When we’re hand washing, stockpiling and practicing social distancing like anything, it’s also important for us to remember our mental health matters. Let’s not put ourselves in the panic mode and make it a mental pandemic.

Here are few strategies from experts which are practical solutions to remain positive and accept any situation. These practical tips will help you to relax, take positive actions and put things in perspective.

Follow these 7 ways to overcome your coronavirus stress and ease anxiety:

7: Practise Social Distancing but Be Connected Virtually:

Social distancing and nationwide lockdown may require us to stay in our homes, but that doesn’t mean we have to lead an isolated lonely life. It’s important now to stay in communication with family, friends, neighbors and anyone who matters to you.

Use the phone, text, social media, email, video chats— all means possible to stay connected with everyone and spread positive vibes and factual news only. When you spread positivity and give hope to others, your mind too gets mental support to carry on with hope. This will ease your stress and anxiety.

6. See the Pandemic in Perspective:

A similar blog on this topic suggests an important component of putting the pandemic in perspective is balancing what we should and should not do.

Few things are out of control, but it’s in our control how we react. We can’t at this present moment get rid of the crisis. But we can observe government orders, we can donate to funds which are fighting this disease, we can share the load with our family members and be good to them at this crisis. At least we can smile so that others in the family don’t lose hope.

5. Practise Self-Compassion and Self-Care:

Fear is natural. So, don’t feel guilty when you are afraid. Accept your fear and try to trace the source of your anxiety. Write down your fears on a piece of paper – and then try to write down what you can do or how you can cope with it. This will take care of your present stress and anxiety.

Slow down, have a pause and engage in healthy practices and try to sustain regular routines that bring comfort and keeps you good emotionally. Conversation with positive people, exercises, yoga, meditation, and religious and spiritual practices are good starting points.

Try considering the healing impacts of making art, reading uplifting books, listening to happy songs, journaling and being useful to others.

4. Keep away from False Rumours:

At this present moment, there is a lot of misinformation, negative content in social media and digital media. Don’t focus on this negativity. It’s essential in this present moment to consume facts only, news which is true. This will prevent you from succumbing to coronavirus related anxiety.

For regular authentic updates around the globe on coronavirus, you may visit the WhatsApp Coronavirus Information Hub at whatsapp.com/coronavirus, and click on the WHO link on the homepage to open up a chat with the WHO Health Alert if you have WhatsApp installed.

The WHO Health Alert will provide official information on topics such as how to protect yourself from infection, travel advice, and debunking Coronavirus myths.

For factual information about the present situation in India and important helpline numbers, you may visit this Government of India website.

3. When you feel overwhelmed, Move the Finish Line:

A recent blog from the Fast Company suggests: “Being overwhelmed is the consequence of trying to juggle too many mental operations at once, which makes it impossible to design or execute a good action plan. By reducing the set of operations, you relieve the load placed upon your frontal cortex (the region of your brain responsible for planning and action) and reduce the corresponding sense of panic.”

When anxiety and stress take over, focus on one thing you know you can accomplish in 10, or even 5, minutes rather than dwelling on what you need to accomplish over the entire day. Keep yourself busy by focusing on just cooking the meal for the present, having a cup of tea for the next five minutes and focusing on that, concentrating on a part on your work from home assignments for the next 15 min and so on. This will help you put off your stress.

2. Act when you feel powerless:

When we perceive we don’t have control over anything we feel helpless. When you panic, which is your default when you feel a loss of control in each moment, it impedes dopamine release, which leads to an even greater sense of powerlessness.

To stimulate the dopamine release and regain your sense of possibility, you have to take actions as simple as listening to your favorite song, making a cup of coffee, texting a friend, helping and chatting with your partner in the kitchen, etc. Then look for the next positive action step. These steps will help you overcome stress and ease your anxiety.

By doing this, you can “shift your mindset from one of powerlessness to one of resolve.”

1. When you feel alone, help someone:

From a neurological perspective helping someone in need, whether by phone, text or even donating a little fund to those who need, infuses positive vibes in your mind. Giving gives you a sense of happiness and gratitude, and it stops the anger and fear.

Helping others changes the chemical composition of our neurons. Those chemicals positively change our brain’s assessment of self and our place in the world. It makes us reassured that we can control things that we perceived not in our control minutes ago.

If you’re following the advice of public health officials and staying home to slow the spread of coronavirus, these are the 7 ways to overcome coronavirus stress and ease your anxiety and take care of the mental health wellbeing.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post 7 Ways to Overcome Coronavirus Stress and Ease Your Anxiety appeared first on The HR Monks.

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever. ~ Thomas Aquinas

Leadership is a mirror in which the people see their collective reflection in the face of uncertainty. Able leadership determines the fate of the employees and the organization in uncertain times – when the business is not doing good.

