#so its like! were just constantly running in place and its so demotivating to even getting anything done

[isa-ah]

bro we've been spinning tires trying to get a computer for months, I'm so sick of it. we've only put away $400 since october and the rig we want is still over $300 away with a bunch of debt we owe my mom in law stacked on top 😭💀 I might ask for help in finally getting that shit ordered so we can start actually Making Things again and lo can work on his own profitable hustles while I focus on paying down our dues

[ikehorganics]

HOW TO REDUCE BINGE

EATING OVEREATING,

AND BORED EATING:

disclaimer: i am aware that binge eating is an eating disorder, but not a lot of people have access to professionals to help them, and this guide could help a number of people struggling with binge eating, it could be successful to some binge eaters but not all. i hope this assists you, and this all comes from a place of good faith not malicious intent. i am also aware that binge eating does NOT equate to bored eating or overeating.

skip the preface if you want to skip straight to the tips!

PREFACE:

I have been in quarantine for nearly nine months, and I have struggled with multiple aspects of my everyday life that have had to be changed and adapted to the new rules of society. Since the beginning, I have always preached about staying in doors, social distancing, not going out to into open places without a mask etc because this is a direct reflection of the respect you have for yourself and the people around you. In this strong belief, I found myself struggling to juggle being a first year university student, my fitness, mental health, food and constantly being bored within my house.

Food was the hardest aspect, and with being surrounded by food 24/7, weight gain was inevitable. At first, I had not realised how I ate on a regular basis, I woke up at 6am, and would be at uni between 8am and 5pm from monday to thursday, where i would usually only eat one meal and a snack between that, whether it be left overs from dinner for lunch and an apple or piece of fruit for when i feel a bit peckish, and 2litres of water. My day consisted of four lectures ranging from 1 hour to two hours and walking around a lot because I hated sitting for a long time, and occasionally doing summaries or watching netflix between lectures. And when i got home, I had dinner and would go to bed. That was my routine and it was never truly surrounded by food constantly available at my every beck and call.

During quarantine, I was filled with procrastination and demotivation to attend lectures online or read my books. And all that extra time was filled with having an efficient workout routine and eating, but then that eating turned to eating quite frequently whether i was watching television, and mainly eating for the sakes of eating and in gross portion sizes because it was now available. Let's talk about how I broke out of that cycle of over eating and bored eating:

1. PLAN YOUR DAY PRODUCTIVELY.

I needed some direction in my life, I forced myself to plan every hour of my day so I can do something productive for myself. I planned the times from when I would wake up at 8am, to the time it took to fix my bed, brush my teeth, workout, stretch, eat my meals, nap, spend time outside, spend time on social media and more. Not only did my eating habits straighten out, but I got more done with my day.

2. SET EATING TIMES.

Setting eating times was the best thing I had ever done. Breakfast was always at 12 midday, lunch at 2 pm and dinner at 6pm, but these were my eating times, especially since i was intermittent fasting. These times helped me plan my day accordingly, between eating times I would usually fill my day with studying, and doing summaries, catching up with work I had missed. This helps especially if you have a restrictive diet or fast a lot! Restricting calories and fasting for extended periods of time only adds to the urge of falling into a binge cycle because your body feels the needs to refeed!

3. LISTEN TO YOUR CRAVINGS.

Listening to your body is so important. If you want to eat pizza for lunch, don't eat a salad, eat the pizza because it will be mor satiating than that salad or pasta that you might not want as much. Because that pizza might just pop into your mind late at night and you will have a little late night feast, this applies especially if you are counting calories. Having cravings are normal, and unless you are on a no bs diet that is extreme, you shouldn't deny yourself of something that you really want for something that won't leave your soul satiated.

4. DRINK WATER DURING MEALS.

I won't say much on this, but having water before, during and after your meal is so important. It aids in better digestion and adds to the feeling of being satiated when you are done eating, plus it's an easy way to get your water in. Replace that coca cola or soft drink with water, especially if you know you don't get enough glasses of water into your day.

5. LEMON WATER.

A cup of warm water and a wedge of lemon juice squeezed into it is super refreshing, sip on it throughout the morning before breakfast, to aid in digestion. Lemon water is a thing that is constantly brought up, and shut down for being "ineffective" but it works for me, and I believe that it is a phenomena of the mind. If you believe lemon water can help, it will definitely help you because you have manifested its impact on your health. Lemon water and warm water is one of those things that 'curb' hunger, and if you are one of those people who sometime wake up hungry but can't bring yourself to eat so early because it could make you nauseous, then water lemon water in a glass is the drink for you.

6. EAT WHOLESOME AND NOURISHING FOODS.

Calories are a touchy subject, and they add up very quickly very surprisingly. A bowl of oatmeal will have a lot of volume, leave you satiated and keep you full longer than toast and nutella. No one is saying do not eat the nutella, but adapt it into a meal that will leave you full and satisfied for example, if you want something sweet, heave oatmeal with a tablespoon of peanut butter or nutella inside of your oatmeal! Eat foods that will nourish you and give you enough energy to go about your day.

7. PORTION CONTROL AND PHYSICAL FULLNESS.

Portion sizes are all up to you as an individual and how satiated a portion size leaves you. Eat portion sizes that leave you satiated, but remember that being satiated does not equal to being so physically full that you feel uncomfortable as a result of eating too much. Being satiated is very difficult because sometimes you eat food that tastes amazing, and even though you are physically full, you feel like you could eat more and that becomes problematic because you've eaten past your bodies physical limit. Eating what you are craving ( number 3 ) comes into play with this aspect, as you have to be able to know when enough is enough. If you feel as if your portion sizes are huge and want to reduce them, then reduce it gradually whether it means you want to go from eating 4 slices of pizza to 2 slices of pizza, then begin with eating 3 and a half slices or eating one less scoop of pasta than you usually eat. If you have no idea how to stop eating past your physical limit, eat until you feel like you're just about to be physically full, do this for a week, and see how you will become satiated with the portions you are eating, gradually lessen the portion sizes overtime until you are happy with the amounts you are eating! This won't happen immediately, it is a gradual process.

8. DON'T EAT TOO FAST. CHEW YOUR FOOD.

A lot of the time, we do not realise how fast we eat and how we don't thoroughly chew our food. The food isn't running away, take your time to enjoy your meal and chew it instead of swallowing after a few times of grinding your teeth. Take in the flavour of your food and really enjoy it in the moment.

9. IT IS OKAY TO FALL INTO OLD HABITS, BUT BREAK IT AS SOON AS YOU CAN.

Nothing in life happens in a linear manner, everything is gradual and has its ups, its downs, its regressions and just general moments we are not proud of. If you find yourself in a binge cycle or overeating cycle for a day or a week, it does not meal all progress is lost. It means you are human, you are not engineered to be perfect constantly. Have a mantra for yourself that you repeat to comfort yourself: “it is okay, tomorrow will be better.” or “it was just one day, i can go back to normally eating tomorrow.” or “I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, it happens to everyone.”

10. INCORPORATE HEALTHY FOOD GROUPS INTO YOUR MEALS.

Make your meals satisfying and as colourful as possible! Don’t just eat pasta or pizza, eat it with something healthy like a side salad or a side of fruits or a side of healthy carbs like roasted potatoes! Never just eat one thing especially if it doesn’t have any greens or vegetables!! It doesn’t have to even be a salad or anything fancy! It can be cut up tomatoes, or cucumbers or apples!

11. HEALTHIER ALTERNATIVES MEAN YOU CAN EAT MORE FOR LESS.

Your oven, grill or airfryer is your bestfriend. Fried food is delicious, but you feel insecure at times after eating something that was cooked in heaping amounts of oil. Remember an airfryer is just a small oven, and can do wonders too. If you want a burger and you have time, home made burgers are always amazing and tastier than their fast food counterparts! Make your burger at home so you can control what goes into it, or make your fries in the oven so you can have a much more healthy alternative for less calories, and have more of it! I’m not saying make your burger buns something like lettuce buns, but making your burger at home can significantly reduce the calories in comparison to ONE mcdonalds burger, and you can have two for less calories than once burger if you make it at home.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Hopefully these tips can assist you day to day, and you take them into consideration and even test it out! These tips worked for me, and I know they won’t work for everyone but some of them might be helpful to you!

[jasontoddiefor]

MTTT AU ft. Padmé in PJs eating take out aka Chapter 7: A Connection - Padmé

Padmé had known from the first moment on that a secret relationship wouldn’t be easy to manage, no matter how used she was to keeping quiet and handling too many duties at once.

All Anakin and she had were stolen moments in the shadows, here and there a few hours in her apartment, and maybe, if she got a little reckless again and had a stroke of luck, a shared mission.

Padmé missed her husband, she did, but they had chosen this fate themselves and now they had to carry its burden. Maybe once the war was over, something would change. They hadn’t talked about it yet, not really, there had never been the time for it. Not to mention, who wanted to think of the hassle that was people’s expectations of them when they could instead make the best they were given at the present. She dared to imagine soft afternoons on Naboo at times, when she was still in bed, sleep chasing her, but that was about it.

Maybe Anakin would leave the Order for her, maybe Padmé would… She didn’t even know what she could do. She just knew that it couldn’t go on like this, not until the end of time. She wanted to show Anakin off to her family, tell them what an amazing husband she had and she wanted to go dancing with him, have a meal at a fancy restaurant, and return to Naboo with him for at least the High Holy Days to watch the fireworks and put candles on the lakes.

