Top 10: 2009 Self-Improvement Resolutions

 

 

No.10 - Be specific

It's tough to follow through on a resolution if it's too vague to understand. If you ring in the New Year with the goal of volunteering more,  you've set up a goal that is too vague. What constitutes volunteer more? Helping an old lady across the street? Do that and in the short-term you may feel that you hit your goal, but if you're honest with yourself, you'll know you fell short -- all because your resolution was unclear. You'll have far greater success if you pick a specific goal -- in this case, something such as resolving to volunteer for two hours a month. If you are specific with what you want to accomplish, there will be nothing left for interpretation, and you'll know when you've achieved your goal.

 

 

No.9 - Track it visually

If you're a visual person or someone who keeps track of your work with notes and checklists, apply that same level of organization to the pursuit of your goal. Start by taking a sheet of paper and making yourself a chart at the start of each month. Label the days in the month, and for all the days you reach a goal (for example, no fast food, no alcohol or a daily trip to the gym), check off the square beside the day. Monitoring yourself like this will become addictive, and you'll be proud to check each day off, knowing you're another day closer toward reaching your goal. If you miss a day, leave the spot blank -- that should encourage you to get back to pursuing your resolution as soon as possible.

 

 

No.8 - Set rewards

It's vitally important to formally reward yourself and reaffirm that you're doing a good job. After all, when you succeed at work (i.e., you get a raise), your success with your goal should be rewarded in the same way. Whether it's a daily, weekly or monthly reward, don't be afraid to give yourself a pat on the back on a regular basis. This method will encourage you and make you look forward to the next reward. As the year goes on, your rewards should probably be spaced out, but don't be afraid to celebrate your accomplishments as often as you need to in January, February and March.

 

 

No.7 - Declare your goals

One of the best ways to ensure your resolutions are met is to make them public. You don't need to call in to a talk radio station and announce your goals, but it's a good idea to declare them to your family and close friends who will hold you to your declarations. Stating your goals will provide more incentive to achieve them if you know you can proudly announce that you followed through. And if someone doubts that you can hit your goal, you'll have an even greater incentive to stay resolute: proving him or her wrong.

 

 

No.6 - Don't do it alone

It can be a scary idea to try to and conquer a tough resolution by yourself, but you don't have to do it alone. If you're looking to start going to the gym, find a friend who'll go with you. You can push each other and when you want to take a day off, you'll still go to the gym because you don't want to disappoint your buddy. Having a "resolution friend" means you'll have more fun on your challenge: you can compare notes, have friendly competitions and pull the other along when he's struggling.

 

 

No.5 - Picture the end goal

Don't be afraid to take the time to daydream and imagine how you will feel upon achieving your goal. We all know that the journey is often as important as the destination; with a resolution, it's all about the end result. Picture how you'll feel to quit smoking, to be 25 pounds lighter or to know a new language, and it will be easier to get there during those moments when it's still an uphill battle.

 

 

No.4 - Start off small

Too often, men pick a grandiose New Year's resolution and have a hard time sticking to it. Get this clear: There's absolutely nothing wrong with making smaller goals. For example, let's say your vice is ice cream -- if you set a goal of not having one bowl of ice cream for the entire year, you may have trouble following through. After all, if you're eating ice cream too much, quitting cold turkey may be too tough. If you decide to avoid ice cream for a week, though, you can tell yourself something like "only four more days" when you develop a craving -- that's much easier than "only 341 more days."

 

 

No.3 - Hit the books

The self-help section of any major bookstore is full of books that can be easily applied to setting and following a New Year's resolution. If you've never been a reader of this sort of stuff, give it a shot (especially if you're a visual learner). You might just find a book that presents an idea in a new way for you, and it'll be something that will stick by your side for the next 12 months (and, hopefully, longer than that).

 

 

No.2 - Be realistic

Unless you're trying to break a life-threatening habit, having the odd guilty moment probably isn't going to kill you. There's nothing wrong with doing what you're trying to avoid every once in a while. This practice will kill those cravings you're dealing with and perhaps put into perspective the resolution you're trying to follow. If you're trying to cut donuts out of your diet, don't beat yourself up for indulging once a month.

 

 

No.1 - Stay positive

Unless you're a robot, you're going to slip up. If you're trying to quit smoking, don't beat yourself up when you take a step backward. Instead, focus on how well you've been doing and think about how your success has made you feel. This is a feeling you'll want to keep experiencing, and the only way to bring it back is to remain positive and seek to recreate that sense of happiness and confidence.

Seven IBM i project lessons learned in 2008

Jim Mason, Contributor
12.19.2008

Jim Mason What is a lesson learned? Is it something that went well for you or someone else that you want to emulate? Is it something that didn't go well that should be avoided in the future? When I look back on the successes and failures I've seen in 2008, the biggest issues weren't technical ones – they involved managing people, tasks and expectations. While choosing RPG over Java for an application may have good or bad effects, the more important issues concerned decisions, processes, communications, expectations, planning, resourcing and management of tasks and people. Here, I'll focus on seven key lessons I learned this year that can make a difference in your job, your team's success and maybe your company's success. Working hard or working smart? I finished a project that was delivered on time but a little over budget. After half the team spent six months working long hours consistently on nights and weekends, it was disturbing to sit with the CIO and have him say we didn't do a good job because we consumed more resources than planned. His management team knew we had put in long hours. His point to me: were you working hard or working smart? We were working hard. Did we work smart? In his view: no. There should have been a better way to get everything done with less effort. It was clear the management team had assumptions about what was possible. On this project, most of the key decisions on resources, assignments, process, software, tools, scheduling and so on were dictated to the project team by the management team. The project team had lots of responsibilities and very little decision-making authority. Thinking about how to change that, I realized we didn't work as smart as we should have. We pointed out all the problems up front with key decisions and constraints we were given by the management team. We were consistently ignored, and told these were constraints. In hindsight, I should have worked smarter by focusing on the next point – manage your manager. Manage your manager It's not enough to manage your team and your work, you need to actively manage your manager. You need on-going communication to ensure he is maximizing his efforts to support the success of your project. In theory a manager's job is to provide the directions, resources and support you need to be successful. But, in many cases a manager may have neither the time, details or understanding of affects of decisions on a project's success. It's your job to manage your manager to ensure he is aware of all the key issues and affects of decisions on the outcome. It's not enough to manage your team and your work, you need to actively manage your manager. In our case, we did clearly bring the issues to the table during the project at key points. When we didn't always get the support or decisions we needed, we went back to work. As a team, when bad decisions were made, we needed to do a better job of measuring their affect and formally pushing that back to management to make changes to the project. In hindsight we didn't do enough to manage our management team effectively. Socialize your success If your project reports directly through one manager, clear and timely communications can be easy to achieve. On my last project, there was a large team of senior managers managing the resources and personnel the project was dependent on. Those senior managers controlled many of the decisions affecting our project. When the CIO looked for feedback for improvements, the senior team gave him input that collectively was passed to us. It was apparent from the comments that while problems and challenges had been identified (that the team fought with hard work), the PMO and other managers did not always understand the root causes, nor did they see all the successes our team achieved. In hind-sight, not only did we need to more formally push root causes back to a wider audience in a politically acceptable manner, we also had to correctly socialize our successes to this wider audience on a very regular basis. Instead the wider team would hear of an issue, but not the resolution. Our team (PM, etc.) needed to be more proactive in getting good feedback from the outside audience. We did the standard items: weekly project meetings with published notes, daily development scrums to manage priorities for the day, a project wiki tracking all the open issues and priorities. Those items were used by the team but the wider audience didn't pay them much attention. On future projects, we'll need to be more proactive in socializing the good work accomplished as well as highlighting changes that are needed. Protect the data, protect your job People who understand the business data, analyze data