There are too many books to read, too many exercise to be done, too many chapters to be covered and the list goes on. This is what I’ve been facing all this week, final examination is just few days away, and preparation? Not enough, simply not enough.  Panic? Freak out? I guess not it is because I already master in controlling stress when it comes to examination.  Not “master” but it works, here I want to share with you some of the tips, work for me and might work for you -

1. Pretend that you had covered all the topics even if you don’t – this one is physcological stuff, you need to control your brain so that the brain think you actually done studying and just need to wait for final examination.  This one is the less you can do, because when on the exam day, you have to face the fact that you actually just pretending.  But if you think you can’t study at all, just study as many as you could  and then use this technique so you not think much about it hence no stress at all.

2. Stop studying, and start doing what you like – Yes, there is simply no time to do anything but study, but if you study “too much” trust me it never good, try to take you mind away from any sort of education and start to watch movies, play game, do sports and whatever you love to do.  It can relax your mind, and simply make you less worried. Sleep can help too, get enough sleep and maybe a bit more.

3. Don’t study alone, try to find at least one person to accompany you – I know some people love to study by themselves maybe they feel more ease and relax, but to make sure you are not so stress with it you should have friend at least you can talk and discuss with them rather than be alone by yourself.  It really helps me to relax my mind and even myself from heavy burden.

4. Properly plan you study scheduled – Don’t just think and then grab a book of whatever you want to study, because it really stress you up because thing like “Im not study that yet, maybe I should study it”, “No, there are still lot to covered for this subject, i need to focus on this” and more of something like that.  If you do planning what to study today, what to study tomorrow, it really gonna ease you up and stress you not.

5. Do something that could handle your stress – Stress can’t help you with your studying, in fact it could damage the chance for you to study properly.  I have write before 5 ways to handle your stress, you could learn from it and also can find other article about how to control your stress because it really does help a lot.

In whatever you do, you shouldn’t be stress, be relax and ease.  How you handle your stress, do you have any ways to help unwind the stress of education?

Popularity: 11% [?]

Sorry for lack of update, and I even cant visit all blog in my blog list because like I say before – busy with education traffic.  Final exam just few days away, and I prepare nothing yet, simply nothing.  But I don’t want this blog to look dead, I need to update even a simple post.  Today I write just simple post, but I try my best to make sure the quality still on par with other post, and today post is about you should stop blogging when -

1. Your blog doesn’t make much money or not make money at all and you feel there is no reason for you to keep blogging because there is no benefit at all. blogging is not about making money 100% it about connecting, if only money in your head and you not making money from it, better if you stop rather than shitty yourself.

2. You have no idea to write your own original content, and then you start to take other blogger contents, if you using copy-writing  then it okay, but if you copy-paste-edit and then say that you write it is absolutely not ok.  There are lot of topics to write, what you have to do some just a bit of thinking and research.

3. Your post if full of hate and shit about other bloggers.. that kind of blogging maybe can generate traffic, but if you just hit and hit without reason it is better you stay away from blogging world.  Like I say before blog is for connecting, to build friendship to give knowledge, but if that only way you can blogging, blog world much better without you.

4. You have blog because people surround you have blog, but when your blog not get much attention you start to think blogging is full of shit and for people who doesn’t have life.  Maybe you have no interest at all in blog, that why you think blog is waste of time it better if you look at something else.

5. Your blog only update once a month and maybe less, there is no reason for you to keep blogging if you only have “10 minute to write new post” only once a month.  People hoping you to update, if you have no intention to update, it better if you say so “I’m Dead, and my blog too”.

I encourage you to share more points if you have any, so that reader can get more from this simple post.  And if you still not vote from my previous fight, do it so in traffic vs comment post.  I will write the summary about the fight in my next post, together with other fight.

Popularity: 19% [?]

When we talk about traffic and comment it is somewhat related to each other.  Higher traffic more comments, but it is not always the case, some blogs have high traffic but few comments, and other blogs low traffic but plenty of comments.. this may caused by the content itself.  If the blog has random visitors which come from let say advertising, the user expect something different but the blog talks about something else, so chance for them to leave comment is low meanwhile if one blog only looking for target visitor, where visitor is interested in what the blog talk about, they may have low traffic but chance for all of its visit to comment is higher.

