Among the many ideas put forward by Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, was to institute an annual speech to the French parliament, a sort of State of the Union à la française. He also introduced a raft of bold proposals for streamlining government. But even bolder than his proposals was the speech itself, and the American-style executive it seemed to usher in.
Month: July 2017
Top Five Skills To Develop In College That Can Help You Get Your Dream Job
While in college, it’s not surprising for students to be starry-eyed about working. However, when reality strikes, life can be devastating.
As a student, to avoid such a situation, it’s important that you see things as they really are. You need to know that having a college degree isn’t a passport to a dream job. It might fetch you an interview call, but that’s not everything. To actually land the job, employers will want to know, among many other things, what you can do.
You need to have a particular skill set that fits their needs. They will also want to know if you’re a leader, can work independently, think logically and are professional in your dealings.
Unfortunately, most students don’t know many of these things. Others feel they will pick them up as they go along in their professions. Some students may learn professional skills by reading “management books by reputed authors“, watching videos on these subjects or latching on to management gurus.
See Also: 3 Management Books Every Upcoming Entrepreneur Must Read
Now, if you are wondering what exact skills can help you in getting your dream job, read on.
Leadership skills
In life, you need to demonstrate leadership skills where applicable. The ability to assume leadership roles as and when the situation demands in college and in working life will help young professionals to assume positions of influence in the future. Besides, “companies prefer hiring leaders rather than followers“.
You can develop this skill by looking out for leadership opportunities while still in high school. As a student, you can do this by becoming the captain of a sports team, a drama club or a student movement.
Collaborative skills
College kids should work well in groups while collaborating on projects. The ability to work as a team is one of the things employers often look for.
Apart from team-based projects like service activities in high school, you can learn to be collaborative by participating in extracurricular activities and athletics, too.
Essay writing skills
As a college student, you will have to juggle multiple subjects and write numerous essays. Some of them can come with very short deadlines. The trick is to master essay writing skills and get so comfortable with researching and formatting your essays that you can handle them with ease and quick turnaround times.
If you are unsure about how well you can write an essay, ask yourself if you are confident that you can score an A+ if you write the essay yourself. If you aren’t confident in your ability, it is recommended to take help from professional essay writing services. Use their essay as a reference to improve your essay writing skills.
Communication and interpersonal skills
Another skill you must learn is listening “actively, humbly and attentively“. You should also learn how to start and carry on a conversation and ask relevant questions at the appropriate time. Make sure to maintain eye contact with your group members in group projects, too.
You can inculcate better communication and interpersonal skills by speaking with your teachers in one-on-one situations. Getting a good internship is another great way to enhance your interpersonal and communication skills.
Problem-solving skills
Students and working professionals will always be confronted by numerous challenges that will need deft handling. You can work on your problem-solving skills by taking classes that teach experiential learning. You should also try out new activities that can put you in unusual situations, such as a debate or an oratory club. By participating in group projects, you can develop problem-solving skills, such as logical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making.
Time management skills
By the time you move on to college, you should have ingrained good time management skills. You should be able to track several projects efficiently and prioritize tasks.
You can improve your time management skills by taking in more responsibility. Some examples include obtaining internships, doing volunteer work or engaging in extra-curricular activities.
See Also: 5 Essential Time Management Tips to Live By
Growing personally and academically during college comes with hard work, perseverance and lessons. Don’t give up and keep honing your skills as they can be your ticket to getting your dream job.
The post Top Five Skills To Develop In College That Can Help You Get Your Dream Job appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Beautiful Home Designed by Bohlin Grauman Miller in a Joint Project with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in Ontario, Canada
This beautiful home is located approximately three hours northeast of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It covers approximately 3,300 square feet and was designed by architectural firm Bohlin Grauman Miller in a joint project with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in 2015. It was thought up as a place where kids could calmly enjoy the thrilling adventures to be had exploring the nearby lake and forest, as well as be rented out during vacations…
Propelled by relentless ocean waves and strong onshore winds,…
Propelled by relentless ocean waves and strong onshore winds, small grains of sand accumulated to form the impressive dunes of Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes National Wildlife Refuge in California. Stretching inland from the Pacific Ocean, the migrating dunes are home to a unique ecosystem of plants and animals, like the northern elephant seal, the western snowy plover and the California red-legged frog. Two remote hiking areas offer visitors a chance to explore this dynamic landscape in peace and solitude. Photo by Ian Shive, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
How Your Car Can Affect Your Personal Branding
We all have a personal brand. If you think you don’t, you should probably look further into it. How you present yourself on a regular basis becomes your personal brand, like it or not. If you dress like a slob and drive a dented old rust bucket, there’s a good chance people are going to think you aren’t all that serious about your personal brand.
