. We kill our time moving around in the malls, boys staring at gals and gals staring at boys, chatting on orkut, facebook and Gtalk, taking all the time on deciding one pair of shoes and jeans, selecting daily but not buying for months for a birthday or a valentine gift for our girl frined or boy friend. And when our mom says that beta ye kam kar de, then the most famous reply automatically comes out - "I do not have time". We had that time for all other things but not for study, not for parents, not for our imaginations, not for dreams, not for our interests and not for even voting and choosing a responsible leader for the society and in a broad way for this country.

Well we would never have time. Life is fast, keep running or we will be far behind to our younger generation. It is question of priority and our decision making. If we do what we like, then its good for us but may or may not be for others. If others do not like what do we do, then we are selfish and if others like it then we may not like it. So now it has become a question of liking and disliking of you and others.

Questions will be raised and it is a big confusion to keep us out of the right track but smartness is, answering all questions, can we dissolve confusion and evolve ourselves for the prosperity of all.

See where we started and where did we end. My friends, life is a big confusion like time management. And I don't know what it takes to manage time.

See How the World is changing

See How the World is changing

DURANGO, Colo.) — The sun had just crested the distant ridge of the Rocky Mountains, but already it was producing enough power for the electric meter on the side of the Smiley Building to spin backward.
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For the Shaw brothers, who converted the downtown arts building and community center into a miniature solar power plant two years ago, each reverse rotation subtracts from their monthly electric bill. It also means the building at that moment is producing more electricity from the sun than it needs.
"Backward is good," said John Shaw, who now runs Shaw Solar and Energy Conservation, a local solar installation company.
Good for whom?
As La Plata County in southwestern Colorado looks to shift to cleaner sources of energy, solar is becoming the power source of choice even though it still produces only a small fraction of the region's electricity. It's being nudged along by tax credits and rebates, a growing concern about the gases heating up the planet, and the region's plentiful sunshine.
The natural gas industry, which produces more gas here than nearly every other county in Colorado, has been relegated to the shadows.
Please follow the link for further reading: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1929657,00.html

Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance
An Interview with Warren Anderson
Start-ups are famous for requiring a lot from employees—especially long hours. The results can include significant personal accomplishments and instant wealth. But they can also include stress, family problems and even physical illness. When Warren Anderson started Anderson Soft-Teach, he had a different idea about work-life balance and how to create esprit de corps:
One of my personal objectives was to create a business where my employees and I could be successful, and everyone’s personal lives could be successful simultaneously. I was driven by a desire not to run into the problem of burnout, either for my employees or myself. I wanted to protect my physical and mental health and everyone else’s. That was one of the things that created a "do your best but don’t kill yourself in the process" framework for Anderson Soft-Teach.
Of course, we did work weekends when it was required, but we didn’t have an ethic where people had to come in on the weekend or stay late as the standard practice. I set the example. If I had a speech to give at a trade show or a new product was being completed, for example, I stayed plenty of extra time, but I wanted that to be the exception rather than the norm.
As a result, we did at times sacrifice some growth in revenues because we didn’t work people 60, 70, 80 hours a week. We weren’t a wild, blow-it-out, Silicon Valley story that hit Newsweek. But you can measure a business as successful many ways. We started the company in 1983 with no venture funding, and it grew steadily and profitably for 14 years. When we were acquired, we had $6.5 million in sales and 42 employees. I think we did create a group of people who worked hard when they needed to and also knew how to have fun.
Whenever we had company events, we included significant others, spouses and families because I thought it was important to recognize the contribution the family was making to the company, and I wanted to include them in the excitement of what was happening.
The emphasis on team spirit was appreciated and adopted by employees, as Anderson discovered during a sales downturn.
At the time, our sales manager was the most heavily leveraged employee: If things were going well, he got a significant bonus; if sales were down, he would make significantly less. During this period, I approached him and said, "You’re probably working harder now than you ever have, yet your compensation is lower than ever." I offered to change his compensation formula so he wouldn’t be hurt so badly by the downturn in sales, and he said he’d think about it. The next day, he came back to me and said, "My salespeople are hurting because commissions are lower. I don’t feel comfortable not feeling the same pain, so thanks but I’d rather not change my compensation."
In general, I think companies need to attend to salary ranges. Today, you have CEOs making incredible compensation even before their stock options kick in. I tried to keep the salary ranges at a low multiple (about 5 to 6 times between the lowest- and highest-paid employee). Putting a reasonable cap on higher-level compensation I thought was an important statement. We were all working hard to succeed, and we were all working together. The big payoff would come if the company became successful and was acquired, not in day-to-day salary.
Also, everyone in the company (except people in sales, who worked on commission) was given a bonus based on growth in total company revenue from year to year, paid each quarter. Each person was assigned a unique factor that was multiplied by the increase in company sales for the quarter compared to the same quarter in the previous year. This meant everyone was looking at how the company was doing, not only their personal job performance. It focused people on doing what was right for the whole team.
One manager told me later that she used to resent calls from customers with technical questions because they interrupted her work. After we started the quarterly revenue bonuses, she began to view those same calls as great opportunities to build positive relationships and increase future sales.

