Battling Anxiety and Depression as an Entrepreneur

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Many people only notice entrepreneurial success — the money, the cars, the new office. But what they don’t see are the sacrifices entrepreneurs make to create success — likely for years. Many people don’t see the mental health problems that occur in entrepreneurs — like depression and anxiety. It becomes crucial to battle anxiety and depression as an entrepreneur.

The rise of depression amongst entrepreneurs is growing to an all-time high. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to find information on how entrepreneurs can manage and overcome depression. Society often encourages entrepreneurs to ignore the signs. Many feel isolated and afraid that their peers will judge them.  Since COVID-19 has contributed even more to anxiety and depression among entrepreneurs.

The Causes & Studies on Depression

Depression is identified as a serious medical condition. Being sad is not the same as being depressed. Depression impacts the way you feel, think, and act (or react).  Almost 30 percent of entrepreneurs experience depression in their lives.  There are many reasons for this. First, society puts a lot of pressure on the entrepreneur to succeed. Small business owners work extended work hours. They often struggle to form a vibrant personal life.  The constant grind of turning an idea into a reality can be overwhelming. Stress pervades.

Unfortunately, these stressful periods last a long time. Many entrepreneurs are in hustle mode for 3-5 years before their product attracts a large customer base. For some, it’s even longer. To complicate matters, many entrepreneurs, in their haste to become profitable and successful, neglect their physical and mental well-being. Many skip meals, choose work to oversleep and fail to exercise their brains and bodies. Each of these excessive choices negatively impacts mental health and can lead to burnout or severe depression.

Identifying Depression

Clinical depression requires a medical diagnosis. However, there are warning signs that any entrepreneur can identify before talking to a medical professional. Symptoms include loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed, increased fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, loss or increase in appetite, or irritability. Depression is different for most people, but if you see these symptoms, please get checked.

Ways to Seek Help

While many entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of seeking help through an employer, they do have many other options they can use should they suffer from depression. Eating right, regularly exercising, and taking breaks are all important. But, it’s also crucial to go a bit deeper in how you seek help.

For one, many entrepreneurs need a strong personal foundation. Due to the nature of the entrepreneurial journey, there is additional job isolation and long work hours are all too common. Surrounding yourself with like-minded people, who stay in your corner through your ups and downs — is extremely important. Watching out for the other person who may be suffering is important also. That way, you know you’re not alone, even if your depression wants you to believe you are.

Most importantly, as an entrepreneur, don’t neglect your feelings and thoughts. The sooner you search for a diagnosis — or at the very least, seek-help, the better your chances of fighting and winning. It’s okay to admit you’re not okay and to seek that help that you need and deserve.

While depression may affect one in three entrepreneurs, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Talk about the topic. Don’t be afraid to admit that you’re not okay. Expressing yourself should be safe, and can open dialogue among entrepreneurs that can increase awareness, offer you support, and more. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t feel like they must suffer to find success.  Depression is real, but it can also be beaten.

 

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How to Recover From Too Many Online Meetings

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, people are meeting online for everything from work, to happy hours with friends, to therapy sessions or even working out. A large number of these meetings can seriously deplete your precious resources.

One of the primary obstacles to recovering from meetings is the time it takes to switch from one point of focus (the meeting) to another (deeper work). After a fruitless or stressful meeting, your productivity is drained as your resources are reallocated to deal with the resulting mental stress.

The end result is that it often takes longer to fully engage in the next piece of work. Here are some tactics that can be used to conquer meeting recovery syndrome and bounce back quickly when meetings sap your mental and physical resources.

Reduce the time you spend in meetings.

The most obvious place to start is with the meetings themselves. You can reduce the time you and your team spend in pointless meetings by following a few strategic guidelines:

  • Only hold essential meetings. If the issue can be handled by chat or email, do it that way and then disseminate the results to the wider team.
  • Format your meetings to be short, with an agenda consisting of only two or three salient action items.
  • Include only the people necessary to the planned discussion. Again, use email to disseminate short conclusions and summarize decisions made to others.
  • Provide a way to record the minutes for the meeting, either through technology or a separate individual.
  • Finally, set hard-and-fast rules about meeting length. If a meeting is to last 30 minutes, it is over by 30 minutes and one second. No exceptions.

Get in the habit of self-debriefing after a meeting.

