PERSONAL SPECIAL .................. 3 Ways to Cure Idea Indecision

 3 Ways to Cure Idea Indecision

Getting distracted trying to find the Next Big Thing?

Here's how to keep the ideas flowing--without losing your focus.

I work with highly creative people in fast-paced environments.  As a result, "great ideas" come up every day, and the temptation to follow all of them can be powerful. I have found that doing so can be very detrimental to an organization.

Case in point: I spent a substantial amount of money and time on building a system that would allow our customers easy access to their previous research. The project got out of hand as we continued to ideate on all the cool things the system could do, and the development of the system moved us further away from our core business. Ultimately, it was an expensive and unnecessary distraction.

I was talking with Rob Bellenfant from TechnologyAdvice--a digital marketing agency that recently pivoted to a site for matching technology buyers with potential solutions--about this very problem. He told me his company's philosophy for avoiding what it calls Idea ADD:

Learn to Say No

In TechnologyAdvice's early days as a digital marketing agency, Rob told me it tried to be everything for everyone. Video production, Web development, email marketing, SEO strategy, content creation--if a client needed it, TechnologyAdvice tried to deliver it.

Rob realized that trying to do everything for everyone made it difficult to do anything great for anyone. It was holding his company back. He had to learn to say no to certain requests and opportunities, because it would not be in the best interest of both the client and the business.

Lesson: Learning to say no allows you to say yes.

Don't Eliminate Idea Creation; Just Focus It

Rob explained that TechnologyAdvice promotes a collaborative and creative environment, but the company let it get out of hand. The company was incredibly supportive of every new business idea and subsequently invested time and energy into making each of them a reality. The company even tried to make an online dance class a reality.

Very few of the ideas became profitable, because the company was spreading its business resources--especially time--too thin.

To correct this problem, Rob communicated that all ideas should be centered on their core business of technology marketing. I used the same philosophy for my research company. To consider a project or idea, it had to center around talking to users to be a good fit. This rule helps everyone on your team decide if an idea is a "good" idea to pursue.

Lesson: It is important to identify your greatest strength and build your services around that strength.

Act More; Think Less

Ideas are great, but they are worthless without execution. Rob told me that his favorite quote from Inc.'s GrowCo conference came from Morgan Newman: "Inaction leads to failure more often than wrong action."

If you spend more time coming up with great ideas and thinking about ways to bring them to life, you're spending less time actually executing on those ideas. Put great ideas related to your area of focus into action immediately, then analyze and adjust.

Make ideas a reality before you try to make them better. An added bonus to this approach: Your customers will help you understand what needs to be improved to make an idea work.

Lesson: Think production over perfection when building a business.

As you build your business, make sure you structure idea creation in a way that it is helpful, not hurtful, to moving your organization to the next level of success.

BY Eric V. Holtzclaw  

http://www.inc.com/eric-v-holtzclaw/does-your-company-have-idea-indecision.html?cid=em01020week25a

FOOD SPECIAL ................Eat or Delete - 5 FOODS TO GET RID OF ASAP

Eat or Delete - 5 FOODS TO GET RID OF ASAP



1. DIET SODA 

When it comes to the calorie count, the diet version may turn out to be a better option than drinking sugarloaded aerated drinks. But artificial sugars and caffeine isn't something we must consume regularly or get addicted to just because it is zero in calories and does not hinder our weight loss efforts. It does a lot of harm to your body in several other ways. Swap with: Plain soda Still keeping the carbonated fizz and the zero calorie lure alive, a can of plain soda deletes the negatives of caffeine and aspartame. You tives of caffeine and aspartam could add a bit of flavour to i by squeezing lime or adding some chopped fruits like berries, oranges, melons, mint or celery leaves.

2. MAYONNAISE 

If you are happily throwing in mayonnaise into your salads and sandwiches thinking it brings in taste and variety, you may as well be clogging your arteries with sticky lard.
Swap with: Hung curd Take some fresh homemade yogurt or the tetra pack slim curd and drain out the excess water through a muslin cloth. Now, flavour this as per taste to make spreads ­ you can add ground or fresh basil and sundried tomatoes, garlic and onion, roasted peppers and olive, coriander and mint or any of your favourite combo.

3. FLAVOURED YOGURT 

Something that is actually very healthy can be easily turned into an absolutely unhealthy food item simply by adding loads of sugar, cream and artificial flavours. Yes, I am talking about yogurt. Why turn this healthy probiotic snack (which it is originally famous for) into a dessert item? If you are using flavoured yogurt as an alternative to ice-creams and pastries, it is definitely a wiser option but if it's stocked in the fridge as a healthy, low calorie, portable snack, get rid of it rightaway.
Swap with: Plain yogurt Flavour it yourself with some chopped fresh fruits like berries, grapes, peach, cherries or any fruit you like. You can even stir it well (it turns creamy) and freeze for a while to get store-like frozen yogurt, but with higher nutrition quotient! 

4. MARGARINE

 Marketed as a healthier option to butter, margarine is anything but that. It is loaded with partially hydrogenated fat which increases the LDL (bad) cholesterol and thus increases the risk of heart diseases and inflammation, a known trigger to premature aging.
Swap with: Fresh mint-coriander mint-coriand chutney Packed with antioxidants like vitamin C, E and low in calories to al calories to almost negligible, this spread will add more taste and health to any sandwich as compared to margarine. To add more proteins to this spread, you can add to it some chana or nuts like peanuts or pine nuts. or nuts like peanuts or pine nuts.

