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Archive for June, 2008

10 Tips for Good Night’s Sleep

Stick to a schedule. Erratic bedtimes do not allow for your body to align to the proper circadian rhythms. Mum was right when she set a time we always had to go to sleep as kids. Also, make sure you try to keep the same schedule on weekends too, otherwise the next morning, you’d wake later and feel overly tired.
 
Sleep only at night. Avoid daytime sleep if possible. Daytime naps steal hours from nighttime slumber. Limit daytime sleep to 20-minute, power naps.

Exercise. It’s actually known to help you sleep better. Your body uses the sleep period to recover its muscles and joints that have been exercised. Twenty to thirty minutes of exercise every day can help you sleep, but be sure to exercise in the morning or afternoon. Exercise stimulates the body and aerobic activity before bedtime may make falling asleep more difficult.

Taking a hot shower or bath before bed helps bring on sleep because they can relax tense muscles.

Avoid eating just before bed. Avoid eat large meals or spicy foods before bedtime. Give yourself at least 2 hours from when you eat to when you sleep. This allows for digestion to happen (or at least start) well before you go to sleep so your body can rest well during the night, rather than churning away your food.

Avoid caffeine. It keeps you awake and that’s now what you want for a good nights sleep. We all know that.

Read a fiction book. It takes you to a whole new world if you really get into it. And then take some time to ponder over the book as you fall asleep. I find as I read more and more, regardless of the book, I get more tired at night and so find it easier to fall asleep. Different for others?

Have the room slightly cooler. I prefer this to a hot room. I prefer to turn off the heat and allow the coolness to circulate in and out of the windows. If I get cold, I wear warmer clothes. It also saves on the bills as you’re not going to require the heat all night long.
 
Sleep in silence. I find sleeping with no music or TV on more easy and restful. I guess others are different, but sleep with no distractions is best for a clearer mind.

Avoid alcohol before bedtime. It’s a depressant; although it may make it easier to fall asleep, it causes you to wake up during the night. As alcohol is digested your body goes into withdrawal from the alcohol, causing nighttime awakenings and often nightmares for some people.

Much has been written about the secrets of good management and few will argue that the best managers are inspired, visionary, dedicated, industrious, energetic, energizing and display integrity, leadership, common sense and courage. So where is it that managers commonly fail or falter and lose their precious foothold on the corporation’s top rungs? The following, from the career experts at bayt.com, are ten of the most basic management traps and tips to avoid them:

Weak managers set weak goals

As a manager your role is to get specific jobs completed by employees in the most optimal, efficient and innovative manner and in order to do that, you need to set clear objectives. Successful managers set SMART goals – goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. They are able to communicate these goals clearly, simply and concisely to their employees so that none are vague or uncertain about expectations. By all means reach for the stars in your objectives but to do so without supplying employees with the training, resources, flexibility and freedom they need to accomplish their goals and a schedule of regular supervision and feedback is to set them (and yourself) up for failure.

Weak managers micro-manage – effective leaders inspire

The days of command and control organizations are long over – today’s managers recognize that in order to leverage their skills and maximize their team’s output they need to adopt a flexible approach and ‘lead’ their teams to excellence rather than closely supervise, instruct and control them. The best leaders communicate to their employees a vision and ignite in them the fire, motivation and desire to work towards making this vision a reality. Good leaders unleash their employees to innovate and achieve optimal solutions by communicating top-level goals and objectives and a suggested blueprint for success then leaving the employees to determine how to get there most optimally while ensuring they have the aptitudes, training, resources and work environment necessary to achieve superior results. While a program of regular feedback and supervision is essential, managers should ensure that their management style is not repressive, meddling or overly overbearing. The golden rule is to communicate the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the work that needs to be done and leave the employees to determine the ‘how’ without burdening them with strict instruction manuals or prescribed rules and patterns that are largely redundant and inconducive to speed, creativity, progress and innovation.

Weak managers are afraid of hiring/cultivating strong leaders

Strong leaders/managers have the self-confidence to hire the best people, take them to new levels and cultivate in them all the qualities needed to make them in turn effective leaders of the future. Weak leaders replicate themselves in their hiring decisions and hire mediocre players, mistakenly believing that an employee with more skills, acumen or industry knowledge than themselves will ultimately undermine them or make them look bad. The best managers are characterized by an ability to stimulate their employees to superior performance and through coaching, training, feedback as well as by example, inspire in them all the qualities needed to make effective managers. A good manager helps employees achieve their full potential and constantly raises the bar so that employees never stop learning, innovating and growing. Coaching, training, career planning and programs for ongoing growth and development of key staff are high on the priority lists of the best managers.