But not right now, nothing was possible right now. They were at war and Padmé shouldn’t indulge in such flimsy dreams. Unfortunately, when she was close to Anakin, it was so easy to get lost in dreams.

Anakin wasn’t here right now, but weeks away, somewhere in the Outer Rim, fighting yet another endless battle whose victory never seemed to matter too much in the long run.

The more war reports she read and the more she fought in the Senate, the more convinced did Padmé become that they were sending the Jedi out to fight for nothing. The thought of losing Anakin to this senseless war made her stomach turn. Padmé worried about him constantly. She knew he was strong, the Republic hadn’t dubbed him its Hero with no Fear for nothing after all, but she knew better.

Anakin was afraid all the time, sometimes so much that it stopped him from speaking, left him haunted by nightmares he couldn’t shake.

When she asked about it, he quickly switched the topic.  Padmé knew that she ought to do better and get Anakin to talk to her, but she was only human and a relationship always required two people doing their best.

And it required that they actually had time to talk.

Padmé glanced at her datapad. Its screen was still dark, taunting her. It had been a month since Anakin’s last message. They tried to message each other as often as possible, exchanging I love yous coded into descriptions of flowers and ship parts. They had to be careful, could never say a word too much that could be used against them at a later date. Nobody was to discover their secrets and so Padmé spun lies upon lies to keep everybody unaware.

She wondered what lies Anakin told Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and every other member of his Order. When the war had just started, Padmé hadn’t been too kind to the Jedi, thinking of their rules as strict and their prohibitions as arbitrary, but more and more she was coming to understand that there was a reason for it all.

You could not be a devout Jedi and pour everything into serving the Republic and then still give everything you have for a family outside of the Order. While it had taken her a while to realize it, Padmé could empathize with the sentiment. It was very much the same with her and her family. Each time they asked her to come home, Padmé still picked the Senate over them. She had a duty to the galaxy and if the price for it was this isolation from them, then she could bear it. She had her allies and friends here on Coruscant, her sisters in all but blood, and she had Anakin.

When he was there.

And actually replied to her message.

She hadn’t heard any great news about him or the 501st at large. As far as she was aware, they were still operating as always, running their missions and following orders. Anakin couldn’t be dead, the Republic would be in an uproar.

The thought was a bittersweet relief at least. She couldn’t even count the times she had thought Anakin dead on two hands anymore. He was always in so much danger – she constantly feared that today would be the day he wouldn’t return to her anymore.

If he died tomorrow, what were the last words they exchanged? The last kiss they had shared? Padmé didn’t want to think of herself as fair Veré, who thought of herself as the widow of Set who had gone to live amongst the stars long before her dear husband actually had.

She shook her head. She shouldn’t think so negatively. She had thousands of other things to worry about. New bills, the assassin that was after her and had somehow managed to poison her favorite dessert – she couldn’t spare more than one moment’s thought on the state of her husband.

She was never just Anakin Skywalker’s wife.

She didn’t want to be.

Padmé had always been a greedy child, though her parents had liked to call her ambitious instead. Padmé had wanted to do good and she had wanted to do it herself. She was unsure whether it was that she didn’t trust others enough for it or if a lothcat just couldn’t change its spots, but even when she let herself be distracted by sweet kisses, half her mind was somewhere else.

One of these days it was going to be too much.

Padmé stood up from her sofa, throwing another glance at her traitorous datapad before sighing, then she walked into the kitchen, searching for something edible after a long day. There she went to open her fridge, trying to find something good and fresh to eat, only to be severely disappointed. Her fridge was a sad and desolate space, stocked with only one take-out container and two fruits that were already starting to look moldy. Padmé vaguely recalled how well-stocked her fridge had been with delicacies from Naboo when she had started her term as a Senator. Imports from her homeworld had become extremely expensive.

Padmé was almost a little ashamed to admit she wouldn’t mind accepting one of Palpatine’s dinner proposals only to get her hands on one of the parfaits she used to stuff her mouth with as a kid.

Once Anakin was back, she’d get him to cook something for her. She hadn’t expected him to be good at it, but he was a surprisingly great cook. On the few days they had had on Naboo together after Geonosis, he had pretty much taken over the kitchen within minutes of seeing her attempt at cutting an onion. He had still required her presence and aid at times, unused to his new prosthetic, but even then he had given her instructions on how to properly cut vegetables and fruits. Padmé had never been someone for cooking, it was a trouble and she had never had the time to learn. Perhaps she should start to, people did say that stress baking helped, though she wouldn’t know where to fit a cooking class into her busy schedule.

In the end, Padmé grabbed the take-out box from Dex’s – her new favorite place to order food at – and warmed it up. After it was done, she considered putting the contents of the box on a plate to make it look like she had put at least some effort into the meal. Demotivated she looked at the white container. If she grabbed a plate, she’d just have to clean that as well and there was no point to it if it was really just her. Padmé fished a fork out of her drawer and walked back to her living room. She didn’t even bother sitting down at her dinner table and instead got comfortable on her couch. What a mighty picture she made, former Queen of Naboo, slouching on her sofa, eating takeout in her PJs like an overworked university student.

Not that Padmé really knew what university life was like. Her handmaidens and she had been educated by private tutors who had given them an extensive overview in whatever subjects they needed or desired. As Padmé dug into her food, she considered whether the time she had needed to read up on archeology digs on Archeron Prime 2 in five minutes because nobody else had wanted to deal with ancient sites conversation and so had dumped it on her, had been similar enough to the common student experience.

Padmé was contemplating turning on a holomovie when finally, after weeks, her datapad chimed with a light ringtone, one she had assigned only to one person.

As quickly as possible, she shoved her food off her legs and reached for datapad. She hadn’t even swallowed her food completely when she hit the accept for the incoming call. Finally, Anakin had had the time to call her. She had so much she wanted to tell him-

“Senator Amidala?”

Padmé stared at the small blue hologram that very much did not depict her husband, but instead his young and small Padawan, looking as exhausted as Padmé felt.

Suddenly, Padmé became all too aware of her looks.

She took pride in her dresses, it was part of Naboo custom and one’s appearance in the public sphere was immensely important. She didn’t exactly look like a dedicated politician right now.

“Padawan Tano,” Padmé greeted Ahsoka, hoping her formal tone could save the situation at least a little. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to answer.”

Inwardly, Padmé cringed. Great, of course, she had to imply that she had thought she could answer Anakin’s call dressed like this. The day was just getting better and better. She couldn’t wait for it to be over.

If Ahsoka had anything to say about the way Padmé dressed, she didn’t let it show.

“I know, I’m sorry for calling you at this hour from my Master’s device, I wanted to talk to you and I didn’t have your number,” the youngling sounded like she was honestly sorry about it.

Padmé’s face softened. “There’s nothing to forgive, Ahsoka. Tell me, why are you calling me? You know I will never mind a call from you.”

“I- thank you. I’m calling about my Master.”

Ahsoka bit her lip and Padmé’s heartbeat sped up.

Oh no. Had Anakin said something? Had Ahsoka discovered their relationship? A thousand thoughts ran through her mind. This was the precise reason they were keeping it a secret still. Padmé couldn’t afford a scandal, Anakin needed to fight and they couldn’t put their friends between their duties and keeping their secret.

Well, Padmé should have known even their luck had to run out sometime.

“Ahsoka, look-“

“Did my master say anything to you before our battle on Temetha last month?” Asoka suddenly blurted out. “Anything strange? Weird? Bad?”

Their battle on-

Yes, Padmé remembered it. She had kept a keen eye on that one. It had been bound to be a difficult one according to the reports and it had also been the last major battle that Anakin had actively fought in as far as the news had been concerned. Ever since he had been on radio silence between her and Anakin. Nothing new of course, but she had still felt like something was going on behind the scenes.

“No,” Padmé said. “Nothing. Anakin and I had just talked about…”

Padmé grimaced. She was almost embarrassed to say that they had chatted about cheap romance novels and even worse holomovies. It had been such a dumb and random topic, childish almost, but it had occurred to her that she had no idea what kind of stories Anakin liked and enjoyed in his free time. They had decided to do a movie marathon the next time he was back on Coruscant, despite the fact that he desperately needed the time to recover and sleep, not spend hours awake with her.

“We talked about nothing really, just hobbies,” Padmé said. “Why? Did something happen?”

Ahsoka’s expression darkened.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she started slowly.

Padmé contemplated stopping Ahsoka right then and there. The poor teenager was going through enough, Padmé shouldn’t use her distress to her own gain, but where else was she going to get information about Anakin?

“Did something happen to Anakin?”

Ahsoka hesitated, her eyes darted to somewhere in her room that Padmé couldn’t see.

“He was injured in the aftermath of the battle,” Ahsoka revealed. “And I don’t know how. The machines say he’s fine.”

The machines. What machines? Had it been vital? Was he comatose? Was that the reason she hadn’t heard a word from him, was the army keeping it under wraps as to not cause distress? What other secrets were they hiding-

Padmé’s growing panic must have shown on her face as Ahsoka reassured her quickly.

“He’s fine now! Or as fine as he can be at least. He won’t talk to me about anything anymore. Obi-Wan’s training me right now too because Anakin can’t.”

