How to Develop Analytical Skills

In our day to day life whether official, personal or social, we have to deal with complications. Some situations are easy to handle with but other are complex which snatch the peace of mind because our brain gets stuck on how best to handle such state of affair. This is where our Analytical Skills help us.

 The prime purpose for the Analysis of any given situation is to get to know the root cause(s) of the issue, to forecast the impact & to plan corrective/preventive actions strategy. So basically analytical skill is to visualize a given situation, task, project or issue from several angles in order to breakdown it into smaller steps.



Below are different situations where our analytical skills are required. I shall give advices in each category accordingly:



1) When Summarizing Large Amount of Data: In this situation, I highly recommend using Pivot Tables feature of MS Excel in order to generate reports. The Pivot Reports feature allows us playing with the data in several ways to generate multi dimensional reports. We can breakdown large amount of data in different sheets to apply Pivot Reports separately as well. Youtube is a very good source of videos for learning this skill. Pivot table can also generate reports for Trends & Forecast in two to three dimensions.



2) When Resolving Conflicts in Office: In this case, listen to all parties which are having difference of opinion. List down the positive & negative input factors & after-effects based on feedback from individuals. Make it in tabular format & review this with your manager to see which one is the best option to go for. Then call for a meeting to elaborate the overall picture based on your fair analysis & convince personnel for the option which is in the best interest of the company.



3) When Being Assigned a large project: in this case you need to make a high level agenda (High Level Project Deliverables) & then start working on WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) & then assign each task to relevant resource. While making WBS you can have a meeting with your Team Leads & other stake holders. You can consider Fishbone diagram to analyze the inputs of any task.



4) When Resolving a Technical issue: The advice here is to consult the product guide to see the possible root causes, consult the SME (Subject Matter Expert) for opinion or consult the Lesson Learnt Register. For all kind of issues resolutions, I always recommend two things. First is to take corrective action to fix the issue, Second to take Preventive Action (fix the root cause permanently) so that the issues does not keep on popping. Six Sigma's DMAIC is recommended way for analyzing & improving. You want to learn Six Sigma, get an introduction from Google.



5) When purchasing something: Let us take the example of mobile phone. When you want to purchase a new mobile you need to ask yourself: do I need touch screen, do I need wifi, do I really need to purchase new mobile, what is my budget? Do I need 5MP camera, do I need iphone or Android, and do I need 4 inch screen or less? What other specs do I need to consider. So basically you are analyzing your demands to come up with the right mobile which is to be purchased.



6) When handling family conflicts: Being a sensitive subject, this is something where you need much more than analytical skills; For each family member involved in the conflict, you have to have sense of feelings, emotions study, stress absorption power, age factor, relationship level & convincing power so in my opinion this is the most difficult part of practicing your analytical skills. You have to consistently guide everyone about 'forgive & forget' policy. You have to calmly listen to each party & take adequate time to analyze all aspects (as mentioned a couple of lines back) vigilantly before concluding something on the brawl.



Conclusion: Analytical skills can make your life easier in almost all aspects of decision making or problem solving; however, it's not only the matter of considering all the options & the inputs, its matter of considering the weight of each option as well. For example, for a given situation you have two options having equal number of advantages or disadvantages so in order to conclude in such situation you have to consider the weight of each option. While doing your analysis you might want to consider the difference between Urgent & Important things.



Develop & sharpen your analytical skills to take steps for reducing stress in your life consequently to ensure peace of mind. - FA

10 Self Improvement Activities

These self improvement activities will help you become more productive, get into the positive state of mind and achieve better quality of life.

In this article you will also find out how to use your energy effectively, what is the quickest way to achieve personal growth and how to excel in every activity.

1st Self Improvement Activity: Use your energy on important things

If you want to succeed in life, you should not waste your energy on activities that do not bring any benefits.

Such useless activities include surfing the Internet without any purpose, watching TV, worrying and wasting money.

When you are involved in such activities, you have no or little energy left for activities that can create a better future. It is worth prioritising and accomplishing important tasks first, and then if you still have enough energy, you may decide to do the unimportant.

2nd Self Improvement Activity: Focus on one task at a time

If you want to get perfect results, you should only concentrate on one activity. This way all your energy will go into it and you will accomplish it perfectly.

If you waste your energy on several things at the same time, you will get average results because you will divide your energy between the activities.

3rd Self Improvement Activity: Control your thinking

To avoid chaos in your mind resulting in chaos in the outside world, you should try to observe your thoughts. Once you start doing that, you will notice how many negative thoughts you get daily.

By observing negative thinking you will be able to emotionally disengage from it. As a result, negative thinking will affect you less and you will notice that your days are getting more peaceful and positive.

4th Self Improvement Activity: Get organised

When you live in an organised manner, you do not suffer from stress and your life is peaceful and balanced.

