Jay-Z's poor motivation

Jay-Z says being poor motivated him to succeed. The rapper - who is married to former Destiny's Child singer Beyonce Knowles - revealed his rise to stardom stems from a desire to escape from his hometown of Brooklyn, New York.

He said: "Being broke is a great motivator. Home was like the cliche of rough. When I was nine I saw someone shot for the first time." Jay-Z, who is set to play at the Glastonbury music festival on Saturday, also revealed his taste in music, saying his favourite bands include British group Coldplay - whose new album 'Viva La Vida Or Death and All His Friends' recently topped the US album charts.

Jay-Z said: "My favourite music is heartfelt music, I don't believe in the separation of music. I listen to Coldplay, 50 Cent and Kanye West." Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has been a close friend of the rapper for many years and attended his recent New York wedding along with his wife Gwyneth Paltrow.


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Tech uses national rankings, attention as motivation for hard work

We've used it as motivation. OK, we're ranked in the top 10; we've got to do our best.' Work hard, make sure we stay in the top 10 because you can lose your first game and automatically you're out of it.''

The reasons many expect more from Tech are obvious: All but four starters and a kicker are back from a 9-4 team that won the Gator Bowl - the program's first January bowl victory in 54 years.

Even Tech coach Mike Leach, who says he always expects to win every game, welcomes the wide-scale acknowledgment.

"I think it's good,'' said Leach, who begins his ninth season at Tech with a 65-37 overall record. "It's pleasing because it's kind of recognition for the efforts of a lot of coaches that have been at Tech, for the institution and for a lot of players.



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24-07-2008: Vizeum’s subconscious approach pays off

Research shows that the Motivation to Media subconscious approach can achieve up to 24% stronger connection with consumers," he said.

Miller said Vizeum Malaysia had invested more than RM300,000 for Motivation to Media, a research database of information pertaining to brands, media and consumers derived from a survey of 2,000 local respondents. Based on the Censydiam Model, a marketing tool developed by diagnostic qualitative research company Censydiam, the system “puts the science behind a creative buy", he said.

The database is used to understand how personalities of different brands are correlated within the category, and Vizeum have taken that information a step further into media delivery, said Miller, adding that Motivation to Media involves segmenting brands into 16 different categories or motivations, and adapting media strategies to each brand personality accordingly.



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Church observers ask: Where have all the good men gone

Perhaps indicative of women's sense of spirituality, 41 percent of women said they have set specific spiritual goals that they hope to accomplish in the coming year or two. Only 29 percent of men have identified such spiritual goals."Women, more often than not, take the lead role in the spiritual life of the family," said George Barna, president of the research group. "Women typically emerge as the primary -- or only -- spiritual mentor and role model for family members. And that puts a tremendous burden on wives and mothers." Pam Durso, associate executive director of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, agrees that women do play a major role in families as spiritual mentors. "One aspect of that is that mothers generally are the ones who do the scheduling of events and the planning of activities, including church attendance and church-related programs."But that’s nothing new, Durso argues.



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IT admins should also think green

They have the potential to reduce power consumption even further than laptops.

[ For more on purchasing green IT desktop hardware, please read "Are green IT premiums worth the cost?" For more on the green benefits of thin clients, please read "Thinking green? Think thin." ]

Now suppose after refreshing your users' desktop systems, you realize it's time to deploy tools for easier backup and system patching. Sounds like a potentially sound investment for the sake of security and business continuity. But what if you also pause to, yep, think green again. You might follow the example of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools: In addition to purchasing licenses for BigFix asset and patch-management software, the district paid a bit extra ($2 per license) for the BigFix PC power management component, which is designed to put machines into low-power idle states when they're not being used, thus cutting energy waste.



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Motivation seminar leaves one wondering, lighter in the wallet

I'm planning to write one of those self-help, motivational books one of these days. That is, if I can get up for it. I almost got around to it yesterday, but I got invited to a chili feed at the last moment.

If you are ever motivated enough to spend 50 cents on the local daily newspaper, you can see a huge ad in there for an all-day seminar coming in late August called “Get Motivated!"

I did a rough count and found that the sprawling full-page ad contains more than 18 exclamation points. By contrast, one of the biggest motivational books of them all – the King James version of the Bible – contains none. I'm not sure what that means, but thought I'd mention it.

The “Get Motivated!" seminar offers “Inspiration! “Career Skills!" and “Wealth-Building!" But before you can learn how to build wealth, you have to part with some of it first.



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The Big Dogz on Business: Many different factors can make job exciting

Motivation is personal. Following the management principle of customization, the effective manager customizes the motivation factors for each individual. For some people, the job itself is a motivating factor. This motivation factor is known as job enrichment.

What is job enrichment?

Job enrichment is the process of expanding the task that an individual performs at work. It includes structuring a job so that it is more stimulating through variety of actions, visibility of results to both the person and others, decision-making opportunities and feedback.

Does job enrichment really work?

Yes. In some situations, it works as well as any other motivation factor. In job-enrichment studies, the results are mixed. I believe a key factor in the results is how important job enrichment is to a particular individual.



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Comment: Re-thinking the Iranian threat —Robert Skidelsky

Would it be a great disaster if Iran had nuclear weapons? As a habitual contrarian, I pose the question because almost everyone seems to believe that it would, and that it must be prevented at all costs. But is that true?

John Bolton, the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, said in April that if the choice is [Iran] continuing [towards a nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you're at a Hitler marching into the Rhineland point. Bush, too, has compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler.

But these so-called statesmen never consider what might have happened had Germany and Britain both had nuclear weapons in 1939. Would Hitler, wicked as he was, have gone to war had he faced an assured threat of total destruction? Have we forgotten all about the theory of deterrence?