Padmé’s thoughts traveled to those days on Naboo in the aftermath of Geonosis. Anakin’s hadn’t been given the time he needed to recover properly and get used to his new prosthetic before he’d been sent out to fight in the front and yet, somehow, he was one of their strongest fighters. Had he lost another limb? How many weeks would they give him off this time if it had already been a month?

“I just thought you might know something,” Ahsoka finally finished. “Master Skywalker speaks very highly of you, you’re friends?”

“Very close friends, yes,” Pamdé told Ahsoka. “We met when we were just children. Anakin helped my planet considerably at the time.”

“Really?” Ahsoka asked, light returning to her eyes.

Perhaps Padmé would have to call Obi-Wan later, or see if she could get someone to tell her what was truly going on with the 501st.

Until then she had a Padawan to calm down.

“I can’t believe Anakin never shared this story with you. Let me tell you all about it,” Padmé said. “I was 14 and had been elected the Queen of Naboo…”

Padmé ended up talking for hours or so it felt like, much longer than she did with Anakin as he hardly had the time for it. When Padmé was done talking about her and Anakin’s first meeting and the consequent fight with the Trade Federation, she began regaling Ahsoka with more stories about her term as a queen. By the time the Padawan had to go again, Ahsoka was still bothered by her worry for her master, but at least she was smiling again.

Padmé ended the call and took a deep breath. She looked at her now cold dinner and the dark night sky.

Then she stood up and got to work.

[rigelmejo]

Advice I’ve found helpful:

1. For ‘easier’ immersion materials, pick things you have some familiarity already with. So: shows/books you’ve already read in your native language, or watched/read in the target language with some kind of context (seen subs before in your native language, a summary, you’ve looked up lots of words etc). I definitely find immersing in stuff I have some context for much easier, because at least sometimes I can place what certain unknown words mean/what is going on in the plot, even when I don’t actually ‘know’ all the words. 

Personally: I like using some absolutely new unknown materials for immersion, just because I like to test how much I’ve ‘improved’ with something I’m sure I have nothing to rely on ahead of time except for what I have learned. But when I’m immersing with something I want to find more comfortable/easier to immerse with, its easier for me to use things I’m already familiar with - otherwise I have to pick graded material/learner materials instead of using target language native materials. 

2. Once you find some study materials that work for you, stick to them. Specifically if they progressively teach new stuff - like textbooks, grammar guides, apps with lessons, teaching podcasts, flashcards that add grammar points/new words, etc. Anything that builds up knowledge over time. 

I used to have a bad habit of switching these kinds of materials often, and would keep ‘restarting’ myself in beginner materials, when really I should have been moving on and studying new things. I have found that even if my ‘book/guide/tool’ is imperfect, if I stick to it then I make more progress and improve at a more dependable rate.

3. For immersion material, feel free to pursue things based on interest. You don’t have to finish one material before moving to the next.

I’ve noticed that I tend to get demotivated or disinterested sometimes in materials (which happens in english with my hobbies anyway too), and its definitely better for me to just move to new material that’s interesting me in the moment (so a new show, new story, new audio). I’ve found that as long as its target language native material, its all exposing me to common things I should review, and new things I ought to pick up/learn, so regardless of the material its going to challenge me and solidify what I’ve studied already and teach me new things. Meanwhile... graded readers would fall into point 2 -  but with a special caveat - if the graded reader has a Subject i’m not interested in, I need to just switch to a new novel at a HIGHER difficulty level at a certain point. Basically - regardless of if I stick to a graded reader all the way through, or if I drop it and move to another, once I’m very comfortable with that reading level, I need to move to prioritizing higher difficulty level material. This might apply to immersion content a little - as in, its better for me to work in some dramas/audios/books with more words I don’t know, so I get more comfortable. But with target language content made for natives its less of an issue since pretty much everything made for adults is constantly teaching me new stuff right now. 

4. Its BETTER to do something consistently, than nothing. So better to study any minutes a day then never. Likewise - its better to study using ANY method that’s helping you make progress, than to not study at all because its not ‘the best way.’ 

I’m sure I’m not the only learner who’s had this issue studying languages, but its easy to wonder if you’re doing things right or doing ‘enough.’ And in the end? For me it boils down to ‘anything where I make any progress, and don’t give up IS enough.’ No method’s perfect for everyone, not everyone can stay engaged in the same methods, etc. Yeah some advice says ‘don’t ever speak before X time’ but some people only stay motivated if they speak from day one, so they might as well speak! I’ve seen plenty of advice for chinese to ‘focus on listening/speaking first’ instead of focusing on reading so early on. But I get motivated/interested by reading, so here I am doing more reading from day 1!  It’s worked well enough for me! It got me this far!

5. At some point, focus on all for skill areas because eventually you need all of them: listening/reading, speaking/writing.

This seems basic as can be but I’m guessing its still easy enough to overlook. There’s a reason good textbooks/teachers try to make sure they cover all these skills for the level you’re supposed to be comprehending/communicating at by the time you finish their class. I self-study mostly, and its easy to forget about one or multiple of these areas, especially if they don’t align as well with your goals/interest areas/preferred study methods. It’s just important to cover them all eventually, if you want roughly balanced skills in the language. I personally think its okay to have imbalanced skills - depending on your goals, and your preferences. For example: if you want to read but do not want to prioritize speaking due to low need to speak to anyone, it seems fine to spend more time on reading and work on speaking more later when its a goal or need to. Or, maybe you specifically need to speak regularly to people in your workplace/living situation/life, then it would make sense to prioritize daily needs conversation study and skills way before you bother dedicating a lot of time to reading etc.

Thankfully, there’s usually a variety of study methods to improve each skill. Though unfortunately, usually to improve in production you must eventually practice Producing language, and to improve in comprehension you must eventually practice comprehending materials. By this, I mean that even with textbook grammar drill sentence exercises and repeat-after podcasts, you must eventually practice speaking to people and writing messages/paragraphs. Even if you study sentence flashcards or read graded readers, you must eventually try to listen to real conversations/audio/shows and try to read materials you’re planning to one day engage with (newspapers/websites/novels/games/whatever your goals are). 

6. Prioritize learning the most common 500/1000/2000 words as needed. 

(Unless your goals and needs are very specialized on other vocabulary needs - who knows, maybe you only need X language for mechanical engineering words?) I ran into this tip when studying French, and then variations on this tip from a lot of polyglot blogs. I’ve also noticed a lot of the youtubers who try to learn a language in ‘x days/x months’ tend to cram in a lot of vocab early on - I saw two successful learners who studied 2000 words in the first 1-2 weeks. Then they moved onto reading grammar points, reading actual books, immersing in television, trying to speak their conversational requirements etc. What boosted their speed-run intro to the language is usually a bunch of common words - which will be their foundation for comprehending some gist when immersing, and their source of words when forming sentences as they work on speaking skills. Now, of course, these people generally get into maybe A1-A2 level-ish knowledge in a month etc. But they still make a lot of rapid progress in that first ‘uncomfortable’ hump, at least from what I can tell. There’s many a article out there about how for most languages 2000 words covers 80-90+% of words in everyday conversation, and in many media like shows (and sometimes books). 

Basically, usually at 2000 words you know enough words to start communicating anything you need to with at least basic words/ideas, and have enough words to start learning some new words from context in immersion (and will in general find immersion much less overwhelmingly difficult). I’ve personally found that it’s just a starting place - but its often a really Great starting place, at least for me. Usually its more than enough to make immersing in shows doable, and to make reading with a dictionary bearable. Its also usually enough, with a few months grammar practice/exposure too, to start expressing a lot of my basic thoughts/needs at least. I did this to some extent with French (maybe 1000 common words), then jumped into immersing and grammar books mostly. I do think if dropped into an all french country, I could read signs and forms/speak my basic needs if I were lost/needed help with X/thought something/wanted to speak with someone. I would probably sound like a wreck (since I didn’t work on pronunciation much and one day need to) but I think I could navigate having to go to a hospital/get a plane ticket/buy something/make a friend/ask how to get somewhere/read any book for gist main ideas/read the news. I could get by. And the foundation for that started with just around 1000 words to start me toward that. Ever since I’ve tried to learn common words with any language I study, and each time I’ve noticed it substantially make target language materials more % comprehensible, and make it easier for me to start having a foundation to express a lot of basic ideas (think maybe 5-8 year old that can start talking about a lot, but may need to ask for a lot of ‘what’s X word mean/what’s X thing about?’). 

Its not a lot obviously, since there’s still much that’s incomprehensible, and there’s still lots that’s hard to discuss/follow the details of. But its enough to build from more easily. And I think its a great way to direct self-study before you start specializing - it prioritizes a ton of useful words before you start moving onto words with less ‘payoff’ because they show up less frequently and not in as big a variety of situations/topics. Even if using a textbook, I find using a frequency list too helps - since some textbooks teach pitifully little like 200 words, and some teach very focused on topic-specific words like ‘my classroom’ and ‘my job’ and ‘shopping’ when you may need words that show up in ‘news’ ‘social media’ ‘shows’ too based on whatever your goals are - a frequency list helps make sure words that show up in more places get learned, even if they don’t always fit in specific topics.

7. Read through a grammar guide. (Adapt this depending on where you get the advice: read a grammar summary, or just look up grammar points once for reference when you run into one that confuses you, or just skim through a guide before you learn, or just read a grammar guide later on if you need a stronger foundation etc).