We all like to believe that personal appearances don’t matter, but they matter more than you can imagine. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, as the saying goes, so you have to pay close attention to how you are presenting yourself to the world.
Celebrities Have A Lock On Personal Branding
When you see photos of Paris Hilton in public, you’ll notice that she’s always put together. Her hair is done and her makeup looks flawless even if she’s just going to the store to pick up dog food. She knows that she will be photographed wherever she goes and that people will critique her personal appearance, so she drives around in a powder pink Bentley.
What you drive says a lot about who you are as a person.
For Hilton, her luxury ride conveys her comfort with luxury items. She also highlights her socialite status with her car’s diamond-encrusted dashboard and custom paint job.
Meanwhile, Oprah Winfrey has nothing to prove to anyone and she’s out to prove it to everyone. She keeps it low-key by staying out of the tabloids. She rolls around town in a Tesla Model S.
Her car says she’s sophisticated, low-key and environmentally conscious. Her choice shows that she is thinking about everything and checking off all the boxes with one choice.
Chris Brown, on the other hand, is no stranger to controversy. His 2012 Lamborghini Gallardo is painted like an F-86 Sabre transonic fighter jet, even though he has never seen any military or even civilian service. But, Brown is more than happy to be in the news for his poor life choices, so why not have a car that is painted to look like a military fighter jet?
See Also: What Science Says About The Car You Drive
How To Enhance Your Personal Branding
What you drive can say a lot about who you are as a person. If you’re still driving your old college clunker, you may not be sending the right message about your personal branding.
If you are starting up a business, pay close attention to how you present yourself to potential clients. Rolling up to client meetings in a clunker may send the message that your startup is a total fly-by-night operation and they would be better off taking their business elsewhere.
Ask yourself what message you want your car to convey about you. After all, this is usually the first thing a potential client sees about you.
If you are running a clean energy startup but driving a gas-guzzling SUV, maybe it’s time you consider switching to an electric vehicle. If you are running an agriculture startup but driving a convertible, you might want to make the switch to a small truck.
It may just be transportation, but it has to serve your needs and send the right messages about you. Even your paint job can speak volumes. Having your company’s logo on your vehicle can show how committed you are.
See Also: 5 Smart Ways to Boost Brand Awareness
Make Yourself Stand Out From The Crowd
If you don’t think personal branding is a thing you need to worry about, you need to reassess things.
Do you need to update your wardrobe? Get your car wrapped with some sort of mobile advertising? Redo your website and update your blog more often?
Take stock of each of the many ways potential clients might have a first interaction with you and ask yourself what impression you want to make. Once you have a personal branding goal, you can start working on them.
To learn more about what your car might be saying about you, here’s an infographic you can check out.
© 2017 Digital EFX Wraps LLC
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Beautiful Hillside House in Los Angeles, USA, Designed by Erika Winters Design and Kamran Khavarani
This beautiful curved house was built on a hill, where herbal and fruit garden has been developed. It has been built on concrete piles to achieve the shape desired by the clients. Being on a hill, it has 180-degree views over the spectacular landscape and across all areas. The property, distributed on two levels, has an elevator. On the second floor are a swimming pool and a waterfall that are..
Transformation of a 16th Century Residence into a Guesthouse by ORA
This house was rebuilt to fulfill the needs of the owner that existed in the former guesthouse. The remodeling work was done by the ORA team – Jan Hora, Barbora Hora and Jan Veisser between the years 2015 to 2017. It is located in the town of Mikulov, in the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, directly on the border with Lower Austria. Throughout its existence, the building has suffered..
The post Transformation of a 16th Century Residence into a Guesthouse by ORA appeared first on HomeDSGN.
The True Value of The 11 Coins From Around The World
How many times have you returned home from vacation with a pocketful of change that you feared would stop your plane from taking off? And what have you done with those foreign coins once you made it back to your pad?
Like everyone else, you probably have a tray or jar where you keep the leftover coins from your trips. It’s only practical to leave them at home since they don’t seem that valuable to carry out in the streets.
