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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