I don’t think everyone needs this. Lots of people really LOATHE grammar, or think its ‘wrong’ to study it at the wrong point in time, whenever they think that is (beginning, or later on, etc). I personally find my life gets way easier when I read at least a grammar guide/summary on AT LEAST the basic past/present/future tense way of expressing things, on adjectives, nouns, verbs, conjunctions/notable grammar particles and features, as soon as possible. Covering this stuff makes my attempts at producing language SO MUCH EASIER since I’ve got at least a rough framework of how to express things basically. And immersing likewise becomes just SO MUCH EASIER with at least a rough idea of what I’m looking at that I can break down into meaningful parts. Even if I don’t know 1 word to even 80% of words in a sentence: if I can tell which words are nouns/verbs/particles/conjunctions/what tense the sentence verbs are in/if there’s any gendered nouns/if there’s any plurals - then I can figure out a LOT about the meaning of the sentence. 

Take “Na no le mayy, ter le henent.” Here’s a sentence I just made up. Let’s say you know that ‘na’ means “there is” in this language. You know “no” is a particle meaning belonging like the japanese ‘no’ or chinese ‘de’ or english ‘s. “le” means masculine ‘the’ and is put before nouns that are masculine if a person, or objects/etc if another kind of noun. ‘ter’ you know means ‘is/are’ as a super basic verb, conjugated for a masculine person not object - now you know maybe this ‘le mayy’ is a person not an object - so the sentence so far means “this is my ‘person’.” You know le also goes before adjectives in this language to match the noun to which it refers, and ‘ent’ is a super common adjective ending in this language. So now you can guess the sentence means “This is my ‘person,’ (they) are ‘adjective describing them’.” Its possible the le henent is a noun spelled with this ending, so it could also mean “this is my ‘person,’ they are ‘noun probably describing them’.” This has narrowed down what the unknown 2 words in the sentence could mean by A LOT. Now if you understand some other context from the Surrounding sentences, you might be able to guess if the ‘person’ is a student/husband/friend/enemy, and maybe if the descriptor is something positive/negative more specific etc. Without any grammar study or overview ahead of time, the grammar pieces like ‘le’ and ‘ent’ and ‘no’ may have confused you or helped you less.

“Na shi wo de pengyou, ta hen hao,” might be how you say this in chinese, or, “Ill y a mon amie, ton est tres intelligent.” But this kind of grammar-helping-comprehension stuff translates to bigger more complex sentences, and sentences where you have less words you know and can rely on. This helped me a TON in french when i just dived into reading when I only knew a couple hundred words at first, and its constantly helped in Chinese - especially since i have no spaces to help me separate words, so recognizing how the grammar breaks down the sentences helps a lot. 

8. Don’t be scared to immerse in interesting things over high comprehensibility things, if you want.

While I do think, absolutely, that things with high comprehensibility will be easier for you to relax and enjoy, and MUCH easier for you to pick up new stuff from context - i think its possible to learn from harder materials if you want. I do it all the time. Like that higher up tip about any study better than none - if engaging with more difficult stuff keeps me interested, then it helps me more than a boring material i would give up studying and therefore stop learning from. Also, personally I really both enjoy occasionally challenging myself to really push what I can do and prove to myself what I’m capable of versus where my ‘safe zone’ is, and I think I personally learn better when I regularly get difficult bursts that challenge me. I do think for some other people, this may have the opposite effect and possibly cause them to burn out/want to give up studying. But for me, while it makes me sad I’m never as ‘competent’ with real material as I wanted to be, I’m always better at it then I was before or at least confident in knowing I’m practicing/studying something I actually want to do one day. (In comparison to me doing like podcast lessons or self-teach beginner books, where I often feel demotivated because it starts with a lot of basic convo drills, often a bit unnatural, whereas I don’t plan to have those convos much, and for my goals want to do other kinds of stuff that those podcasts may not prepare me for after months if at all...). I’d much rather get a quick foundation then be thrown into the deep end, then a slow foundation with baby steps where I have little new material regularly pushing me. 

Who knows how much this is a legacy of me being in all those honor classes/AP, and then being an engineering student in a bunch of accelerated/condensed courses taking way too many credits, studying too many hard classes at once ;-; - honestly studying anything I actually enjoy and am passionate is eons better than that past schooling. But I do think I developed a lot of my study habits back then around ‘do quick effective stuff to get basically competent then MOVE ON CAUSE THERE’S NEW HARD MATERIAL YOU GOTTA AT LEAST GET THE GIST OF IN LESS THAN A WEEK’.... aahhh. So um... I’m really skewed toward do bare minimum needed, and push difficulty asap constantly. NOT everyone is going to be able to do this, or even Want to do this. So, I’d say in general if other people apply this tip about immersing regardless of difficulty if you want to: you do not have to get the same benefits as me. I think even if the only benefit is that you’re enjoying the parts you do understand, or having fun even if its something you only do once in a while because you’re curious on how much you’d understand, that’s absolutely fine. A lot of people who do this focus on ‘comprehending the gist’ - which I guess would be me. And a lot of people who do focus on harder stuff sometimes, instead prioritize ‘focus on just getting used to it’ aka don’t worry if you can’t follow what’s going on, its okay to only catch a line or word once in a while, the familiarity you develop over time is also a benefit itself.

I do personally think, at the bare minimum, doing this does get you more okay with being dropped into situations that are harder for you and being okay with that. I imagine in language learning, eventually you run into a convo where you get lost, reading where you barely understand anything, or a show where you catch zero words! It’s nice to have the practice of not understanding but being comfortable, so that when you’re stuck in those situations you are less bothered and have possibly some other methods you’ve developed to help you cope/get by/tolerate it until you get through it or can grasp something comprehensible again or can find a way to redirect the convo/look up key words etc. In some languages there is just a huge amount of time you’ll deal with materials less than 98% comprehensible (which is comfortable level for most people), or less than 90% comprehensible (which is difficult but bearable in short bursts for most people). Also, the earlier you immerse/engage in conversation, the longer you’ll hit this ‘difficulty’ curve and either need to get used to it or else it’ll feel uncomfortable.

9. Write your GOALS down. Also, preferably, plan some SMART goals - or some study plan that roughly includes WHAT you plan to do, how you could measure it or it’s progress and test if its working or not-actually-helping-the-goal, how it contributes to your goal, and what smaller-step of your goal you want it to get you to in X time. 

Writing goals, and plans for smaller achievable steps, helps in any goal achieving process. Helps a ton with language learning too, especially when self studying if you’re not sticking to a textbook or course with very clear definited steps/goals you can just copy and aim for. There’s been studies that literally just writing your goals down makes it more likely you’ll achieve them. Its also just much easier to stick to a self study plan if you know what you’re doing, where you’re heading, why, how to check that what you’re doing is actually making progress, and have something to hold yourself accountable to study (since there may be no one else expecting you to hit your smaller-goals or bigger ones). Also personal goals will motivate you - what do you want out of this study? Personally? 

10. Make it enjoyable to you, again any study that you can keep doing and make progress is better than none. And any goal you personally will USE and Enjoy/will help you, is much better then some external goal (like oh X people will be impressed).

The enemy of progress is you giving up. Even if you Do give up - skip the being mad at yourself or feeling guilty, it is what it is and if you gave up there was a reason. Likewise, if you start studying or pick up from an absence, make sure you know what is driving you to study. Think about things you want to DO in the language - how do you want to engage with people, culture, language, that sphere of the world. 

If you are studying it for some external goal - say you want to learn it to ‘be more appealing as a job applicant’ make sure there’s something you’d DO with it (do you plan to speak to those language speakers at a job? translate? read articles in the language to improve your knowledge in the field? work in that country? do you also want to chat with friends/make friends? do you work with that country a lot and want more bg on the culture and want language to use social media/watch shows/chat online/read their news more etc?), or do you have no plans to actually use it concretely - if the second is the case, maybe a different ‘job skill’ would also help your resume and would personally be more valuable to you (maybe coding would help your job prospects, and you also think you’d use it to make an art portfolio website, for yourself or some fun little games or text-choose-your-adventure stories, maybe you would like a job specifically that codes as a part of the regular tasks, or you want to do website/portfolio coding commissions on the side even if you don’t end up getting a job that codes). 

If you’ve got some hobby reason - same things apply. Will you actually use the language if you could? How? These questions will help you form concrete goals, and possibly even help you pick the study methods you’ll want to use more. If convo and chatting is a big goal, conversation skills and practice will be way more important earlier on and also motivate you since you’ll be making friends sooner etc. If say chinese or japanese novels are a big interest of yours, and you even read painful machine translate messes of novels just to get updates or read ones never-translated that you’re into, it might really pay off for you to prioritize reading and maybe even be practicing translating yourself (for yourself) earlier on - since you may end up at the least, learning to translate fics you want to read a bit better than the machine translations you rely on (or at least so you’ll be able to double check the original writing when mtls are painfully incorrect). 