To start living this way, you should start planning your day in advance. This will eliminate any stress caused by being late to a meeting or forgetting to complete some task.

You should also live in tidiness because by keeping your home clean you also keep your mental state clear and peaceful. Such mental state will benefit you in many ways, including improved memory and less negativity.

5th Self Improvement Activity: Live in the present


Although this self improvement activity may seem strange to you, it is a very important activity that many ignore. The majority of people do not live in the present. They either dwell on their past or daydream about the future. They seem to forget the most important time of all - the present.

You should enjoy every present moment because your current state of mind always manifests in the outside world, creating your future accordingly.

Therefore if your main mood is very positive, you will experience only happy days. However, if you dwell on negative thoughts, you are sure to encounter many obstacles and misfortunes in the present and days to come.

6th Self Improvement Activity: Complete each task in a perfect manner

Whenever you are working on some project, try to accomplish it in the best way possible. Always ask yourself 'Is this project turned out as perfect as it could possibly be?' If the answer is no, try to correct or add something to it until there is nothing that you can improve.

This way you will make sure that each single task you accomplish is done in an excellent manner. By doing this you will create successful future because you cannot possibly fail if you only get perfect results.

Also, when you entirely focus on one task excluding everything else, you will notice that you start enjoying the task. If you concentrate on the task but still do not enjoy it, that means that you probably see the task as a means to an end rather than the process.

You should start focusing on the process itself to find enjoyment in the task. Such enjoyment will fuel motivation and you will accomplish everything quicker and better.

If you enjoy your work, you will put only positive energy into it. As a result, your completed tasks will bring you success.

7th Self Improvement Activity: Challenge yourself

Nothing develops you more than challenges. Challenges force you to shift your comfort zone, experience new situations and make you grow. Without challenges life would be very boring and depressing.

Challenges are necessary for every human being who is seeking quality life. Only through trial and error you realise who you really are, which activities you like and what preferences you have.

You can easily measure the success of a person by the amount of challenges s/he had.

8th Self Improvement Activity: Read personal development books

There is nothing more important than searching information about self improvement. Without reading any self improvement books or articles you cannot improve yourself.

9th Self Improvement Activity: Socialize only with positive people

Positive people can inspire, empower and make you happy. It is so much worth to be at least once in a while with positive people rather than constantly spend time with negative friends or relatives.

If you spend your days with, for example, lazy people, you may notice that you are becoming lazy.

If all your friends' main qualities are negative, try to avoid all of them. This way you will not be affected in a negative way and after some time will start attracting positive people.

10th Self Improvement Activity: Exercise


Daily exercise develops determination, focus and patience. It improves your health and strengthens your body. It makes you more active, positive and invincible.

People who exercise every day are always perceived as strong-willed and disciplined.

Conclusion

These personal improvement activities are sure to put you on the track to success. I hope that you will apply the steps in this article and, as a result, will greatly improve the quality of your life

How To Build Trust in Relationships

Firstly let us understand what Trust is.



Trust is the permanent certainty and confident expectation from someone for something. Lack of trust might lead to shattered relations so Trust is the most critical ingredient for strong relationship; the relation which can either be between Husband-Wife, Boss-Employee, Father-Son, Brother-Sister, Supplier-Customer and so on.

Here are some recommended 'behaviors' which you need to demonstrate in order to develop trust.

1- Being Responsible: ensure you are performing your day-to-day responsibilities and meeting the short-term and long term expectations by your dependants.

2- Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen: God has given you two ears and one tongue so you listen more and speak less. Effective Listening is a skill; develop this habit. Google it today and learn.

3- Being Truthful: Be honest and fair. Don't deceive someone. Remember the fact that building trust is tough but it takes seconds to have scratches-in-the-jewel which usually is very hard to recover.

4- Keeping Promises: your promise is your commitment with someone to do something, so don't break at any cost. In case you couldn't meet your promise, there is always a door for dialogue for re-consideration of things. In case of dialogues be fair, be truthful and be open. Confess the short comings on your end.

5- Consistent Behavior: the ever changing attitude is an indication of your non-predictive personality which is an anti-trust drive. So be consistent in what you speak and what you do.

6- Apologizing Behavior: Sorry is the best medicine in healing relationship complications.

In fact, Sorry and Thanks are the two golden words

Use them often and you will see massive improvements in your daily life.