So, what are the things that make an organization powerful and sustain the storm in uncertainty? There are so many things you can think of, but if you can narrow down to a few things you shall see only a handful of the things in an organization that determines the fate of the company.

According to the UN News  “Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, the economic uncertainty it has sparked will likely cost the global economy $1 trillion in 2020,” said the UN’s trade and development agency, UNCTAD.

One “Doomsday scenario” in which the world economy grew at only 0.5 per cent, would involve “a $2 trillion hit” to gross domestic product, he said, adding that collapsing oil prices had been “a contributing factor to that growing sense of unease and panic”.

Below is a graph which charts the economic meltdown in the last few years to the current situation:

Global GDP Growth, 1995-2020 and future trajectory

Source: https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2300

But if you closely look at the graph you shall find every time there was a meltdown the industries and the businesses are fighting back.

Organizations become most powerful in uncertain times because at the end of the day leaders takes a decision not in cold blood, but out of sheer courage and vision, and this die-hard attitude comes from the undefeatable strength of human resources. Organizations are not only about money but more about the people and serving the people at large.

What makes the Organization Powerful in the Uncertain Times?

Here are the 7 things which help every organization to bounce back and sail the rough tides:

7. Practical Decisions:

Practical decisions based on facts, statistics and farsighted leadership can help an organization cope with the economic meltdown and human tragedies. Practical decisions don’t mean you can’t make decisions that are emotional, but it means you make decisions that are pragmatic, takes care of greater good and are informed and farsighted.

6. Ability to take quick decisions:

The ability to take quick decisions makes an organization sustain rough weather. Here the responsibility is universal. In crisis moments if the team waits every now and then for leadership direction, it can’t sustain. The ability to take quick and correct decisions comes from ownership. When everyone takes responsibility, you can’t make the wrong steps collectively.

5. Grit and Determination:

You cannot have hope in fear. You can have Hope in courage, grit, and determination. From team members to managers and to leaders – grit and determination count in times of economic meltdown. If the organization collectively loses determination, if there is no last man standing – it can never fight back in tough times.

4. Innovation and Learning:

Learning is a habit. Companies who are constantly investing in R&D will become a powerful organization in testing times. Constantly innovating technologies and processes not only keeps an organization ahead of others but also helps the company learn faster than other organizations in times of disaster. These types of companies find the out of box solution in the least amount of time and they successfully cope with the disasters.

3. Business for a Cause:

Companies that care only for profits will not sustain this tough time. Organizations doing business for a cause, caring about helping and improving the lives of people at large will become powerful in this uncertainty. You can see how many non-profit organizations which struggled in rosy times, are now becoming more powerful than any other companies.

2. Keeping the Team Together:

Keeping the Team Together is what makes an organization powerful in uncertain times. A team that thinks and cares about others even in lockdown, can never be defeated. A team that thinks of collectively fighting back has seldom seen a failure.

1. Visionary Leadership:

Able Leadership is the brain which cuts through the rough tides. Leaders without vision cannot sustain rough times. From Steve Job to Walt Disney, from Toyota to Tesla, from Google to Amazon – leadership has mattered every time to fight back and fight back with a bang.

A leader who has no vision, cannot hold nerve in these tough times. A leader who can dream can only provide a lifeline to his people.

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter.

~ Chris Hadfield

The brain and the heart are the two organs that keep us alive. Thinking and doing together with tremendous passion and hope makes an organization powerful in uncertainty.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post 7 Things that Makes an Organization Powerful in Uncertain Times appeared first on The HR Monks.

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

As a child, we must have read fairy tales. And we must have enjoyed that. Because some books are like magic – they lift our soul and make us happy. They can be our best friends too at times of loneliness. They can be the best teacher, philosopher, and guide to find positivity in life.

When we are at uncertain times, or our career is taking a downturn, or we face personal loss – we question the meaning of our life. We stop having faith in our destiny. So, it may be the perfect time to dust a few time-tested old books which may light our way.

Happiness and positivity in life come from peace. It comes when you lockdown from the outer world and listen to silence, understand the meaning and light of life. There are many books which can shift your life. But these 3 most significant books can help you to find positivity in life.

Today I shall discuss 3 most significant books that changed the outlook of my life. I have seen many negative moments in my life, where I almost lost hope and faith. But these are the three books that set me free from my fear always and made me accept the situations calmly. And the storm passed.

3 most Significant Books that can help you now to find positivity in life:

1. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank:

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” – Anne says in this book. It’s a beauty of positivity. It’s a hope of hope. You need to hold on when things are dark and wait for the oranges to come on the blue horizon.

In the same book she tells: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” This book was published on 25th June 1947. After 73 years when we almost lost faith in all the good things in life, we see we all have not lost our goodness of heart. We are helping each other now selflessly.

“Whoever is happy will make others happy.” Your happiness can give hope to others.