To get both traffic and comment is not impossible, but not everyone can do it.  And for this post let say you can’t have both, what will you prefer, traffic or comment? And for me I prefer comment, because comment that ignite me to write more and more, if my blog have no comment, maybe not long till I end my writing here, luckily some of my post have numbers of comment and that what make me eager to write more.  But traffic is important though.  Blog is all about traffic, the higher traffic you have, more income you get, advertiser love blog with high traffic and sometime they not even care about numbers of comment.  So this is not an easy pick.

What do you think you prefer most, traffic or comment? Vote the pool and leave comment about your choice, I will excerpt the comment when I announce the result.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Presentation is a usual thing among university student and also for a business man.  Presentation for academic purpose, presentation for project, presentation for business and else.  Presentation is important to make sure what you try to convey is understandable by the audience.  There are many ways to present better, it all depend on how you comfortable with it.  Today I gave presentation for my Small Business and Entrepreneurship class, I think i gave pretty good presentation even there are so many mistake like – too fast, lack of idea and too many stop.  I’m not master in presentation but here some tips to present better -

1.  Slides are only to help you not to present by itself – This is mistake often done by presenter.  They try to put as much details about what he gonna talk about on the slide as possible, rather than trying to explain by himself.  If we take driving lesson as analogy, your instructor is slide and you are presenter, instructor suppose to help you to drive not to drive for you, same as presentation slides suppose just to help you not to present for you – if you put so many information on the slides, people tend to read rather than listening to you.  So try just put points in slide or something than you can show by words for example graphs and images.

2.  Don’t make your slide plain – Slide is very important in term to assist you on presentation, thats why it is important to make your slide attractive and different so that it does not look boring.  There are themes for slide, you can use it, it still look nice but try to be different than usual presentation.  Try to make each of the slides have its own identity -  for example let say first slide in point, why not make second slide to show quote or images instead of another points.  You also can be vary in term of color and font.  Try to make variety so that while people listen to you they can appreciate the slides.

3.  Make yourself heard – If you follow the first tips, then you have to make sure that people can hear what you say, because there are nothing much information on slides, people will expect you to tell more information about it, and if you speak slow nobody can hear you – they can’t read on slides and they can’t listen to what you are saying, the audience will be confused what the hell you try to explain.  They lost, and you prove nothing its bad especially if you try to explain about your project or businesses.  Make sure you speak loud enough for everyone to listen clearly and don’t ever blame the audience because not listening to what you say, because it is your problem not them.

4. Don’t be plain – It is similar to tip no 2 but this time it not about your slides but about you.  While you are presenting don’t be plain, don’t talk same word same style all the time, try to be different from point to point.  You can put some joke, a bit chat here and there and such, don’t do it too much because the main focus is your topic.  But why not try to entertain your audience a bit especially if it is a long presentation, your audience must be boring to listen to you all day, so if you take them out from presentation for awhile they of course very much appreciate it. Most good presenter they do it by joking, chatting, showing video and etc.

5. Control your pace – this is important to make sure you and the audience feel comfortable with presentation, if you going to fast people might not catch up with you but if you go to slow, you might not feel good with it, because the slower you talk more thought you give to every word and that is not good for presentation because you are not natural.  So go moderate speed, and if possible control your own slide – when you want to change, when you want to return to previous slide or even you want to skip certain slide, so you don’t need to say next, next oh back back.. other than irritating it also effect your pace.

6. Rehearse – Even how good presenter you are rehearse is a must, you just don’t go out-there and start to rambling, you might lost your focus and also points.  You should know when to talk about this topic, when to stop awhile and else.  You also need to make sure that your are familiar with the slides, what point you need to talk about on this slide and if you using something like graphs or images you should know what you want to add to that particular item.  So rehearse is important, so that you won’t be choking while presenting, my mistake always on this one – I rarely rehearse that’s why on presentation that I talk above I talk a bit fast and sometime lack of idea to explain.

Those are some tips that I could give, even I’m not a good presenter but if you can follow the tips, I’m sure you will present better than usual.  You can check from other blogs though, especially business blogs they often talk about presentation – how to and tips. Reading books about it can help you much more and I suggest you to read slide:ology. Other than that Watching great presenter also could help you a lot, like me I love watching Steve Jobs presenting in Macworld Convention, you can check it on YouTube.  So what do you think about presentation? How you make sure your presentation is better than anybody else?

p/s – i already publish my blogs list, you can check on “A Blogs List” page.

Popularity: 14% [?]