A cluttered, messy desk can negatively impact your ability to perform your job.

Here are some things you should never keep on your desk


Organisation comes naturally to some, but for others, it’s just not in their nature. Maybe you’re too busy to clean up, or perhaps organised chaos works well for you. You spend a majority of your day at work and a messy desk can negatively impact productivity. Additionally, some of the items you keep on your desk may not be appropriate for the workplace, such as political items or documents with sensitive information. Whether your place of work is cubicle, corner office, or open layout, here are some things you should never keep at your desk:

Lunch


You may think it’s wise to eat lunch at your desk, when in fact, it could hurt your productivity. In a 2015 study, Professor Kimberly Elsbach of the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management noted, “We know that creativity and innovation happen when people change their environment, and especially when they expose themselves to a nature-like environment, to a natural environment.” So, staying inside, in the same location, is detrimental to creative thinking. It’s also detrimental to doing that rumination that’s needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allow a person to arrive at an ‘aha’ moment,” Elsbach said.

Your cell phone

This may be the most difficult for people to get behind. “Most of what’s on our mobile devices are distractions from what will propel us forward,” Judge Graham, executive leadership expert and author says. Prefer the old-fashioned landline.

It allows you to be in touch only for business reasons, therefore allowing your phone time to generate value only for business.

A study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that your phone’s mere presence can distract you, even if it’s on silent or powered off.

Sweets

Avoid keeping cookies, candy, or chocolate at your desk if you’re trying to stay healthy. “It’s far too easy to go into autopilot and keep munching while you’re diverted by a task, especially during the usual earlyafternoon slump,” Ben Taylor, founder of HomeWorkingClub, says. “Whether you work in an office or at home, keep the highcalorie snacks in the kitchen or the break area, so you have to make a special effort to dig in,” he says.

Resume

Unless your company has announced a mass layoff and you are certain that your position will be eliminated, having a resume visible for everyone to see sends a clear message that you are looking for a job. If your boss were to see it or hear about it, it could break their trust, which is hard to earn back.

Five gadgets to help you get off to a great start

These little devices can go a long way in keeping you entertained while you explore the world on your own terms

Onaji Pawa Card

It is a credit card-sized smartphone charger that weighs just 32g and works on any device that uses a micro USB. It also has a small torch built in. It charges via a USB port in a laptop or PC/ Mac and takes 90 to 100 mins to charge. As for charging phones, it claims to add up to 30 per cent of charge to a device.


Kindle Voyage

K i nd le Voyage is a travel-friendly reading tablet. One of the thinnest Kindles, it weighs just 180g. It is readable in both bright light and winter murk, adjusting automatically. Another travel bonus is that the battery lasts for weeks.

QDOS Q-BOPZ

This rubber Bluetooth speaker sticks to the back of your device to act not only as a stand, but also a speaker. Apart from its quirky alien shape, bright colours of red, blue, green and orange add to its attraction. And the sound quality it delivers is pretty good too. It fits in the palm of your hand and is splash-proof, so it works brilliantly in the shower.

Cauldryn Coffee battery heated travel mug

This heated electronic mug is the best friend of a traveller. The mug uses battery power to keep your coffee or tea at your selected temperature all day long to ensure that each sip is perfect. You can also brew coffee and tea, cook, or even boil water right in the bottle. And that’s not all, its optional blender can make frozen drinks or smoothies anywhere.

PTron Viki Bluetooth headset sunglasses

These funky looking Bluetooth sunglasses can make you look cool. They are integrated with digital wireless technology and premium sunglasses fused together. This one’s for the style-conscious techie traveller who loves to explore the world fashionably. PTron Viki Bluetooth headset sunglasses are compatible with all smartphones.

Bouncing back after a bad punch

Didn’t get that promotion or corner office that you’ve been working months towards? Try these tips to get your career back on track

Contrary to popular belief, getting overlooked for a promotion isn’t a career death sentence or a signal to abandon ship. Sometimes it can be a sign that you just need to adjust your goal posts like Atletico Madrid forward Antoine Griezmann did.

The striker was recently crushed when he missed out on the top three spots for this year’s FIFA Player of the Year Award despite the Europa League win and his four crucial goals in Russia that helped France win the World Cup. Despite the setback, the 27-year-old has vowed to give the next three months his best as he sets his sights on winning the Champions League and the prestigious Ballon d’Or.


Yes, getting passed over for a promotion can be dejecting but if you maintain some perspective, it is possible that you can triumph with both your reputation and ego intact. Here are a few tips to help you get over the hump:

Check the negativity

Unless you’re a robot, finding out you got passed up for a promotion can be a bitter pill to swallow and it’s instinctive to want to lash out. However, getting angry and depressed will not get you another promotion and may, in fact, hamper the professional reputation you’ve worked so hard to build. At that moment, it’s important to take a step back and calmly process that cocktail of emotions that comes with being passed over — surprise, frustration, disappointment and anger. Give yourself the chance to cool off before making any hasty decisions.