Though everybody knows Anne Frank, for those who have forgotten her, she “Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank” was a German-born Dutch-Jewish diarist. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, a hope for many lockdown moments.

2. The Shift: Taking Your Life from Ambition to Meaning by Wayne Dyer:

If you are finding this uncertain period making you question your existence and you think you are failing in life, read this book:  “Becoming the observer (step back) you begin to live in process, trusting where our source is taking you. You begin to detach from the outcome. That detachment allows you to stop fighting and allows things to just come to you; you no longer make things happen but allow them to show up. The fight is gone!”

This book will give you peace and find the inner happiness of the passage of your existence. Here is a long excerpt from the book I am sharing:

“As we become one with our Source, we begin the realignment process, thinking and contemplating more like God. We gain the wisdom necessary to understand these words written by Thomas Troward: “If you contemplate with thoughts that match originating Spirit, you have the same power as originating Spirit.” This idea is anathema to the ego. But the wholeness, the oneness, that we truly are, is revealed as we begin trusting the wisdom that created us.”

Wayne Walter Dyer was an American self-help author and a motivational speaker. His first book, Your Erroneous Zones, is one of the best-selling books of all time, with an estimated 100 million copies sold to date.

3. The Power of your subconscious mind by Joseph Murphy:

In this book, ‘The power of your subconscious mind’, in this book you can find spiritual wisdom and scientific research that brings to light how the sub-conscious mind can be a major influence on our daily lives.

“The only path by which another person can upset you is through your own thought.” – this can be vital learning for you from this book. You are the pilot of your positivity in life.

How to find positivity in life in harsh times? “Busy your mind with the concepts of harmony, health, peace, and good will, and wonders will happen in your life.” – there is this solution. This valuable book helps to understand an reaffirm the healing power of our daily prayers, “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire. Your desire is your prayer. It comes out of your deepest needs and it reveals the things you want in life.”

This is one of the most significant books than can help us to find positivity in life, – “Never finish a negative statement; reverse it immediately, and wonders will happen in your life.”

I am sure in this newfound break; you shall be reading a lot. And I hope these 3 books will be a treasure trove for your faith and happiness in your life. Embrace positive thoughts to take care of your happiness.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post 3 most Significant Books that Can Help You now to Find Positivity in Life appeared first on The HR Monks.

Work from home has been announced as a mandatory precaution against the coronavirus outbreak to many of the people around the globe. Millions of employees, managers and even CEO’s are for the first time working remotely from the home.

Work from home or working remotely is not a new concept. Many companies have adopted this practice decades ago. Today we have many virtual companies too whose staffs work from home only.

There has been a lot of anxiety over the covid-19 outbreak and it’s really hard for the time being to focus on your work when your area is under lockdown. You may be overwhelmed by the thoughts about how to manage foods, get essential commodities or protect your family from this disease.

Additionally, being cut off from friends and colleagues can make you insecure about your job and you must be feeling helpless.

So how in these uncertain times you can keep focused at work? What can give you back the same productivity when you are working remotely? What are the essential do’s and don’ts of work from home?

The antidote of such negative thoughts can be your work only. For our mental health wellbeing, we must focus now on our work more than ever. Being engaged at work helps us to stay focused on the present and keeps away negative thoughts.

Here are 5 essential do’s and don’ts when you work from home which makes you more productive:

1. Meditate Daily to Stay Positive and Productive:

There are so many blogs now available on the web which tells even for leaders and CEO’s now it’s too important to practice daily meditation. Can you guess why? This is one of the essential do’s of boosting your productivity while you work from home.

Daily meditation is a process of deep breathing which not only soothes our nerves but also releases essential body hormones that keep us relaxed and helps to stay focused on the present. Your attitude becomes positive and your concentration improves dramatically.

2. Do Bodyweight exercises or Yoga for 30 min:

Bodyweight exercises or Yoga are the best exercises that you can do anywhere, and it can be done without any instruments. These are exercises with minimal risk of hurting yourself accidentally, as well as these exercises are best for relaxing and toning your body.

A brisk exercise for 30 min a day, will help your mind to stay positive and ward off negative thoughts along with boosting your immune system now. It also ensures you don’t jump off the bed at the last moment before you open the laptop for working (essential for those who are now working at daytime).

3. Don’t Be in Pajamas While You Work:

Don’t be in the pajamas while you work. Take a proper shower and dress like you are going to the office. This helps to send neuro-signals to your brain that it’s time to work. Dressing in office attire, will not only make you concentrate more at work; but it too helps your mind feel the ease of the old office habits.

4. Make a Designated Workstation at Your Home:

Working from home doesn’t mean you should work on your bed or sofa. Make arrangements for a separate desk and ergonomically designed chair for your work. Don’t keep anything else than your laptop and a few essential articles of your work on the desk.

A simple, tidy table helps you to keep your mind happy and focused at work. This is one of the other essential do’s while you work from home.