5. PICKLES 

They add a dash of spice and flavour to your daily meals, thus helping break monotony of everyday cooking styles. But remember, that along with its ichness in taste, pickles are a high source of oil and sodium. The additional oil (since cooked meals have already exhausted your daily oil quota) plays havoc with our lipid profile and ts a load on the heart, and the puts a load on the heart, and the excess sodium (since our meals already take care of our daily salt requirements) spoils the electrolyte balance and thus affects blood pressure.
Swap with: Fresh, homemade oil-free pickles Vegetables such as cucumber, carrots, cauliflower, chillies and onions can be made into water, vinegar or brine based `pickles'. These pickles do not last for months together (since they lack the oil as a preservative) and thus should be consumed soon. They can be refrigerated for longer shelf life, but it's advisable to make smaller quantities and finish them faster. Do note that brine is high in sodium, so do not consume it daily.

TL140622

HEALTH SPECIAL................ Kapha Prakriti: know your body type for effective weight loss

 Kapha Prakriti: know your body type for effective weight loss

The physical constitution of one’s body is believed to be derived from the same elements as in nature.

The beauty of ayurveda is that it links these elements to us in a logical way. Fire has attributes of being hot, so the season that predominantly carries pitta (fire) is summer.

Similarly, foods such as black pepper carry a dominant fire element. Once we understand the basic nature of an element, it is easy to connect it with our environment, space and time. Here are some physical, emotional and mental characteristics that make up the kapha or water body type.

Kapha Prakriti
Kapha prakriti is the embodiment of the elements of water and earth. It is thus easy to understand the traits of people with kapha constituency if you know their prakriti. Kapha people have a wide bone structure with wide wrists. They tend to have strong joints and bones, and have a tendency to put on weight easily. They have flawless skin, which doesn’t wrinkle easily. 

Kapha bodies, being derived from earth and water energies, have thick and long hair. The teeth are well-formed and are pearly in colour. They take their own time to respond to situations and also take time to take decisions, in comparison to other constitutions. But once they take a decision, they are extremely headstrong about it. Kapha people have a pleasant voice and have great social skills. They build associations and groups easily. People of this constitution take time to learn new activities, but are also blessed with very strong memories. Their calm and tranquil nature is a positive quality though sometimes their emotional nature can give them health problems. They become uncomfortable during winter.

Kapha and weight gain
Kapha people have a natural tendency to put on weight and have to nurture healthy habits to avoid weight gain. People with kapha constitution become unhealthy when they go overboard eating banana, curd, cold drinks, cold water, ice-creams, sugar, sweets, maida, sooji, alcohol, fried food, cream, cheese, milk, wheat and rice.



Shikha Sharma HT BR140622

TECH SPECIAL ..................Put your browser to work with free online tools

 Put your browser to work with free online tools

As long as you have a stable and fast Internet connection, there's a lot that can be accomplished online with a basic computer & web browser. 

How to get stuff done without downloading anything.

Numbeo (numbeo.com)

Numbeo is the world's largest repository of living conditions in any city of the world. This could be useful if youre planning to shift cities. You can view details regarding cost of living, property prices, crime rates, hea ..

Psykopaint (psykopaint.com)

Psykopaint lets you convert your photos to beautiful paintings with different paint styles. Head to the website and choose to paint online. There, just upload a photo and you can start to paint right in the web browser. You can choose to apply a preset paint effect or manually select and place paint effects in the area of your choice. You can choose from various styles such as Van Gogh, Renoir, Guillaumin and so on. You can also cr ..

Image Editor (Pixlr.com)

If you need a free online photo editor, there's no need to think beyond Pixlr.com. Pixlr offers three interfaces for editing your photos. If you prefer more control and tools, check out Pixlr Editor. If you want to quickly fine-tune an image, then open Pixlr express. If all you want to do is add effects to the image to beautify them, try Pixlr O-matic. Each interface has its set of tools to enhance your images and then allows you ..

Emaze ( emaze.com)

Why use PowerPoint when you can use a web browser to create presentations? Once you sign up for a free account, you can start from scratch or choose one of the free templates. You can create multiple slides, add pictures/videos/text as well as charts to your presentation. With the free account, your presentation will be saved on Emaze's own servers. With the paid accounts, you get various benefits like offline viewing, custom logo use, passwo ..

Versus (versus.com)

Making a buying decision between two similar products can be difficult. With Versus, you can compare two similar devices on attributes like price, looks and even get recommendations on what one product has over the other. A useful feature is that the website can be used in over 15 languages. You can compare, phones, laptops, cameras and various other gadgets on the site.

Padlet (www.padlet.com)

Padlet is an online noticeboard. It gives you a blank space to add notes and you can easily invite collaborators. Sign up for a free account to create a personalised noticeboard — just double tap on a blank area to create a new note. Apart from text, a note can hold web links, files or even a photo captured using your webcam. Each noticeboard has a unique web address that you can use to share it. A noticeboard can be customised with wal ..

Easely (www.easel.ly)

Infographics are one of the best ways to share statistics, plans and thoughts in an eye-catching way. However, creating them isn't always an easy task. With Easely, you can choose from over 300 ready-to-use layouts to create a visually appealing infographic with your own data. The interface lets you quickly change text, resize various elements, change opacity/colours and so on. Once you are done with creating your infographic, you can sav ..

Prefer downloads? Try these amazing free tools

F.Lux (justgetflux.com) - Automatic monitor adjustment according to the time of day

Calibre (calibre-ebook.com) - A do-it-all ebook management & conversion tool

CamStudio (camstudio.org) - Records everything on the screen and every action as a video

Everything (voidtools.com) - A local search engine with fast indexing and quick name search

UnifiedRemote (unifiedremote.com) - Use your smartphone (Android, iOS, Win) as a remote for a computer.

Secunia PSI (secunia.com) - Scans your computer for vulnerabilities from third-party software

By Karan Bajaj & Hitesh Raj Bhagat, ET 140618