Use it as a stepping stone

While there’s nothing wrong with expressing disappointment, make sure you take the time to find out how you could have done better. Rather than dropping passive-aggressive hints or stewing in a storm of ‘what ifs’, the professional thing to do would be to approach your manager directly or someone high up in the organisation that you trust and ask them “How can we work together to make sure I get promoted in the future?” By going straight to the source, not only will you gain insight into areas in which you can improve but you’ll also be able to understand how the leadership team thinks when it comes to appraisals.

It’s important to note that there is usually a combination of factors involved when you’re passed over for a promotion. In case you think your boss isn’t being straight with you, feel free to approach a trusted senior or knowledgeable person within the company to get their take.

Act, don’t wallow

Once you have concrete feedback, start working on an action plan to make that promotion a reality. For example, if you were passed up for not bringing in enough business leads, try expanding your circle of influence. Throughout this process, make sure you have a set time frame in mind to achieve your goals. You don’t want to be stuck in an endless cycle of feedback that goes nowhere.

Have a Plan B

Finally, if you’ve set a reasonable timeline but it hasn’t worked out or if you feel there may be some other forces keeping you from that promotion, consider an exit plan. You don’t have to jump right to mailing stacks of resumes. But it might be a good idea to brush up on your contacts so that you’re ready for new opportunities when they appear.

Tying the knot is easy. But how do you tackle the strangulating effects of warring spouses and in-laws?

No noose is good news



If there’s a problem in your relationship, it’s best to address it sooner rather than later, before you accumulate years of resentments that hurt easily fixable issues.

That’s especially true if the problem has to do with your in-laws. According to Peter Pearson, a relationship coach and consultant in Menlo Park, California, most couples dealing with in-law issues are “delusionally optimistic”. They believe that after they get married, things will get better, and so they brush the issues under the proverbial rug. Except that most of the time, Pearson said, it does not get better. Sometimes, the tension gets worse.


The problems

Pearson outlined two types of in-law problems he sees. Either one person is jealous of how much time the other person spends with their family or one person’s parents don’t like the partner they’ve chosen. In the first instance, Pearson helps the person with the tight-knit family set some boundaries: How much time will they spend visiting their parents or talking with them on the phone? The ‘marginalised’ spouse must work on being more flexible.

For couples dealing with the second type of in-law problem, Pearson takes a somewhat harsher approach. The person whose parents don’t like their partner has to decide which camp they’re in. Should they stand by their partner or defend their family? It’s a tough choice to make.

If the person chooses their spouse over the family, that doesn’t necessarily mean they no longer show up at family functions. But when they do show up, they stand by their spouse (physically) the whole time to show that they’re a team.

Forging new bonds

Meanwhile, a study led by psychologist Terri Orbuch at the University of Michigan, cited in The Wall Street Journal, found that couples in which the husband was close to his wife’s parents were 20 per cent less likely to divorce over the next 16 years than average. When the wife was close to her husband’s parents, the couple’s risk of divorce was 20 per cent higher. Orbuch suspects that wives who feel close to their in-laws may have a hard time setting boundaries — and eventually, they may perceive the in-laws to be meddling. Couples postpone the discussion because it creates tension. But a problem like that rarely disappears without some effort.

A closer look at some aphrodisiacs that supposedly work wonders in the bedroom

Aphrodisiacs have been known to enhance libido since time immemorial, but how many of them actually work? A study published in the journal of Sexual Medicine Reviews recently debunked myths surrounding these libido boosters. Here’s what science has to say about some common aphrodisiacs thought to make you better in bed.

Oysters


Oysters contain nutrients like zinc and certain amino acids known to boost sexual desire, the study found. However, the authors remained inconclusive about whether oysters actually enhance the experience while making love.

Ginkgo biloba

The study revealed that unlike oysters, gingko biloba does wonders to the libido. A study conducted in 2011, found that gingko extracts increased the dopamine levels in rats and excited them. For those unaware, we share 99 per cent of our genes with these rodents.

Chocolate

While it’s passionate to smear melted chocolate on your partner as you make love, and it may even turn you on further, studies reveal that chocolate has no effect on sexual function. However, dark chocolate is known to stimulate the nervous system and make you feel happy.

