Sandarenu's Blog

Year 2008 has almost came to an end. This is the best time to get started to welcome new year. As with last year I created a List of Sri Lankan holidays, which you can add to Outlook, Thunderbird or Google calendar.

Outlook Holiday List

– – – – – – – – – Start Copy – – – – – – – – –
[Sri Lanka] 26
Duruthu Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/1/10
Tamil Thai Pongal Day(BPM),2009/1/14
National Day(BPM),2009/2/4
Navam Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/2/9
Mahasivarathri Day(BP),2009/2/23
Medin Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/3/10
Milad-Un-Nabi (Holy Prophet’s Birthday)(BPM),2009/3/10
Bak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/4/9
Good Friday(BP),2009/4/10
Day Prior to Sinhala & Tamil New Year Day(BPM),2009/4/13
Sinhala & Tamil New Year Day(BPM),2009/4/14
May Day(BPM),2009/5/1
Vesak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/5/8
Day following Vesak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/5/9
Poson Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/6/7
Esala Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/7/6
Nikini Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/8/5
Binara Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/9/4
Id-Ul-Fitr (Ramazan Festival Day)(BP),2009/9/21
Vap Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/10/3
Deepavali Festival Day(BP),2009/10/17
Il Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/11/2
Id-Ul-Alha (Hadji Festival Day)(BP),2009/11/28
Unduvap Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/12/1
Christmas Day(BPM),2009/12/25
Duruthu Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2009/12/31
– – – – – – End Copy – – – – – – –

Please follow the instructions given in one of my previous posts to add holidays list to Outlook.
Note: If you have last year’s list under Sri Lanka you will need to replace it with this year’s ones


Google Calendar

Just click on the link to add the Holiday Calendar to your Google calendar.
http://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=trbsm3c2ek1f1l3500qr4muejs@group.calendar.google.com


Thunderbird
In order to add calendar to Thunderbird you have to have Lightning add-on installed. Follow the instructions given here if you haven't installed Lightning yet.

After installation go to Calendar view. and select Calendar -> New Calendar from main menu. From the Create New Calendar window select >On the Network, click >Next, select >Google Calendar as the format and insert the following URL into the >Location field. http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/trbsm3c2ek1f1l3500qr4muejs%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Click >Next, eventually enter your Google >User Name and >Password and click >OK, >Name your calendar, give it a >Color, click >Next and finally >Finish to complete the procedure.


Hope this will help you.....

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• Productivity
• Time Management


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Well, what do you think about this....being punctual?

I’m not sure about you, but I hate people coming late and not doing things on time. Especially in here most of the people don’t take this seriously, they never come on time. As an undergraduate I have seen lot of my batch mates coming to lectures, group meetings late. They are the most selfish people; they don’t think that they are wasting time of others. As professionals I think we should learn about how to do time management and being punctual.

I found these two articles at lifehack about the importance of being punctual and most importantly how to do that. Hope this will encourage you to be punctual...

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There is only few days for the dawn of the new year, 2008. It is time to get organized for the new year. As with last year I thought of creating a Sri Lankan holiday list.

Outlook Holiday List

– – – – – – – – – Start Copy – – – – – – – – –

[Sri Lanka] 25
Tamil Thai Pongal Day(BPM),2008/1/15
Duruthu Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/1/22
National Day(BPM),2008/2/4
Navam Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/2/20
Mahasivarathri Day(BP),2008/3/6
Milad-Un-Nabi (Holy Prophet’s Birthday)(BPM),2008/3/20
Medin Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/3/21
Good Friday(BP),2008/3/21
Day Prior to Sinhala & Tamil New Year Day(BPM),2008/4/12
Sinhala & Tamil New Year Day(BPM),2008/4/13
Bak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/4/19
May Day(BPM),2008/5/1
Vesak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/5/19
Day following Vesak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/5/20
Poson Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/6/18
Esala Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/7/17
Nikini Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/8/16
Binara Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/9/14
Id-Ul-Fitr (Ramazan Festival Day)(BP),2008/10/1
Vap Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/10/14
Deepavali Festival Day(BP),2008/10/27
Il Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/11/12
Id-Ul-Alha (Hadji Festival Day)(BP),2008/12/9
Unduvap Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2008/12/12
Christmas Day(BPM),2007/12/25

– – – – – – End Copy – – – – – – –

Please follow the instructions given in my last post to add holiday list to outlook. Note that if you have last year’s list under Sri Lanka you will need to replace it with this year’s ones

Google Calendar

Click on the button to add the Holiday Calendar to your Google calendar.