All these goals will have pretty clear smaller-milestones you’ll already know you want to aim for, and those smaller goals will make what study methods you’ll need to use for them a bit clearer. If your goal one day is to chat with people about all kinds of things, a good small step is to learn small talk, introductions, then start branching out one by one (or by depth of convo) into things you want to talk about. If it’s to connect with people, language partners might be a fantastic thing, and you might study a lot by helping someone else with your language, then they help you with theirs, the whole time you get to chat and share ideas and develop friendships. If its to read novels, small steps are learning maybe to skim novels for key information - so if a mtl novel is painfully wrong, you can pinpoint what line you want to word-by-word translate yourself for yourself. Maybe you prioritize learning a lot of words, and characters, and basic grammar, quickly, so that skimming gets easier - and so that picking up details gets easier piece by piece. Maybe you start with more basic topic novels (or comics), get to read novels you’d want to read anyway in that language, then move onto harder stuff as you progress. If you watch tons of dramas, and already know you sometimes watch no-subbed and just desperately try to follow it anyway because you want to watch it NOW or you wanted to watch THAT SHOW but it has no existing subs in your native language... now you know a major long term goal of yours, that you’ll use. You can plan smaller goals that build up to it, and also allow you to accomplish things you enjoy. Maybe first you work on following short fanmade videos with scenes, or following trailers, or watching youtubers/etc that you like watching and would probably try to watch without subs anyway. You compare the subbed versions to no subs or target language subs, you look up common unknown words that come up, common phrases etc. You work up to episodes of shows you’ve already seen and had subtitles for, and try to follow it this time without subs. Etc. 

Yes, with all of these goals you’ll eventually need to do the less fun less your-goal oriented more basic tasks, like grammar and vocab acquisition and pronunciation learning/listening etc (whatever you personally like more or less).  But you’ll have reasons WHY you’re doing it that motivate you. You’ll have a REASON you’re willing to slog through vocab flashcards or a grammar guide or a pronunciation/convo learner podcast. Because it will directly help you do something you WILL like. And you’ll know at least a PIECE of your study, WILL be some tasks you do know you’d do/enjoy anyway - like trying to chat, or reading, or watching tv, or listening to music, or browsing the internet, etc. 

[olgagarmash]

Do Health Apps Really Make Us Healthier? – Harvard Business Review

Findings that mobile and wearable devices and apps do lead patients to change their behaviors in ways that can positively affect their health provide offer not just patients but also care providers and insurers with opportunities. But surprising results about the effectiveness of personalized vs. non-personalized prods means that there is no clear-cut way to remind patients to adopt healthy behaviors. This suggests that providers need to experiment to find out what works best with patients.

In the past few years, a number of companies have marketed wearable devices and mobile apps that can track our personal health data. These “mHealth” devices and apps have led to the birth of what is known as the “quantified self” — a phenomenon where individuals start tracking their behavioral, physiological, biological, and other kinds of health markers. A key question of interest in this ecosystem remained unanswered up until recently: Is there any scientific evidence that consumer adoption and usage of these wearable devices and mobile health apps actually leads to a tangible change in their behavior, which, in turn, can show up in concrete health care outcomes? This is the question my coauthors and I investigated in a recently published paper.

This first-of-its-kind study uses data from major stakeholders (digital app platforms, hospitals, clinics, doctors, nutritionists, pharmacists, and so on) to examine whether emerging mHealth technologies effectively persuade people to modify their lifestyles and thereby reduce hospital visits and medical expenses over time. The relatively new area of mHealth includes mobile computing, medical sensor, and communications technologies used for health care services (e.g., managing chronic diseases). mHealth applications can operate on smart phones, tablets, sensors, and cloud-based computing systems, all of which collect health data on individuals.

In partnership with a major mHealth app platform in Asia, we designed and implemented a large-scale randomized field experiment based on detailed patient lifestyle activities (e.g., steps walked, exercise time and calories spent, sleeping patterns, and food quality and quantity) and blood glucose values from chronic diabetes patients over a 15-month time frame. The randomization involved some patients having access to the mHealth app, some having access to web-based version of the app, and the rest (the control group) not having access to any of these apps or devices.

The adoption of the mHealth app led to an improvement in both short-term metrics (such as a reduction in patients’ blood glucose and glycated hemoglobin levels) and longer-term metrics (such as a reduction in hospital visits and medical expenses). Patients who adopted the mHealth app undertook higher levels of exercise, consumed healthier food with lower calories, walked more steps, and slept longer on a daily basis.

Some other interesting discoveries concerned the outcomes of patients in the group that used the mHealth app who received personalized reminders via text messages vs. those of patients who received generic reminders. An example of a personalized reminder would go like this: “Dear Mr. XX, you did not exercise at all yesterday. Take a 45-minute walk today as it will help control your blood glucose levels.” In contrast a generic reminder might say: “Regular exercise at moderate intensity is very helpful for controlling blood glucose.”

Such generic messages with generalized guidance about diabetes were 18% more effective than personalized messages at reducing glucose levels over time. Surveys conducted after the experiment offered an explanation: Some patients found the accuracy of the personalized messages to be intrusive and annoying, and some said they made them feel constantly coerced to follow the wellness recommendations, which demotivated them and led to a lower level of wellness activities (e.g., less exercising, fewer healthy eating habits, and shorter sleeping durations at night).

That said, our randomized experiments demonstrated that compared to generic messages, personalized messages were more effective in reducing in-person doctor visits and replacing them with telehealth services. Post-experimental surveys of the experimental subjects revealed that the accuracy of these personalized messages, in fact, made patients comfortable with adopting telehealth services deployed by the platform. Thus, they were substituting their offline physician interactions with online ones, reducing their overall medical expenses. This was a silver lining of personalization.

Our findings have several implications:

First, our study shows that users of mHealth devices and apps can became more autonomous and more motivated in self-regulating their health behavior and more engaged and consistent in their lifestyle and wellness behavior, which leads to improved health outcomes. This suggests that it would be worthwhile for government and private insurers and tech companies to subsidize the prices of these devices in order to encourage their use. Apple, in fact, has been recently collaborating with Medicare plan providers to subsidize its watches for the elderly.

Second, personalization is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it leads to some patients reducing their engagement with wearable technologies and reducing their wellness behaviors. On the other hand, personalization also facilitates an increased usage of telemedicine among patients, which, in turn, leads to lower medical expenses. Practitioners in the health care ecosystem would benefit from keeping these countervailing effects in mind when designing their communications strategies. For instance, they could run experiments or conduct market research on their local populations to examine the effect of personalization on patients’ preferences for in-person vs. telehealth consultations. By soliciting feedback on patients’ preferences, they would be able to predict the net benefit of personalization and adjust the frequency of personalized communications accordingly.

Third, mHealth devices and apps could provide health insurance companies with an opportunity to personalize premiums. They could allow them to reward consumers who make the effort to exercise more often, eat healthier, and sleep longer with lower insurance premiums. This would be similar to what some auto insurance companies are already doing: placing tracking devices in cars to monitor driving behavior and then rewarding better drivers with lower premiums.

That said, such a strategy poses some potential problems or challenges. HIPAA’s privacy rules mean that patients would have to agree to give health insurers companies access to their data. And rewards based on healthier eating habits and lifestyles could end up rewarding the rich and penalizing the poor, which would be wrong. Even so, having a clearer idea of how these apps and devices do and don���t change behavior can help health care organizations better strategize how to create better care for their patients.

source https://wealthch.com/do-health-apps-really-make-us-healthier-harvard-business-review/

[empmoniitor]

AMP UP YOUR EMPLOYEE MONITORING ETHICS IN SIMPLE STEPS

Employee monitoring is by far the most considerable method to keep track of employee activities during working hours. But does it interfere and disturbs the privacy of the employee? And is it even legal to monitor employees at the workplace? Even if it is legal, then to what extent is it considerable?

To clarify all these concerns, you need to have a closer look at the workplace monitoring ethics. You require to grab some ideas on how far it is ethical to manage the employees by keeping records. When workplace monitoring ethics comes into action, it is necessary to understand the tactics to do everything within the legal boundaries.

EMPLOYEE MONITORING AT WORKPLACE

Employee monitoring is all over the place in 2021. We all know the reasons behind it. As the entire world is undergoing pandemic situations, employees get advised to work remotely. Now the managers must keep a check on their teams. All thanks to the technology. It introduced us to some of the best employee monitoring software that makes the entire process uncomplicated.

Monitoring includes various aspects to check and record the activities of employees. It incorporates features like screenshot monitoring, website and app usage monitoring, keyboard monitoring, and most importantly, productivity monitoring and management.

But yes, let me tell you, even if the higher authorities use various software to manage and monitor employees, everything goes behind the scenes. The employees remain unaware that they are getting monitored. But it is legal. Always keep this in consideration.

Monitoring employee activities and remembering their passwords do not go hand in hand. Employers own no right to trespass the employee’s personal information even if they have the reach to it. The entire goal of employee monitoring is to create a productive environment and not data breaching.

IS THERE SOMETHING CALLED INTENTIONAL UNETHICAL EMPLOYEE MONITORING?

Higher authorities will never do something unethical. They never grow these intentions. But they always wish to protect all their business data and never want anyone to interfere. In turn, this sometimes goes off the track. At times the employers forget to consider the ethics of employee monitoring. And as we know that there are plenty of employee monitoring tools available, it also creates room for unethical monitoring.

Mostly the employers try to stay away from all these. But it creates significant trust issues within the employees. They think it might take up their personal information, and they end up losing interest in work. Demotivation, unproductivity, and distraction are all that it leaves behind. So, employers must have ethical employee monitoring and maintain trustworthiness.

WHY IS IT NECESSARY?

If we consider the case of remote workers, they do not visit the traditional workplace regularly. So the managers must use an employee monitoring tool to monitor them. The device provides detailed reports of the activities of the employees throughout the working hours.