Soup up your car tech with a second set of eyes on the road

With driver assists, wireless connectivity, lane departure warnings and radar detectors, dash cams are one of the best bets you can have for modern safety features without purchasing a new car. Here’s what you should look for when buying one:

Garmin DriveAssist 50LMT


The Garmin DriveAssist 50LMT offers the full package for safe drivers including GPS navigation, hazard alerts and a built-in dash cam that continuously records your drive and saves the video on impact. The navigation has the option of being voice-activated, and its smart features keep you connected while driving, with hands-free calling, and smartphone notifications.

Cobra CDR 855 BT

The device includes a two-inch LCD screen, ultrawide 160-degree viewing angle and embedded G-Sensor to save and protect clips if an impact is detected. Its smartphone connection enables new features including embedded GPS location, time, G-Force and speed information footage, as well as providing alerts for upcoming speed and red-light cameras.

Goluk T1

It is an affordable dash cam that is equally adept at helping you capture traffic incidents as well as your outdoor adventures. The T1 records in 1080P through a 152-degree wide angle 6G Lens with G-Sensor dashboard camera. It allows easyto-share video and crash detection but doesn’t have a built-in screen.

Owl Car Cam

The Owl Car Cam is a dash cam and security device that pairs with your smartphone. Video clips are stored on your phone, so no memory card is required, and you don’t run the risk of losing your clips if the camera is stolen. It has some cool features like two-way talk, an inside camera, and remote camera access.

Roav Dash Cam C1

This dash cam is a budgetfriendly one with a Sony Exmor CMOS sensor that enables recording at 30fps. Its wide dynamic range auto-adjusts for light conditions to deliver perfectly exposed Full HD 1080p footage. C1 simultaneously records four lanes of traffic with imaging technology that provides a full view of the road, not just the car in front of you.

Garmin Speak Plus with Amazon Alexa

Here’s a dash cam, a GPS device, and a smart speaker all rolled into one. What sets the Speak Plus apart from other devices is that it responds only to voice commands, lacking a conventional display. In addition to getting directions and recording the road ahead, you can use the Speak Plus to play tunes from your Amazon Music collection or control your smart home devices remotely.

When should you sell a mutual fund

Investors often sell mutual funds for the worst possible reasons. They should actually sell a fund only when they need the money to meet a financial goal, says Dhirendra Kumar
Every saver knows that there are numerous mutual fund schemes and choosing a suitable one to invest in can be a difficult task. There’s actually an even more difficult choice that investors face—which funds to sell off and when. Curiously, it is the more knowledgeable and more involved investors who face this problem. The reason is, active and involved investors always have an urge to do something. While such investors generally do well because they learn, analyse and act more than others but soon enough, they start equating being good investors with doing something, often anything.

There are many reasons for selling funds, but not all of them are good. There can be exceptions, but the good reasons tend to be about the investor’s own finances and the wrong reasons tend to be about the fund. Let me explain. Overactive investors give three reasons for wanting to sell off a fund. One, they’ve made profits; two, they’ve made losses and three, they’ve made neither profits nor losses. Basically, investors who have a bias for continuous action can create a logic for taking action out of any kind of situation.


So which is the right reason for selling a fund? Obviously, none of the above. By themselves, they are not legitimate reasons for selling a fund. The first comes from the spurious ‘booking profits’ concept that advisers have promoted. Booking profits doesn’t make sense for stocks, and it makes even less sense for mutual funds. In mutual funds, the whole point is that there is a fund manager who is deciding for you which stocks to sell and which to buy. If the fund manager is doing this job well, then the fund will be giving good returns. So, selling a fund that has made good returns is the exact reverse of what investors should be doing.

Let’s come to the second reason now. While selling underperformers is a legitimate idea, evaluate the timeframe and the degree of underperformance. Someone will say that over the last year, my fund has generated 25% but five other funds have generated 30%, so I will switch to those. This switching based on short-term past performance is counter-productive. Only if a fund underperforms consistently for two or more years, and drops down two notches in its rating should you switch away from it. Following a relatively long-period risk-adjusted rating system is the right way to make a decision.

So when should investors actually sell their funds? The right answer is that they should be guided by their own financial goals. You should sell a fund and get your money out when you need it. Let’s say you have invested for five or 10 or 15 years, and now the money has grown to what you need. You need to make a down payment for a house, or pay for your child’s education, you should sell and redeem, irrespective of the state of the market. Unless it’s an expense that can be postponed, you should start acting one or two years before time by withdrawing the money from the equity fund and parking it in a liquid fund. You can use an automated STP (systematic transfer plan) for this, which will be convenient.

In a manner of speaking, the primary goal of investing is not to invest but to sell because that’s when you achieve your goal. Be guided by that.