A little objective debrief after meetings helps you to pinpoint both what’s going right and what can be improved.  What were you discussing and what exactly was going on then? Through these questions, figure out what worked and what didn’t, then use that information to tweak how you run future meetings to be shorter and more efficient.

Schedule strictly meeting-free time periods.

Reserve certain time periods (your most productive ones, preferably) for deep work, and resolve to schedule no meetings during these time periods.

Meditate every day.

A regular and consistent meditation practice can help you maintain focus and mindful attention throughout the day. In particular, many studies show that mindfulness meditation improves your mental abilities. A consistent meditative practice may even help slow and stave off age-related mental decline.

Start each day with exercise.

Research proves that regularly scheduled workouts help build mental acuity and focus all day long.  Regular exercise and movement help improve cognitive skills and focus in a number of both direct and indirect ways, including reducing inflammation, improving sleep and increasing the supply of oxygen to your brain by forming new blood vessels.

Try out recurrent fasting.

The underlying premise of recurrent fasting is that you refrain from eating anything at all for a certain number of hours in each 24-hour day — anywhere from 14 to 18 — and confining all calorie intake to the remaining hours of the day.  Because your body is no longer allocating significant physical resources to the digestive process, you have more resources available for attentive focus and deeper levels of work.

Take regular breaks throughout the day. 

Making a habit of taking a few minutes each hour to stand up, walk away from your computer, stretch and get water helps you maintain a deeper level of focus throughout the day.

Don’t let meetings ruin your workday.

Meetings are essential for the success of your company, but as with everything, too much of a good thing can wreak havoc over time. Learn to manage your focus and attention as the mental resources they actually are, and you’ll find it’s easier to switch directions and dive back into more meaningful work tasks.

 

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Getting Aerospace Industry Wired into Future

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Technology and innovation are essential to the future of the aerospace industry, with experts anticipating some major changes over the next few years. These changes are likely to have a significant effect on cabling. The quest for profitability, the pressure from low-cost carriers, stricter regulations on noise and greenhouse gas emissions are boosting the need […]

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Bacteria-Buster Robot that Kills Germs and Airborne Viruses While Playing Music

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We are all worried about protecting ourselves and loved ones during the Coronavirus epidemic and are on a life-saving mission to kill germs.  The ROCKUBOT is “the new UVC light sanitizer with UV-C light and ultrasonic wave to eliminate virus.”  It can also sanitize medical masks, remote controls, and toys, etc. Besides its auto-disinfection and cleaning, it also has wireless charging and a power bank so you can charge on the go. It can also be used to fight germs in hotel rooms.

ROCKUBOT is equipped with smart-mapping and artificial intelligence. Just put it on top of your bed and it seamlessly glides across. Thanks to its cliff sensors and smart sensors, it can go over bumps and won’t fall off the bed and it detects walls.  It can also be hand-held.

 

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Top Business Functions That are Ready to Use Artificial Intelligence

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Artificial Intelligence is still in the very early stages of adoption by most organizations. However, most leaders are quite excited to implement AI into the company’s business functions to start realizing its extraordinary benefits. While we have no way of knowing all the ways artificial intelligence and machine learning will ultimately impact business functions, here are 10 business functions that are ready to use artificial intelligence.

Marketing

If your company isn’t using artificial intelligence in marketing, it’s already behind. Not only can AI help to develop marketing strategies, but it’s also instrumental in executing them. Already AI sorts customers according to interest or demographic, can target ads to them based on browsing history, powers recommendation engines, and is a critical tool to give customers what they want exactly when they want it. Another way AI is used in marketing is through chat-bots. These bots can help solve problems, suggest products or services, and support sales. Artificial intelligence also supports marketers by analyzing data on consumer behaviour faster and more accurately than humans. These insights can help businesses make adjustments to marketing campaigns to make them more effective or plan better for the future.

Sales

There is definitely a side of selling products and services that is uniquely human, but artificial intelligence can arm sales professionals with insights that can improve the sales function. AI helps improve sales forecasting, predict customer needs, and improve communication.

Research and Development (R&D)

AI can help us build a deeper understanding in nearly any industry, while collecting and analyzing tremendous amounts of information efficiently and accurately. This and machine learning can help us research problems and develop solutions that we have never thought of before. Artificial intelligence helps R&D activities be more strategic and effective.