5. Take regular Breaks and Don’t avoid Lunch:

Working from home means you miss the coffee breaks and watercooler conversations with your team. But don’t forget to take breaks for 10-15 min after every 2 hours of your work when working remotely. Or else fatigue may set in and you will lose focus on your work.

Don’t avoid lunch, because in the flow of your work it’s easy to get tempted for a late lunch or just opt for a binge. But to keep yourself healthy and energized it too important for you to have a light but nutritious lunch every day at the same time.

These are the few things that will keep you engaged positively to your work and boost your motivation to overcome this tough time. So, these are the 5 essential do’s and don’ts when you work from home which will make you more productive and stay focused and happy at work.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post 5 Essential Do’s and Don’ts When You Work From Home Which Makes You More Productive appeared first on The HR Monks.

Here I have discussed 3 possible situations where you may find obstacles to become productive at work every day and 1 simple solution – that is rewiring your mind and become mindful at work.

Here the situations discussed are:

1. How to be mindful when someone gives negative feedback and still you can remain positive at work
2. How to stay positive and execute a task when you are given a task that you don’t like
3. How you can be totally mindful and love your work

I hope this blog helps you to be more mindful at work and helps in increasing your productivity.

We all want to be successful in life. And most of us see our career as a tool to bring a sense of fulfillment in our life.

We spend a lot of time at the office and it takes a chunk of our life. And after good health, we see jobs and money as the most important part of our life. We think if we have money, we can acquire everything in life, be it a lavish life, social recognition or buying a dream home and so on. And thus, we see our job as a tool to earn money.

Thus, we go to the office every morning with lots of expectations. But even with the best of the intentions, we may fail to perform that very day. There can be various reasons for non-performance that very day, but generally, most of us put the blame on external factors.

Recently I came across a webinar of Leo Babauta at zenhabits.net which offered me a new window and a new insight to examine the problem about how can we increase our productivity daily?

Leo Babauta talks about the feeling of getting “hooked” or “caught up” – that we all go through every moment of our life – and this can (if we get aware of it) really helps us to be more mindful at work and increase our productivity.

He says, he got this idea from Pema Chödrön and the original idea originated from Tibetan thought of “Shenpa”, “which is usually involuntary and it gets right to the root of why we suffer.” You can read more about this in her blog here.

But this idea is not merely philosophical. It is true in case of the emotions and feelings we go through at the workplace too.

I shall discuss here the three common scenarios which decrease our productivity and how by applying this technique we can practice mindfulness at work and increase productivity.

How to be mindful when someone gives negative feedback and still you can remain positive at work:

Suppose your boss or colleague while talking to you suddenly starts criticizing you. In this case, what is your voluntary reaction? Naturally, you become negative and start nurturing resentment.

We came across various situations at work where we face negative feedback.

Now, this can be a spark. You suddenly get lost in the “cloud of thoughts”, your emotions start ballooning and you lose control.  You get lost in resentment and negative thoughts. This is both the conscious and the unconscious part of your feelings. And Leo Babauta tries to show us the way on how to get rid of it.

How to get rid of negative thoughts and become mindful?

Most of us are guided by our feelings and we fail to differentiate between our thoughts of the minds and our feelings. Our feelings get triggered by our thoughts, and when we can detach our thoughts from our feelings objectively when we can observe our thoughts, only then we can get rid of our emotional turmoil.

In simple words, if we practice mindfulness at work, we can detach the harmful emotions from our minds, and it can increase our productivity at work.

The Process to become aware of our thoughts and become mindful:

Leo Babauta gives us a process to become more mindful. As soon as you see you have trapped yourself in some sort of negative emotions, he suggests you become aware of it and stop yourself from getting carried away. Stop, take a deep breath and pause for a moment.

Have a glass of water and notice how your body is reacting to your thoughts. Try to find out which part of your body gets tensed, is your jaw getting tight, or is your shoulder muscle getting tensed or your head starts aching? Now relax that part of your body. Watch the reactions mindfully and it shall dissolve and vanish.

Trying to be mindful is an ongoing process:

Now, this is a continuous process. You will have tides of thoughts throughout the day, and you need to be watchful. You may mess up the things (your thoughts), but it’s ok! It’s really ok! You have to start the process once again, just as simple as that. And it shall a lot of practice to stay away from negative thoughts and feelings.

How to stay positive and execute a task when you are given a task that you don’t like:

The above technique taught by Leo Babauta also helps you to increase your productivity at work in a different way.

There are incidents at the office when your boss gives you a task and you don’t like that to carry that. Or in another way, we all come across situations in office when we really don’t like to work, even knowing the fact the task may be very important and we are failing to meet the deadlines.

You may term it as procrastination at work. And it kills our efficiency and productivity at work.

