Better Done than Perfect

This combination of freedom and abundance affords us opportunities to create ideal lives for ourselves.

Perfection eludes you; there is always doubt about your love, your children, your career! Do you feel Overwhelmed ! Yes!

When You have no choice in a matter and something goes wrong, You have no reason to blame yourself.

If a tornado comes along and destroys your home, You don’t go around assigning blame; instead, You begin to rebuild.

You have high expectations and expect everything to be perfect, which would never happen.

You need to be able to accept your Reality and Move on.

Always Remember " Better Done than Perfect", just finish your task with best quality possible and know that the learning curve would be jumped when you finish more tasks not taking more time in one task.

Photo-Courtesy : DigitalMediaHealth 

The incredible #MBA Community on Twitter

Get Connected with the #MBA Community on #Twitter:

Most active users of #MBA on #Twitter

@College_Experts @United_Kingdom_ @jobsplane @ClearAdmit @addygarg @BlueSky_Edu @MagooshGMAT @PauloLotJr @TCU_MBA @TopMBA @findmba @rsmmba @sustainablersm @timothypeters @v_stoyakin

Most mentioned users:

@DukeFuqua @DebPG @beatthegmat @fortefoundation @MelodiestClub @instituteb @BasSieffers @EconomistGMAT @LokeyGSB @MichiganRoss @PeterHolmark @globeandmail @m_yury

@beatthegmat

 @MBAHighway  @mbaMission

@NewburgEquip  @austinGMAT

@DukeCOLE3

@MiddlesexDubai  @ShanghaiA2Z

@TheMBAClub

@UICLiautaud

@m_yury

@sleribaux

@testmasters

@tudut

@waterdifference

@DukeCOLE3

@ProcterGamble

@businessbecause  @FT

@OfficialRCTI

@rsmmba

@BerkeleyHaas

@INSEAD_Degrees @MBAFocus

@MiddlesexDubai @PoetsAndQuants  @ismail_albar

 @meltyCampus

@Accepted @MP_Connect @CarlsonMBA @SmithSchool @hildis84 @DukeWLEAD  @NSBNewYork @Shyam17 @TonyMarino @cgsm_mba @mbaprojsearch @surgiclprincss @thembacentre @uvmvermont @wvucobe 

@FansOfMelody @achanJKT48  @TopMBA @darrellkopke @MSUBroadCollege @cgsm_mba @BWbschools  @College_Experts  @LaSalleBCN @MagooshGMAT  @NSNtweets @Worldexp_uk @kaollin @nbmbaahq

Join Now: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/MBA-Job-Board-2967381/about

Take Good Care of Yourself:)

-Write down your thoughts, express your feelings, you will feel better

-Affirm yourself with kind and loving thoughts, check Susan Jeffers' Affirmations

-Avoid Negative Self-Talks, it leads to nowhereland!  Kick it out!

-Have a gratitude for someone, feel it, and express it 

-Don't exhaust yourself mentally or physically, Relax!

-Exercise, Go to the Gym or go for a walk to get fit and chillax

-Do something nice to yourself, think positively and get to your higher

Self!

-Always find the support of families and friends, Everywhere! Find them!

How 2 Get Organized, Now!

In an Era of Big data and endless flow of Information, News and SocialMedia, you can lose Focus easily. The self-management becomes a necessity for success, in this Blog, We will go through some steps that can help you.

1. Create a To-Do List

If you feel overwhelmed, you forget things, overloaded,stressed , incapable of finishing what you want to do, missing deadlines and not hitting your targets, you need a "To Do" list .

Get Piece of paper and:

-Write Down the Tasks you want to complete

-Prioritise your tasks 

You can also use software tools like Remember the Milk (www.rememberthemilk.com)

Tip: Remember: Make the list of maximum 4 to always hit the core.

2. Find the right Places for Everything

First know what you have at your place, shoes, clothing, books, equipment, watches, games, toiletries, electronics, food and practically everything you have.

Second, Get rid of the old stuff or the stuff you are not using, you will add up to your charity score and you would empty your shelves and free your disorganised time capacity wastage.

Third, If you use it don't lose it , make sure you put the things you frequently use at your fingertips in easily accessible bins, drawers to avoid losing time. 

