May 13, 2009

November 14, 2008

The key principle points that I came across were…

1. Negative consequences sometimes change behavior, but they do not change attitude.

2. Only positive reinforcement strategies produce long-term attitudinal change.

3. Negative consequences do not improve the behavior of impulsive children and frequently increase the frequency and intensity of misbehavior.

4. Cognitive control of behavior can be learned through the use of appropriate positive reinforcement systems.

5. Positive reinforcement systems must be incremental in nature such that the child can directly observe even small improvements in behavior.

6. You must always reinforce the final compliance with adult authority no matter how long it takes to get there.

Explanation is my next post!!!

It’s so important and necessary for not only adults but also for the children to understand the basic principles of having a positive attitude and learning positive reinforcement. And as mentioned positive reinforcement developed and learned by children will help them in their academic performance also.

I had come across this article where they gave an example of how positive reinforcement helped many children perform better and learn good things with lots of excitement. The example goes this way…

Martha was a five-year-old girl who attended preschool. She seldom played with the other children. Workers at the preschool began praising and admiring Martha when she engaged in cooperative play with other children. As a result of this procedure Martha’s level of cooperative play with the other children increased.

A Portfolio is a meaningful collection of an individuals work which consists of his/her efforts, progress and achievements in his/her field.

When it comes to modeling, your portfolio serves as your resume and showcases your body of work. Whether you are signed to an agency or are a freelance model, putting together your portfolio is one of the most important aspects of your career.

So… if you want to start making your modeling portfolio you need to find a professional photographer and take your best pictures, you can look in the magazines and catalogs for poses you like… then call up the top modeling agencies and tell them about your work, talk to them about the pricing and ask them to see a sample of the photographers work. I surely feel that this would be a good start for your modeling career.

But you definitely need professional guidance which will help you to achieve your goals and to become a top model in future…

October 13, 2008

The following are a few strategies, I have learned for writing complaint letters that are certain to get some action:

1. Get the name and postal address of a very senior person in the organization responsible for the product or service that you are complaining about.

Address the complaint letter to the senior person. This ensures a serious response.

2. Do not use an email. Emails are usually handled by customer service people hence getting a serious response is a doubt.

Use a formal written complaint letter and dispatch it using a postal / courier service. Such letters when they reach the senior most person’s office, triggers a bureaucratic process that ensures that the right people will see your letter, and will act on it.

3. Start the letter with a heading placed at the top of the page that indicates information such as the account number or the customer number or product number or any such service/product related details.

This simply makes it easy for the recipient to determine the actual file that holds your data/bills.

4. Make sure that the letter is not longer than one page, two at the most.

The only purpose of such complaint letters is to ensure that the recipient understands the point.

5. Draft the letter using a positive tone since its being written to a senior person.

6. The letter should include all the specific details that the recipient will require to solve the issue:

• Specific dates
• Time and place (if applicable)
• Names of people you dealt with in this regards

7. If the complaint refers to some more people who are in the loop, send them a copy of this letter. This makes sure that you will get some serious response.

8. End the with a paragraph that indicates that if your issues are not resolved/considered, you have no other option, but to choose another service provider. This means the Company will lose you as a customer which no company likes.

Lastly remember to follow-up by phone calls or e-mails after the letter is dispatched.

October 11, 2008

Make your job work for you

Don’t let work rule your life.  Set aside time in your date book for social events one or two times a week and commit to them as you would to any other project.

Definitely do lunch

Deprive your body of food and it will break down on you under pressure. At least have some soup or grab a slice of pizza on the go. Also buy low fat snacks such as yoghurt that you can munch on to keep energy up throughout the day.

Take mini time outs

Tension can build up quickly so take two or three minutes every hour or two to relax. Get up, walk around, take deep breaths or chat with co-worker. People who take breaks are more productive at work and more satisfied with their jobs.

Get a chance of scenery

During lunch break, visit a park, walk around the block to recharge and take your mind off work.

Remind yourself who you are outside of your job

Hang family photos, postcards or seashells from your last trip to the beach by your desk. Work is only part of who you are, not all of who you are.

Learn to say No

Women often have trouble setting limits because they don’t like to disappoint people who count on them. Are you taking more than you can handle? Are your deadlines realistic? Trust your intuition. If you almost never make it to yoga class, maybe you don’t think you are worth the time. Try to put yourself first and don’t reply to emails at late hours. Make sure you get out the door for some time.

Ask for help

You may want to do everything yourself, but delegating will save you time in the end. The smartest way to oversee a project: outline responsibilities, set deadlines and schedule periodic updates.

Work smarter - not harder

If you regularly work longer hours than your co-workers, you may not be using your time wisely. Streamline tasks that stress you the most. Then, promise yourself that you’ll leave the office every day at a certain time or complete a project by a specific deadline and do the best you can with the time you have.

Make plans to leave work

Stop working 30 minutes before you really want to get out of office. Use that time to organize your desk, go over what you accomplished and create a to-do list for the next day.

Don’t strive for perfection

At a certain point, you have to let a project go, even if it’s not exactly what you wanted. The time and energy you’d have to invest to take it from 85% to absolutely perfect is not always worth it. Once you accept you can’t be the best every time, it takes a lot of pressure off.

This seems to be a silly question!

Our school teachers had already taught us vowels. However, what the teachers failed to explain us was it’s never about vowels, it’s all about phonetics.

Let us understand it in this way:

“an hour”, Here, we use an before hour because it sounds like OUR where O is a vowel.

So are there some exceptions to put “AN” before words starting with vowels?

I bet there are…

A User - (Sounds Yu-zer, Y is not a vowel)

A Eulogy (Sounds Yu-Logy)

A Union (Sounds Yun-Nian)

A University (Sounds Yu-Niversity)

Let me know if you find more of these words.

Refreshing the desktop is perhaps the biggest computer myth among all Windows users.

I have seen several computer users around me doing tons of refreshes thinking that they are speeding up the process.

It’s not known who first discovered this remarkably worthless trick and what he achieved from it, but it just spread.

Most new users learn this trick from other new users without caring to know what it does.

Some do it devotedly just because others do it, while some others have various weird explanations for it.

A few of them assume that it refreshes the RAM, while some others believe that doing it will somehow keep their PCs running smooth and easy.

Time to throw some light on it.

What does a desktop refresh actually do?

Refreshing the desktop simply redraws the icons on the desktop. That’s it!

It does not:

• Refresh the RAM
• Clean the PC

This means while your computer is busy with something you are just giving it something else do with something that is already going on. Instead of making things fast, you are delaying the processing as now it also needs to re-draw the whole display.

Refreshing the desktop has absolutely no effect on the working or performance of the computer.

So why is the tool there?

Sometimes when you bring some changes to the desktop icons, the change doesn’t get reflected instantly. In such cases, refreshing the desktop becomes necessary to bring the change to effect.

This is what refresh is for. It is to re-display the desktop. Refresh has the very same function when done in Explorer.

Lots of people in the IT world write reasonably well for an audience of their peers. However, writing technical stuff requires specialized sets of skills.

These specialized sets of skills are:

Communicate, Translate, Redesign user interface, High-quality documentation, Thinking from user’s perspective, Test the product, Holistic view of a product, work faster.

A technical writer:

1. Helps communicate without any kind of ambiguity.

2. Translates between the developer’s jargon and the simpler language the product’s users require.

3. [Like me] can also help redesign a product’s user interface to reduce the need for documentation.

4. Drafts High-quality documentation that helps reduce calls to the technical-support department of the company.

5. Begins by thinking from the user’s perspective, not the designer’s perspective. Thus, can explain better how end users can reach their goals.

6. Tests the product while documenting to learn how it really works. Whilst doing so, the technical writer may often discover bugs or usability issues.

7. Develop a more holistic view of a product than is possible for its developers, who must focus intensely on their own small parts of the product.

8. Creates documentation faster than the product’s developers.

October 10, 2008

A resume should be laid out in a simple and attractive manner. It should present the relevant information in clear and concise language. This definitely gives you the edge over those candidates who force the reader to sift through several pages to find the same information.

Keep the resume one page and at the most two pages. DO NOT keep it in between i.e. one and a half pages. It should either be one full page or two full pages. After the French word résumé means summary so keep it brief.

Always remember that the person reading your resume is busy. The reader is only interested in knowing what can you offer/do at the moment for their company.

The resume is actually a Marketing Brochure that allows sell a fine product - You.

Use it to propel yourself. Start each statement with an active verb that indicates your actual role.

Place the contact information right at the top of your resume, including the telephone numbers where you can readily accept calls during work hours.

Do not label it “resume” or curriculum vitae. An employer obviously recognizes it whilst reading.

The resume should clear indicate:

What you want to do

What you’re really good at doing

Use a clear font such as Times New Roman or Arial, 12-point or larger.

Be consistent in your use of boldface, underline, or italics to help lead the reader through the document.

A resume usually goes through several drafts before it begins to reflect clearly the multidimensional individual on a piece of paper. Be grammatically correct, use spell check, and have someone else proofread your resume carefully.

Ensure that you place the details of your last 4 to 6 assignments/projects in the resume. If you’ve done multiple jobs for one client, list each of them. This shows that they liked your work and wanted to use you for multiple jobs.

List the most recent projects first and work back.

Don’t ever insert “References on request.” It is advisable to provide your list of references later, when requested, on a separate sheet with their contact information.

Never ever disclose salary information in the resume or cover letter. If your pay has been generally low, the potential employer may be influenced by that fact and make you a “lowball” offer. Let the employer make an offer. This empowers you to then counteroffer for a higher salary.

Your resume should be printed on one side of extremely good quality bond paper that will stand out from all of the other papers on a desk.

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