Of course, the world would be safer if Iran did not have nuclear weapons, not because it is a rogue state, but because any spread of nuclear weapons is likely to make the world more dangerous.




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Staff motivation: Holding deeper conversations can help drive

After a year-long programme, Skandia has tracked and measured a 50% average increase in motivation in those teams where managers have focused specifically on building relationships with their people. For those who are always looking for proof that investment in the soft stuff makes any difference, this is pretty compelling data.

So what has Skandia been doing that has made such a difference? The answer is that it has been training managers to have very different sorts of conversations with their staff. The defining characteristic of such conversations is that managers don't start by focusing on the result that is required but rather on how the team member concerned can be switched on so that they take pride in their job and feel inspired about their work.

Of course, most managers know that successful business depends to a great extent on the motivation of their staff to perform, and what this approach supplies is a framework that helps them tap into people's engagement.



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Spritual As Criminal?

It need be told that apart from the 'magnum opus' of the founder of SS and HJS, Jayant Athavale which is called "Science of Spirituality' - which is book of 21 volumes - and other texts about 'Divine Kingdom', 'Arts for God Realisation' and 'Spiritual Experiences of Seekers' etc. a very important text in the training of the seekers is Texts on Defence where seekers of divine kingdom are also imparted training with air rifles ( Vol 3 H - Self Defence Training, Chapter 6, Page 108-109)
It would be opportune to discuss a portion from this text which trains the seeker in 'Firing' . In 7 a. it trains the seeker in standing stance (kada pavitra) [shooting in the standing posture] in section 7

b. it discusses Sitting Stance (baitha pavitra) [shooting in the sitting stance]. It also shows the photograph of Vinay Panvalkar wearing a hat showing the different positions.


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EDITORIAL: Upcountry basketball teams need motivation

BASKETBALL fans in Dar es Salaam and the rest of the country had every reason to feel proud of the regional team, popularly known as ’Dream Team’, as it won the East African Inter-cities tournament held at the National Indoor Stadium in the city at the end of last month.

The week-long tournament also involved teams from other East African cities including Arusha, Mbeya, Mwanza, Kampala and Mombasa, some of which featured both men and women squads.

The absence of top sides like Nairobi, who were the tournament’s defending champions, was not really felt as participants put up impressive performances that made the event worth attending.

Dar es Salaam truly need a pat on the back for their achievement in the tournament after suffering a series of heart breaks in past competitions.



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Facing the reality of your HIV test results

Even after hospital authorities had told him to go and look for Nevirapine, a drug that is administered to children who are born to HIV positive mothers, because it was out of stock at the hospital then, it did not cross his mind that his wife was HIV positive, probably because he didn't know what the drug was used for. He went to a number of pharmacies to buy this restricted drug all the while unaware that he was buying it to save his child from contracting the HIV virus.

Hospital staff did abide by the confidentiality clause that they are governed by in the medical code of conduct. The lady had told them never to inform her husband that she was HIV positive and why he was looking for the drug. Disclosing a person's HIV status can be a breach of one's rights to confidentiality but medical personnel can encourage someone to disclose their status to their partner or have someone encourage their partner to go for testing.



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We Have Sexy Bodies and Brains .Why Not Sexy Culture and Sexy

It is a terrible intrusion into the rights of the individual and his freedom of religion and freedom of inner spirituality to tell him how to think intuitively, develop wisdom, and find an ultimate purpose in his life.-

What we worship and how we worship is our own personal business. And men and women are both capable of this to a large degree, even if women are a bit better at it. Furthermore the soul is said to be androgynous or double-sexed and great soul-power can easily transcend a mere biological apparatus like a body. There have always been both men and women who can see past their biological programming.-

I was brought up to be a Catholic. Catholicism is probably the most patriarchal of all religions. It dates back to the time when the Roman Empire fused with Christianity to form the Holy Roman Empire.


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NBR Transcripts- July 24, 2008

But thinking about next year and 2010, we have a number of programs under way to improve our revenue production so that we too can overcome higher energy costs. And I would like to see the results of some of those initiatives before we expand aggressively. But the nice thing is, with all the shrinking going on in the market, we have a number of opportunities to expand. We'll just keep our powder dry here for the time being.

YASTINE: Gary, when you talk about increasing revenue, are ticket prices, an increase in ticket prices on that menu, because it sounds like some of the comments you've made elsewhere sort of hint that that is something that the company is contemplating?

KELLY: You know, I just think that's the inevitability that we'll have to find some way to raise revenues.



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Motivate staff to deliver the goods

But in June the 37-year-old distribution manager for the construction materials provider Lafarge found he could be fired up to new heights of motivation.

Dargie, who works at Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, had been in his job for almost four years, with 22 staff and responsibility for managing the company’s relationship with haul-iers and subcontractors across the Midlands and eastern England.

Then he was identified as someone with the potential to deliver more and was invited to join the company’s "Jump" two-week development programme in Paris.

The programme, delivered in partnership with Mannaz, a management development consultancy, sought to reenergise key staff, help them to change their workplace style and enable them to consider career options they had not felt capable of before.



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Brain Function Has Many Facets

One important consideration in evaluation of human behavior is the concept of spirituality. Every human group has some concept of this nature. We do not know how the brain structures this phenomenon, and so, at present, cannot help with a scientific evaluation of it.Our present research facilities are increasingly using CT scans, magnetic resonance scans and pet scans to help improve our knowledge. Each of these scans emphasizes a different part of the brain, and they all show that different parts of the human brain are active in different situations. The effects can be modified by drugs, fatigue or anger.Thinking seems to involve several different areas of the brain including the memory sections, but we still are not able to describe the details. There is some suspicion that a single brain cell (a neuron) may be able to handle a single memory.


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