Tip: Get Organization Products - 

-Media Organizers (DVDs , Cassetes)

-Bookcase

-Basket

-Multiuse Hanger

-Trays

-Containers

- Recycling Bin

-Drawers

-Clear Box 

Check:

-Ikea items http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/categories/departments/small_storage/

-Container http://www.containerstore.com/shop?

productId=10000671&N=&Ntt=Everything+organizer

Blog: http://www.sheknows.com/home-and-gardening/articles/852425/10-best-ikea-products-to-organize-your-home

3. Get Rid of Clutter

Take out anything you don't use, again use it or lose it.

-Make a Pile of Everything you have

-Sort Things out

-Empty your closet and Drawers

-Check out all your papers and apply the same process

-Make 3 Piles

   -Things you use daily(Put in Closets)

   -Things you use weekly/ monthly ( Containers)

   -Things you don't use (Charity)

4. Do things Immediately 

Don't procrastinate , do the things you want to do now to avoid getting yourself into delays , missing deadlines and starting a negative spiral.

Tip: Start Now and Don't leave it until tomorrow 

5. Color Code Tasks

Divide Tasks to Urgent,Important, Not Urgent and Not Important

Then use a colour for each task, whether on a piece of paper, an excel sheet, ms project, folder or Mobile Application 

You can also use Remember the Milk (www.rememberthemilk.com)

6. Keep a Schedule

Manage your time wisely because it is the most valuable resource you have, divide your time based on Key Activities, Milestones and Deliverables.
If you don't start each an everyday with the daily tasks in your mind, you would lose your time and miss your objectives, start each day with the Objectives on Your mind.
You can use a simple Agenda to manage your schedule and you can use different applications
Schedule Planner

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/schedule-planner/id437461477?mt=8

7. Create Small Goals

When you make huge goals that are difficult to accomplish you could end up not meeting them because you become overwhelmed. Small goals that you can actually accomplish will result in getting more done and making sure you can complete them as you anticipate. Keep goals written on your main calendar and make sure to update them as you progress.

Check the following tools: Mind Tools http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_HTE.htm

8. Be Positive 

There is nothing that could be possibly accomplished if you are not positive. Smile, help someone, know that tomorrow is a better day, keep pushing forward, learn from your failures and move on . The more positive you are the more you would be able to stay focused and Organised.  

-Avoid Negativity

-Optimism

-Stop Blaming Yourself

-Think of the good things you have

-Believe in Yourself

9. Set Priorities

Know what you want from life, it is not an easy task but you should think it through, make a mind map of all of your life,business, investment, travel,Charity and whatever you want. 

Check what you do each and every day and write it down in another mind map and then check what is important and mark the mindmap with your ranking.

Know your Priorities 

Check the Mind Mapping tools 

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm

10. Use Time Wisely

Don't spend your life daydreaming, time is e most valuable commodity you have, stay away from anything that isn't brining or won't bring results .

Focus on finishing one task at a time and minimise the number of switches between tasks. 

Minimise checking your emails and checking your phone because it takes 20 minutes to regain focus between switches.
Tiny Budha

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/40-ways-to-use-time-wisely/

What Gets in the Way of Your Leadership Effectiveness?

What Gets in the Way of Your Leadership Effectiveness?

Courtesy of Random Acts of Leadership Blog
http://randomactsofleadership.com/what-gets-in-the-way-of-your-leadership-effectiveness/

We all have things that are likely to get in our way of being effective and effectively leading.  Being honest with yourself about what they are is essential to developing yourself as a leader.
These past few days I came face to face with a few of those things for myself.  A request was made of me about six weeks ago and as the deadline loomed near I attempted to get to work. I noticed I was really having trouble getting started. Then there were a few false starts. I found myself printing a series of attempts and promptly crumbled each in a ball to toss into the trash
The deadline I had given myself was Saturday.  On Sunday I communicated that I had not forgotten and I was working on it.  Even when I wasn’t working on it, my integrity would not allow it to drift far from my mind until it was done.  Finally I sent a note coming clean about my struggle.
I was not clear about what I was doing or why. The embarrassing thing for me is that I know better!

