Watch the clip above to see Staffan Noteberg’s talk about Pomodoro technique – a perfect way to eliminate procrastination and increase productivity at work.

Here’s the synopsis of Noteberg’s talk about the famous Italian timeboxing method:

“You have so much you need to accomplish today. Your list is a mile long and you find yourself getting interrupted every other minute. You’d like to tell everyone to leave you alone, but most of the interruptions are coming from you! You think of a phone call you need to make or a web site you need to check and before you know it you’re answering email, checking twitter, and finding a million other things to occupy your time.

You need to focus – really focus.

The Pomodoro Technique puts you back in charge of your day. You’ll apply successful techniques from software engineering to identify what you should be doing today and to help you achieve your goals. Your mind won’t wander when it is fully engaged in short bursts of focused activity.”

Source: Parleys.com

Learn to work less and accomplish more using nothing more than paper, pencil, and a simple kitchen timer.

If you’re new about Pomodoro technique – read more about it here.

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One thing is certain: the most effective and successful people are experts in time management and they have the same number of hours in the day as you do. So time management has nothing to do with magically expanding time to suit your needs, but of using it effectively. It is a question of self-management rather than time-management.

Here are some tips on utilizing your time effectively:

1. Identify what is really important in your life and build your activities and goals around these big rocks. Having clear Core Values will avoid decision paralysis.
2. Identify what are your time wasters: how much time do you spend watching TV? How many activities do you do that can be delegated to others? Do you live in a cluttered environment that drains your energy? Which activities can you eliminate without any particularly important repercussions? How much time do you spend worrying over things that are not within your circle of influence?
3. Eliminate procrastination. Just stop it plain and simple. Identify why you are procrastinating and challenge your assumptions. Are you a perfectionist?- learn how to manage it. Do you create a huge To Do list that’s impossible to go through? – cut out on the list. Do you feel overwhelmed with some large tasks? – chunk them down in smaller activities… and just DO it.
4. Use a planning system such as a To Do list everyday. Having a To Do list will help you to focus on the Big Rocks of life especially if you prioritize well.
5. Plan the hardest task and DO IT the first thing so that you get over the hardest task early on when you have high energy levels- in other words, as they say: eat your frog.
6. Learn to time activities correctly. I find that people who are not outstanding achievers generally lack the ability to time activities effectively. If you do not time activities effectively you will find yourself sliding off your schedule and missing out on important activities.
7. Focus on the task at hand. Do not start doing many things at the same time. Chunk big jobs into smaller ones, focus on the particular task, get it done and then move on. And please – do not give me the multi tasking excuse. Yes you can multi-task but you have to be focused on the task at hand.
8. Do not handle an activity twice when you can finish it in one sequence. E.g unless you are sure you can take the time to answer an email or a letter right away- do not open it.
9. Give a strict time frame to meetings or activities. Make sure you come out with clear actions from the meeting as otherwise it is just a waste of time.
10. Drop tasks that you do not need to do or those which are of no benefit. Learn to delegate effectively. Make sure that you delegate to people who have the knowledge and skills and delegate a task completely. Offer help if required but don’t breath down people’s necks.
11. Avoid being distracted by requests or telephones during activities which you need to focus on intensively. Give clear instructions that you are not to be disturbed unless the office is on fire.
12. Never leave the scene of a situation that requires a decision without taking a specific action. Taking an action right away will ensure you save time in the future. If you keep procrastinating on an action you need to take it will come back to you with a vengeance and you will waste more time trying to solve the repercussions.

To receive a FREE Report that provides information on the 10 Vital Keys to Life Success and other resources visit http://www.insightzonecoach.com or http://www.insightzonecoach.com/blog.

Reggie Aquilina is the Founder of Insight Zone Academy. He is a Life Coach and works in the field of Adult Learning and Development. He is actively involved in providing e-learning resources related to Life Coaching and he is the creator of the Life Coaching Home Study Course: The 10 PowerKeys Program.

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Like most forms of communications, branding of your product will only be successful if the communication process can reach the intended target audience. PowerPoint presentations can be a great way of getting your message across but whether it can be achieved or not will depend not only on the design of the slides but also the person that is presenting them.

