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I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.

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I just found a list of 100+ motivational techniques for students at Smart Teaching. I believe that many of these are of use to anyone, not just students:

Here are 100 or so suggestions of ways that you can make your classes more engaging and encourage your students to work harder at learning.

General

Here are some basic ideas to consider when motivating your students.

1. Encourage internal motivation. While some students may need a great deal of motivation from you, your ultimate goal is to get them to motivate themselves. Encourage students to provide their own motivation for getting things done rather than relying on you to motivate them.
2. Prepare students to learn. Before you begin teaching, make sure that students have been prepared and are in the appropriate mood to sit down and learn. Those who feel uncomfortable for any reason will feel much less motivated to pay attention.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6d7dc3. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Craig Harper has some insights into personal development in his new post “Seven Self-Help Pitfalls“. I recommend everyone read this:

While the benefits of working on ‘us’ are seemingly obvious, I believe there are a few challenges, pitfalls and curve balls that the would-be, self-helper needs to be mindful of in his or her search for their best self and best life.

1. Self-Help Selfishness. One of the potential dangers of constantly working on us is that we can inadvertently become self-absorbed, selfish, unaware of the needs of others and disconnected from reality. Some Personal Development devotees are so ’self-focused’ (their world, their issues, their problems, their relationships, their body, their finances) that they struggle to relate to, take an interest in, and connect with people who don’t have the same mindset, values, attitudes or thinking. Sometimes we need to put our own reality, situation, goals, needs and desires on hold for a while and simply and selflessly invest time, energy and love into others with no agenda.

I, too, am a believer in “paying it forward” over looking for what’s in it for me. This outlook has helped me grow myself and my business much more than eyeballing every angle ever did. Go read Craig’s post and leave a comment!

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6kopa5. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Alik at Practice This has an interesting post about the design and implementation of:

Your Life Projects

Define your life projects you want to develop yourself and achieve results. Mine are customers, family, finances, professional development, soft skill development, blogging, and few more. Everything that falls beyond these categories (life projects) does not deserve your attention, energy, and time.

Read the whole thing, as he describes how to use Outlook 2007 to manage these projects.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6aaqpt. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

“As a savvy business owner, you know you can’t do everything yourself. Whether you are capable or not, you understand that your time is most intelligently focused on activities that grow your business and generate revenue. These days, outsourcing your administrative work to a Virtual Assistant makes it very easy to get just the amount of support you need without having to hire in-house staff. But how do you choose a highly skilled, truly qualified Virtual Assistant?

This 10-step guide gives you some practical points to consider and questions to ask as you go about the selection process.”

“For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others.” Eleanor Roosevelt

[Editor’s Note: This post has been updated and corrected for originality]

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6g6jcf. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen