CLASSES & JOBS

Getting your entire family on the same page is not an easy task. Everyone is busy and everyone has his or her own parties, trips, work, and school. This is why one of the greatest investments you will ever make is a family calendar. A family calendar isn’t just a normal calendar though; it needs to be regularly updated. My family updates our calendar at the beginning of every month. We add any new trips we are taking, when we have family parties, and so on and so forth.

We use a Sharpie on a paper calendar, but a lot of families have large whiteboard that they reuse every month. The calendar needs to be where everyone sees it regularly, and if something changes, they immediately change it. If you have an updated calendar, you will be able to plan family dinners and events much easier. If you want to see your family more, know when they are home by using the calendar. It is an easy, inexpensive way to keep your family together.

Spring is a great time to start a new exercise routine. It is finally getting a little warmer and you can once again exercise outside. You can run, golf, swim, play tennis and basketball, and hike or mountain bike. There are great opportunities, and it is a lot less expensive to exercise during the spring and summer. For example, to exercise during the winter you need to purchase a gym membership, or buy snow clothing to ski or snowshoe. During the summer, you only really need a great pair of shoes and perhaps a little sunscreen.

Find something you enjoy this spring, and use it to exercise. I personally love to play basketball, and there are some great outdoor courts around my house. Every weekend I get a few friends together and we play all day. It is a lot of fun, and it is essentially free. Some people really enjoy camping during the summer. Turn that into exercise by camping somewhere really remote that forces you to hike all day. No matter what the spring and summer months are great times to improve your health.

People are generally in a better mood when they are fed, and when they have energy. This is why the morning can be trouble for a lot of people. You wake up hungry and tired, not a great combination. Many of us turn to caffeine to regulate our behavior, which may or may not be healthy. Having too much caffeine can cause you to have jitters and you will eventually hit a wall where you crash, but not having any caffeine will cause you to be grumpy and not very social at all.

The key is, like many other things, to have moderation in all things. Having a cup of coffee every morning is not unhealthy; in fact, some studies suggest that a little coffee every morning has many of the same effects of red wine. It may lower the risk of heart disease. The problem is when people have too many orange mocha frappuccinos. The sugar and fat can cause serious health problems. Also, many people claim that caffeine dehydrates your body. A general rule of thumb to prevent this is to have twice as many non-caffeinated drinks as caffeinated drinks. This will keep you hydrated, and caffeine is more effective when you have had a lot of water.

Going to a community college can save you thousands of dollars. Community colleges offer similar classes to large universities and colleges, but it is much cheaper. In addition, when it comes to generals, or classes you have to take in order to graduate but really have nothing to do with your major, you may not notice any drop in quality whatsoever. For instance, when you take a something like the History of Music at a large university, you will be in a classroom with hundreds of students and a graduate student will probably teach the class.

How is that different from a community college, and in fact, a community college is probably better. A community college usually has smaller class sizes, and is taught by full time professors. One of the best strategies to save money and get a great education is to complete your generals at a community college and then transfer to a university. This way you will be able to save money, figure out what you want to major in, and still get a diploma that says you graduated from a well-known university. Community colleges are excellent for people who want to save a little money before graduating from a large, expensive college.

College and Universities alike are facing some serious problems. As the economy sinks, so do donations and budgets are cut. The entire field of higher education is trying to do more with less. Also, more people try to come back to school during times of economic hardship, and many schools just don’t have the cash to accommodate that many more students. Raising tuition is one option for schools, but many educational administrators try to avoid that at all cost simply because they feel like a quality education should be available to all students regardless of their financial status.

It may seem like a dire situation for higher education, but the bright side is that when we come out of this economic mess, our schools will run more efficiently, saving taxpayers and students money. Hopefully we will come out of this tailspin soon, but until then a lot of pressure is going to be put on development and philanthropy employees of universities and colleges to keep donations coming, or else we will see a major spike in tuition.

Ikea, the chain furniture store, is one of my favorite places to shop. However, I rarely buy anything when I go there. That may seem odd, but the main reason I enjoy going to Ikea so much is because of the way they display things. It is like a home show every day of the year. They set up entire rooms using special themes. Some rooms are very modern whereas others are traditional, and the most important part is that everything in each room is for sale. If you had the money, you could essentially go to Ikea and purchase not only furniture but also an interior design for your house for a very reasonable price.

For those of us who are slightly less creative than the normal population, we need Ikea to give us home design ideas. If you gave me one cool desk or couch, I really wouldn’t know what to do with it, but if you give a desk and a vision of how it could look in my room, then I get excited. Ikea is fun to visit even if you do not need to purchase anything. It gives us important design ideas for our future.

There seems to be a trend regarding web development. The most visited websites are interactive. Practically every major website has some sort of community building aspect like blogs with comments, bulletin boards, games, or user profiles. If you can find a way to get users to interact with your website, you will find that they visit more often and stay longer. Take ESPN.com for example. They used to be simply a news outlet, but have added multiple layers of interactive features, like user profiles, contests, polls, live chatting, and comments about articles.

When you are creating the blueprints for your website, include multiple places for your visitors to create community. You want to always have new users on your website, rather new users and users who have visited the site a thousand times and have it bookmarked on their web browser. That is one of the ways you can create a killer website.

Some people smoke cigarettes when they are stressed, I check Facebook. I don’t necessarily care too much for Facebook, but when I do not want to write a paper, or when I have a lot of work to do, instead of being productive online I check Facebook, ESPN, CNN, etc. The Internet to me is like a portal for procrastination. I never understood why certain companies block people from using the Internet at work. I figured employees could just be honest and not visit certain sites on company time, but now I know just how strong the temptation can be.

I wouldn’t mind if I could block sites like Facebook for two or three hours at a time. When I start working, I am usually pretty good about not wasting time, but two or three hours into my assignment, I begin to wander. It is simply a matter of self-discipline that I have not mastered yet. One day I will, or I will just block sites that I waste time on and lose the password on purpose. We’ll see.

Life coaches, career coaches, and sports coaches all essentially do the same thing. they are here to help you move forward in your life, and motivate you to work hard and gradually get better at whatever you do. Consider an NBA coach. There job is to teach their players the correct way to execute an offense and how to play solid defense, in addition to motivating their players t try hard at every practice and in every game. How is that different from your career coach?
Your career coach instructs you on how to succeed in your career, and then motivates you to train everyday and get better all the time. Coaching principles are transferable to every aspect of life. This is why so many famous football, basketball, or other major sport coaches publish books about life once they retire. Principles of sports and coaching are applicable at your job, with relationships, and in your pursuit for happiness.

The future of technology doesn’t have any wires attached. With the innovation of Bluetooth technology, and other wireless formats, practically everything can be made wireless. All video game systems are now made wireless, and practically everyone has a Bluetooth headset. Also, this wireless wave is having a huge effect on the business world. Projectors and other presentation aids are all seamlessly integrated so you can link your PDA or computer up to a projector without any cords or mess.

However, one area that has a huge need for wireless technology is power. This seems to be impossible, but we have overcome greater odds before. How much would you pay not to have to plug your computer or phone in to charge? Whoever invests that gizmo will make a large amount of money to say the least. It would change life as we know it, and virtually every computer would be laptop. Airports, malls, and businesses would simply broadcast Wi-Fi and Wi-Power.