Resistance, procrastination and frustration are good indicators that clarity is lacking.

As a coach I often work with people to get and stay clear.  In fact, my clients tell me that is one of the things they count on most from me.  However, that does not mean that I am immune to suffering from a lack of clarity or that my emotions don’t sometimes transcend my knowledge or skills.
When you are the one who is resisting, procrastinating or frustrated it can be hard to see what is really going on even when you “should” know better. When that happens it can be humbling. The good news is it happens to all of us on occasion – at least it does if you are human.

So what stopped me from just asking?

In hindsight I can now see there are 3 things that were in my way. These same three things can get in the way of my effectiveness and my leadership if I am not mindful.

1.  I Thought I Should Know

I let my embarrassment that I was not clear about the request get in the way of reaching out to actually ask. I really respect this person and didn’t want to look bad in her eyes. Wow, that one is hard to admit out loud!

2.  My Commitment had Become an Obligation

I lost sight of why I was doing this both in service of my own commitments and in service of my commitment to this person and our bigger cause. The moment that happened this task was just another thing on my to do list that didn’t have the same level of importance in my mind and heart that other things on that list had. There is a big difference in your experience when you are acting from a commitment vs. an obligation. For more about this topic read The Opportunity of Obligation.

3.  I Was Experiencing Overwhelm

The good news is this woke me up to realizing I am feeling over committed at the moment. Now that I can see it I can take action by reassessing my commitments and plans and making adjustments. However, the first thing I know to do when I feel overwhelmed is to reconnect with what I am most deeply committed to so the adjustments I make can be informed by my commitments rather than an intellectual exercise that could end up being the equivalent to “moving the deck chairs around on the titanic!”

What gets in your way in being effective and leading effectively and how have you learned to overcome it?

Private Equity Update - First Half 2013

PE firms completed 738 deals totaling $140 billion in the first half of 2013; this is the slowest start to a year since 2009

• Strong public markets spurred an increase in IPO activity for PE-backed portfolio companies

• Deal flow in IT increased 26% from 1Q to 2Q; all other industries saw declines of at least 10%

• PE firms completed 108 exits in 2Q; an improvement from the previous quarter but still the second lowest total since 1Q 2011

• PE firms closed 29 funds totaling $48 billion, which is the most capital raised in a quarter since 1Q 2009

Source: Pitchbook 

http://pitchbook.com/

Top 10 Productivity Boosters

Check the following apps to boost your productivity with immediate effect.

1- YAST: Easy time tracking to increase productivity, billing rate and staff performance. Features: Shared projects, 1-click timers, mobile apps and detailed reporting.

www.Yast.com

2- Evernote : Capture Anything, Access Anywhere and Find things Fast.  www.evernote.com

3- Dropbox : is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again!

www.dropbox.com 

4- Skitch: Get your point across with fewer words using annotation, shapes and sketches, so that your ideas become reality faster.

http://evernote.com/skitch/

5- Remember The Milk: Online to-do list and task management

Remember The Milk is the popular to-do list that's everywhere you are: from your phone, to the web, to your Google apps, and more. Used by millions worldwide.Manage your tasks from everywhere and get email , sms alerts http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

6- Sanebox: Automatically filter your email of spam and unimportant messages to only see the emails that are important. SaneBox intelligently analyzes your emails http://www.sanebox.com/

7- LastPass : Password management that makes browsing easier and more secure https://lastpass.com

8- Dunno : Change the way you take notes 

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dunno/id517746799?mt=12

9- mint : Get a handle on your finances the free and fast way. Mint does all the work of organizing and categorizing your spending for you. See where every dime goes and make money decisions you feel good about. 

www.mint.com

10- Expensify : manage your expenses with simple, hassle free expense reports www.expensify.com 

50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Analytics, and Management | Pamorama | Social Media Marketing Blog

50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Analytics, and Management | Pamorama | Social Media Marketing Blog

By Pam Dyer

To succeed in today’s connected world, you need to build a community around your company, brand, and products. Over the last decade, social media monitoring has become a primary form of business intelligence, used to identify, predict, and respond to consumer behavior. Listening to what your customers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about you is key to getting great results from your social media campaigns. There are countless tools out there, offering many ways to analyze, measure, display, and create reports about your engagement efforts.