He says something interesting. He says to avoid things we don’t like; we turn to momentary pleasure (we see it as our hope) – and then that gives birth to a sense of fear.

Let me explain this.

Suppose you are given a task at the office that you are not finding interesting. What’s your reaction? You get busy with your smartphone or open Facebook. Now, this is a momentary diversion or “pleasure”. And at the end of the day, you have a sense of uneasiness that you have not performed well (because you haven’t concentrated on your task).

And if it carries on for a few weeks, slowly your performance takes a toll, you start losing interest in your job.

How to stop procrastination at work and start acting:

To stop this sense of something stopping you from doing things you don’t like to do, you need to be mindful.

Don’t avoid the task and keep yourself busy in diversions. Instead, focus on the feeling of dissatisfaction on your mind and watch that feeling closely. Keep patience. And slowly that feeling of obstacle or dislike will dissolve. It’s simple like a tide of thought.

It rises and rises and then slowly vanishes. Slowly relax your muscles, have water, take a deep breath. Now you are ready to do the task that you dreaded. Continue your practice, until you form a habit of doing that task.

So, this way you can avoid procrastination and become mindful. You can increase productivity at work.

And finally, how you can be totally mindful and love your work:

We all have a common habit that we compare ourselves with others. Again, this is in our thoughts. In the office too we don’t escape from that.

Suppose you love vegan food. And you see a colleague eating chicken every day. You start comparing food habits. Suppose a colleague has some habits that you don’t like. You start complaining about that at the subconscious level and start disliking him/her. Or somebody got a pay hike and you don’t get that. And you get furious!

What are the solutions?

Accept the fact you are unique and different from everybody:

You must accept that fact you are not a copy of anyone. And you are unique. So are other colleagues. Your life is different, you are different and so is everybody else. So, the daily outcomes in everybody’s life are bound to be different.

Don’t expect others to behave as you wish or your life to be the same as others:

Here also you must stop your thoughts form expecting others to behave your own way. Or stop expecting the same result in a life that your mates have got in their career.

Try to accept everybody as they are and welcome them to your life; try to accept yourself with all the ups and downs in your career and welcome yourself to your life. Love yourself and love everybody else. You shall be more at peace and the focus and concentration at your work will improve dramatically.

As a result, you shall be more mindful at work and increase your productivity.

The process is just watching your thoughts, watching your “uneasiness”, and refrain from acting, just relax and let it pass. And practice it continuously until the rest of your life. You shall find your life and career is taking a positive turn and you are enjoying your work more and more.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post How Can You Be More Mindful at Work and Increase Productivity appeared first on The HR Monks.

The Indian subcontinent is gradually becoming a force to be reckoned with owing to its steady economic rise, and a growing youth population that holds immense potential. However, entering the workforce is not as easy as perceived by most freshers. One of the biggest reasons why most Indian graduates fail to secure suitable employment is the lack of proper communication skills.

Today most of the jobs require proficiency in the English language. And as it is not the mother tongue of Indians, certain demographics of freshers in India still don’t possess the requisite proficiency in English.

Communication skills play a significant role while freshers are interviewed for a job post. In fact, the way they communicate goes a long way in boosting the credentials mentioned on their resume.

Based on recent job profiles it can be safely said that commercial enterprises across the globe irrespective of their sizes have unanimously zeroed in on one quality for their potential employees and that is “good communication skills”

Here Are 3 Reasons Why Effective Communication Is The Most Important Skill for a Fresher:

1. Effective Communication Helps to Crack the Interview:

Cracking an interview mostly depends on the soft skills of a fresher. Effective communication is the most important skill for a fresher to crack any interview. Communication skills are a host of skills clubbed together which includes assertive speaking and effective listening skills.

Good and effective communication is an essential tool in achieving productivity and maintaining strong, lasting working relationships at all levels of an organization.

Employers feel freshers who can deliver clear lines of communication will rapidly build trust amongst employees, leading to increases in productivity, output, and morale in general.

Poor communication skills in the workplace, on the other hand, will inevitably lead to unmotivated, ill-informed staff that may begin to question confidence in the abilities of the freshly appointed Managers and eventually the organization as a whole.

2. Effective Communication Helps to Do the Job Well:

When managers are strong communicators, they can better manage their teams.

When a fresher is a strong communicator, it becomes much simpler to delegate activities, manage conflicts, motivate and build relationships in an organization for him.

Communication is a two-way process and if managers don’t listen and don’t encourage dialogue with the other party, no job or person can survive for a long time. Listening shows respect and allows the new manager to become familiar with the extraordinary problems that they may have to solve in the organization. This why effective communication is the most important skill for a fresher which helps him to do his job well.

3. Effective Communication Helps Us to be Confident:

Effective communication is the most important skill for a fresher which helps him to be confident. Body language of anyone, which is a part of effective communication skills; works to display confidence and other desirable traits. In the case of a potential job opportunity, the amount of displaying confidence can be the driving factor in whether a fresher gets hired or not.