IT Operations

AI for IT operations is often the first experience many organizations have with implementing artificial intelligence internally. AI is commonly used for IT system log file error analysis, with IT systems management functions as well as to automate many routine processes. It can help identify issues so the IT team can proactively fix them before any IT systems go down.

Human Resources

Artificial intelligence really has the potential to transform many human resources activities from recruitment to talent management. AI can certainly help improve efficiency and save money by automating repetitive tasks, but it can do much more. In addition, AI can help human resources departments with data-based decision-making and make candidate screening and the recruitment process easier.

Contact Centers

The contact center of an organization is another business area where artificial intelligence is already in use. Organizations that use AI technology to enhance rather than replace humans with these tasks are the ones that are incorporating artificial intelligence in the right way. These centers collect a tremendous amount of data that can be used to learn more about customers, predict customer intent, and improve the “next best action” for the customer for better customer engagement. The unstructured data collected from contact centers can also be analyzed by machine learning to uncover customer trends and then improve products and services.

Building Maintenance

Another way AI already at work in businesses today is helping facilities managers optimize energy use and the comfort of occupants. Based upon the data that is collected, the AI system can adjust the building’s systems to accommodate for the number of occupants, time of day, and more. AI helps facilities managers improve energy efficiency of the building. An additional component of many of these systems is building security as well.

Manufacturing

Heineken, along with many other companies, uses data analytics at every stage of the manufacturing process from the supply chain to tracking inventory on store shelves. Predictive intelligence can not only anticipate demand and ramp production up or down, but sensors on equipment can predict maintenance needs. AI helps flag areas of concern in the manufacturing process before costly issues erupt. Machine vision can also support the quality control process at manufacturing facilities.

Accounting and Finance

Many organizations are finding the promise of cost reductions and more efficient operations the major appeal for artificial intelligence in the workplace. Human finance professionals will be freed-up from repetitive tasks to be able to focus on higher-level activities while the use of AI in accounting will reduce errors. AI is also able to provide real-time status of financial matters to organizations because it can monitor communication through natural language processing.

Customer Experience

Another way artificial intelligence technology and big data are used in business today is to improve the customer experience. Innovative uses of chat-bots during industry events are another way to provide a stellar customer experience.

 

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3D Printed, Filtered Face Mask, a Remarkable Development

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Custom 3D printed mask with replaceable filter, obtained from a 3D scan of the wearer, an open-source project released.

3D printing in last couple of years has become an exciting new way to create many different objects in very short time. That is because a 3D printer is designed to allow you print real, 3 dimensional objects from only a template. It eliminates the need to work with many different materials to create something new, exciting and beautiful.

WASP (World’s Advanced Saving Project) has developed a custom 3D printed face mask with a replaceable filter that’s non-irritating and acts like a sterilizable ‘second skin’. The wearer can be scanned using photogrammetry with a standard smartphone camera from a distance of 1 meter. All the photos taken are then reprocessed to create a 3D mesh.

The material used is PCL: Polycaprolactone as it can be placed in direct contact with the skin. PCL is a bio-material widely used in the medical field.  Its melting point is 100°C, it doesn’t warp and there’s no need for a heated chamber to print it האתר שלי.

All masks are printed using Delta WASP 4070 INDUSTRIAL 4.0.  This 3D printer allows you to easily use technical materials like the described above. The 3D printed mask can be sanitised and used many times. The filter is located in a central front slot, where it can be replaced.  It only takes about an hour and a half to customise a perfect fit face mask in TPE, thus reducing skin irritation and long-use related issues.

This is an important development as far as the 3D printing technology is concerned. Keeping in the view the on-going COVID-19 crisis being faced by the world, these 3D printed face masks can be of a great value.

 

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CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC: Strategies for Industrial and Automotive Companies

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To rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, industrials must undertake a journey that begins with resolve and ends with fundamental reform.

During coronavirus pandemic, protecting lives is the first priority, but we must also protect our livelihoods. For automotive and industrial companies, surviving and emerging stronger at the far end of this crisis will require thinking beyond the next fiscal quarter. Success in the long run will require a journey across five stages: Resolve, Resilience, Return, Re-imagination, and Reforms.

Resolve

The first stage, Resolve, involves determining the scale, pace, and depth of action required. To do so, companies in advanced industries must take the following steps:

(a)       Establishing a nerve center to steer the organization, serve as the information hub, manage risk and responses, and align all stakeholders.