But if the remote employee works on the personal workstation, the employers get an opportunity to interrupt their personal information. So this might bring some concern within the remote employees. But if the higher authorities go for ethical employee monitoring, things become more cut and clear.

You have to make things transparent for your employees. Tell them why they need to install an employee monitoring software, and there must not be any issue if they do so. If not, what are the benefits, and what actions will you take if someone misuses it. It is necessary to clear everything out. Otherwise, they will always remain a little skeptical before installing it.

CONSIDER THE CONSEQUENCES

There will be some consequences if you start walking on the wrong path. Let me show you some of the possible outcomes you have to face if you choose the unethical way of employee monitoring.

DATA BREACH

We keep our personal and professional life apart, but will a monitoring software understand the difference. Most of the employees feel insecure because they fear that there might be some tampering with the data. And even after knowing it, while would someone take the risk? Again if the employers keep checking on the employees throughout the working hours, they might get their hands on all the data stored.

The employees will have a lot of queries if they are getting monitored for the very first time. If there are so many issues, then why not start tracking employees without their consent. Make sure you never have these thoughts! It can get you into serious trouble. Not only will you lose the trust of your employees, but you might also get yourself into facing legal actions.

The most efficient way is to honestly let your employees know that they are getting monitored and do everything legally.

DECREASE EMPLOYEE TRUST

Yes, this will top the list because once they see their employees are into some illegal activities, they will lose trust and interest in working for your company. So do not do anything secretly. You have no right to check on personal emails, social media messages, or any other notification popping up. Again it can happen from the employee’s end too.

Some employees involve themselves in malpractices like sharing out the confidential data of the company. But if you consider every employee to have a similar mindset, you can never find a solution. Hence, go for ethical workplace monitoring rather than indulging in illegal accomplishments.

And, of course, there is a difference. Employee monitoring is tracking the progress of the project on which the employee is working. It makes no sense to get into every detail and information of the employee. It would create a wrong impression whenever your employees get to know about it.

SUSTAINING WORKPLACE MONITORING ETHICS

Here are some practical ways to monitor your employees ethically.

CONSIDER THE LEVEL OF EMPLOYEE POLICY

Sit down with your HR’s and design a proper employee policy. The policy must include the reasons to monitor the employees. The next thing is to mention what exactly will get observed. Keep everything transparent. Again you have to introduce the different monitoring types like capturing screenshots, website and application usage, and keystroke logging.

Let the employees know which websites and applications get considered as unproductive for the tool. Accordingly, they will receive productivity alerts for not working efficiently. Also, let them know about the hours they will be kept an eye on.

STICK TO THE RULES

Even if it is legally permitted to track the employees if working remotely, keep following the rules. You have no right to go beyond the laws and check on every information of the employee. It might put the company’s reputation at high risk. Hence, you have to stick to the rules provided by the government. It will help the entire process to keep running smoothly.

REALIZE THE NEED FOR MONITORING

To need to make your employees understand the need for monitoring. May it be your in-office employees or remote employees, they should realize why employers keep track of every activity they perform. If you let them know about everything, they might not have any issues getting employee monitoring software installed in their system.

THE MOST ETHICAL WORKPLACE MONITORING SOFTWARE- EMPMONITOR

We have been talking about employee monitoring software throughout the article. By now, you must have made a clear picture of the best employee monitoring software that you need for your company. Let me put your imagination into words.

EmpMonitor is the most ethical employee monitoring software that monitors each activity of the employee during working hours. It also provides a productive report which shows the details of employee’s assignments. It offers productivity alerts if an employee is remaining unproductive throughout.

Again the tool has some extra added features like screenshot monitoring. It helps receive screenshots of different time intervals. It helps in more precise employee monitoring. It also provides a detailed report of the website visited and applications used during office hours.

Keystroke logging is another remarkable feature provided by EmpMonitor. It constantly keeps monitoring the keypunches of the employee’s workstation and dispenses a report. Hence, you can check which employee is working and who has left the workstation ideals for hours.

The employee time tracking tool also helps in marking the attendance of the employees. Hence, it can monitor them right from logging in to logging out from the workstation. There is no need to invest in any other tool for maintaining the attendance record of the employees.

Were you considering all these points while imagining the perfect employee monitoring tool? If yes, then you have just landed at the right place. EmpMonitor is one of the best employee tracking tools that acquire all these features and monitor employees ethically. It also offers a free trial, so do not miss the chance and grab the opportunity right away.

Check Out Our Latest Posts:

7 Insider Threat Statistics That You Shouldn’t Overlook In 2021 Getting Employee Behavioral Analytics Back On Track And Why Does It Matters? Insider Threat Detection Software| Problems, Benefits And Solutions

CLOSING LINES

May it be a large-scale company or a small industry, every company must monitor its employees while working. But if you get into illegal actions, it might end up spoiling the reputation of the company. Keeping all these aside, focus on ethical employee monitoring remembering the consequences we mentioned. And do not forget to implement EmpMonitor for better results of workplace monitoring.

I hope the article helped you know about workplace monitoring ethics. Is there something that we can incorporate? Please drop your thoughts in the comments below. I would love to hear from you!

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

[dalyunministry]

Word Ministration

Topic: Run to win

By. Sister Savita Manwani

🔥

Greetings to all in the matchless name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Its time to share the word of God.

So stay tuned and be blessed…

• Let us Pray:

Gracious heavenly Father, we come boldly to thy throne of Grace thanking you for this day and this opportunity you gave us to hear from your word. I pray Lord that you give us an alert mind, a receptive heart and enable us to receive you word with gladness and be changed and renewed for thy Glory. In Jesus Name… AMEN

¶ TOPIC: RUN TO WIN

Scripture: Hebrews 12:1-2

This is a familiar scripture which we have often read and heard. A believer is often likened to an athlete in Paul’s epistles. It’s a race which everyone must finish faithfully.

This verse helps us to understand how we can faithfully complete the race of faith.

We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. It’s not just the dead people( the heroes of faith as mentioned in Ch.11) are watching us from above but it is to say that their lives of faith and witness constantly encourages and speaks to us. Their lives and their running must be a teaching lesson for us.

The next part of the verse says to strip off every weight that slows us down and the verse clearly says sin. Sin keeps us from moving ahead. It eats us from inside, it blunts. We are demotivated and pulled down with guilt and despair. If we need to run faithfully and cover the distance we need to shed the baggage of sin that holds us back. Not just sin it could be anxieties also.

In Psalm 55:22 we read, “Cast your care on the Lord and he will sustain you”. A game is never played casually. The player must be totally dedicated to win the game. You have committed your life to Christ, taken baptism, received the Holy Spirit and decided to give your life to serve God. The race is before you.

• REMEMBER GRACE IS WHEN YOU RUN THE RACE WITH GOD

How to run this race and win?

1. RUN BY THE RULE

This is a basic rule for the athlete. Even if you come first, even if you set up a world record, if you have crossed over to the other track, you have violated the rules and will be disqualified.

2 Tim 2:2-5, Paul writes to Timothy about choosing “qualified people”. Who are these qualified people? They are those who have learnt to play by the rules.

Verse3, 4 – You are a soldier of Christ. A soldier cannot leave his post and go to run a shop. The commanding officer will be sorely displeased with him if he finds out. He has violated the rule.

There will be lots of attractions for us along the way as we run, to draw us out of our set path. Don’t turn this way or that and be side tracked. Your friends may be indulging in various activities that draw your attention. But remember that you have joined God’s army and your commanding officer is the Lord Jesus Christ. Your mind must be set on pleasing your commanding officer.

2. RUN WITHOUT LOOKING BACK

We often make many decisions but we constantly feel the pulling back forces.

Gen.19:26 – Lot’s wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt. Having been rescued by the angels from fire, she chose not to obey their instruction and she perished.

Phil. 3:14 - I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, without looking back we need to press towards the goal. Though the Israelites were freed from slavery they kept craving for the things of Egypt (Num.11:5). So they were destroyed on the way before reaching the Promised Land.

What have you decided to leave behind?

Some friends, habits, things, secrets, sins, etc…

Be careful not to go back to them.

3. RUN AGAINST ODDS

Christian life is a hurdle race. We will face lots of hindrances to apply brakes as we run. We have to jump over the sin that so easily entangles. That’s the admonition Paul gave to young Timothy (2 Tim 2:22)

“Though a righteous man falls 7 times he rises again says Prov.24:16.

So get up and run if you have fallen.

Any youth is surrounded by lustful attractions. You literally breathe lust wherever you go – in schools, colleges, neighbourhood. We need to take care never to get close to sexual sins. It draws like magnet. It needs all your will power to escape such places and persons.

But if you do your best the Lord will take care of the rest.

Many athletes have fallen and yet without losing hope have got up and run to finish the race victoriously. In our life’s journey, unless we shed unnecessary weight we cannot run fast. That’s why athletes are sparingly dressed. The writer of Hebrews counsels us to “throw off every burden and run the race”.

4. RUN WITHOUT BURDEN

What burden is the author talking of?

This Hebrew congregation was torn between their loyalty to Moses and Faithfulness to Christ. They wanted to obey the law and follow Christ. They were confused by false teachers who insisted that they keep the law. Their basis for a relationship with God was law and not faith. That became a heavy burden for them because it was absolutely impossible to obey the law.