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How hard it is to say no to someone?... For me it is a very difficult thing. How about you? I think most of you also have the same problem.
Today I came across a nice article on Lifehack.org on "The Gentle Art of Saying No". It explains 10 tips on how to say no.

1. Value your time. Know your commitments, and how valuable your precious time is. Then, when someone asks you to dedicate some of your time to a new commitment, you’ll know that you simply cannot do it. And tell them that: “I just can’t right now … my plate is overloaded as it is.”
2. Know your priorities. Even if you do have some extra time (which for many of us is rare), is this new commitment really the way you want to spend that time? For myself, I know that more commitments means less time with my wife and kids, who are more important to me than anything.
3. Practice saying no. Practice makes perfect. Saying “no” as often as you can is a great way to get better at it and more comfortable with saying the word. And sometimes, repeating the word is the only way to get a message through to extremely persistent people. When they keep insisting, just keep saying no. Eventually, they’ll get the message.
4. Don’t apologize. A common way to start out is “I’m sorry but …” as people think that it sounds more polite. While politeness is important, apologizing just makes it sound weaker. You need to be firm, and unapologetic about guarding your time.
5. Stop being nice. Again, it’s important to be polite, but being nice by saying yes all the time only hurts you. When you make it easy for people to grab your time (or money), they will continue to do it. But if you erect a wall, they will look for easier targets. Show them that your time is well guarded by being firm and turning down as many requests (that are not on your top priority list) as possible.
6. Say no to your boss. Sometimes we feel that we have to say yes to our boss — they’re our boss, right? And if we say “no” then we look like we can’t handle the work — at least, that’s the common reasoning. But in fact, it’s the opposite — explain to your boss that by taking on too many commitments, you are weakening your productivity and jeopardizing your existing commitments. If your boss insists that you take on the project, go over your project or task list and ask him/her to re-prioritize, explaining that there’s only so much you can take on at one time.
7. Pre-empting. It’s often much easier to pre-empt requests than to say “no” to them after the request has been made. If you know that requests are likely to be made, perhaps in a meeting, just say to everyone as soon as you come into the meeting, “Look guys, just to let you know, my week is booked full with some urgent projects and I won’t be able to take on any new requests.”
8. Get back to you. Instead of providing an answer then and there, it’s often better to tell the person you’ll give their request some thought and get back to them. This will allow you to give it some consideration, and check your commitments and priorities. Then, if you can’t take on the request, simply tell them: “After giving this some thought, and checking my commitments, I won’t be able to accommodate the request at this time.” At least you gave it some consideration.
9. Maybe later. If this is an option that you’d like to keep open, instead of just shutting the door on the person, it’s often better to just say, “This sounds like an interesting opportunity, but I just don’t have the time at the moment. Perhaps you could check back with me in [give a time frame].” Next time, when they check back with you, you might have some free time on your hands.
10. It’s not you, it’s me. This classic dating rejection can work in other situations. Don’t be insincere about it, though. Often the person or project is a good one, but it’s just not right for you, at least not at this time. Simply say so — you can compliment the idea, the project, the person, the organization … but say that it’s not the right fit, or it’s not what you’re looking for at this time. Only say this if it’s true — people can sense insincerity.

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I previously posted about how to add Sri Lankan holiday list to MS Outlook. After that I though how wonderful would it be if I can add those holidays to my Google calendar.
So I did exactly that. Itwas not that difficult. I exported my Outlook holiday calendar to iCal file and import it from Google calendar. I made my holiday calendar public so you also can add it to you google calendar.

