While exercise and work performance might seem unrelated, several studies have actually proved that physical activity can improve concentration and productivity. People who exercise on a constant basis work better with their co-workers and have fewer medical and health-related expenses. There’s no better way to refresh your thoughts and clear your mind than by exercising. By taking time out of your day you really do work more effectively and more efficiently.

Exercise helps not only the body, but the brain as well. It has a major impact on the nervous system, increasing the production of serotonin and dopamine. This means that exercise influences your mood and feelings, helping you perform better and think more clearly. Physical activities increase blood flow and improve concentration, making you feel better able to solve problems and make complex decisions.

Studies have shown that about $130 billion a year in health care costs are related to inactivity and weight problems. For this reason, increasingly companies are putting fitness facilities in their corporate headquarters, encouraging people to exercise. In addition to improving work performance, daily activity helps employees work better together and feel more motivated to accomplish their professional goals.

There are many ways to increase motivation and productivity in the workplace. Exercise is one of the best options because it affects not only your health condition, but also your mood and your efficiency at work. More than that, physical activity keeps your body strong and fit, regulates the circadian rhythm and endocrine function, increases quality of sleep and improves brain function. Exercising is also an excellent way to reduce stress and to feel better about yourself. If the company you work for offers onsite exercise facilities, start using them as soon as possible. Taking time to exercise could be the key to an accomplished professional and personal life.

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Outsourcing has become a popular option in every business and every industry – because the service can offer huge rewards when used effectively. The use of a professional team of workers beyond standard company employees can significantly increase business productivity and potential profits. However, many companies are afraid of the potential problems that might arise should they take outsourcers on. Here’s how you can get around any problems you might face and make the most of outsourcing!

Language Barriers: Many businesses outsource their customer service and call center operations to foreign countries. However, some outsourcing companies cannot promise workers with an excellent vocabulary or understanding of the client speaking language. This causes delays and unhappy customers. A solution is to restrict outsourced projects to companies that will guarantee an excellent command of your required spoken language, before signing a written contract. Many of these are in fact available and can offer fluent and native speakers.

Specialized Training: Companies that outsource help desk support services require a strong foundation and understanding of their specific software or hardware packages. Finding an outsourcing company that can provide this training for their employees is sometimes difficult. A solution is to provide web video conference training to outsourcing companies that have issues with learning new hardware or software – however, many of the best outsourcing firms will be able to provide a comprehensive portfolio of abilities.

Time Zone Differences: Companies with Western offices that outsource their work to Eastern countries must consider time zone differences. Choosing an outsourcing company that cannot meet required operating hours is harmful to business. A solution is to analyze the time commitment and availability of a contracted outsource firm to be sure that it meets the time constraints of your company. A firm which truly wants to serve the needs of your business will ensure that it can hit targets.

Effective Management: Outsourcing work requires a high level of quality management. The outsourcing company may not understand or operate their management of employees correctly. An easy solution is to ensure that you give detailed, specific instructions and request that outsourced workers explain what they will be doing to confirm understanding and agreement on tasks. For more in depth cross-management, you can provide management training and insist on tough company polices for outsourcing managers. This ensures that the work will be supervised and completed correctly and accurately.

By using simple techniques like these you can ensure that outsourcing is both efficient and effective – the better to inspire your business!

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One of the skills that is useful in life when it comes to managing your time properly is recognizing when to do something right away, and when it should be done later. An excellent tool for doing this on the internet is called Read It Later, a Firefox plug-in (and iPhone app) that allows you to archive sites for later reading.

When you come across a site that you know contains information that you need, but you are in the middle of another project, it is best to come back to that site at a later time. This is because switching from one task to another slows you down and when you switch tasks part of your mind is still focused on the previous task, so you work less productively. This is why it is better to focus on one project until you are done with it, before moving onto another task.

Normally saving sites to be read later can be somewhat awkward as you pile up potentially useful links. Bookmarks and tabs can build up fast and you can lose track of them, which can be annoying if you only intend to visit the site once.

Read It Later lets you archive sites to your hard drive or direct to your iPhone. It saves them in the order that you saved them and they can be accessed when you are not connected to the web. This way you can still access a site of interest on the subway or on the go, even if you don’t have a wireless connection.

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Secretaries are kept perpetually busy, constantly accepting work from multiple people, many of them with nearly impossible deadlines. There’s constant pressure to get enormous amounts of work done quickly without sacrificing quality, but sometimes it’s simply unrealistic to accomplish each task both well and on time; either the deadline has to change or quality suffers. There’s just too much for a single person to do.