(b)       Protecting employees by making their health the paramount concern and adjusting production as needed

(c)        Screening and safeguarding the supply chain by understanding risks and taking action to address disruption

(d)       Adapting marketing and sales by identifying and mitigating the risks of declining sales while meeting critical customer needs

(e)       Maintaining financial health by improving liquidity, reducing costs, and establishing a spend control tower

Resilience

As industrials experience virus-related shutdowns and economic pressures, they should move quickly to address near-term cash management challenges and broader resiliency issues.

To understand what makes companies resilient, past downturns provide helpful insight. Some companies also flourish during those hard times—typically those that took significant action at the outset.  Resilient companies, defined as those in the top quintile of total revenue share within their sectors, took several key steps:

(a)       They sustained organic revenue growth throughout the recession and out-performed on earnings and on revenue in recovery.

(b)       They moved faster and harder on productivity, which preserved growth capacity.

(c)        They divested 1.5 times more during the downturn and acquired 1.2 times more in the recovery.

(d)       They maintain clean balance sheets long before a downturn starts.

Return

Restarting production facilities can be more challenging than shutting them down. It requires a thoughtful approach to revive the supply chain, match volume to actual demand, and, most importantly, protect the workforce. Given the complexity of global supply chains, ramping up factories in a coordinated way will be mission critical. This will include four important phases:

(a)       Preparation: Companies reach full transparency about systems, networks, and workforce, including the parts and people available.

(b)       System filling: Leaders monitor their global supplier networks to ensure readiness.

(c)        Stabilization: Employees become familiar with the new normal and prepare for volume increase.

(d)       Ramping up: Companies produce the full product portfolio, matching supply and demand.

Re-imagination

The coronavirus pandemic could fundamentally shift how people live, work, and use technology. Advanced industries will likely see a shift in preferences as the expectations of workers and leaders begin to change. The organizations that reinvent themselves will emerge much stronger than those that simply work to reclaim their pre-COVID-19 position.

For industrial companies, this global health crisis may lead to a re-imagination of the following:

(a)       The go-to market approach, as businesses shift to e-commerce and companies digitize their sales experiences or place greater emphasis on new business models, such as rentals and leasing, to overcome consumer reluctance about purchases that involve a greater commitment.

(b)       Cooperation and alliances.

(c)        Workers’ roles.

(e)       Geographic footprint.

(f)        Sourcing.

(g)       Costs.

Reform

In addition to dealing with the significant societal changes coming in the next few months, industrial companies may want to consider strategies for addressing some of the persistent issues affecting the sector to avoid the next crisis. For example, they may want to minimize supply-chain risks by increasing local production or dividing production among more sites. Other imperatives include sustainability, workforce flexibility, and adaptability to accommodate changing tariffs. Above all, companies need to retool their operations to produce medical equipment.  Keeping in view the demand of such products around the world due to current situation, it will be a great move not only towards meeting the need to fight against COVID-19 but also generating revenue by consuming such products within the country as well as abroad.

 

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Companies Retooling their Operations to Assist in Fight Against Coronavirus

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Companies around the world are retooling their operations to assist in Coronavirus fight. As the pandemic puts nations on wartime footing, distillers producing hand sanitizer, a car maker offers to assemble ventilators; a jeans factory switches to face masks.  Rolls Royce and the electronics manufacturer Dyson starting production of life-saving ventilators.  General Motors Co. and Ford Motors Co. have also put their idled factories to work making medical equipment including ventilators. Ferrari and Fiat Chrysler are going to assist Bologna-based Siare Engineering, as they ramp up ventilator production from 160 units to 500 a month.

At one hand, the current scenario has become a challenge and at other hand it has created many opportunities for Engineering, Electronics and other manufacturers to produce medical equipment for fighting against Corona virus.

This situation has also created an opportunity for Pakistani companies to retool their operations to produce medical equipment.  Keeping in view the demand of such products around the world due to current situation, it will be a great move not only towards meeting the need to fight against COVID-19 but also generating revenue by consuming such products within Pakistan as well as abroad.

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Dr. Bilal Siddiqui and Mr. Awais Tariq from Spell Petrochemicals have developed a face shield to be used to get protected from Corona Virus. Petro Chemicals are basically PVC compound and PVC additives manufacturers. They are scaling to produce 3,000 a day of these face shields which have a visor that can swing up and down.  This is an important initiative by Spell Petrochemicals Group and other manufacturers in Pakistan are expected to follow.

