Machine, Material & Environment can cause stress

 How to manage this?
3.) Machine – Do you know what is the “machine” that relates to stress? It is your own body. Your body needs exercise and substantial amount of physical activity in a daily basis in order to stay active.

It is why if you are always in the bed the whole day or sitting in front of the television the whole day. Your body feels inactive/unresponsive and then can cause a lot of stress.

Try to take care of your body. You might be surprised that if you fail to take care of this body, it can either result you to:

a. Overweight
b. Sluggish type of person
c. Slow type of person
d. Unattractive to look at.

The problems above can result to a more severe form of “machine” related stress known as “mental stress”, which is a problem deeply rooted in your mind and subconscious.

Overall recommendation: You simply need to exercise. This is not actually going to the gym, but at least either (you can select any of these depending on the applicability to your own scenario):

1.) 30 minutes daily walking (speed walking)
2.) 30 minutes of biking/cycling (high speed)
3.) 30 minutes of strenuous in-house activity like cleaning

As long as you sweat too much, it is now OK. If you do not sweat anything at all, it is a bad exercise.
4.) Material – what is this material? It is your food. If you are not wise enough in selecting appropriate foods for your body, then it can surely contribute to stress.

Why? It is because:
a. If you consistently eat high cholesterol. This can have side effects which slow down your body and increases risk of heart disease. If you reach in this stage, I am sure you are pretty stressed out.

b. If you always drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. It might feel good and advertised as stressed reliever. NO- because if you reach at the old age, you are still the same person but you might be suffering from lung related ailments that can surely be so stressing to think.

Overall recommendation: Eat a balance diet. Eat well but not eating too much. Eat as what is required for your body. You need to drink water, eat some vegetables, and drink some milk. As long as it is healthy, it is good for your body and won’t contribute to stress.
5.) Environment – this is self-explanatory. It is why a lot of persons will go on a vacation far away from their noisy, polluted and dirty work environment.

If you are living in peaceful, clean and calm surroundings, your mind is relaxed and stress free. This is very different with polluted, traffic and dirty surroundings, even as going outside for 1 hour; you feel you are getting stressed too much.

Overall Recommendations: Select your ideal home and working environment. Something which can relax you for quite a long time even you are working.

Remember this equation: Stress free = happiness.
Read more!

Simple ways for managing stress in your life- Man and Method

"Stress" is an undesirable result of working too hard or worrying too much. Even more surprising is that; even you do not work or worry too much, you still get stressed. Stress is also a result of having no work at all, as boredom might worry you much as well as periods of inactivity can make your body feel very sluggish.

So how can we manage stress? For around 5 years, I have experimented deeply on the topics of stress in actual, personal and home life. I found that stress is a result of the 4M’s and one E known as:

1.) Man
2.) Method
3.) Machine
4.) Material
5.) Environment

In each of those five factors above causing stress, also needs some sort of different approach in managing stress. Ok let’s get started:

1.) Man – your interaction with normal people can cause stress because of:

a.) Severe mismatch in personality – you might wonder why there are just some people who will simply argue or disapproved the way you handle things. This is normal because there is a severe personality mismatch. One good for another, may not be good for anyone else.

b.) Different backgrounds/work status – it is why it is hard to get along with bosses. It is because of different work status, if you hang-out or talks to your boss, every instructions or disapproval from him/her can cause a lot of stress.

c.) Different marital status – a married person behaves differently from a single. So if a married person hangs-out with a single, like in bars. Things can be difficult to handle and if forced; can cause a lot of stress.

d.) Different cultures – if it is OK for an American to just watch anything in the television. Things are different for a Muslim. So if you hang-out with persons with different cultures, it can cause a lot of stress.

Overall recommendation: You need to limit your exposure to people, it seems that in my 5 year observation, those people who are used to hangout with everyone else are often more stressed/unhappy than those persons that are simply selective in interacting with people and focusing more on quality relationships rather than “forced” relationships. You define that “relationship” not anyone else.