It’s actually peculiar. Even in the age of plastic, these coins follow us everywhere and it’s not something we often give a thought. In reality, however, these coins aren’t really worthless.
The True Value Of The Coins From Around The World
As for the substance of those coins, the weight of the metals used in making them is more or less arbitrary. In essence, this means that the store value of most modern coins bares no direct connection to the value of the materials they’re made from.
Most coins cost considerably less than what they are worth when spent. Otherwise, fraud would be more widespread than it is. While the act of melting down coins for any reason – let alone to sell as scrap metal – is illegal, there’s generally no point in doing so as they are worth more as minted currency.
But, what can you actually get from those foreign coins if you were to reduce them to shapeless nuggets?
That would depend on your relationship with that notoriously difficult group of people known as scrap metal merchants. It makes more sense to think of how much the metal costs to buy in the first place.
For example, the United States quarter, which has a surface value of 25¢, is mostly made of copper. In fact, 92% of it is copper.
While the price of copper has soared over the last few years – enough so that the nickel is actually ‘worth’ more than a nickel – there’s still only $0.02968 worth of copper in a quarter. The rest is accounted for by $0.00439-worth of nickel. So, all in all, you’re better saving up that daily change in a jar and turning it in at the bank, rather than starting your own foundry.
The Canadian quarter costs even less to make. Its face value equals that of 19 US¢, but its metal value- mostly from its 94% steel content- is just $0.00315. It contains less than a thousandth of a cent’s worth of nickel. The use of steel strengthens the coin while the smidgen of nickel makes it easier to create the design on the face.
Holiday Coins
And how about that holiday money?
Well, your €1 coins are currently worth around US$1.09 in the pâtisserie. However, despite their fancy gold-colored rim, they are actually worth less than a nickel as scrap metal.
The similar looking British pound is worth around $2.58 right now, although it varies widely at the moment due to the confusion surrounding Brexit. One thing that remains a little more constant is its metal value which is around $0.071. That’s a little more than the similarly-constituted Euro as it is a little fatter.
The Australian dollar is equivalent to around three-quarters of the value of the American dollar. In metallic terms, however, it is worth a gnat’s wing under a nickel. It’s made mostly of copper- around $0.04728’s worth, in fact. The Indian ten rupee coin may sound exotic, but this Asian treasure is equivalent to only 16¢ in the bank or $0.04687 at the foundry.
A ten-dollar coin in Hong Kong looks like the inverse of the Euro- a silver-colored rim on a gold-colored core. You could exchange it for US$1.25. In metal, it’s only worth one-twentieth of that price.
It may only be a matter of time before American dollars and Russian rubles are directly interchangeable. We’ll have to see how that one plays out in ‘Trumpmerica’!
Meanwhile, a five-ruble coin is equivalent to just under 10¢ or less than $0.004 in metal terms. It’s made almost entirely of steel.
The five-South African rand coin is worth a nickel and a bit in metal. The Chilean 500-pesos coin, as impressive as it sounds, accounts for just $0.75 in the store. As a scrap metal, it’s just worth $0.043.
Old Coins
For a true whopper of a coin, you might need to go back to the Roman ages. From the 1st century BC to the beginning of the 4th century AD, the Roman gold aureus contained around 8g of gold. It was considered to have the monetary value of 25 pure silver denarii.
In today’s terms, it would be worth around US$710 at the bank and just under half of that if melted and sold to a gold merchant.
That said, if you happen to be passed one amongst your Euros while on holiday in Italy, the wisest move is to not take it to a bureau de change or to seek out a local scrap merchant and cash it in to pay for your flight home. It would be far more sensible to put the thing up for auction. Its rarity and antique status make it a sought-after collector’s piece for many big buyers.
In fact, that piece of gold ‘pocket shrapnel’ might make you up to a million dollars if it’s the right vintage, in good condition and you find the right buyer. Just make sure that they’re happy to pay you by check or by bank transfer. You don’t want to be carrying $1M-worth of unmarked nickels and dimes in your suitcases! It’ll end up costing you a whole lot more in checked luggage.
For an at-a-glance guide to the prices of the coins from around the world, including their precise metallic constitution and values, check out this new visual guide from 911 Metallurgy.
The post The True Value of The 11 Coins From Around The World appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
July 5th
You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.