Don’t be confused by false teaching. To escape the ravages of false teaching, you must be grounded in the word of God. Be regular in your Bible meditation to escape the floods of false doctrines. That will keep you steadily going with God.

5. RUN TOWARDS THE GOAL

Heb: 12:2 speaks of this goal. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus”. He is our goal. He is our terminus, our finish line. He is our gold medal.

At the end of this earthly journey Paul says, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Do not run aimlessly but run towards the goal; towards Jesus to receive our crown.

An athlete looking at the onlookers or turning back will lose the race. His eyes must be fixed on the finish line, the goal.

There is only one life. So run the race victoriously and win the crown that will never fade away.

Focus on Jesus the author and perfector of our faith. Focus all our attention on Him. When we take our eyes off Him, we are in serious danger. We often faced bad times because we took our eyes off Jesus, we looked at ourselves, we looked what others were doing, we looked at the circumstances.

There may be unexpected problems, difficult circumstances to encounter, few big challenges. But do not Panic and fall into terrible trouble rather fix your eyes on Jesus and follow His steps. If we follow Him, we will find that at the end we have been kept safe by His amazing grace.

Run with patience the race that is set before us. Don’t be distracted by the things of the world. Keep running. Don’t look back. Fix your eyes on Jesus.

In Jesus, there is full acceptance, therefore do not doubt Him.

In Jesus, there is life, therefore abide in Him.

In Jesus, there is blessing, therefore delight in Him.

In Jesus, there is light, therefore follow Him.

In Jesus, there is power, therefore wait on Him.

In Jesus, there is all truth, therefore learn from Him.

In Jesus, there is grace, therefore receive Him.

In Jesus, there is joy, therefore rejoice in Him.

In Jesus, there is unlimited wealth, therefore depend on Him.

In Jesus, there is strength, therefore lean on Him.

Everything we need we find in Jesus. The Lord Jesus has already run the race. Therefore let us fix our eyes on Jesus and run the race to win. May God bless you all…

• Let us Pray:

Lord, we thank you for your word. We pray that as we have got into this race, help us to focus our eyes on Jesus, know him better than ever, love Him more and more, serve Him with enthusiasm and declare His name with increasing vigor and finish the race victoriously. Let Jesus be the center of all we do. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.

[cellerityweb]

Building a Lean Team: Part II

A functioning team is the essential foundation of success. Guido Schmidt from Digamore tells us in the second part, how to improve the work process and goes deeper into the topic SCUM.

Check out the first part of Building a Lean Team:

Building a Lean Team: Part I

Improving the work process

We set up the whole work process, team culture requirements and game vision structure in the best and most reasonable way we could. But of course, no plan survives reality unchanged. That’s why we also put a lot of emphasis on observing and improving our work process. It wasn’t enough to just set up and use SCRUM, we wanted the team to

Visualization of the three pillars of a lean team: work climate, ownership and work processes.

eventually own and shape the process on its own. For that we intentionally reserved two whole days per 2-week sprint. One day for planning and one day for reviews and retrospectives. Maybe it seemed like a huge waste of time initially, which was also the first feedback we got from the team. Why not use this time to pull off additional work? A good question that deserves a good answer.

First off, we know that implementing a new work process always requires a lot of time and effort. Everyone wants change but nobody wants to change. So we said that we intentionally invest this time into making this process work and that we are aware that it means we have less time to do actual work – and that’s ok.

Second, we need this time to prepare our plan for the next sprint. We invest one whole day to make sure we can work for the remaining two weeks without having to re-adjust constantly. The main idea was to create two weeks of quiet, during which people can get stuff done without being constantly interrupted.

Third, we invest another day to reflect on how the last two weeks worked out. It is a timeframe that is short enough for people to not forget the problems they had. And by allowing ourselves the time to sit back one day and reflect, we can make improvements to the way we work.

Clearly defining all areas of responsibility for everyone helps the team immensely in growing trust.

In a retrospective, people can bring forward topics they want to improve. The members of the team are the best people to ask this since they are the ones doing the actual work and having the actual problems. Of course, we also highlight things which went well. If you have to discuss uncomfortable issues, it is especially important to also be aware of the good things that happened within the last two weeks in order to avoid communicating an impression that things are worse than they really are. The most important part of the retrospective, however, are the real issues. The stuff that really annoys the team. Things that demotivate – things that cost an extraordinary amount of time, frustrating behavior of managers, unfair blaming of people and other uncomfortable circumstances.

However, by putting such a great emphasis on a positive and constructive team culture, we were always able to keep difficult discussions at an objective level. We were able to talk about things which annoyed us very calmly and we eventually resolved these problems by fostering understanding on all involved parties. Every team will have their share of issues, problems and personal annoyances. This is normal and every team will face these issues. The difference between a good and a bad team is how they deal with them.

At the end of each retrospective we put together a set of actions that we were going to try out to improve things. In the following retrospective, we then re-evaluated these actions to see whether they did improve anything. If they did, we kept them. If not, we dropped them and tried something else.

How did it work out?

Brace yourselves – winter is coming! And with it a lot of discussions about a lot of very very basic things. When we started working with SCRUM (note: an agile software development framework for managing product development) it was new to all of us. None of us had worked with SCRUM before, so we hired an external consulting company to help us implement it in our process correctly. These guys also helped us with understanding the meaning behind certain agile concepts, why they made sense and what it was that people benefited from. Some of the things we spent hours and hours talking about them:

1. What are the team’s benefits from using SCRUM at all? – Isn’t it a huge waste of time? 2. Why are we using »story points« and not just a time estimation just as »normal« people do? – And if we are using story points, what the hell is this »complexity«? 3. What’s the exact granularity of our stories per feature? – Is it ok to just say »League User Interface« (like one story per feature)? – Should we make a story for each screen of the League Interface (four to five user stories)? – Or should we create a story for each interface element with all their behaviors and states (more like 30+ user stories)? 4. Aside from this, we also had fights and troubles concerning coding architecture, art-style or which features were still within the vision and which weren’t. We had a huge scope on our plate and from time to time underestimated the effort it took to get certain features implemented, which led to fights about what features to push back and what should be achieved in certain milestones.

Basically, we went through all the insanity of game development you can expect in every company and project. Every team will face these problems. Accepting that teams will have these issues and knowing how to handle them is key. There is no perfect project out there, where everything runs smoothly from start to finish. Projects are messy. And projects change during development, as does the market and its requirements.

People leave, new people join, but the world continues to turn. In today’s fast paced society, it’s even almost impossible to take reliable predictions two or three years into the future. Who can say what revolution is waiting around the corner, which will make your key USP totally worthless half way into your current project. And if it happens, do you continue with your original plan or would it be better to adjust? And if the answer is yes, how would you do that exactly?

Game development is full of tough questions and hard calls, which is also why the retrospective is the most important meeting in our whole development process in order to be able to adapt to the »unknown unknowns«. Thanks to our mature discussion culture and ability to talk about uncomfortable topics, we were able to greatly improve the efficiency of our work process.

When we started with planning meetings at the start of a sprint, they tended to last seven hours or longer. Those were extremely exhausting days, full of uncertainties, questions and unclear requirements of what we wanted to achieve over the next two weeks, but we stuck to it. During every retrospective, we not only identified the three worst problems, but also found ways to improve these long and exhausting meetings. We had to go a long way, but in doing so our meetings became very reliable and humane. It now rarely takes us more than 1.5 hours to complete our plan for the next 14 days. So yes, it is possible to improve the efficiency of your work process by up to 80 percent and more!

What are the team’s benefits from using SCRUM at all?

Especially in the beginning of the production process, people were wondering why we would use SCRUM at all. How does the team benefit from it and why would we »waste« two (!) days every bi-weekly sprint sitting around and talking? The very first step to get everyone on board was to acknowledge that it does take time to get a new work process implemented and that the management is willing to invest this time. It meant that we accepted that implementing new features would take longer in the first couple of months!

An early draft of »Football Empire«’s »start a match screen«.

Just accepting and acknowledging this fact took a huge amount of pressure off us, since we made clear that we did not expect the team to implement a new and unknown process and push for a super-fast implementation of new things at the same time. When people are trying to adapt to new processes, it takes time to get everything in place properly. In addition, we spoke about the process and what we expected from it – for ourselves and for the team.

1. By using SCRUM, we ultimately expected a more accurate time estimation – Measuring how many story points the team would be able to complete every two weeks would eventually allow a reliable forecast of how much work the team could pull off in reality, including all the disruptions, discussions, ambiguities and hidden efforts.

2. A more reliable project plan – A more reliable plan meant better-quality planning. It was a lot easier to push estimated features back and forth and tell whether a feature would fit into the next milestone or not. Of course, we wanted to push as much stuff as possible into each new build, but when the numbers said that it was going to be a problem, we could adjust early enough to rather focus on the most important features.

3. Transparency – We always made all efforts, plans and estimations publicly. We showed the current state to our team and discussed our plans and whether the team felt it was realistic or not. In several cases, we also changed the contents of certain milestones to what the team felt was more useful or easier to implement.

Players can individualize their club grounds with way more than 20 different buildings.

4. Less overtime – More accurate planning will lead to more reasonable milestones which again will prevent nasty surprises. And avoiding those will prevent people from having to do overtime to get forgotten things into the next milestone.

Why are we using story points?

