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A recent study by When Is Good, a meeting planner website, has found out that the time when most people are available for a work meeting is 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon. They put this down to many factors – the motivation once you’ve coped with the weekend backlog on Monday, the timing fitting in with working hours (meaning there is less danger of it over-running) and the chance to get down to work in the morning is not affected. But what is the time when you’re most productive?

I tend to find that in the middle of the week, when the weekend is in sight and I’m actually well into the work-time frame of mind, is my best period. I can get loads of work done and outside interference seems to have less of an effect. In this respect, I’ve learnt to plan around it: get the tough stuff done mid-week, the easy stuff on a Monday or Friday and everything else can fit in as and when time is free.

Realising your productivity changes over a traditional work-week is an important step to realising your full potential. Trying to undertake tasks you know will be difficult or long-winded when you’ve barely got any energy left on a Friday afternoon is sure to fail, while doing little in the time when you are most productive is essentially wasting your time when it could be spent better somewhere else.

So, sit down and have a think – are you productive right now? If not, when are you? It could be midnight on a Saturday night, or 8am on a Monday, it really doesn’t matter. Just as long as you fit in your activities around it, you may well find your overall productivity rising. One example of this is fitting in your exercise or down-time with when you aren’t typically productive, meaning you save your best time for things which matter.

Some of you may have heard of this story before, but I think it is a good one to tell again.

A young man in Malawi, William Kamkwamba, is being touted as the embodiment of the African spirit and determination which could save their continent from the worst ravages of climate change. Why? Well, after being forced to leave school at age 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80 a year in fees, he decided that it wasn’t all over for him. He kept on learning from the local libraries he had access to and in the end has shown a remarkable talent for innovation which has helped his family and others living in the area.

You see, this boy loves science. A lot. He built a windmill from bits of scrap he found – so far so what? Well, this windmill has revolutionised his area by generating electricity from the wind and enabling the villagers to be able to pump water, a precious resource in drought-afflicted Malawi.

Initially his family and others simply thought he was up to no good. He had to explain numerous times what he wanted to do and they didn’t believe him, or believe it was possible. But when he finally finished his work, what they saw made them realise he was on to something. By hooking up a light bulb to his makeshift wind turbine and showing that it worked, he showed everyone that not only could their lives be improved, but that they didn’t need anyone else to do it.

In the end, his windmill and its successors have given electricity and running water for irrigation to a large area. Villagers queue up to charge their mobile phones, his family’s farm can thrive thanks to the availability of water and paraffin lighting has been replaced by electric lighting. All in all, this boy (as he was at the time) has really been a shot in the arm to his local community.

Now 22, the man has been around the world at climate change conferences, speaking in front of major world statesmen and businessmen, and won a prestigious scholarship at a South African leadership academy. No doubt he will go on to even greater things, and I would not be surprised to see this young man rising higher and higher in African society.

So how does this story relate to you? Well, if this boy can do what he has done in circumstances where even $80 for a year’s education is an unachievable target, then maybe you can make those life changes you have always wanted to. He is a shining example that available resources don’t matter all that much – raw determination, spirit and desire to improve either your own or someone else’s life can go a very long way.

Read the story for yourself here!

“Self improvement” is one of those areas of knowledge which is half snake oil and half fact. There are plenty of people who have spent thousands upon thousands on books, tapes, DVDs and seminars to “become the best they can be” – but this is a vague aim. The best you can be has no hard definition. Chances are that as you go on through life you will find out you could do a lot more than you actually do! This side of the coin is snake oil – promises are often made that can’t even be quantified, never mind fulfilled. So what is the other side of it?

The base of all self improvement is your general well-being. You would be amazed how much you can improve your day-to-day life by just being that little bit fitter, for example. More energy, endorphins flying around your body like nobody’s business and a generally more healthy body can do wonders for self-esteem and mental balance, which in essence are the core of what self improvement is all about. I like to think of this as the ‘self’ part. Once you have the ‘self’ nailed down you may well find it a lot easier to go on and do what you want to do – the ‘improvement’ part.

These are the reasons I think fitness is more important. I’m no health freak (far from it!) but when I began to exercise a little, using up energy wherever I could, I found myself more driven in my work and private life. Part of it all is going to sleep knowing that you have done a l0t in that day, and that the next day you will continue and do it again.

Self improvement gets a bad rap but I think with simplifying it to this bare structure, it sounds a lot better. What do you guys think?

An employment survey makes interesting reading as it covers the reasons cited by employees for staying in their current job and what it would take to make them move to a new position.

In the third annual survey of its kind, inadequate compensation was the most popular reason for leaving a job.

Other reasons for leaving included, lack of career advancement, insufficient recognition, inadequate professional development and boredom.

As for why people want to stay in their jobs, the top reasons were good relationships between coworkers, desirable working hours and attractive benefits.

