Speed up your reading

You can read four times faster than average. How? By mastering speed reading techniques.

Speed reading allows you to increase your pace of reading, without reducing your comprehension. When you speed read, you stop reading every word on the page. Instead, you switch to scanning documents for key points.

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Get better results from web searches

Do you spend hours wading through web search results? Are you frustrated by irrelevant search results? Here’s how to search more efficiently.

1. List keywords before you start

To generate relevant search results, you need to be specific about the keywords you use. For example, searching for ‘learning’ will generate lots of hits. But most of them will be irrelevant if you’re writing an article on teaching adults. You’ll get better results entering specific keywords, such as ‘adult learning’ or ‘experiential learning.’

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Cut your writing time in half

Do you want to write high quality material quickly and easily? Here’s how to do it.

1. Plan before you write

A good plan will save you hours of writing time. Use headings and dot points to create a skeleton for your article. In your planning document, list the key sections you want to include in your article. Then use dot points to list the points you’ll make in each section. For example:

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How to say no

Meredith was a Human Resources consultant. She was passionate about supporting her clients. But this meant that she often said ‘yes’ to work she had little time to do. She was working long and starting to feel burnt out.

Meredith was taking on some projects to keep her clients happy, even though those projects fell outside her core area of expertise. This meant she was working excessive hours in order to master them. It was time Meredith started saying ‘no’ to these projects. She came to one of my communication skills training sessions. Here are some of the ideas Meredith picked up. You can use the same principles to say no to time-wasting tasks in your job, too.

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Guilt-Free Ways to Say No

Finding it difficult to turn people down? Here’s how to say no when you need to.

The direct no

You may sometimes feel you need to explain why you’re saying no. The problem is, explanations are often heard as excuses. For some people, your excuse is an opportunity to persuade you to say ‘yes’.

A direct approach is often needed. And some ways of saying ‘no’ work better than others. Saying ‘I can’t/won’t’ gets straight to the point but the most likely instant response will be ‘why not?’ Before you know it, you’re in explanation territory again.

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Keeping meetings on track

Chair that meeting without feeling stressed

As a chairperson, your job is to keep the meeting on track. This means striking a balance between allowing people their say and keeping the discussion on topic. This is often easier said than done. You’ll need a healthy mix of assertiveness and diplomacy to get through a typical meeting. Here are some useful verbal strategies for handling tricky situations which emerge during meetings.

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