Estimating story points means to not just estimate »how long something takes to implement« but to determine the rough complexity of a given task. Of course, in the end, we want to re-interpret story points back to a time estimation – that’s the whole point of it. Doing it via story points will in fact improve the quality of the time estimation. Let’s say two programmers are to estimate how long a specific task will take them to implement. Programmer Lenny says he can do it in one day, while Carl argues he would probably need around five days to do the same. In this case a time estimation with regard to the whole team is very inaccurate. Both guys, however, can agree on a rough complexity rating for the task.

It’s just that Lenny can do the same thing a lot faster than Carl. Nevertheless, Lenny can’t do everything alone and Carl has other areas of expertise. What we want is an accurate estimation of what the whole team and not only individual members can achieve. When both guys agree on the complexity of a story, they can eventually agree on a reasonable amount of story points for the task at hand. Our definition of complexity includes the following aspects:

1. Amount of expected iterations – This aspect applies for tasks that encompass a lot of quick iterations, e.g. on how a specific window should scroll. Should it snap at certain key elements? And with how much inertia should it scroll? In this case, it makes sense to just implement something, try it out, adjust it, try it out again, etc … Tasks like this are more complex than tasks with clear and easy requirements.

2. Scope of the task – The sheer scope of a task contributes to its complexity. If a task requires to touch all 200 items in the game manually, it is more complex than if it requires to just touch the last 10.

3. Communication effort – If a task can be completed without having to bother the other departments, it is less complex than if it is a task where coders, designers and artists have to synchronize in order to finalize it.

4. Testing effort – If a task uses randomization, it is more complex than if it doesn’t. That applies to all tasks that need several test-runs before their implementation can be finished.

5. Amount of different technologies used – Every technology used contributes to complexity. If a task is to just create an icon, it is less complex than the task of creating a user interface which not only uses icons, but also sounds and that has to function on an Android and an iOS device.

6.Dependencies – The more dependencies, the higher a task’s complexity. If a task only touches the frontend alone, it is less complex than if the backend has to provide specific data before the frontend can show it.

With all of these aspects elaborated, the team eventually settled on a magnitude of how many storypoints each task was worth. That allowed us to greatly improve the quality of our planning forecasts.

What’s the granularity of our user stories?

We were experimenting with various granularities. We wrote stories which were very big in the beginning and almost encompassed whole features. This method brought several disadvantages with it since we could not always complete a whole feature in one sprint, which meant that these stories could also not be completed.

Working places at Digamore are positioned in a way that makes it easy for people to turn around and talk to each other.

After that we went into the opposite direction and created stories which were extremely small and detailed, even going so far as to have a story for each interface element. Which, on one side, was a good indicator for what had been achieved. On the other side, it created a lot of dependencies between stories, which made the whole point somewhat useless. Plus, the overhead on the management team exploded and it was very difficult to keep up with the team. In this scenario, people were implementing things faster than we could design and document them.

Eventually we settled in the middle. Stories were basically written »screen by screen«, while the interface elements were described on the according wiki page.

Summary

So, in the end and in my opinion, there are three main points you should adhere to when creating a good team and – as a direct result – a good product:

1. Ensure a good work climate. – Make it a topic. – Emphasize it. – A good work climate and team culture is the basis of everything that comes after. Get it right from the beginning because otherwise there is no point in trying to build anything on top as nothing will work out properly.

2. Create a framework of clear responsibilities which your team can eventually outgrow. – Provide a safe environment for people where everyone can voice their concerns and where it’s clear who has which responsibilities and who has to make the call. – Be rigid at the beginning. – Be flexible when the team is ready for it.

3. Improve the process (the »retrospective« within the SCRUM process). – Ensure that the management is behind this approach. There’s no point in trying to improve things when the management is not willing to invest time into doing so. – Regularly reflect about how everyone did and what the most pressing issues are. – Don’t try to fix everything at once. Take the three worst issues and fix those, then take the next three issues and so forth. – Ensure that the time-frame between taking action and reviewing it is short enough. Otherwise people will forget what they have agreed upon.

About the Author:

Guido Schmidt is Project Lead at Digamore Entertainment GmbH

Guido is an industry veteran with more than 15 years of experience. He worked on the »Anno« and »The Settlers« franchise (e.g. »Anno 1404« and »The Settlers Online«) and is now responsible for the upcoming Football Empire.

@LinkedIn

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[olgagarmash]

Findings that mobile and wearable devices and apps do lead patients to change their behaviors in ways that can positively affect their health provide offer not just patients but also care providers and insurers with opportunities. But surprising results about the effectiveness of personalized vs. non-personalized prods means that there is no clear-cut way to remind patients to adopt healthy behaviors. This suggests that providers need to experiment to find out what works best with patients.

In the past few years, a number of companies have marketed wearable devices and mobile apps that can track our personal health data. These “mHealth” devices and apps have led to the birth of what is known as the “quantified self” — a phenomenon where individuals start tracking their behavioral, physiological, biological, and other kinds of health markers. A key question of interest in this ecosystem remained unanswered up until recently: Is there any scientific evidence that consumer adoption and usage of these wearable devices and mobile health apps actually leads to a tangible change in their behavior, which, in turn, can show up in concrete health care outcomes? This is the question my coauthors and I investigated in a recently published paper.

This first-of-its-kind study uses data from major stakeholders (digital app platforms, hospitals, clinics, doctors, nutritionists, pharmacists, and so on) to examine whether emerging mHealth technologies effectively persuade people to modify their lifestyles and thereby reduce hospital visits and medical expenses over time. The relatively new area of mHealth includes mobile computing, medical sensor, and communications technologies used for health care services (e.g., managing chronic diseases). mHealth applications can operate on smart phones, tablets, sensors, and cloud-based computing systems, all of which collect health data on individuals.

In partnership with a major mHealth app platform in Asia, we designed and implemented a large-scale randomized field experiment based on detailed patient lifestyle activities (e.g., steps walked, exercise time and calories spent, sleeping patterns, and food quality and quantity) and blood glucose values from chronic diabetes patients over a 15-month time frame. The randomization involved some patients having access to the mHealth app, some having access to web-based version of the app, and the rest (the control group) not having access to any of these apps or devices.

The adoption of the mHealth app led to an improvement in both short-term metrics (such as a reduction in patients’ blood glucose and glycated hemoglobin levels) and longer-term metrics (such as a reduction in hospital visits and medical expenses). Patients who adopted the mHealth app undertook higher levels of exercise, consumed healthier food with lower calories, walked more steps, and slept longer on a daily basis.

Some other interesting discoveries concerned the outcomes of patients in the group that used the mHealth app who received personalized reminders via text messages vs. those of patients who received generic reminders. An example of a personalized reminder would go like this: “Dear Mr. XX, you did not exercise at all yesterday. Take a 45-minute walk today as it will help control your blood glucose levels.” In contrast a generic reminder might say: “Regular exercise at moderate intensity is very helpful for controlling blood glucose.”

Such generic messages with generalized guidance about diabetes were 18% more effective than personalized messages at reducing glucose levels over time. Surveys conducted after the experiment offered an explanation: Some patients found the accuracy of the personalized messages to be intrusive and annoying, and some said they made them feel constantly coerced to follow the wellness recommendations, which demotivated them and led to a lower level of wellness activities (e.g., less exercising, fewer healthy eating habits, and shorter sleeping durations at night).

That said, our randomized experiments demonstrated that compared to generic messages, personalized messages were more effective in reducing in-person doctor visits and replacing them with telehealth services. Post-experimental surveys of the experimental subjects revealed that the accuracy of these personalized messages, in fact, made patients comfortable with adopting telehealth services deployed by the platform. Thus, they were substituting their offline physician interactions with online ones, reducing their overall medical expenses. This was a silver lining of personalization.

Our findings have several implications:

First, our study shows that users of mHealth devices and apps can became more autonomous and more motivated in self-regulating their health behavior and more engaged and consistent in their lifestyle and wellness behavior, which leads to improved health outcomes. This suggests that it would be worthwhile for government and private insurers and tech companies to subsidize the prices of these devices in order to encourage their use. Apple, in fact, has been recently collaborating with Medicare plan providers to subsidize its watches for the elderly.

Second, personalization is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it leads to some patients reducing their engagement with wearable technologies and reducing their wellness behaviors. On the other hand, personalization also facilitates an increased usage of telemedicine among patients, which, in turn, leads to lower medical expenses. Practitioners in the health care ecosystem would benefit from keeping these countervailing effects in mind when designing their communications strategies. For instance, they could run experiments or conduct market research on their local populations to examine the effect of personalization on patients’ preferences for in-person vs. telehealth consultations. By soliciting feedback on patients’ preferences, they would be able to predict the net benefit of personalization and adjust the frequency of personalized communications accordingly.

Third, mHealth devices and apps could provide health insurance companies with an opportunity to personalize premiums. They could allow them to reward consumers who make the effort to exercise more often, eat healthier, and sleep longer with lower insurance premiums. This would be similar to what some auto insurance companies are already doing: placing tracking devices in cars to monitor driving behavior and then rewarding better drivers with lower premiums.

That said, such a strategy poses some potential problems or challenges. HIPAA’s privacy rules mean that patients would have to agree to give health insurers companies access to their data. And rewards based on healthier eating habits and lifestyles could end up rewarding the rich and penalizing the poor, which would be wrong. Even so, having a clearer idea of how these apps and devices do and don’t change behavior can help health care organizations better strategize how to create better care for their patients.

via Wealth Health