That’s where a virtual assistant comes in. The new world of the twenty-first century and its easy to use communications allow many jobs to be done from anywhere in the world. Professionals can find and employ an assistant no matter where he or she is, and these virtual assistants can be enormously helpful to all types of professionals, even to secretaries under constant pressure to complete work.

Many tasks don’t require someone with extensive, specialised training; often the time-killers involve repetitive tasks like responding to simple email questions, typing out dictation, checking through applications or database entry. A virtual assistant is perfect for these kinds of tasks; after just a little training, the assistant can step in and lighten your workload. Even if double checked, the work will be processed far more quickly. There are all kinds of projects a virtual assistant can help you with so that quality remains high and deadlines are met.

The role of a virtual assistant creates a new job but not a new occupation. These assistants have been used for decades in all types of industries, but today they no longer have to be on location to work. They can help you from anywhere, and you don’t have the added costs of overheads or providing new equipment. They’re the perfect assistant for busy, overworked secretaries, who are still essential for on site tasks and administration. You really can help yourself and those you work for by using the services of a virtual assistant to complete your tasks.

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PageOnce is an app available for the iPhone that allows you to more effectively manage your online accounts. Netflix, eBay, credit cards, banks, frequent flier miles and social networking can all be managed using this single program. All of the accounts are safely locked behind a 256-bit encryption key that is insured by one of the top ten A+ insurance carriers. The premium version of PageOnce also allows you to have an unlimited number of accounts, the ability to refresh all of your accounts with one click, and real time flight information.

By managing all of your online accounts through a single program, you will spend less time trying to track and monitor each one. By putting all this information in one place, it also becomes much more difficult to forget whether or not you checked on a specific account. Without a program like this to organize all of your most important accounts, it can be easy to neglect one, or several, and lose track of what has been taken care of and what has not. A great deal of time can be wasted checking up on a site that you have already checked in with, or trying to recall little used sites you need to check.

You can pay all of your bills at once using this account, allowing you to be certain that you haven’t fallen behind on any of your payments. In addition to this, it will alert you when you need to pay your bills. This saves time that would otherwise be spent logging into different accounts and paying them all separately, entering in your personal information over and over or, possibly, missing a payment and having to pay unwanted late fees. PageOnce is an excellent way to stay on top of all of your accounts.

Image: PageOnce

With the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter it seems that, for many people, there is an ever present temptation waiting in their work place. It is not unusual for offices to deny access to these web pages in order to save the time that might otherwise be wasted on them.

Some studies have shown that social networking can be beneficial to the user. However, this is for those people who are disciplined enough to take a “short break” to surf the web. It is typically after completing a long assignment, and is usually for only 5 to 10 minutes. While it might be relaxing, most employees cannot limit themselves to this type of practice, and waste many valuable hours chatting and sending personal messages. Activities such as responding to messages, looking at photos and writing status updates are rarely relevant to work, however interesting they might seem. Behavior such as this is not acceptable in a business environment, and can be grounds for disciplinary action. In worst case scenarios, people are actually being terminated because they can’t break their fascination with social networking.

Many people using social networking convince themselves that they are simply taking a short break – even one that can last for one full hour. This is not the proper behavior for anybody employed by a reputable business. Furthermore, by switching from a productive task and then back again, the worker must approach each task afresh, breaking their concentration and their engagement with their work. Even in a social capacity, networking sites can be a waste of time. If you are adding people as friends who you will never communicate with or looking at events you will not attend, then you are wasting your own free time. This is even worse in a work context, and detracts from productivity. Companies need to monitor their employees’ working habits during the day, in order to deter negative behavior and to ensure that targets continue to be met.

Social networking can be an enjoyable use of leisure time, but if it is not business related, it should not be explored during the working day.

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The Pareto Principle posits that in many instances some 80% of the outcome is derived from 20% of the input (or more broadly, that the majority of output derives from a minority of the input). The Principle is also known as the 80/20 rule and can applied to a very broad range of situations. At a high level, the principle attempts to describe unevenly distributed relationships, in which a very large portion of something is accounted for by a disproportionately small percentage of something else. Pareto himself originally used the principle to highlight the fact that in the early 20th century, 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Since then, the 80/20 rule has been used as an effective tool by business managers and economic planners. Manufacturers for instance, can hone their quality assurance processes by focusing on the 20% of defects that cause 80% of the quality problems. Product distribution centers can be optimized by focusing on the 20% of the products that consume 80% of the space, while financial managers can apply the rule to maximize returns on stock investments.

The same 80/20 logic can also be applied to maximize returns on advertising dollars. If 80% of advertising profits are being derived from 20% of the clients who are advertising, then it makes sense for companies to focus more on that minority segment rather than the broader, less profitable majority. By focusing time and effort on clients who fit the same profile as those in the 20% of the most profitable advertisers, companies can generate a greater return on investment from their marketing dollars. By leveraging the 80/20 rule, companies can squeeze more profits from advertisers at a lower overall cost than if they were to spend more time and resources on the remaining 80 percent.

