Meeting Etiquette: Keep your mobile turned off at meetings. This habit was first force fed to me by one of my former bosses. Keeping a mobile phone turned on can make you look like someone who does not belong to that meeting. If we assume we attend meetings to make important decisions and not to look stupid, it would always help keeping the mobile phone turned off. Silent mode may not be helpful, since you might have to fight the temptations to check what has happened to the world while you were not caring enough (of the outside world)

Bonus Points: According to the study, keeping your mobile turned on can take out 10 points of your IQ. So it increase your chances of looking stupid at a meeting at the same time. If you are low on IQ (which can also cause keeping your mobile turned on) that 10 points can be significant.

Ring-tone to ruin them all: Setting explicit or silly ring-tone may give out early warnings about you to the people you meet. It’s always good idea to be discrete rather than being loudly stupid. Have several profiles for Outside, Office, Factory, Home etc. Set office ringing volume to low and tone to be less irritating to enhance your professional image.

Juggling between Email, Text Messages and Work: This also seems to take 10 points off and cause Low Productivity at the same time. I have my own experience on that as well. About 4 months ago I discovered I’ve been wasting lot of time on Juggling between emails, instant messages and work. I made it a habit not to log into instant messengers unless there’s an prearranged discussion. If there’s anything important people will leave an offline message. I check my email by following a set schedule.

What Times Online suggest is to use the dead-time, such as your traveling time to check text messages.

For many others; these approaches may not be ideal. For me these simply works. I’m not a Fire Chief, God or someone who’s willing to pay 10 IQ points penalty and settle for a less-productive day.

reference: TIMESONLINE

Posting it almost after one year of the speech. However its always worthy to read (listen to) the speech. Thought of putting few excerpts to give some motivation to the read the full story.. if those didn’t motivate you into reading the full article, please click on the link and read the full article :D

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation…

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life…

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle…