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Showing posts from 2017

25. Work place - working efficiently

8 months later and I finally reached a point where I am efficient in my work…well, most of the time. One thing I’ve realised about myself is that when something comes up while I’m busy with one thing, if it is urgent and/ or will take little of my time, I’d rather stop what I’m doing currently and attend to that thing before I forget about it. I’d rather get it over and done with there and then instead of procrastinating it, otherwise it won’t get done. If it’s something that will take long, which I’d only realise while attending to it, I’d keep the paper work or a sticky note on the desk or on the laptop where it will not pass my eyes, so that I know it has to be attended to before end of day. I also don’t like papers on my desk, so putting them on my desk is motivation enough to attend to them and to get rid of them before end of day. However, it’s also important to be realistic: if I can’t do everything today, there’s always ‘prioritizing’ – doing the urgent tasks first, and ther

24. Experience versus qualification

This is a topic I feel very strongly about, especially now that I have entered the working world and see the need for both experience and qualification. Qualification I believe that a qualification, be it a diploma or a degree, is merely a resource to assist one in whichever field they intend to work in, for that particular occupation/(s). The concern I have is when we spend years to obtain a qualification that we don't even know how we will use it, or even worse - obtain knowledge that may not be used at all! Obtaining a qualification is good for getting knowledge, a foundation, a background of the field of work and/ or area of expertise one intends to be in. I realized that through the B.com Accounting degree I obtained. However, it is not enough alone, and that's where the need for experience comes in. Experience I feel that experience is better than a qualification. Let me tell you why: A person with experience obtains knowledge, the actual knowledge required for th

23. Time-management: made simpler with 'DayPipe' applications software

This blogpost is quite different from all the others - this is a guest post. I was approached by a fellow blogger - Matic from DayPipe , whose team have invented pretty awesome applications software that individuals and small organizations can use to ensure efficiency and seeing results in the work, projects and / or tasks we have. The guest post included here focuses on the 3 applications software they have invented. These applications are free for single users, and are charged for use by a group of people (like companies). To get a complete picture of what DayPipe is about, check out their blog-post titled 'How to better use the most valuable resource:  http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/06/27/how-to-better-use-the-most-valuable-resource-3x3-matrix/ Guest post by Daypipe How to better use the most valuable resource: the 3 apps This blog post is part 3 of the 3 series of blog posts, written by Matic from  DayPipe team, about how we can better understand time organizat

22. Cooking

This is most probably the one topic you wouldn’t have expected from this blog, hey? Well, I didn’t think I’d find myself writing it either, but it is quite relevant. As much as some of us cook for ourselves at university, some still buy ready-made food from the dining halls. It may also be that some never had the opportunity or took the chance to cook while at home. Eventually, we'd have to get into the habit of cooking, especially because there will be a need to do so when we start living on our own. How I started cooking I was always cooked for – from the time I was a child right up until I started my first year at university. I confidently started my cooking journey at university and I loved it! I even went to the extent of making samp - umngqusho as we call it in the Xhosa language: do you have any idea how long that takes?! I didn’t care, as long as I was cooking. I suppose it was the excitement of starting something I did not do before. I did not like buying at the dining

21. The work environment - how do we survive

In blogpost 17, I spoke about the transition from university to the working world. It’s been over 6 months now that I have been working, and there’s more that I have learnt. Discovering myself This is something I did not expect to happen in a work environment, but I understand why it did happen: I work with people, people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, people with different ways of doing things. The work environment helped me to discover how I relate to people – how I am with people, how I respond to situations I find myself in with people. I’ve discovered myself, acknowledged my character, and the work place couldn’t have been a better platform: it’s where I spend almost half of my time, and it’s where I work the most with people. Standing my ground – standing up for myself This must be one of the toughest things to pull through – not allowing yourself to be walked-over when you’ve only recently started working and most probably don’t want to lose

20. Dressing up - presenting yourself: part 2

In the previous blog post, I focused more on how I wear at work. In this blog post, I’ll focus on how I wear outside work. There isn’t much of a difference really: I wear the same clothes, just worn differently, and of course there are some clothing items that I can’t wear at church for obvious reasons.  Here, I'm wearing the same shirt I wear at work (as you may have seen on the previous blog post). I'm wearing it with a skirt I bought at Mr Price for about R120 I believe, and the heels...well, there are those exceptional items that are expensive (lol), but this is the heel I got for graduation day. See, I could wear it again elsewhere, not just for speacial occassions like graduation. And ofcourse the same bag I used for work, I used for church. As soon as I realised that, and could afford it, I got myself another bag, the brown  bag - you may have seen it on the previous blog post, but the zip of this bag broke, which means I now have one bag for both wo