Everyday ethics

Everyday Ethics
Morality Requires Regular Reflection on the Day-to-Day Decisions That Confront Us.
By Thomas Shanks, S.J.
"Have you taken the mandatory training for business ethics?" Dilbert's manager asks the popular comic strip engineer one day. Without missing a beat, Dilbert turns from his cubicle's computer and responds, "No, but if you say I did, then you'll save some money on training, which you can spend to decorate your office." Obviously taken with this suggestion, the manager says, "Luckily, I haven't taken the training myself." Dilbert adds, "I hear it's mostly common sense anyway."
The ethics Dilbert is talking about might be called everyday ethics. As philosopher Mike Martin notes, the moral aspects of day-to-day living are "more direct, persistent, and urgent" than the global moral issues — immigration, capital punishment, welfare reform — we might be at ease discussing over the dinner table.
"Why is that?" Martin asks. These topics, he says, "evoke our genuine concern, and sometimes they require our immediate action. Because we lack the authority to settle these issues, however, we can maintain a comfortable distance between us and them."
That distance — and the comfort that comes with it — diminishes when we make ethics part of our everyday reflection, asking ourselves, How am I doing at "the art of human being" as artist Laurel Birch describes it? Ethics is intimately bound up with that art because, at its heart, are human relationships.
How We Treat One AnotherIn The Leadership Compass, John Wilcox and Susan Ebbs write, "Moral behavior is concerned primarily with the interpersonal dimension of our behavior: how we treat one another individually and in groups — and, increasingly, other species and the environment." The key here is that morality brings us into contact with others and asks us to consider the quality of that contact.
How many times have we asked ourselves: Is that the way I should treat someone else? Is that the way someone else should treat me? Because we have the ability to be critical of our interpersonal behavior and our contact with animals in the physical world, we have the ability to develop codes and norms to guide that behavior. Those moral norms and codes, plus a set of virtuous character traits, are what we mean when we talk about ethics.
Ethics poses questions about how we ought to act in relationships and how we should live with one another. Ethics asks us to consider whether our actions are right or wrong. It also asks us how those character traits that help humans flourish (such as integrity, honesty, faithfulness, and compassion) play out in everyday living.
Ethical norms and principles have developed over time and across cultures as rational people of goodwill consider human relationships and how human beings act when they are at their best.
In the past few years, I've had the chance to talk with hundreds of people about humanity at its best — and worst — including students, parents, educators, lawyers, engineers, physicians and allied health providers, journalists and television producers, CEOs, CFOs, managers and employees in all sorts of businesses, community leaders and community members at large, people rich and poor, and everyone in between. I've asked them to name the commonplace moral questions they confront in their day-to-day living or at work.
The Nitty-GrittyJust a few of their responses: Is it right to keep my mouth shut when I know a neighbor's child is getting into real trouble? How should I decide when it's time to put my parent in a nursing home? Do I release software I know isn't really ready? When's the right time to "let go" of my child? Is it right to be chronically late for meetings because I'm busy? Do I laugh at a sexist or racist joke? How ought I to love my spouse in the first year of marriage? In the 60th year?
Despite our many differences, we share these everyday questions; this is the common "stuff" of human living and interacting. We also share a hunger for ethical approaches to these questions. A Times-Mirror survey released a few years ago showed that, for the first time in a decade, Americans named ethics, or rather a decline in ethics, as one of the most important problems facing the United States, after crime, health care, and jobs. Ethics and drugs were tied for fourth and fifth place.
Most people would indeed like to live an ethical life and to make good ethical decisions, but there are several problems. One, we might call the everyday stumbling blocks to ethical behavior. Consider these: My small effort won't really make a difference. People may think badly of me. It's hard to know the right thing to do. My pride gets in the way. It may hurt my career. It just went by too quickly. There's a cost to doing the right thing.
Now, how would you respond if your own children were the ones making these excuses for their behavior? Oh, Mom, what I do won't really make a difference. Dad, I just didn't know what to do. Grandma, my friends won't like me. I won't get invited to anybody's home. I know I'll just never date again.
Put like this, ethics seems easier. But we still confront a practical obstacle--much as anti-smoking public service announcements did years ago. Research showed these ads were tremendously successful in getting people to recognize the addiction and want to kick the habit. The problem was that the ads didn't teach people how to do it.
The Five Questions: A Systematic ApproachThe same is true of ethics. People need a systematic way to approach living an ethical life. Here are five questions that, used daily, can help with the how-to of everyday morality.
Did I practice any virtues today? In The Book of Virtues, William Bennett notes that virtues are "habits of the heart" we learn through models--the loving parent or aunt, the demanding teacher, the respectful manager, the honest shopkeeper. They are the best parts of ourselves.
Ask yourself, Did I cross a line today that gave up one of those parts? Or was I, at least some of the time, a person who showed integrity, trustworthiness, honesty, compassion, or any of the other virtues I was taught as a child?
Did I do more good than harm today? Or did I try to? Consider the short term and long-term consequences of your actions.
Did I treat people with dignity and respect today? All human beings should be treated with dignity simply because they are human. People have moral rights, especially the fundamental right to be treated as free and equal human beings, not as things to be manipulated, controlled, or cast away.
How did my actions today respect the moral rights and the dignified treatment to which every person is entitled?
Was I fair and just today? Did I treat each person the same unless there was some relevant moral reason to treat him or her differently? Justice requires that we be fair in the way we distribute benefits and burdens. Whom did I benefit and whom did I burden? How did I decide?
Was my community better because I was in it? Was I better because I was in my community? Consider your primary community, however you define it--neighborhood, apartment building, family, company, church, etc. Now ask yourself, Was I able to get beyond my own interests to make that community stronger? Was I able to draw on my community's strengths to help me in my own process of becoming more human?
From Everyday Ethics to Moral LeadershipThis everyday ethical reflection must occur before we can effectively confront the larger moral questions. A person who wants to take moral leadership on global issues must, according to author Parker Palmer, "take special responsibility for what's going on inside his or her own self, inside his or her own consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good."
Palmer goes on to suggest that all of us can be leaders for good; the choice is ours:
We share a responsibility for creating the external world by projecting either a spirit of light or a spirit of shadow on that which is other than us. We project either a spirit of hope or a spirit of despair.... We have a choice about what we are going to project, and in that choice we help create the world that is.
Thomas Shanks, S.J., is executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and is currently working on a book about workplace ethics.