These 50 tools distill data in ways that are relevant to your social media marketing plan, enabling you to figure out how to succeed with your audience.

Determining which tools are right for you requires a clear definition of your objectives. Some are real-time, highly customized dashboards that enable you to manage multiple accounts, use shared work spaces, and respond on multiple social networks with one click. Others are simple, effective, and lightweight, and provide the right amount of functionality.

1. Alterian/SDL ($) | Alterian is now SDL, an integrated platform that blends the marketing analytics, campaign management, and social media capabilities from Alterian with those of SDL.
2. Argyle Social ($) | Identify and engage with more prospects, qualify and quantify better leads, and build and maintain stronger relationships by linking social media actions to the marketing platforms you’re already using.
3. BackTweets (Free) | Track how many people are talking about you, who’s talking, and what they’re saying. You can search through a tweet archive for URLs sent via Twitter, including results for full URL links, shortened URLs, and URLs without the “www” prefix.
4. BlitzMetrics ($) | Social media dashboards for your brand that monitor content across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, and more. It helps you benchmark against your competitors, learn which demographics are the most active, and track content performance so you can improve your reach and engagement.
5. Bottlenose ($) | A tool that provides live social intelligence by analyzing activity across all the major social networks. Use it to search, monitor, analyze, target, and engage in real time, all from one place.
6. Brandwatch ($) |This service reads through and summarizes what’s being said on the Web about brands, people, and products. Define keywords to track (brands, topics, people names, products) and get access to mentions,  trend and campaign analysis, and competitive info.
7. Buffer (Free and $) | An app that manages multiple Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, with the ability to set a tweeting or updating schedule unique to each. Includes detailed analytics for all your posts.
8. Buzz Equity ($) | Listen to social media conversations in real time from various social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news, forums, reviews, and video websites.
9. CARMA ($) | Evaluate your overall social media image, brand recognition, message penetration, competitive positioning, and areas of strength and weakness, and use the data to develop a strategically sound and effective communication strategy.
10. Collective Intellect ($) | This Oracle platform captures millions of conversations a day across multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. It extracts sentiments, preferences, and intentions from those sources and displays the information in real time.
11. Crimson Hexagon ($) | Tap into social media conversations with listening tools that help you understand how the most engaged consumers think and feel about your brand, why consumers are choosing other brands over yours, and how your ads/marketing are really perceived by your audience.
12. Curalate ($) | This tool applies advanced image analytics to social media conversations to give you detailed insights for your initiatives on Instagram and Pinterest.
13. CustomScoop ($) | Track media coverage, listen to social conversations, monitor your competition, measure PR and marketing effectiveness, and get automated daily reports.
14. CyberAlert ($) | Monitor 100,000+ consumer-generated media sites for word of mouth, including Twitter, blogs, Usenet (there’s a blast from the past :), and video sites.
15. Facebook Insights (Free) | Facebook’s built-in tool provides Facebook Page owners with metrics around their content. Helps you understand and analyze trends within user growth and demographics.
16. Fliptop ($) | A customer intelligence platform that uses publicly available information, including social data, to score leads so you can prioritize your pipeline, better target your audience, and know more about your customers.
17. Google Alerts (Free) | Get email updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web, news, etc.) based on your queries.
18. Gorkana ($) | This tool searches through and filters conversations to provides insights into the most relevant conversations about your brand. Offers audits and reports plus daily social media alerts.
19. HootSuite (Free and $) | A social media management system that enables teams to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one dashboard. Includes audience identification tools, the ability to streamline workflow, and custom reports. I use HootSuite to manage my company’s Twitter account.
20. Icerocket (Free) | A free resource for brand monitoring, it taps the Web, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, and delivers easy-to-read results in one page.
21. Klout (Free) | A tool that finds the influencers in your audience so you can target and empower them to become advocates for your brand.
22. MarketMeSuite ($) | A dashboard similar to Hootsuite and TweetDeck, it can be used to manage and market on multiple social profiles, schedule messages, use geotargeting, and more.