Stop Drowning and Start Making Each Week Awesome
You’re reading Stop Drowning and Start Making Each Week Awesome, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
You can learn to stop drowning and start making your ultimate reality slowly come true. I used to worry incessantly about how the future would turn out. Then, it finally dawned on me that all this worrying was doing nothing to help me. It was taking away from my present, and by doing that, it was draining my future from what it could eventually become.
I fundamentally began to realize that the feelings and actions I feel and take week by week, would ultimately create my future. So if I fret and worry now, I’m laying the seeds for continuing that cycle in the future. If I smile and do my best work now, then I’m laying the seeds for that too.
The only way I can be sure of creating a great future is to do my best to create a great present, incrementally improving it week by week – despite the mishaps and little pains that inevitably arise through the course of life.
These days, I write what I’m grateful for every morning and night. I hug my family every day. I do a little exercise each day. I eat a healthy meal each day. I work on my writing each day. Because small acts multiplied through Monday to Sunday and each week, change my future by an enormous amount.
Why are we focused on the distant future?
The underlying reason behind why we worry so much about the future is because we’ve put it on a pedestal. The same model of focusing on a particular guy or girl replicates itself with the way we lead our lives. Macy can’t stop thinking about Gary, so she’s spending less time feeling happy about her life; giving less time to her hobbies and friendships (her present). But really Gary is a scumbag (the future) and doesn’t care about her.
Done right, thinking about the future may be useful since it can engender positive actions in the present. For instance, perhaps Macy realizes that Gary isn’t good for her after some careful thinking and starts focusing her attention on the right people and goals. Yet, when we concentrate on the future too much, it creates anxiety and a distorted vision that cripples our ability to take advantage of each week.
The first step in getting over our anxiety for the future is first to accept that the only reason why we’re anxious is because we’re looking away from what’s in front of us. The second step is recognizing that, at the deepest root, our anxiety for the future comes down to believing that it’s our salvation (most often, that’s never the case).
We need to change the lens we’re looking through.
Since many of us don’t have a dominant overriding focus time view, our mind naturally gravitates to its default thinking; the distant future. But since our mind loves concepts, we might as well hold on to the one that serves us best. And a week to two weeks seems to be the sweet spot.
Tim Ferriss, the well known author of the Four Hour Work Week and Tools of Titans, lives his life through the mainframe of two-week experiments within six-month timelines; eschewing five-year plans for a more short term focus.
Several other different authors like Scott Adams, have explored the benefits of setting short-term deadlines and using systems based thinking. So for instance, instead of dreaming about writing a book, for example, ditch the idea and focus on writing a chapter per week. Short term focus gets you moving.
Cancer patients, who know that their death is coming within the year, inevitably start losing their fear of being successful and start taking more action.
But you can’t do anything when you’re focusing on the what-if’s in-between a month, to five years, or a decade from now. And that state of inaction is what sets the stage for worry.
To worry less about the future, here are some of the things you can focus on through the lens of the week:
- What time you wake up
- What you choose to eat, read, and watch
- Blocking 1-3 hours daily or more to drive you towards your goals
- Meeting your friends
- Saying thank you, smiling, and laughing as often as you can
We all have goals and dreams. But to build the best future possible, all you need to come back to is making your week as phenomenal as you can. Not too long ago, you were picturing how life would be like when you’d be *insert your current age*.
Don’t let that cycle repeat itself your whole life. Act this week, and make it count. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. Though I’m not saying we need to live each day like it’s our last — we’re all going to have our off days. I just like you will have minor blips along my journey.
And having a perfectionist mindset is only going to screw us over in the long run. But as long as we keep showing up in our work, relationships, and habits each week, the future will be okay. To have a dazzling future, all we need to focus on is making our average week better by 1-5% consistently.
By applying the principles in this article, living each week in a phenomenal manner will eventually become more and more natural. That’s the place where you want to get to. Where doing the hard things becomes easier. Where embracing the week instead of the imaginary future, becomes your default living mechanism.
Eventually, you’ll barely care about the future. Why? Because you’ll get all the thrills and fulfillment you need by crushing it every week.
My Last Words
If you work on a PC and you’re interested in learning how to brighten your path to its full potential, read my free book on Creating your Week.
- You’ll learn about how to split up your day into four chunks, so you worry less about external influences.
- You’ll discover the small hacks that will take your productive work on the PC to the next level.
- And much more…
Samy Felice is a writer who brings meaning to words. His Free Book explores how to make success easier.
You’ve read Stop Drowning and Start Making Each Week Awesome, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Sig Nordal 