Top 10 Productivity Tips

Hard work is old school. Smart work is where  most productive friends to see how they get it right. Make the shift from hard to smart with our top 10 productivity tips.
1. Stop multi-tasking

Maybe you havent read the news yet, so wel tell you “ multi-tasking is six feet under. Its been given the last rights, buried and mourned. The idea that you can focus on more than one thing at a time and be even remotely efficient has been exposed for the BS myth it is. If you want to be productive then the first thing you want to do is FOCUS “ on one thing at a time.
2. Make Lists

Keeping track of the things you want to accomplish is way less painful when you make lists for daily, weekly and monthly tasks. Plus its so satisfying when you cross things off!
3. Get out of your InBox

How many hours do you waste every week with those ˜quick email checks that end up as hour-long black holes of ˜correspondence? Set specific times each day for checking emails, and give yourself a limit to how long youl spend each time. Every email should fall into one of three categories:
a. delete immediately
b. quick response (under 5 minutes)
c. deal with later.
*Category C should make up a tiny fraction of your emails. Deal with them at the end of your work day and get them out of your InBox before the days end.
4. Take breaks

Schedule specific breaks for yourself and stick to them. Giving yourself 10 minutes every 1.5 hours to stretch, go outside or do anything that is NOT work will give you a little brain-n-body boost.
5. Quit the chit-chat

Social hour is social hour, whether its virtual or at the local bar. Skype, Messenger, Twitter, Facebook or anything that rings, bleeps, pops, buzzes or tweets should be turned off if you want even a modicum of productive time.
6. Prioritize

What are the most important things you need to get done today, this week, this month? Do them first, when your energy is fresh. Fussing with details that dont take much brain power wastes time when youre feeling chipper. Leave those little things for times when you only have little bits of energy or focus.
7. Rise-n-Shine (early!)

When you start your day early you give yourself more time to get things done. But theres more! Once you get going (as in: out of bed), you tend to have more energy than if you slept in. (But hey, if youre aiming for ˜groggy and unmotivated then by all means, stay in bed til noon!)
8. Clear the Slate (or desk)

Make sure your work space is clear of unnecessary clutter “ and this includes your computer desk top. A cluttered space is no friend to an organized and focused mind.
9. Schedule it

Appointments, work time, fun time. Not that we want you to marry your day planner or anything, but making a basic daily, weekly and monthly schedule that balances work and play helps keep your whole life in balance.
10. File it away

When a task or project is complete, put it where it belongs. Get it out of sight and out of mind so you can focus on the next task at hand (see #8 if you dont believe us).

So there you have it “ Top 10 Productivity Tips. We know theres plenty more so now its your turn.

Deadly Sins of Negative Thinking

"The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emotions that are stronger and more powerful."

Life could be so much better for many people, if they would just spot their negative thinking habits and replace them with positive ones.

Negative thinking, in all its many-splendored forms, has a way of creeping into conversations and our thinking without our noticing
them. The key to success, in my humble opinion, is learning to spot these thoughts and squash them like little bugs. Then replace them
with positive ones. You'll notice a huge difference in everything you do.

Let's take a look at common ways that negative thinking emerges get good at spotting these patterns, and practice replacing them with
positive thinking patterns. It has made all the difference in the world for me.

The Deadly Sins of Negative Thinking

1. I will be happy once I have _____ (or once I earn X).

Problem: If you think you can't be happy until you reach a certain point, or until you reach a certain income, or have a certain type of
house or car or computer setup, you'll never be happy. That elusive goal is always just out of reach. Once we reach those goals, we are
not satisfied we want more.

Solution: Learn to be happy with what you have, where you are, and who you are, right at this moment. Happiness doesn't have to be some state
that we want to get to eventually it can be found right now. Learn to count your blessings, and see the positive in your situation. This
might sound simplistic, but it works.

2. I wish I were as ____ as (a celebrity, friend, co-worker).

Problem: We'll never be as pretty, as talented, as rich, as sculpted, as cool, as everyone else. There will always be someone better, if you
look hard enough. Therefore, if we compare ourselves to others like this, we will always pale, and will always fail, and will always feel
bad about ourselves. This is no way to be happy.

Solution: Stop comparing yourself to others, and look instead at yourself what are your strengths, your accomplishments, your
successes, however small? What do you love about yourself? Learn to love who you are, right now, not who you want to become. There is good
in each of us, love in each of us, and a wonderful human spirit in every one of us.

3. Seeing others becoming successful makes me jealous and resentful.

Problem: First, this assumes that only a small number of people can be
successful. In truth, many, many people can be successful in
different ways.

Solution: Learn to admire the success of others, and learn from it, and be happy for them, by empathizing with them and understanding what
it must be like to be them. And then turn away from them, and look at yourself you can be successful too, in whatever you choose to do.
And even more, you already are successful. Look not at those above you in the social ladder, but those below you there are always millions
of people worse off than you, people who couldn't even read this article or afford a computer. In that light, you are a huge success.