Weak managers belittle their employees

Bosses who favour the archaic ‘tough’ management style where employees are singled out for public reprimand and negative feedback is plentiful while recognition and positive reinforcement are scarce will fail to win the loyalty, respect and commitment of their teams over the long run. Without an inspired, fired up, self-confident employee base these managers set themselves and their teams up for failure. Effective leaders by contrast, respect their employees and give them regular feedback with intelligent constructive criticism and loudly laud special accomplishments in both public and private, while communicating any negative feedback ONLY in private and focusing such criticism strictly on the job performance, not the person’s character. Strong leaders recognize and reward a job well done. These leaders inspire their teams to perform at their best and are able to elicit from them a high degree of loyalty and a ‘hunger’ to raise the bar and continuously excel. In such organisations, employees are not afraid to challenge their boss’s ideas or upset the status quo in the interest of innovation and excellence and are encouraged to take risks to elevate the business to a new level. The autocrats and bureaucrats on the other hand sap their employees’ self-confidence, drive and energy with their overbearing management style and fail to induce in them any motivation to raise the bar or excel.

Weak managers have obsolete skills-strong leaders constantly reinvent themselves

In today’s knowledge-driven economies and highly competitive environment, skills, training and education rapidly become obsolete and effective managers know that they must constantly re-educate themselves and update their skills to maintain an edge. While over-confident managers with an inertia to further education fall by the wayside, good managers regularly take an honest inventory of their skills and abilities and upgrade their technical knowledge and soft skills wherever appropriate. They encourage their teams to do likewise with sound career planning and performance appraisal programs and an emphasis on training and self-education.

Weak managers have poor communication skills

Good communication includes cultivating and maintaining open channels of communication with the team and others in the organisation, giving constructive, intelligent feedback, eliciting ideas through brainstorming sessions or otherwise, articulating the company vision and mission in no uncertain terms, setting clear objectives and listening attentively with an open-mind to employees grievances, suggestions and any other issues. Effective leaders have an open-door policy that welcomes input, suggestions and feedback from employees and recognize that good ideas and the next best idea/process/innovation can come from anywhere. Strong leaders listen; weak leaders talk. Strong leaders pay attention to their employees and encourage them to express professional opinions and ask for more responsibility; weak leaders think they are above such open-door policies. Employees who are not listened to and are not made to feel important or respected as professionals or individuals are unlikely to innovate or express any exciting new ideas that can move a company forward.

Weak managers blame

Everybody makes mistakes and strong leaders protect their good people from taking the fall when they err. Good bosses recognize that the occasional slip-ups are inevitable and can be learning opportunities and are ready to take personal responsibility when the team makes a misstep. A good boss realizes that his most promising employees want to succeed, will grow as a result of their mistakes and are unlikely to repeat the same mistakes. They do no set their people up as a negative example for the rest of the organization nor point fingers when the going gets tough. Good bosses are personably accountable for their actions as well as the actions of their subordinates and do not allow a culture of blame to permeate the organisation.

Weak managers take full credit for their team’s accomplishments

While weak leaders usurp all the credit for a job well done by their teams, the strongest leaders will give the full credit to the team as a whole or the team member responsible for the project. Strong leaders motivate, energize and inspire by giving credit where credit is due and being generous with reward and recognition wherever appropriate. Strong leaders publicly thank their employees for a job well done and recognize that a motivated, successful, energized team will reflect directly on the boss.

Weak managers thrive on bureaucracy

Weak leaders are fond of, augment and live well with the layers and bureaucratic shackles that tie an organisation down; strong leaders remove them. Today’s effective leaders recognize that in order to compete they must operate like a small company with a high level of speed, responsiveness and flexibility. They realize that to maintain their edge in today’s marketplace their organization needs to be responsive to changing market conditions and remove the shackles, boundaries, layers, clutter and obsolete policies, procedures and routines that get in the way of the freedom and free flow of people, resources and ideas.

Weak managers are divorced from their teams

Effective managers genuinely care about their employees and take the time to get to know them and to understand their strengths, weaknesses, what makes them tick and their goals and ambitions. They also take the time to learn something about their personal life. While weak managers will maintain an outdated aloofness and a formal distance from their teams, exceptional managers are able to bring out the best in every employee and win their loyalty and respect by understanding their unique needs, motivations and abilities and showing the team that they are important and personally significant. Strong managers are team players and through their constant involvement with their teams communicate to them that they are there for them and supportive of them. Effective managers by building a supportive work environment, build a camaraderie and team spirit that enthuses and excites the team to new levels of performance.

Economic issues have occupied people’s minds throughout theages. Aristotle and Plato in ancient Greece wrote about problems of wealth,property, and trade. Both were prejudiced against ommerce, feeling that to live by trade was undesirable. The Romans borrowed their economic ideas from the Greeks and showed the same contempt for trade. During the middle Ages the economic ideas of the Roman Catholic Church were expressed in the canon law, which condemned usury (the taking of interest for money loaned) and regarded commerce as inferior to agriculture.

