Arun Sarathy

If you want to know if someone is good at their job, watch them do it for 30-60 seconds, a research says. But take that with a pinch of salt because not everyone is cut out for excellence all the time.

Circumstances, situations, environments, people present, everything plays a role and must be considered before judging someone at something. That’s why face to face interviews often prove the contrary and only working with them over time shows what they are really capable of. Hence, the reason why most companies follow the concept of probationary periods of 3 to 6 months or sometimes even up to 1 year before confirming the employment.

We need to give them time to help them prove that they are capable of greater things than the ones that are possible to squeeze in just few seconds.

We all pay more attention to people who are comparatively charming, pretty, confident, and talkative. The first moments or days with them fall into mental inertia and a kind of distorted reality sets in. And so we tend to take the time to evaluate them.

Studies show that if someone seems extroverted, confident, religious, or conscientious, they probably are. Similarly, funny people are smart – effective humour production acts as an honest indicator of intelligence in humans. Having a knack to read and understand people and give them time under any circumstances is important than always taking first impressions into consideration.

Recommended Reading: What EveryBODY is Saying – An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People and, The Dictionary of Body Language.

 

Cheers, and good luck!

– Arun

With the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, more and more companies have opted to Work From Home. With this, face-to-face conversations happen lesser and lesser and chat conversations, especially in group settings, will happen more. Not all might be formal discussions, and for few introverts who say something but don’t attract any reaction could end up being a big blow to their ego(?) that nobody is paying heed to their expressions.

It’s important to understand and visualize that there are no room full of people (chat room) sitting and watching your text (the messages you type) and choosing to ignore you. Instead, everyone is working on something, or might not even be at desk (even if their status shows as Online). Just know that the scene here is totally different, especially if you start feeling that people are ignoring you. That’s the last thing. They are just busy, it’s important to assume positive intentions, not because we must assume they’re good, but because our moods should not be spoiled because of others’ reactions to what you have to say – that’s the bane of Social Approval Indicators such as the ‘like’, ’emoticon’, buttons. Forget textual responses – you must be lucky (or a manager) if you want them consistently for all your messages.

To conclude, the next time you share something that you think is funny, but find no response at all, just move on! Nobody will remember that a week from now, may be it’s just you. On the contrary, you are the courageous one for contributing to team conversations when the others haven’t done it.

Recommended Reading: The Art of Mingling, Fun and Proven Techniques for Mastering Any Room

 

Cheers, and good luck!

If you have too many items on your to-do list and don’t know where to begin, try these 3 routes to fight “Analysis Paralysis”:

1. Get up from your desk, and walk around – either fill your water bottle, go for a coffee/tea, or just go somewhere, may be even just a short walk. The task that needs more importance will automatically float to the top of your mind like magic, and will stick to your mind sometimes asking you ‘why is it not done yet?’. Pick that task to go with first.
2. Try the 80/20. Which task, if done, reduces 80% of your burden with 20% of the efforts. Start with that task.
3. Big things first – eat that frog. Some people work the opposite way: small things that take less than 2 – 5 minutes to do gets done first. Choose whichever works for you.

A close cousin to these techniques is just pick anything that you have been analyzing too much, and ‘act’ on it for 2 straight minutes. Don’t think. Just do. This 2-minute work propels, and snowballs (more often than not) into multiple 2-minute installments and voila, you’d have accomplished a huge chunk of that task.

Cheers and good luck!