4. I am a miserable failure I can't seem to do anything right.

Problem: Everyone is a failure, if you look at it in certain ways. Everyone has failed, many times, at different things. I have certainly
failed so many times I cannot count them and I continue to fail, daily. However, looking at your failures as failures only makes you
feel bad about yourself. By thinking in this way, we will have a negative self-image and never move on from here.

Solution: See your successes and ignore your failures. Look back on your life, in the last month, or year, or 5 years. And try to remember
your successes. If you have trouble with this, start documenting them keep a success journal, either in a notebook or online. Document
your success each day, or each week. When you look back at what you've accomplished, over a year, you will be amazed. It's an incredibly
positive feeling.

5. I'm going to beat so-and-so no matter what I'm better than him. There's no way I'll help him succeed he might beat me.

Problem: Competitiveness assumes that there is a small amount of gold to be had, and I need to get it before he does. It makes us into
greedy, back-stabbing, hurtful people. We try to claw our way over people to get to success, because of our competitive feelings. For
example, if a blogger wants to have more subscribers than another blogger, he may never link to or mention that other blogger. However,
who is to say that my subscribers can't also be yours? People can read and subscribe to more than one blog.

Solution: Learn to see success as something that can be shared, and learn that if we help each other out, we can each have a better chance
to be successful. Two people working towards a common goal are better than two people trying to beat each other up to get to that goal.
There is more than enough success to go around. Learn to think in terms of abundance rather than scarcity.

6. Dammit! Why do these bad things always happen to me?

Problem: Bad things happen to everybody. If we dwell on them, they will frustrate us and bring us down.

Solution: See bad things as a part of the ebb and flow of life. Suffering is a part of the human condition but it passes. All pain
goes away, eventually. Meanwhile, don't let it hold you back. Don't dwell on bad things, but look forward towards something good in your
future. And learn to take the bad things in stride, and learn from them. Bad things are actually opportunities to grow and learn and get
stronger, in disguise.

7. You can't do anything right! Why can't you be like ____ ?

Problem: This can be said to your child or your subordinate or your sibling. The problem? Comparing two people, first of all, is always a
fallacy. People are different, with different ways of doing things, different strengths and weaknesses, different human characteristics.
If we were all the same, we'd be robots. Second, saying negative things like this to another person never helps the situation. It might
make you feel better, and more powerful, but in truth, it hurts your relationship, it will actually make you feel negative, and it will
certainly make the other person feel negative and more likely to continue negative behavior. Everyone loses.

Solution: Take the mistakes or bad behavior of others as an opportunity to teach. Show them how to do something. Second, praise
them for their positive behavior, and encourage their success. Last, and most important, love them for who they are, and celebrate their
differences.

8. Your work sucks. It's super lame. You are a moron and I hope you never reproduce.

Problem: I've actually gotten this comment before. It feels wonderful. However, let's look at it not from the perspective of the person
receiving this kind of comment but from the perspective of the person giving it. How does saying something negative like this help you? I
guess it might feel good to vent if you feel like your time has been wasted. But really, how much of your time has been wasted? A few
minutes? And whose fault is that? The bloggers or yours? In truth, making negative comments just keeps you in a negative mindset. It's
also not a good way to make friends.

Solution: Learn to offer constructive solutions, first of all. Instead of telling someone their blog sucks, or that a post is lame, offer
some specific suggestions for improvement. Help them get better. If you are going to take the time to make a comment, make it worth your
time. Second, learn to interact with people in a more positive way it makes others feel good and it makes you feel better about yourself.
And you can make some great friends this way. That's a good thing.

9. Insulting People Back

Problem: If someone insults you or angers you in some way, insulting them back and continuing your anger only transfers their problem to
you. This person was probably having a bad day (or a bad year) and took it out on you for some reason. If you reciprocate, you are now
having a bad day too. His problem has become yours. Not only that, but the cycle of insults can get worse and worse until it results in
violence or other negative consequences for both of you.

Solution: Let the insults or negative comments of others slide off you like Teflon. Don't let their problem become yours. In fact, try to
understand their problem more why would someone say something like that? What problems are they going through? Having a little empathy
for someone not only makes you understand that their comment is not about you, but it can make you feel and act in a positive manner
towards them and make you feel better about yourself in the process.

10. I don't think I can do this I don't have enough discipline. Maybe some other time.

Problem: If you don't think you can do something, you probably won't. Especially for the big stuff. Discipline has nothing to do with it
motivation and focus has everything to do with it.  If you put stuff off for "some other time", you'll never get it done. Negative
thinking like this inhibits us from accomplishing anything.

Solution: Turn your thinking around: you can do this! You don't need discipline. Find ways to make yourself a success at your goal. If you
fail, learn from your mistakes, and try again. Instead of putting a goal off for later, start now. Focus on one goal at a time,
putting all of your energy into it, and getting as much help from others as you can.

You can really move mountains if you start with positive thinking.