Importance of Clusters in the Business Co-operation Development

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A cluster is a system of interconnected firms and institutions the whole of which is greater than the sum of the parts. Clustering is a recognised way to enhance productivity, innovation and competitive performance of companies.  Clusters can allow small companies to combine advantages with various benefits.  Hence, the clusters are important operators in a region’s economic growth.  Clustering has always been a part of history of the economic activity, but it has attracted increased attention during the past two decades.  Clustering has become a recognised way of co-operation and economical development between businesses.

Clusters are affecting economic growth. Competition of course continues, but being part of the cluster gives so many benefits rather than continuing business alone.  Within a cluster’s co-operation, one has access to specialized inputs and information on employees. For example benefits in lower-cost access to components, machinery, business services and personnel. Cluster sourcing provides information on outsourcing companies, information and complementarities. It is obvious that being part of cluster, company benefits.  However, one has to remember that the company receives benefits only if it is actively involved in the work. Time and resources affect to companies’ commitment. The more company invests, more it gets.

Pakistan Aerospace Council, a Unique Cluster Organization

Pakistan Aerospace Council (PAeC) is a not-for-profit constellation for enterprises active in the aerospace, defence and hi-tech mechanical/electronics market. PAeC is working for global promotion of high value addition and high technology manufacturers of Pakistan, while meeting the national needs for technology acquisition as well as export-led, sustainable growth of Pakistani Aerospace and hi-tech Industries.  For joining or knowing more about Pakistan Aerospace Council, please visit http://pakaero.com.pk/

Self-Reliance: A Cure for the Ills of Globalization

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The world is shrinking and flattening at breakneck speed, which means that the choices someone makes in Wuhan or Beijing have a measurable and predictable impact elsewhere in the world and that supply chains—not just raw materials—are interlinked and interdependent. Opportunities and challenges resulting from globalization leave us with one simple lesson: we cannot ignore the fact that prioritizing self-reliance is what made us resilient in the past and is what will ensure national resolve and an ability to lead the world in times of crisis.

As globalization steamrolls our daily lives, it’s important to recall the wisdom of our fore-bearers, which held that self-reliance is a virtue at any scale—from an individual on the grassland to a nation on the world stage. Whether it is worldwide travel, necessary weather services or the supply chain dependencies that come with globalization, new challenges and their solutions illustrate both the leadership opportunities and promises that growing connectivity can afford.  It begins with self-reliance, with nations being able to develop and produce their own goods and services.

As the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis response is evolving and adapting, the new space economy is noticeably contributing in ways that are helping first res-ponders, policy makers and even the general public make real time decisions that would have been impossible a few years ago.  Satellite imaging can enable scientists to discover things about the context of an outbreak that other methods can’t, as well as aid in pinpointing where the next one could occur.  Orbital Insight is contributing as well, enabled by data collected by Planet Lab satellites, placed into orbit by Spaceflight Services, that allow us to continue with our work and classes remotely using a variety of next generation tech apps like Uber, Amazon Prime and Zoom. These all rely on satellite communications, precision navigation and timing from an earlier generation of space tech.

The resilience enabled by this new space economy will play a vital role in our survival in the coming decades at-casinos.com.  There are many different challenges the world faces today, as in every era of modern history, but never such a time where the revolution in satellite tech and business could play such an integral role in solving these challenges.  Even small businesses, operating globally due to advances in technology, can both lead and impact the networked world. They might not make the business section headlines, but 99% of the space industry is made up of small businesses and these are the people driving the future of innovation.

In only the first few weeks of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we can see how the next generation of space tech, which is supported by many of these small businesses, is informing the world to adapt. Small businesses are uniquely positioned to supply the technology and innovation necessary to secure our future. The current crisis as well as those we face in the future will be addressed more swiftly, with greater transparency and trust because of this new space economy.

Our hegemonic rivals are dead serious about leading the world into the future of space, especially the commercial economy.  As a space scientist, entrepreneur or enthusiast, this is the most exciting time in human history. Proving the Earth and planets revolve around the sun shifted an egocentric world view. Putting a man on the moon and delivering him safely home opened the heavens for exploration and pushed the bounds of human possibility. Democratizing space by creating and growing businesses will create jobs and improve the lives and future of humanity. This new chapter of globalization will affect the world and its human inhabitants in a truly priceless way.

 

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