Open a demat account if you don’t have one Paper shares to be rendered illiquid after December 5

Open a demat account if you don’t have one
Paper shares to be rendered illiquid after December 5

Not too many years ago, stock broking in India was a family business. While those who were good in maths handled the numbers, the families also had a laggard who ended up working as the “Patavat boy.” An extremely responsible position, one had to carry bundles of share certificates to the stock exchange, sit on the floor, and hand over physical share certificates as settlement.

This was how things worked before 1996 when NSDL was set up as the first depository for dematerialised shares. Those were risky times. Someone who bought shares on the stock exchange paid good money as settlement, but could end up with bad delivery of shares. There were too many instances of fraud and manipulation. The idea of converting the equity shares into book entries and doing away with physical certificates was doing rounds. However, it took the scam of 1992 and the opening up of the markets to foreign investors to bring about the much-needed reform to replace physical shares with electronic entries.


In a diverse country like ours, it is tough to introduce legislation that mandates how private citizens hold their assets. So, the law did not preclude investors from holding shares in physical form, while also allowing investors to remat, or reconvert electronic entries into physical shares. However, they cannot transfer or sell such shares on the stock exchange, where the rules of settlement require an electronic transfer of securities. An initial list of highly traded stocks was mandated for demat settlement only, and slowly expanded to include most actively traded stocks. Soon enough, unscrupulous operators began applying for IPOs by opening multiple demat accounts in the names of retail investors. This scam was unearthed and plugged. However, there continues to be instances of fraud and manipulation, especially of physical shares, where the trail of transactions are difficult to trace. While many investors chose to convert to demat, many decided to stay put with physical shares.

Sebi has now mandated that after 5 December 2018, no transaction for transfer of securities of a listed company can happen in physical form. This renders all paper shares held after 5 December 2018 illiquid. New owners will have to convert them to demat if they wish to sell or further transact these shares. This is an opportunity to clean up the paper and unlock their value. Investors can now consolidate the paperwork when they request for dematerialisation, in a twostep process. The first step is to open a demat account if they already do not have one. At this stage, all the KYC verification procedures of the investors will be completed. The second step is to complete the Dematerialisation Request Form (DRF) for each of the physical shares, along with all the required documents. If the company whose shares are being held has not joined the depository, and therefore does not have a unique number (ISIN), such shares cannot be dematerialised. Except these, all other physical shares can be converted into electronic entries.

While many conversations go back to the past and delve in nostalgia. Such indulgence sometimes miss the marvels of mindful progress like the dematerialisation that made stock transactions fair, efficient and qualitatively better.

Harish’s success is all the more inspiring

This year’s Asiad medallist sells tea at brothers’ stall to help family
Father Drives Auto, Mother Was House Help Until Recently

New Delhi:

The sepak takraw world championship in Bangkok is just a fortnight away and Asian Games bronze medallist Harish Kumar is busy serving—not on court but at his brother’s roadside tea stall in Delhi’s ‘Little Tibet’, Majnu ki Tila. Tea has been the 21-year-old’s ticket to sporting glory. For each one of his 15 medals, he and his family have passed countless steaming cups over the counter.


Five days after the Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games ended, Harish’s euphoric return home is a fading memory in the neighbourhood, but his celebrity is undimmed. On a wet Friday afternoon, his house in Majnu ka Tila’s narrow lanes is easily found. Being part of India’s first-ever sepak success at the Asian Games has made him a role model for young athletes here.

Harish’s success is all the more inspiring because of his family’s precarious financial situation. His father Mohan Lal drives a rented autorickshaw. His mother, Indira Devi, till recently worked as a household help to bring up Harish and his five siblings, two of whom are sightless. Two of his brothers, Naveen and Tarun, started the tea stall to increase the family’s income, and Harish not only helps them but also drives his father’s auto when he is not training at the Sports Authority of India centre in Bawana.

They are a gifted family, but have been unlucky twice. Harish’s eldest brother Pradeep was a talented cricketer who became a coach, but had to leave his job after injuring his right leg in a bike accident in 2011. Naveen showed promise as a sepak takraw player and was handpicked by coach Hemraj. He played at the international level, but was forced to quit after a ligament injury in 2013.

Inspired by Naveen, Harish had started playing sepak with a ball made of bicycle tubes, in 2011. Luckily for him, “Hemraj sir” took him under his wing.

“All credit must go to our coach Hemraj sir. He took me to IG Stadium and provided me shoes and kit. He also helped me get a monthly allowance from SAI. I represented India for the first time in 2013 at the World Championships in Bangkok and won a medal,” says Harish.

He has never looked back since, but the family’s finances sometimes cast a cloud over his future. The Asiad medal couldn’t have happened at a better time, as a cash award of Rs 5 lakh from the sports ministry will help in the treatment of his blind brother and sister, and also pay for his education. He has enrolled in Class XII at an open school in Chandigarh.