Being confident can be as easy as maintaining eye contact, maintaining a relaxed body stance, and talking with clarity and assertiveness.

Having strong communication skills develops confidence and aids in all aspects of life – from professional life to personal life and everything that falls in between.

From a business standpoint, all transactions result from communication. Good communication skills are essential to allow others and the communicator to understand information more accurately and quickly. Thus, effective communication is the most important skill for a fresher. Here you can read about how to improve your communication skills at the workplace.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post Effective Communication is the Most Important Skill for a Fresher appeared first on The HR Monks.

Have you ever thought of how many times we create a routine or a daily schedule so that we are able to complete our daily tasks?

Not everybody leads a disciplined life. To lead a disciplined life you should be able to follow your daily routine religiously.

But why do we fail n number of times to follow that routine? We fail because organizing your days needs a set of skills.

Here are 7 things you may lose if you don’t organize your day:

1. Unable to complete your daily tasks:

We all have 24 hours a day. But what is the difference between Mark Zuckerberg, Tony Robins or Eisenstein and between you?

It’s simply how you use your hours per day. Or in other words how productive are you per hour per day.

Organizing your day calls for:

• Waking up every day in a fixed time
• Do exercise daily
• Having a healthy breakfast
• Reaching your office on time
• Prioritizing your tasks
• Spending quality time with colleagues and family
• Spent a few moments with self
• Going to bed at a fixed time
• Having a nice sleep

But are you really able to follow this every day? In reality, most of us are living in a mess. Either we wake up late, skip physical exercise and rush to the office without having proper breakfast.

Most of the time we fail to complete our tasks at the office and carry office work to home.

And probably, most of us stay awake till late at night.

As a result, our life loses our biological rhythm; we become stressed and start living an unbalanced life.

2. We lose mental peace and become stressed:

As our work gets piled up, we lose our calm. If we don’t organize our day we are always in a hurry and surprisingly we become unproductive.

This happens because we think we have many works to do. And without proper prioritizing our tasks we are unable to finish our daily works on time.

Ultimately we lose our cool. And if this goes on happening every day, we lose our mental peace and slowly start picking up the habit of getting stressed easily.

3. Miss the career ladder:

If you have read any of the autobiographies of highly successful people, you will find one thing in common. All of them are efficient in organizing their day effectively.

If you are unable to organize your day, most of the day you go back home without finishing your office work. And slowly not only you shall be looked down by your colleagues and boss but also you shall lose your efficiency at work.

Finally, you lose the good vibes with everyone around you at the office. And ultimately your more organized mates will go up the career ladder.

4. Lose focus in life:

As a result of accumulating daily losses by not being able to organize your days properly, in the long run, you may lose focus in life.

Most people who are unable to clock daily wins become negative and start cultivating constant procrastination.

Procrastinations and negativity will snatch away the focus in life.

5. Start a sedentary lifestyle:

Till now I have been talking to you about your professional life. But what about if are unable to organize your day and rituals in your personal life?

If you stay awake till late at night and don’t get proper sleep, you cannot wake up early. As a result, you miss the fresh oxygen every sunrise.

And believe me, if you miss the gym or physical exercise for a couple of years – you have already changed your lifestyle.

Surely, now instead of a healthy and balanced lifestyle, you will spend more hours in binging fast-food, tea and coffee or soda. You start gaining weight at a rapid pace. Slowly, you pick lifestyle diseases.

6. Sour Relationship:

And finally, you are on the last step of your self-destruction. There is an old saying, “If you are comfortable with yourself, you shall be comfortable with others.”

Without an organized day, you shall fail to make quality time for your friends and colleagues. And you carry it for few months at a stretch; you are not in anyone’s apple’s eye anymore.

Bad health along with broken relationships will make most your relationships sour.

7. Lose purpose in life:

And with all the above things happening to you, are you not bound to lose the purpose in your life?

The true fact is most of us are drifting away from life – in the truest sense a purposeful and meaningful life.

If you are unable to organize your day properly, ultimately you shall lose proper coordination in life.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post 7 Things You May Lose if You Don’t Organize Your Day! appeared first on The HR Monks.

Procrastination is a habit that kills productivity, creates anxiety and friction among team members.

You can not entirely stop yourself from procrastinating. But you can minimize it by discovering why your mind is dithering away from time to time.

The best way to manage procrastination and be productive is to discuss the matter with someone who can help. But before that, you need introspection about what is possibly wrong?

4 signs that you cannot manage procrastination and are getting less productive:

How can you spot procrastination? There are several signs, and if you notice those in yourself, you need to start corrective measures immediately.

Recently have you noticed too many people, maybe your friends and colleagues or relatives are complaining that you are somewhere lost and not active socially, or not meeting your deadlines of projects? Are they anxious, baffled or depressed with your behavior?