quality, manage it and support processing data directly are the most indispensable resources in a company It's a tough economy and getting tougher. Looking at the last company we delivered a large project for, the staff who were best positioned to do well and survive any IT layoffs were the ones who "protect the data." People who understood the business data, analyzed data quality, managed it and supported processing data directly (feeds, batch etc) are the most indispensable resources in the company. While delivering new solutions and maintenance requires other skills (e.g., systems support, networking support, development skills), those individuals who have ownership on the IT side for business data are the most critical resources at any company. Outsourcing and contractors can be used as needed to cover other areas. Quality comes first Not second. My last large data warehousing and reporting project had some bad assumptions up front about the data. When I asked if we would add logic to define data test conditions and data edit rules, I was told that, no, we didn't need to do that. These were existing internal or external data sources that were already being used, and they were trusted, so we wouldn't do that work. Lesson learned: always define the data test cases (not just the data) up front and validate it. Our project proved that trying to rework systems that are already built to fit data conditions discovered after the fact is 10 times more expensive. This was a bad decision that cost more than anything else. Quality data analysis and automated data test cases can make the biggest difference on many projects. We had the right tools to make automated data regression tests easy but were told it wasn't part of our plan. In general, a test-driven development process that focuses on developing executable test cases up front to support requirements and application use cases and then run them continuously as automated regressions will produce higher-quality solutions with less work. Cost reduction is more important If your IT department doesn't need to focus on this as a top priority going forward, you're lucky. IT costs are even more of an issue in a tough economy for most companies. So you want to ensure IT's budget cuts are limited? Then focus on adding value in IT by cutting business operations costs more. How do you do that? Ask the business users where they spend their time. If users aren't giving clear answers on where to cut operations costs, then look at Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office – email, Excel, Access, Word, Powerpoint equals time lost in many companies -- lot's of it! It's true that we couldn't live without those emails, documents and spread sheets -- but they don't necessarily need to be in the Microsoft format. One company analyzed their application portfolio. They found 60+ IT supported applications and 2000+ Excel applications managed by users! They took one Excel application that cost 15 days to produce with VBA etc. It was re-engineered as a central database application using open-source generation in four days! After that, the IT department decided there was a large potential cost savings as well as control and data quality improvements in moving many Excel applications into standardized database applications that can be quickly generated. Enterprise open source solutions dominate Commercial software is not dead by any means, but growth is slower, especially in this economy. Enterprise open source (EOS) software solutions have picked up critical mass now in many businesses. Beyond saving up-front licensing costs (in the case of some vendors, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars), it turns out EOS also often has lower support and implementation costs. Commercial solutions that are working are not usually worth replacing. On the other hand, if you're buying an application, infrastructure or tools, you should look to see what EOS options are out there. My team has had great success using a variety of EOS solutions where commercial software has been used normally in System i shops. So who produces EOS solutions? Commercial software vendors (IBM, Sun, Oracle and more) as well as individuals and organizations like Eclipse and Apache. For example, IBM has WebSphere (a commercial Web application server) as well as WebSphere Community Edition, a free, open-source Web application server. IBM provides support plans for both. That's my short list of key lessons learned from 2008. Your lessons learned will be driven by your experiences. Hopefully you'll pick up something useful for next year from mine. My next column on best bets for 2009 will focus on key technologies with big potential payoffs for System i shops. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Mason has worked with ebt-now as a System i Web consultant delivering architecture, development, training (QuickWeb workshops) and support for IBM WebSphere software and enterprise open source solutions. Jim has participated in IBM beta programs for System i software. He writes articles and teaches on System i Web technologies. He also speaks at a variety of System i conferences. You can reach Jim at jemason@ebt-now.com.