2.) Method – your interaction with the processes in your life

This is very complex; even as simple as how you are sitting in a chair can contribute to stress. In this case, you might change your method on how you are sitting right now, or else strain can accumulate on your backs can cause some stress.

If you are used to wash a massive amount of clothes manually, then this is stressful. So in this case, you might save some cash to buy a washing machine.

Overall recommendation: Do not just ignore of what makes you uncomfortable. What makes you uncomfortable are already causing you stress. You need to find a way to change it as early as possible before it can cause a lot of damage.

The rest of the causes and recommendations will be discussed on the next essay.
Read more!

Inspirational Quotes about Living Life to the Fullest

For me I can say that “Life is govern by people quotations and failure to understand these quotations can mean a miserable life”.

Some successful people that lives on Earth leaves some of the most important quotations particularly dealing with living life to the fullest.

We only have one life to live on this Earth, it is our duty to bring out the best in it. So if you relate a specifications to a product quality, or a musical notes to a music; quotations can relate to people.

Below are some of the best quotes I learned in life, in which principles are based upon:


1.) The ultimate of being successful is the luxury of giving yourself the time to do what you want to do- Leontyne Price

Comments:

Freedom is a universal right and luxury. By doing the things you love not dictated by anyone is already an indication that you MIGHT be successful. But if you are HAPPY with the things you do , not told by anyone (not only “love” to do) then you are really successful.

2.) There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet." William F. Halsey

Comments:
Some people say they are limited, actually NOT; if you are forced by circumstances of which you REALLY NEED TO DO, then you will become a great person. If you want to live life to the fullest, accept some challenges in your life, it can transform you to an invincible person.

3.) He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still - Lao Tzu

Comments:
Just like in a movie which relates to reality, how many times have you seen a master boss villain being successful in slaying the hero? Only RARE, so it means if you want again to live your life to the fullest extent, master your own sets of skills to the fullest and no one can defeat you except God. Be humble before Him.

4.) Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. - Lao Tzu

Comments:
Limit your needs to ACTUALLY WHAT YOU NEED. Plain and simple, if you do not need anything; it's like the whole world now belongs to you. Living life to the fullest again does not mean you need to acquire anything, mansions, cars, fame, luxurious vacations, expensive blah....NO..NO....NO NO... Just get what you REALLY need. You do not need to have anything to own everything. If you find this UNTRUE, dream yourself to be a philosopher also and see if you will become more successful and unforgettable than Lao Tzu.. NOT!
Read more!

Acquire Excellent Time Management Skills in a Work Place

Time management is one of the most difficult forms of management in the workplace. Not anyone likes or skilful in managing their time.

As a result, time lost will never comeback and these employees are either forced to work overtime or has a decreased work productivity output. The end result is high employment cost (cost due to overtime), quality is affected (tired workers doing overtime will never produce quality results), employee moral is degraded (especially if the guilt feelings due to unaccomplished or delayed tasks will accumulate over the period of time in addition to frequent nagging by the boss).

Aside from “office politics” and meetings which are the number one time wasters, any employees can carefully manage their time by following a simple, easy and universal approach to time management.

By reading this short guide, you do not need to attend time management seminars which last more than hour (again wasting your time), or any type of boring time management conferences. As simple as having PC and an Excel spreadsheet (even a notebook or any piece of paper will do), one can skillfully manage their time like a professional (not only managers are required but even a cigarette vendor in the streets can benefit in time management).

These are the steps:

Step1: Open an Excel spreadsheet or get a piece of paper (notebook is recommended).

Step2: Make a column and in that first column, write down ALL your tasks assigned to you as well as other tasks that you think you need to do. Do not limit the list according to what has been said by your boss , or to yourself or co-workers, write down ALL tasks even it includes “Checking my facebook account for updates”.
Name this first column as “Task name”.
 