If something is happening so frequently, look for these 4 warning signs about procrastination:

• Are you giving too many excuses at work?
• Are you taking frequent brakes and indulging in nonworking activities like web surfing, chatting, and snacks or smoke breaks at the office?
• When your boss knocks you for any of your projects you are slower in response?
• When you are given any work to do or some urgent project crops up – your mood swiftly changes from positive to negative?

If you are suffering from these 4 signs surely you are unable to manage your procrastination and becoming less productive day by day.

For understanding how procrastination kills your productivity you can read this blog Do Procrastination effects employees’ productivity! 3 reasons how?

But don’t worry. At times even minor episodes of procrastination can make us feel guilty or ashamed. An article by Mindtools, How to Stop Procrastinating writes:

 It (procrastination) can lead to reduced productivity and cause us to miss out on achieving our goals.

If we procrastinate over a long period of time, we can become demotivated and disillusioned with our work, which can lead to depression and even job loss, in extreme cases.

As I have earlier told, Procrastination is a habit, so you probably wouldn’t be able to break it overnight. But with genuine effort in a phased manner, you can manage procrastination and be productive.

Here are 7 ways how to manage procrastination and be productive:

1. Focus on self-introspection:

Concentrate on the “why” part first! Ask yourself why are you putting off a few particular tasks every day? What is the real reason behind it?

Keeping a journal will help you in a great way to find out the root cause of procrastination. Our mind is a powerful tool, and if your lifestyle is not a balanced one, your mind becomes your master.

Often our mind gets cluttered in achieving short-term pleasures, rather than facing hardships to achieve long-term goals.

Keeping a daily journal is a great way to de-clutter your focus. A vision board may get your focus back in your work and turbo-charge your motivation to excel.

2. Jump at work:

The first 10-30 seconds of thought process is very important. Your mind will try hard to start procrastinating. But don’t let it do that.

Jump at your work, and if you can avoid getting distracted for at least for the first 2-5 minutes, you have won the battle.

Once you are into the project, you have cut half of the chances to disrupt it in middle.

3. Chunk your Job:

When a task seems overbearing, procrastination often follows. So, in this situation, you should break that task into smaller, more manageable parts.

Projects that you don’t like can be overwhelming. So take 2-3 minutes and outline all the things you need to do to get started. And put the outline on the calendar, with timelines and checkboxes.

This will help you to find out how to manage procrastination and be productive at work.

4. Avoid perfectionism:

Lindsey Perkins Wade quotes Psychologist and author Tamar Chansky :

“Strive to do excellent work, not perfect work. It’s not about lowering your standards, it’s about lowering the very unrealistic stakes that you’ve constructed in your mind of what it means to fall short of the non-existent construct of perfection.”

So much so of the perfectionism! So next time you get a task and start wasting your valuable time in making non-important aspects perfect, concentrate on the bigger parts of the job and make them just right.

5. Give deadlines to all your works:

Commit to a self-imposed deadline to all the tasks in your hand to avoid procrastination and be productive. This is the best way to manage deadlines.

Instead of setting vague goals that you can push back at ease, start scheduling important tasks for non-negotiable windows of time, and be realistic in setting the time limits.

6. Eliminate things that distract you easily:

No, distractions won’t put you in a procrastinating mode. Rater the habit of procrastination looks for distractions to get you indulged upon to kill your time silently.

Eliminating anything that might tempt you, imposing restrictions on yourself to ensure that accessing these diversions is next to impossible,-  will help you focus on work and be productive.

7. Occasionally change the order of your tasks in hand:

Don’t waste your time on something or a part of any task that you are finding to complete for the time being.

This process is like answering math’s exam paper. You have limited time, and when you are unable to solve a particular problem, better try to solve the ones which you can at first.

I will give you one practical example. Suppose in a day you have to write 2 blogs, create a video, create a couple of image works as a content executive in a digital marketing company. And you are having problems with conceptualizing the video or write the first blog.

You should better try to write the next blog or create the image works at first and then go back to the works you were struggling at first.

This way you know how to manage procrastination and be productive.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post 7 Ways How to Manage Procrastination and Be Productive appeared first on The HR Monks.

What separates a leader from common people, a winner from an average, is self-discipline and daily habits. Habits that bring success are painful at the beginning, rocky in the middle, and super powerful at the end.

There is a relationship between self-disciple and daily habits. Strong self-discipline creates unstoppable daily habits of achieving great milestones in human history. If you follow the daily rituals of any Olympic champion, you shall find how this is true. It takes hours and hours and hours of rigorous and painstaking practice and patience for one medal.

Learn from these powerful 5 daily habits of great leaders that teach you how to be successful in life:

Rise Early in the Morning: How to be successful in life? Wake up early daily. Make it a ritual. Almost all great leaders follow this ritual. Early morning gives you space for an uplifting and mindful beginning of your entire day.