 

Stand Out In A Crowd

Few people draw the attention of those around them, and standing out in a crowd can mean one of two things: People admire you, or your fly is open. Being noticed comes naturally for some, but even hot broads have to work to elevate themselves above the rest of the hot broads. The same goes for guys, and while some guys act charismatic by nature, getting noticed is a combination of appearance, personality and -- most of all -- accomplishments. The bottom line here is that God helps those who help themselves, and the meek will not inherit jack.

The natural tendency of some people is to stay out of the spotlight, to be content with being a number. But the shadows are for babbos, so get away from the wall and into the game. If you are comfortable and quiet, you're wrong.

Assert yourself

You can stand out in a crowd just by having a position of power. To get there, ask for more responsibility than you think you can handle. Go after the things you want instead of sitting back and hoping the boss will recognize you on merit alone. Being assertive about what you want will do more for you than all your silent workdays. Remind your boss from time to time about where you plan on going in this world, lest he forget. He may not care about your goals, but when a job opportunity arises, he will likely think of you, the busybody fly in his ear who won't leave him alone. The squeaky wheel does get the grease.

Learn to talk

People tend to gather around those who can talk and tell good stories. Other than Helen Keller, you'll never see a deaf-mute with an entourage. If you do, send me a letter. Look around at bars and parties, and you can see that the natural sellers have people nearby. The quiet people follow talkers, not necessarily because they admire or respect them, but because the talkers are making all the decisions. Learning to sell yourself is the first step in getting noticed, and if you can sell yourself, you can sell your agenda as well.

Dress sharply

Don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want to have. Unless you plan to sling tacos on the corner for the rest of your natural life, start dressing and acting like your superior. The guy who puts on a tie tends to be trusted more than the guy wearing a greasy T-shirt. Appearance alone isn't going to get the job done, but it will grease the sale, and more importantly, it will help you meet chicks that you can take home to mom (or just take home).

Have the ability to laugh at yourself

To be noticed might occasionally mean making an ass out of yourself. Walking on eggshells is no way to make an impression. Guys like Capone and Luciano didn't pussyfoot around and when they entered a room, people straightened up to take notice. Of course these guys made mistakes -- big ones -- that got one of them exiled and the other sent to Alcatraz. Even in prison, Capone stood out in the crowd (which is the one place you'd rather not stand out).

Entertain your audience

The people I always try to steer clear of are those with no temperament, no emotion and no interesting opinions. Your personality needs a spark plug, some bite to make meeting you worth a second visit, otherwise the crowd will avoid you the next time around. If you have too much personality, it's annoying. Too much cheeriness is depressing and a constantly negative personality is a tranquilizer. Find some middle ground between the two and make it your own. If you don't have an interesting personality, there is a perfectly suitable place for you in the world of accounting.
 
Not everyone can stand out in the crowd, so if you want to be a follower, be one. Smile and nod and be happy listening to more interesting people who love an audience. However, if you want to stand out in the crowd, you should get a good woman on your arm and a reputation for satisfying her. It's important to remember that standing out in the crowd doesn't mean you have to be the boss -- it just means you have to be admired or noticed by those around you.

By Mr. Mafioso

The more personal, the more universal

Bodybuilding Myths

Through time, a vast number of bodybuilding statements have come and gone. Some of them are true, while others are far from it. Unfortunately, all it takes is one well-muscled guy to start spreading the word to bodybuilder beginners before it becomes "the new way."

Below are some common myths and truths that seem to have passed the test of time. If you haven't heard of them before, it's time to take note so that you can integrate the positive ones into your workout and avoid letting the negative myths hurt you.

Always work a muscle to failure

This is a sneaky myth because most people know that in order to see results from a workout, you have to apply an overloading stimulus to the muscle cell. An overloading stimulus is defined as something that pushes the muscle's boundary, creating microtears so that the muscle is forced to grow back bigger and stronger once rest is given. In other words, working the muscle to failure.

The problem with this is that while you do need to push a muscle to failure to see results, you don't need to do it during every session. If you start giving 110% every time you're in the gym, you'll more than likely suffer from overtraining syndrome within a few weeks and you'll be sidelined for quite some time. Then you'll have plenty of time to recover because you could be out for weeks or months if the condition is severe enough.

The key is to develop a program that allows you to work a muscle to failure, but also incorporates a couple sessions per week that are done short of failure. Don't forget to include a few days of complete rest.

Furthermore, if you're on a low-carbohydrate diet, you may not want to work a muscle to complete failure as you risk depleting it of all its muscle glycogen stores. Unless you have planned large "carbups" after each workout, over time your body will become fully drained and you'll no longer be able to perform your workouts.

Bodybuilding judgment: False

More weight means bigger muslces

Some guys focus solely on pushing the weight in their sessions. This is because they think there is a strict correlation between the amount of weight lifted and an increase in muscular size.

This is not always the case. The fact of the matter is that regardless of what you do in the gym, you can't build more muscle tissue out of nothing. If you aren't eating more than enough of the nutrients that your body needs to maintain itself and to build the new muscle tissue, you aren't going to get bigger -- no matter how heavy the weights you lift are. It's that simple.