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When handling complex tasks on a computer system, it is much easier to get them done when you have a multi-screen setup. This way you can have information on one screen while getting work done on another. Multi-screen setups are an excellent time saver because you don’t need to repeatedly open and close windows, losing track of information. Unfortunately, the standard multi-screen setup which comes with most operating systems is less user friendly than might be preferred. That is where Ultramon comes in.

The most important feature of Ultramon is its smart task bar. Unlike the standard multi-screen setup, the smart task bar assigns specific tasks to the task bar at the bottom of each screen, instead of putting them on all screens. This makes it much easier to designate each monitor to a specific use, so that you don’t lose track of your programs.

Ultramon allows you to drag a window from one monitor to another with a single mouse click. The program also makes it easy for you to adjust the settings of each monitor separately. A display profile can also be set up so that each user can set up their own properties. Mirroring also lets you take what you are doing on one monitor and display it on a secondary monitor as well – you can even display it on several other monitors. This is great for doing presentations. Unlike other options, Ultramon lets you hook up more than ten monitors, and a user friendly interface makes it easy to decide how you want these monitors to work together with one another.

Ultramon is an excellent way to save time by quickly setting up multiple monitor systems which can be used in such a way that more work can more easily be done – and in a shorter period of time!

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Hollywood uses outsourcing on virtually every major production sent to theaters. Movie making is a labor intensive business – actors need to be hired and coordinated, sets built and maintained, and editing has to be done before the final product is released. Outsourcing as much of this process as possible can help to keep costs on Hollywood productions within budget.

As the attempt to invoke a sense of realism in films has become standard, shooting portions of movies in faraway locations has become the norm. Much of the building work done on sets in remote filming locations can be outsourced to local construction companies. Rather than bringing along technicians and equipment, work can be given to a local firm that can build a set to specifications on site before the actors even arrive.

Even within the Hollywood area itself outsourcing can be utilized to maximize cost savings on a film. Rather than keep armies of publicists and extras on the payroll, Hollywood film producers can outsource the process of generating publicity and hiring extras to dedicated marketing companies and talent agencies.

Special effects are yet another major component of Hollywood film production where outsourcing is common practice. Talented CGI animators are in short supply, and the talent is quite often located far from Hollywood. Special effects that rely on computer technology rather than stunts and pyrotechnics are routinely outsourced to computer companies that specialize in this sort of work. Filming can be done in front of a green screen with the CGI effects incorporated into the background during post-production.

Outsourcing has been standard practice in Hollywood for decades, and the cost savings associated with contracting specialized companies to do much of the technical and labor intensive work has saved production companies huge amounts of time and money.

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Background noise can make it harder to work. At one time or another you’ve probably been driven to distraction by background noise, causing decreased productivity and a poorer quality of work than you are willing to accept. What can you do to become more efficient and productive when you are surrounded by it?

Scientists have identified a potential explanation as to why background noise is so disruptive. In a 2005 study, researchers discovered portions of a rat’s brain stem (consisting of “novelty detector neurons”) that apparently continually monitors the milieu of sounds in daily life, detecting potentially critical events, and alerting the brain. Think gazelle: an unexpected crunch of dry grass may mean that a cheetah is nearby. The novelty neurons pick out that sound and alert the gazelle to that possibility, allowing it to investigate and react.

In the jungle known as the office, however, each new telephone ring or closing door can trigger the novelty neuron’s response. Your brain is in a near-constant state of distraction as it decides to investigate or ignore each event. In order to overcome this pre-programmed function, your brain must either have a steady stream of predictable audio input or new background noises must be muted.

To produce a predictable audio environment, many choose some form of white-noise generator. The generator may be a low-tech desk fan or it may be a more advanced piece of equipment specifically designed to produce continual low-volume noise. In either case the effect is similar: your immediate surroundings are filled with a predictable, consistent hum and your brain spends less time on alert.

A high-octane variation on the white-noise generator, however, is as close as a classical radio station. Playing classical music in your work area not only creates a predictable audio environment but also acts as a sort of musical algorithm, stimulating both the logical and creative halves of your brain. Translation: classical music reduces distractions while giving your brain a subliminal workout, allowing you to work more quickly and creatively.

Those who prefer the sound of silence should research and purchase a set of noise-canceling headphones. Low-tech models simply suppress all ambient noise, but their high-tech cousins literally cancel out background noise through sound wave inversion. Distracting noises are eliminated, freeing your brain to devote itself to work.

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