Step3: Make 3 columns besides task name, name it as “IMPORTANCE”, “URGENCY”, “JOB PERFORMANCE RELEVANCE”.

It should look like below:


Step4: Assign ratings to IMPORTANCE, URGENCY AND JOB PERFORMANCE RELEVANCE columns according to this rule:

Importance column rating;
1- No importance (no relation to company goals)
2- Moderate importance (attainment of other department goals but not your own department)
3- High Importance (attainment of your own department goals)

Urgency column rating:
1 – Deadline is set next month or no deadline
2 – With deadlines set tomorrow or next week
3 – Deadline is today

Job performance relevance rating:
1 – Not related at all to your job description.
2 – Job description and responsibilties assigned to you but not stated in your original employment contract.
3 – Direct job description and responsibilities stated in your employment contract.

Step5: Multiply them altogether like the one shown in the above screenshot. The result total is the overall score.

Step6. Do things first with the highest score and in the decreasing order.

So this means that in the above screenshot, a person should be making yield reports first, followed by defect analysis, attending meetings and finally checking facebook updates when all important/urgent/high related jobs are done already. But if you asked; how come QA meetings deadline is today but the person is doing defect analysis which is next months deadline?

Answer: The fact that you can say NO to any meetings. Just say NO and tell them you have other important tasks to do first. Not a partly yes or no answer.

Sadly, if you are a manager reading this guide, you will observed that not even one of your employees are doing this. Bear in mind that low productivity can also reflect managers performance so teach this guide to your employees and implement strictly as possible.

Read more!

Training needs Analysis methodology–Successful job performance

If you have a lot of new and old employees and you are expecting the best performance from them, one of the answers is TRAINING. Do not expect them to perform well if you have not trained them COMPLETELY by your department pertaining to the job she/he needs to do.

Training is not always the answer for better job and productivity performances as well as helping employees attain company goals/objectives. In this case, you need to do training need analysis. In this analysis you need to do some sort of interviews, surveys and examination on your employees pertaining to these following core areas:

1.) Job performance problem
2.) Level of technology used by your company preventing them to be efficient and productive on their job.
3.) Issues on company policies affecting their work and needs.

Training needs analysis is an important step that you should do before conducting any types of training methods effective for your employees. The following illustrates the methodology and analysis result summary of sample training needs analysis:

Job Performance Problem:

Job Title: Manufacturing Engineers
Average number of years working in the company: 2
Number of engineers examined: 6
Job performance problem – According to series of test conducted, the company engineers appears to be seriously lacking in knowledge pertaining to this key areas:

1.) Mastery in MS Excel.
2.) Lacking mastery in statistical analysis.
3.) Problems managing his time on a daily basis.
4.) Slow in creating yield reports using MS PowerPoint.

Level of Technology used:

It is also revealed that:
1.) The company purchased advanced software for engineering analysis and statistical computation but the engineer does not know how to use it properly.
2.) The engineers supposed to be working closely with manufacturing technicians. However, since they do not know how to operate the machines, they can hardly suggest for better ways to improve operator/technician performance.

Issues on company policies affecting their work and needs

Company policies are also affecting manufacturing engineers to perform their job properly such as:

1.) Frequent work overtimes and even engineers are force to work overtime on a daily basis.
2.) Several reported violations on company policies by the engineers; it means that they have not completely understood the company handbook.

The above are sample summary of the overall training needs and result analysis. By having this set of data are important because it can help your employees to be successful in their job. Now determine if those problems can be answered by training the employees or suggest other ways to resolve their issues (such as a company policy change).

Important note on the above methods: Instead of providing questionnaire and letting them answer the training needs analysis, it would be much better if you spend time actually evaluating their job performance rather than providing a questionnaire. Sometimes employees will not tell the truth and may not be willing to be trained. It is management responsibility to find the most accurate method in assessing a training needs analysis that actually reflects job performance.
Read more!