1. Note, however, that it is perfectly possible to eat a maintained calorie intake and continually put more weight on the bar. This would mean that you are getting stronger without getting larger. There are specific athletes out there who train with just this purpose in mind, since too much additional size will begin to slow them down and is not wanted. When strength is your main goal, this is the ideal plan.

Bodybuilding judgment: False

You must eat more to get bigger

Now, contrary to the point above, others think that if size is their goal, then life should become a 24-hour buffet. They eat everything and anything in sight, in the hopes that it will help spark new muscle growth.

What these individuals need to realize is that, yes, they do require more calories, however, the body can only assimilate so many of those extra calories into lean muscle tissue. After that, the remainder will go toward fat mass. Your P-ratio is what determines the amount of surplus calories going to fat and the amount going toward lean muscle mass. Your P-ratio is partly influenced by genetic make-up -- which is something you can't change -- but the changeable factors that affect are your workout program, your nutritional intake and the timing of your meals.

So if size is your goal, you need to make sure that you are eating enough to get growth in the first place, but not so much that with the additional muscle mass, you get a great deal of fat mass as well.

Bodybuilding judgment: False

Time off from the gym means instant fat gains

Another common notion among the really hardcore lifters is the fear that if they miss an entire week (or sometimes even less), all their strength will go down the drain.  

First off, realize that the body has something known as muscle memory. So, if you are planning a long layoff (two or more months), you can relax in knowing that it will be easier to bring your strength back up than it was before. This is because your muscles will "remember" how to get there.

For shorter layoffs, often you don't lose strength, you gain it. The reason is because far too many individuals are on the verge of slight overtraining already. They are not letting their bodies fully recuperate between sessions and, therefore, are not seeing the strength gains that they could have. When they take a week off, their bodies fully recover and upon returning to the gym, they find that their strength shoots way up.

Furthermore, these shorter breaks are often just what is needed to really jump start your motivational levels.

Bodybuilding judgment: False

Gym sessions should never exceed one hour

This is one statement that is very true. Less is definitely more when it comes to bodybuilding. If your sessions are lasting over an hour, you are either doing way too many exercises and need to curtail it to include more compound lifts and less isolated movements or you are just taking extended rest intervals.

You want to get in the gym, do an intense workout and get out.

Working out past an hour could have you seeing rapidly declining blood sugar levels  along with a decrease in testosterone output. Your cortisol release will also start to go up, which is a catabolic hormone that will promote muscle breakdown and fat storage.

If you can't seem to get your workouts under an hour, then it's likely time to have a look at a specific exercise selection or your workout split of choice. If you are trying to do a full-body plan three times per week for example, it may be better to look at doing a four-day, push-pull type of split instead.

Bodybuilding judgment: True

Workout through pain

This is one of those myths that require you to consider the situation. If it's a small amount of muscular soreness from a previous workout session, then more than likely you are fine to do your workout the next day.

However, if the pain is more deep-tissue related and feels as though it could be a torn muscle or ligament, then you may want to hold off and either give it a few more days to rest or see a doctor. You never want to risk pulling a tendon -- they can take a long time to heal, particularly if you keep aggravating it with more exercise.

You need to judge your own body and learn what type of pain will still give you a green light to go ahead with your workouts and what type of pain means you need to stop.  Don't let determination to keep progressing cause you to push through pain you know you shouldn't. At times, when motivational level is high, it's really hard to take the day off and allow for more rest, but consider the long-term consequences of your actions and hopefully that will enable you to make the right decision.

Bodybuilding judgment: False (kind of)

dumb… bell logic

So make sure you are aware of these myths and truths. In order to reap the benefits from your workouts, you need to have everything in line; rest, sleep, nutrition, and the actual workout. When just one of these factors begins to falter, the losses can be quite significant.

By Jeff Bayer Fitness Specialist

"It's never smart to dip your pen in the company ink"

About Me

What is ris.journal ?? well... it is about me !!!;-) I'm willing to bet that you have met men who have refined interest and quality tastes but you have never met the one who want to show you new world, learn alongside and share the adventure... it is even tough to find* that real#.. sensitive#... funny#... person. --------#Conditions apply *I live outside internet ;-)