You can breathe from your busy schedule if you wake up early in the morning and can get an hour or two and do something that makes you relaxed and happy. This is a powerful ritual that helps you to enjoy life and become successful and unstoppable.

Revisit your Goals twice daily: You can’t achieve your dreams if you can’t track your progress daily. Goals keep you on the path to achieve your dreams. So every day before you go to bed and when you wake up in the morning track your goals. See are you on the right track, or getting deviated?

Successful leaders review daily several times that they are on the right track or not. So, if you want to be a powerful leader, you need to examine at least twice every day that are you on the right track or not.

Be action-oriented: The lesson from the great leaders that teaches you how to be successful in life is taking continuous action. The actions that you take daily become the answers to your karma – your destiny. Tireless daily actions create an unbroken path to mastery. All great leaders achieve success in life through hard work, determination, and dedication.

Make time for self-care: Self-care is a potion for your soul. You can take care of your inner core by connecting with your inner self. You need to connect to your inner core daily.

This can be done through daily meditation, exercise, reading, taking a walk, spending a few quiet minutes, or listening to music or anything you want. All these activities make you reflect on the ultimate purpose of your life, realigns you with your inner self, finds answers to your pain, and makes you grateful for your existence.

Learn repeatedly: All great leaders learn infinitely in life. This is one of the powerful daily habits of great leaders that teaches you how to be successful in life. We tend not to learn from our mistakes and run in the same circle of trial and error throughout our life.

Successful leaders learn to break this circle as fast as they can. They learn continuously from their mistakes and breaks the patterns of failures of their life. You should keep a daily journal so that you can remember your lessons of life and cease to make repetition of your mistakes. A daily journal helps you to discover new learnings when you go through the same page of your daily life and makes you wiser.

When we learn actively, we start growing and become an unstoppable force that creates milestones in life.

The secret of success and failure in our life lies in our daily habits. Daily habits are like a powerful cable which we rewire every day with our self-discipline. Follow these powerful daily habits of the great leaders and make it your ritual, they can teach you how to be successful in life.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post 5 Daily Habits of Great Leaders That Teaches You How to Be Successful in Life appeared first on The HR Monks.

Many managers became great leaders by virtue of leading the organization from within and transforming them into organizations of disrupting innovations.

Google and Apple are two organizations, where its leaders are loved and admired by all over the globe. These leaders have successfully transformed their organization into institutions that usher disruptive innovations decades after decades.

And this has catapulted these leaders as personalities who are loved and admired to work with, and they have ensured the impact they created will last in their absence.

So, what are the qualities that determine a leader who is loved and admired to work with?

A leader who is loved and admired have these following qualities:

They can dream big and inspire the whole organization: These great leaders have an insane vision, their dreams are so big, giant, that ordinary people would never dare to dream such things any time. But these leaders with their confidence and faith in their leadership abilities ignite and inspire a thousand people to dream like them and creates a unified vision to move forward and take giant steps forward.

They don’t negotiate with the benchmark they set at any cost: Great leaders are merciless in terms of the quality standards of their products and services and demands continuous improvements and constant innovations of high standards. They not only think out of the box but forces the whole team to think outside the box in terms of solutions and innovations.

They believe in small daily wins and not in big bangs: Great leaders who are loved and admired, work with a belief that small daily wins create milestones. They expect the whole team to complete the daily tasks effectively each and every day, round the year.

For them, if the employees need to be successful, consistency is the key. It’s not one day, but every day everybody must follow the plans and work towards to make the dream successful.

They have great faith in the capabilities of the teammates: Great leaders though seldom heap praise on the team publicly, but their inner core has strong faith in the capabilities of the teammates. The teammates can fail a hundred times, but they know they shall learn from their mistakes and ultimately shall achieve success.

They are people who lead with the heart and value human emotions: A leader who is loved and admired to work with puts great emphasis on forging warm relationships with employees. They put great value on the feelings and emotions of their employees and teammates and finds space aside from the work, where they keep in touch with everybody in the organization.

He may not see every person every day, but he exactly knows how a particular person is doing, what are the problems he may be facing in the organization.

Leaders are loved and admired because they make everybody who comes in touch with them – warm and comfortable.

Whether a leader will be loved and admired is determined by the fact of how he adds a sense of purpose and love in the everyday work of his employees and teammates. People spend so many hours at the office or at work. They look for a boss who makes them feel accomplished at the end of the day after a hard day’s work. These are the qualities that determine a leader who is loved and admired to work with.

People love to work with leaders who can give them a sense of pride even long after they leave the organization, a feeling that their work has added immense value in their life.

Sayak

Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.

He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.

He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The post Qualities That Determines a Leader Who is Loved and Admired to Work With appeared first on The HR Monks.