Click on the button to add the Holiday Calendar to your google calendar.

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This is a simple method that enables you to add Sri Lankan holiday list to MS Outlook holidays. I first saw this at Meril’s blog. It only had information to add the holiday list to Outlook. But it is possible to add the same list multiple time creating duplicates. (It personally happened to me) After Googling, managed to find a method to remove those duplicates. I’m including that in this post as well.

– – – – – – – – – Start Copy – – – – – – – – –

[Sri Lanka] 26
Duruthu Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/1/3
Tamil Thai Pongal Day(BPM),2007/1/15
Navam Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/2/1
National Day(BPM),2007/2/4
Mahasivarathri Day(BP),2007/2/16
Medin Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/3/3
Milad-Un-Nabi (Holy Prophet’s Birthday)(BPM),2007/4/1
Bak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/4/2
Good Friday(BP),2007/4/6
Day Prior to Sinhala & Tamil New Year Day(BPM),2007/4/13
Sinhala & Tamil New Year Day(BPM),2007/4/14
May Day(BPM),2007/5/1
Vesak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/5/1
Day following Vesak Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/5/2
Adhi Poson Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/5/31
Poson Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/6/30
Esala Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/7/29
Nikini Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/8/28
Binara Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/9/26
Id-Ul-Fitr (Ramazan Festival Day)(BP),2007/10/13
Vap Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/10/25
Deepavali Festival Day(BP),2007/11/8
Il Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/11/24
Id-Ul-Alha (Hadji Festival Day)(BP),2007/12/21
Unduvap Full Moon Poya Day(BPM),2007/12/23
Christmas Day(BPM),2007/12/25

– – – – – – End Copy – – – – – – –

Update the current holiday file

• Exit Outlook if it is running.
• In Microsoft Windows Explorer, locate the following file:
  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\1033\Outlook.hol
• Open the file using notepad.
• Add the contents of the above text (between Start Copy and End Copy) at the end of the Outlook.hol and save it.

Updating the Outlook calendar with customized events

• Start Outlook.
• On the Tools menu, click Options.
• On the Preferences tab, under Calendar, click Calendar Options.
• In the Calendar Options dialog box, under Calendar options, click Add Holidays.
• Select the check box for your customized set of events and holidays, and then click OK. For this example, select the box labeled Sri Lanka.

Note It's possible that a set of holidays or events observed in your country/region has already been selected in the Add Holidays to Calendar dialog box. If you try to add the same country/region again, you see the message, "Holidays for country are already installed. Do you want to install them again?"
Click No. If you click Yes, the holidays and events are installed a second time, and you will see duplicate holiday and event entries in your calendar.

In case if you accidentally clicked Yes here is how to remove duplicate holidays.

• Choose View | Arrange By | Current View | Events
• Right-click any column heading, then choose Field Chooser.
• In the Field Chooser, switch from the Frequently-used fields list to Date/Time fields, and then drag the Created date to the view to add it to the fields displayed.
• Click on the Created column header to sort by that field.
• You should now see two distinct sets of holidays, each in reverse chronological order. Click on the first holiday of the set you want to delete.
• Use the scroll bar to view the last holiday of that set. Hold down the Shift key as you click on the last holiday. This selects all the holidays in that set.
• Press Delete to remove them all from the Calendar folder.
• Drag the Created column header out of the view to remove it.

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Time management is one of those skills no one teaches you in school but you have to learn. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you can’t organize information well enough to take it in. And it doesn’t matter how skilled you are if procrastination keeps you from getting your work done.
Penelope Trunk, a columnist at the Boston Globe, summarizes some great tips that coming from the blogosphere. She lists ten important tips to get a better handle for your work and focus to achieve productivity:

• Don’t leave email sitting in your in box.
• Admit multitasking is bad.
• Do the most important thing first.
• Check your email on a schedule.
• Keep web site addresses organized.
• Know when you work best.
• Think about keystrokes.
• Make it easy to get started.
• Organize your to-do list every day.
• Dare to be slow.

Read 10 tips for time management in a multitasking world for more details...

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