Rags To Riches - A True Life Example

Listening to a self help guru talk is generally motivational and educational.

However I personally get more inspired by a real life example.Even better if it is one reported in the media. For me that carries more credibility.

Here is one such story reported by Yahoo.

Toll Booth To Screenwriter

Public Speaking - My Biggest Obstacle

Time and again my Toastmaster's evaluators commented on the pace of my speeches. They liked many things about my speeches but found my speaking style too fast for comfort.

This is a problem with Indians in general.

Check out an earlier post on the world champion of public speaking who has similar advice

I continued to ignore and never acted on their advice...till one day when it really hurt.

I was delivering a speech that had a bit too much content to fit the 7 minute slot. Rather than chopping off some of the content I decided to just speak fast!!!

Needless to say I totally missed connecting to my audiences. This was my worst performance never mind that there were no stumbles, stutters etc. I was too fast for their comprehension. I lost my audience completely.

For the next speech I had the forethought to tape a practice session. I was taken aback by how fast I was speaking. I could not understand parts of my own speech!

Smarting from my poor performance the previous time and chastened by the visual feedback of my performance I managed to speak slowly and more deliberately for my speech project #7.

The result was spectacular. The impact on my audience between this and my previous speech was like the difference between day and night.

I received very positive feedback. In fact a Toastmaster who had witnessed both my speeches later left a voicemail commenting that my speech was ten times better than the previous one!

Perhaps you have a stumbling block in your own speeches as well. It could be that you are not projecting your voice, not moving around and so on.

Being aware of your weaknesses is not worth much until you act on it.

The payback is terrific. Trust me on that.

The Power of Planning

Today I learnt first hand the power of planning.

As a project manager I was tasked to reduce the duration of a project from 6 months to a shorter time frame.

I had with me a long list of tasks the developer had outlined with estimates for each task.

Making it more complicated was the inclusion of tasks to be performed by another developer and the overlapping between these two.

In a single meeting lasting less than an hour we were able to reduce the duration from 6 to 4 months!!

I used two planning aids common to the project management profession of which I am a rabid practitioner.

The first is called WBS and stands for Work Breakdown Structure. Any project has to deliver something. You take this 'something' and break it down into smaller and smaller pieces.

The next tool is called a network diagram. Here you take activities that you have obtained as a result of performing WBS and chart out the dependencies among them.

I try to practice planning in all aspects of my life.

I was not like this before. I read somewhere that events will not turn out exactly as planned but then if you do not plan your work then you are planning to fail.

Brian Tracy talks about the 6Ps of planning. Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

Incidents like the one I just illustrated has made me a believer in planning.

Autistic Kid or Super Kid

Sometimes we just can't tell.

Watch this video and decide for yourself.

A powerful story that left my jaded and cynical eyes moist