Economics as a subject of modern study, distinguishable from moral philosophy and politics, dates from the work, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), by the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith. Mercantilism and physiocracy were precursors of the classical economics of Smith and his 19th-century successors.

Economics, social science concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. Economists focus on the way in which individuals, groups, business enterprises, and governments seek to achieve efficiently any economic objective they select. Other fields of study also contribute to this knowledge: Psychology and ethics try to explain how objectives are formed; history records changes in human objectives; sociology interprets human behavior in social contexts.

Standard economics can be divided into two major fields.

• The first, price theory or microeconomics, explains how the interplay of supply and demand in competitive markets creates a multitude of individual prices, wage rates, profit margins, and rental changes. Microeconomics assumes that people behave rationally. Consumers try to spend their income in ways that give them as much pleasure as possible. As economists say, they maximize utility. For their part, entrepreneurs seek as much profit as they can extract from their operations.
• The second field, macroeconomics, deals with modern explanations of national income and employment. Macroeconomics dates from the book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1935), by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. His explanation of prosperity and depression centers on the total or aggregate demand for goods and services by consumers, business investors, and governments. Because, according to Keynes, inadequate aggregate demand increases unemployment, the indicated cure is either more investment by businesses or more spending and consequently larger budget deficits by government.

Definition of Economics given by Adam Smith

Adam smith wrote a book in 1776 whose title was “Wealth of Nations”. In his book he discussed the word ‘wealth’ through its four aspects: production of wealth, exchange of wealth, distribution of wealth and consumption of wealth. There fore it can be said according to Adam Smith:

• Economics is a science of wealth.

Wealth means goods and services transacted with the help of money. Lets discuss four aspects of wealth; first one is production of wealth it shows as to how goods and services are produced. Goods and services are produced by the combination of four factors of production i.e. land, labour, capital and organization.

Second aspect is exchange of wealth there are many procedures of goods and services in a society. Every procedure produces goods and services more than his personal requirement. The exchange of wealth enables everyone in the society to satisfy his multiple wants. Third aspect is distribution of wealth, which means the distribution of goods and services among different sections or individuals of a society. As known by explanation of exchange of wealth that procedures of goods and services exchange the surplus wealth with each other through out the year. The last and forth aspect is consumption of wealth that is using up the utility of goods and services for the satisfaction of wants is called the consumption of wealth.

Definition of Economics given by Marshall

Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics was the most influential textbook in economics. Marshall defined economics as

• Econimics is study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing. Thus it is on one side a study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.”

Many other books of the period included in their definitions something about the “study of exchange and production.” Definitions of this sort emphasize that the topics with which economics is most closely identified concern those processes involved in meeting man’s material needs. Economists today do not use these definitions because the boundaries of economics have expanded since Marshall. Economists do more than study exchange and production, though exchange remains at the heart of economics.

Definition of Economics given by Robbins

Most contemporary definitions of economics involve the notions of choice and scarcity. Perhaps the earliest of these is by Lionell Robbins in 1935:

• “Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.”

Virtually all textbooks have definitions that are derived from this definition. Though the exact wording differs from author to author, the standard definition is something like this:

• Economics is the social science which examines how people choose to use limited or scarce resources in attempting to satisfy their unlimited wants.

The two main branches of economics are Microeconomics and Macroeconomics.

Microeconomics looks at the behavior of individuals, homes, businesses or even groups of these. Microeconomics looks at prices of things and of services. It wants to help people decide how to divide society’s resources. To do this, microeconomics wants to understand how decisions are made and how these small decisions affect bigger things. Macroeconomics looks at the all the economy. It tries to explain the causes of numbers like national income, employment rates, and inflation. Connecting the two branches has been important and the general idea since the early 1980s. A good macroeconomic theory is based on microeconomics, meaning one can explain macroeconomic events using microeconomics for individuals.

MACROECONOMICS

Like most definitions in economics, there are various competing definitions of the term Macroeconomics and Microeconomics.

 The simplest answer to the question “What is Macroeconomics?” can be found at WordReference.com. They state that “Macroeconomics is the branch of economics concerned with aggregates, such as national income, consumption, and investment “.

The Economist’s Dictionary of Economics defines Macroeconomics as “The study of whole economic systems aggregating over the functioning of individual economic units. It is primarily concerned with variables which follow systematic and predictable paths of behavior and can be analyzed independently of the decisions of the many agents who determine their level. More specifically, it is a study of national economies and the determination of national income.”

 The website Tutor2U.net answers the question “What is Macroeconomics” with the following response: “Macroeconomics considers the performance of the economy as a whole. Many macroeconomic issues appear in the press and on the evening news on a daily basis. When we study macroeconomics we are looking at topics such as economic growth; inflation; changes in employment and unemployment, our trade performance with other countries (i.e. the balance of payments) the relative success or failure of government economic policies and the decisions made by the Bank of England.”