As such it is important that research is done after all it is your brand that you want to talk about, so who better to do it then yourself. Know everything that is there to know about your brand before you go out to present and try to predict the questions that your audience might have on their mind so that you can answer them, the last thing you want to do is fumble in front of your audience as this may be perceived negatively.

You might feel a little nervous at first but try to remain focus and channel that nervousness it something more productive. As mentioned earlier no matter how well you have designed your slides, it will fail to deliver its intended message if the speaker is not capable of doing it.

No matter how long you have done this, it is advisable that you do not get over-confident with yourself. This basically means that you should practice and not take anything for granted, look through the slides and make sure that it flows well with your presentation. If you feel that there are slides to add or you want to remove them then follow your instinct, the important thing is that you are comfortable with what you are doing and is able to effectively communicate your brand.

No one is perfect but everyone is capable of improving themselves, so if you feel that your presentation is not achieving the desired objectives then take pointers from those that are successful in what they are doing and the best examples are people such as Steve Jobs and Lawrence Lessig. Without a doubt you can find videos upon videos of the people mentioned earlier, so your job right now is to study them, see how they present their brand to the masses, once you have done that then take your time to digest it and create a distinct presentation style of your own. After all they must be doing something right if their brands are one of the most recognizable images in the world.

If you are unsure whether your presentation slides are doing what it’s supposed to then what you can do is test it out first. Obviously the people you choose should not be connected to you in anyway, what you want are feedback to see whether your brand has been successful in being communicated to them. If not then it is back to the drawing boards to think of a new strategy or rather back to the computer to create better slides or improve on the original ones. However if you feel that what you have can be used then take them to the clients and present to them your brand and make it a memorable one.

Picture courtesy of cloneofsnake

Danny Lau is a freelance writer who covers myriad topics including finance and careers. He’s currently a guest contributor for Mindshortcut.

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The tools that you need to create effective PowerPoint presentation slides is all located within the application itself. So your job is to figure out which tools will benefit you the most, here are some simple steps which you can follow to achieve your objective.

Keeping your power point slides to a manageable size is a good idea as you will be able to edit and run the slides smoothly during your presentation. The last thing you want is for the slides to hang in the middle of a presentation or a meeting. You can avoid such problems from occurring by using smaller sized picture, compressing large file types and using features that you can originally find in the PowerPoint applications such as charts and diagrams.

Other feature that you can benefit from is the “align or distribute” tool which can be used to arrange the items in your slides. With just a click you can achieve this and you won’t have to go through the hassle of nudging the objects until you tire your eyes. This particular tool can be selected from the “draw” menu. Besides this you can also use the ‘guides’ to space and align the objects, the guides can be utilized to measure the distance as well as maintain the position of the elements across multiple slides.

Should you desire greater accuracy in what you are seeing then you can use the zoom function. Just select the object which you intend to zoom on before changing the settings on the Standard toolbar, this step will help you eliminate the process of trial and error.

If you are sending the presentation slides through email and want the recipient of the slides to see to what you want them to see, then you can try to save it as a Slide Show. So when your recipient receives the file it will automatically open in slide show view. To do this you will need to go to “file” and click on “save as”; here click on the PowerPoint show. Another great way to save time and stress is to package your presentation slides onto a CD (a feature which can also be found on the PowerPoint application).

Here you will be able to run the presentation including all the linked files for any recipient that has a copy of the CD, besides this another great feature is that even though the recipient’s computer does not have PowerPoint it will still be able to run the slides.

Using Masters can help you save time and maintain a consistency throughout your slides. You can achieve this by placing the intended elements on the Slide Master, which will result in it being automatically appeared on the slide layouts. However if you wish to hide certain elements from certain slides you can still do so. Making your slides consistent is a great way to promoting your brand or logo as your clients or audience member will be able to recognize it after the first few slides (but make sure you have something that is worth remembering).

Picture courtesy of dantaylor

Danny Lau is a freelance writer who covers myriad topics including finance and careers. He’s currently a guest contributor for Mindshortcut.

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