23. MediaMiser ($) | Web app that collects and analyzes relevant content about your brand from social, traditional, and digital media. Spots trends in media coverage, including sentiment, share of voice, and top regions.
24. MediaVantage ($) | Pulls traditional media coverage and social media mentions into a database that helps you monitor your reputation, align your teams and messaging, and measure results.
25. Meltwater ($) | Combines social media monitoring and analytics with social engagement tools to help you create targeted marketing campaigns and build  brand relationships.
26. Mention (Free to $) | An iPhone and Android app that lets you create alerts for your company, its keywords, your brand, and your competitors. Updates in real time.
27. NetBase ($)| A social intelligence platform that enables you to monitor, understand, react, engage, and publish through both owned and earned channels.
28. Netvibes (Free and $) | A platform that tracks clients, customers, competitors, and your reputation across media sources, analyzes live results with 3rd party reporting tools, and provides media monitoring dashboards for brand clients.
29. NUVI ($) | Real-time display of conversations that weight influence and sentiment. You can instantly see the social media conversations taking place in your market and immediately engage your detractors and evangelists.
30. Pinpuff (Free) | Similar to Klout but focusing only on the Pinterest, it measures the how people share images about your brand and the influence that results.
31. PinReach ($) | Measures your Pinterest influence by giving you an overall score and easy-to-read charts and tables that show your most popular pins and boards.
32. Pinterest Web Analytics (Free) | Pinterest’s built-in analytics gives site owners insights into how people are interacting with pins that originate from their websites. See my in-depth post: Use Pinterest Web Analytics to Jumpstart Your Social Media Marketing.
33. Plugg.io (Free) | Manage and tweet from multiple accounts, get friend suggestions, and automate syndication via blogs and news sources.
34. Shoutlet ($) | A community management and moderation platform for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and YouTube. Includes integrated workflow tools and task assignments.
35. Social Marketing Cloud ($) | An automated solution that enables you to monitor and analyze blogs, forums, wikis, and microblogging sites to track real-time conversations about your brand.
36. Social Mention (Free) | A real-time social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google,  etc. into a single stream.
37. Social Response ($) | Formerly Cotweet. Build dynamic Facebook fan pages, respond in real time on Twitter and Facebook, and communicate 1-to-1 with your followers.
38. Sprout Social ($) | Web app that monitors Twitter, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Gowalla, and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands.  Also offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, and analytics.
39. SWIX Analytics ($) | This tool tracks 75 social media metrics in one dashboard, enabling you to measure your social media influence.
40. Synthesio ($) | Platform that offers global, multilingual monitoring of your brand’s reputation, campaign management, influencer tracking, and competitive intelligence. Well-suited for large enterprises.
41. Sysomos ($) | A real-time monitoring dashboard that collects relevant online conversations about your brand and provides insights with detailed metrics and graphics.
42. Talkwalker ($) | This reporting tool constantly scans the Web and social media to monitor your brand, reputation,  and competitors. It can also be used for campaign tracking, market research, and customer service.
43. Topsy ($) | Monitors tweets, websites, blogs, and social networks, and analyzes/indexes/ranks content and trends.
44. Trackur ($) | Quickly monitor your online reputation, measure social media trends, and analyze social media mentions for your company, brands, or clients.
45. TweetBeep (Free and $) | This app is like Google Alerts for Twitter: Choose some keywords and receive daily search results via email.
46. TweetDeck (Free) | Very similar to HootSuite, only without all the bells and whistles, this client enables you to tweet and track mentions, people, and keywords.
47. Twitalyzer ($) | One-click access to Twitter metrics that analyze followers, mentions, retweets, and influencers and their locations. It can also be used to compare your Twitter account to those of your competitors.
48. UberVU ($) | Keeps track of all the major social media platforms in real time and delivers opportunities for audience engagement.
49. Visible ($) | A social media analytics and engagement dashboard that enables you to monitor, analyze, and engage in social media conversations all in one place. It can also be integrated into your existing CRM system.
50. Vocus ($) | Cloud marketing and analytics platform that looks at social, search, email, and PR, and delivers real-time marketing opportunities in the form of leads, prospects, social media conversations, curated content and inbound media inquiries.