 Wikipedia.org states that “Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy in terms of the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the general behavior of prices. Macroeconomics can be used to analyze how best to influence policy goals such as economic growth, price stability, full employment and the attainment of a sustainable balance of payments. ”

Introduction to Macroeconomics:

Macroeconomics, branch of economics concerned with the aggregate, or overall, economy. Macroeconomics deals with economic factors such as total national output and income, unemployment, balance of payments, and the rate of inflation. It is distinct from microeconomics, which is the study of the composition of output such as the supply and demand for individual goods and services, the way they are traded in markets, and the pattern of their relative prices.

 At the basis of macroeconomics is an understanding of what constitutes national output, or national income, and the related concept of Gross National Product (GNP). The GNP is the total value of goods and services produced in an economy during a given period of time, usually a year. The measure of what a country’s economic activity produces in the end is called final demand. The main determinants of final demand are consumption (personal expenditure on items such as food, clothing, appliances, and cars), investment (spending by businesses on items such as new facilities and equipment), government spending, and net exports (exports minus imports).

Macroeconomic theory is largely concerned with what determines the size of GNP, its stability, and its relationship to variables such as unemployment and inflation. The size of a country’s potential GNP at any moment in time depends on its factors of production—labor and capital—and its technology. Over time the country’s labor force, capital stock, and technology will change, and the determination of long-run changes in a country’s productive potential is the subject matter of one branch of macroeconomic theory known as growth theory.

The study of macroeconomics is relatively new, generally beginning with the ideas of British economist John Maynard Keynes

  in the 1930s. Keynes’s ideas revolutionized thinking in several areas of macroeconomics, including unemployment, money supply, and inflation.

MICROECONOMICS

Perhaps the simplest answer to the question “What is Microeconomics?” can be found at WestValley.edu. They state that “Microeconomics deals with the decision making and market results of consumers and firms”.

 Wikipedia.org states that “Microeconomics is the study of the economic behavior of individual consumers, firms, and industries and the distribution of total production and income among them.It considers individuals both as suppliers of labor and capital and as the ultimate consumers of the final product.”

 The Economist’s Dictionary of Economics defines Microeconomics as “The study of economics at the level of individual consumers, groups of consumers, or firms… The general concern of microeconomics is the efficient allocation of scarce resources between alternative uses but more specifically it involves the determination of price through the optimizing behavior of economic agents, with consumers maximizing utility and firms maximizing profit.”

 Apart from all the above definitions I’ll state as the following:

Microeconomics is the branch of economics that deals with small units, including individual companies and small groups of consumers. Economics is concerned with the allocation of scarce means among competing ends. People have a variety of objectives, ranging from the satisfaction of such minimum needs as food, clothing, and shelter, to more complex objectives of all kinds, material, aesthetic, and spiritual. However, the means available to satisfy these objectives at any point in time are limited by the available supply of factors of production (labor, capital, and raw materials) and the existing technology.
Microeconomics is the study of how these resources are allocated to the satisfaction of competing objectives. It contrasts with macroeconomics, which is concerned with the extent to which the available resources are fully utilized, or increase over time, and related issues. It is not always possible to make a distinction between microeconomics and macroeconomics. For example, the difference between conflicting schools of thought in macroeconomics is sometimes traced to differences in assumptions related to microeconomics.

Introduction: The economic is an evolutionary science. Let’s examine some of the definitions of Economics put forward from time to time by the economists.

Adam Smith’s Definition: Adam Smith (1723-1790), the founder of economics described it as a science of wealth in his book, “The wealth of nations “in 1776.
The early economist also called economics the science of wealth.
According to Cairn’s, “Economic deals with the phenomenon of wealth”
According to F.A. Walker, “Economics is that relates to wealth”

* (Wealth means that goods and services transacted with the help of money)

There are four aspects of wealth in the light of Adam Smith’s definition of Economics.

1. Production of wealth: There are four factors of production i.e. land, labor, capital and entrepreneur. The production of goods and services is the result of combination of four factors of production. The wage is given to labor as a reward of its physical and mental work where capital helps to produce goods and services by providing man made resources. The rent is that part of payment which is made only for the use of land where as the entrepreneur has to act of combining the factors of production to produce goods and services.

2. Exchange of wealth: The multiple wants of the people are satisfied by the exchange of goods and services produced for each other. The above phenomenon can take place with the help of wealth.

3. Distribution of wealth: The distribution of wealth means the share of each factor of production in national wealth produced in a year as a result of exchange of wealth. Some parts of society are backward due to unequal share in the national wealth; it is called unequal distribution of wealth.

4. Consumption of wealth: The people use their share in the national wealth for the satisfaction of their human wants and get utility from the use of goods and services. It is known as the consumption of wealth.