Employees are much more ready to look for new positions but require more compensation than employers believe. 50% of employers believed a salary increase of 8-15% was enough for an employee to move but only 31% of employee said that this would be the case but for 38% employees it would take a increase of 15-30% before they would move to a new position and 17% said the increase would have to be even larger than 30%.

Dispite this loyalty, the amount that employers would offer in a pay increase to retain a member of staff was willing to offer was just 7%. Only half of employers sometime make an offer to retain staff, while 35% say they never do. Quite surprising considering the cost of finding a replacement member of staff is more than £13,000.

In the second of this series of CV tips we look at the what you should include on your CV. Primarily, the CV is a summary of your achievements used to market yourself to your next potential employer. Keep this in mind. Employers just need to know the relevent facts that make you suitable for the position  not your life story.  What you need to include also depends on your level of work experience and how long you have been working in your current position.

Most important is your contact information. This can be your mobile telephone number and email address. On written CVs you should also include your address. It can also be good to include a link to your a Linkedin account, if you have one.

Personal Profile – one or two  sentences summarising your career. For example: “Investment banker with 3 years in aquisitions and mergers.”

Key Skills – this section should show that you can do the job and are everything the employer is looking for. These can be grouped either by theme, e.g.  HR, Computer Skill, Administration, office management, etc.

There are many companies out there that will charge you to look over your CV but they are not really necessary. However you have written your CV there are some simple ways in which you can make changes that will make a difference.

CVs come in three basic types:

Reverse Chronological – this starts with your most recent experience and works back through time. This type of CV is good if you have a lot of experience.

Skill Based – instead of listing what you have done, this CV tell the employer what skills you have an your level of competance with these skills. Better for university leavers without a lot of work experience.This is also useful for people that are making a jump to a different career.

Hybrid – a combination of both types. Useful for someone moving positions within the same sector. It should list your previous work history and list the key skills that you have that are relevant to the job.

Writing your CV is the one chance you get to impress when applying for a job. Don’t mess it up by  being flippant. These are genuine quotes from CV that were received for various positions:

• “I have lurnt Word 2007 computor and spreasheet progroms.”
• “I am loyal to my employer at all costs…Please feel free to respond to my resume on my office voice mail.”
• “Reason for leaving last job: they insisted that all employees get to work by 8:45 am every morning. I couldn’t work under those conditions.”
• “References: none. I’ve left a path of destruction behind me.”
• “I have an excellent track record, although I am not a horse.”
• “Wholly responsible for two (2) failed financial institutions.”

You need to have some common sense when filling out your CV.

In the current economic climate, the prospects for a finding a job are not good. The level of unemployment lags behind that of the prospects of the rest of the economy. With the UK starting its tentative recovery process, the number of people seeking work is still increasing.

In these times, people looking for work are forced to consider jobs tha they would not otherwise take.  This puts increased pressure on those that the least able to help themselves. The poorly educated and those in debt. We are seeing employers use this situation, with an increased number of internships where people are willing to work for little or no wages just at the potential prospect of having a job in the future.

It is very poor situation for job seekers that will take some time to improve.

There are no hard and fast rules to writing a CV but there are some commonsense guidelines that can help. Let’s take a moment to go through some of the important points to remember when writing a CV.

The first is that it should be to the point. When a job vacancy is issued, there are usually many applications and to stand a chance of being seen you must sell yourself to the employer as effectively as possible. The first way in which this can be done is to be consice. If your CV is more than 2-pages long then it is probably too long.

Update and modify your CV according to the job you are applying for. Many people write a CV and either leave it to become outdated or include lots of irrelavent information. If you are applying for a good which requires certain skills that you have then write your CV in such a way as to emphases these skills. Extra talents are good but for every job there are a set of essential skills which must be met first.

To tailor your CV to a particular job, look at the requirements and try to include something in your CV that reflects these requirements to the employer.

It is all too obvious to say  that you should check your spelling and grammar at least twice when sending a CV but it never fails to amaze me that people do not bother. As this is the first chance to make an impression it is vital that you make a good one otherwise there won’t be another chance. Pay particular attention to the spelling of Curriculum Vitae. That is often spelt incorrectly.

If you have to post a CV, use a first class stamp. It is often an unmentioned way of quickly weeding out candidates. It is harsh but reflects the attitude of the candidate to the job.

The web is great place to improve one’s self, either by studying a something new or finding out about your interests. However, there are so many sites full of dross and many of them come under the heading of self-help.

Type ‘self improvement’ into a search engine and you will find thousands of results but then look at the quality of the pages. There is nothing. Most of the sites are so called ‘Made for Adsense’( MFA) sites with scarcely any content but many hundreds of adverts designed to make money from the clicks of the unwary.  If you were to take a sentence from one of these sites and search the chances are that it would be on many other sites.

Is this what self-help is about these days? Help yourself make money by making useless spammy websites. There is a lot of good information on the web but it is not found through self-help websites.  Help yourself, go and get an education.