Monthly Archive for April, 2022

5 Helpful Tips to Help You Retain Important Information

It’s widely believed that our memories get worse at we get older. However, whilst it is true that the aging process causes changes in our brains that can mean that it takes longer to learn and recall information, we shouldn’t mistake this for true memory loss. It is normal to forget things once in a while as we age. But, however old we are, there are many things we can do it in our day-to-day lives to help keep our brain working at full capacity.

Here are five ways to help keep your memory sharp:

Sleep

Sleep is proven to be one the most important factors in having a good memory. It is during sleep that our brains perform the consolidation processes required to do things such as moving remembered events from short term to long term memory. Lack of sleep may cause issues with retaining new information and even make you struggle to recall information laid down in the past.

Research also suggests that getting a good night’s sleep before learning is also very advantageous, since sleep deprivation can affect our brain’s ability to memorise and consolidate any new information. Remember, before your next class, seminar or training day, try to be well-rested, as it will help you more than you think.

Exercise

Studies in human brains show that regular exercise can improve our memory. Fitness amongst older adults has even been shown to help to slow the decline of memory. Exercise is also helpful with spatial awareness, which will also improve your spatial memory. Spatial memory is the storage and retrieval of information within the brain needed to plan routes and to remember where objects are located.

The health benefits to exercising regularly are well known and documented, but regular exercise is shown to improve other cognitive abilities besides memory, so whilst you’re improving your health and your memory there are many other benefits.

Meditate

Regular meditation increases blood flow to the brain, which in turn strengthens the network of blood vessels in the cerebral cortex. This reinforces our memory capacity. A particular study has indicated that meditating for just 20 minutes a day boosts memory and concentration. Meditation can particularly help working memory, which stores information temporarily for short term use.

Research shows that participants with no experience in meditation can improve their memory recall in just eight weeks. As meditation also helps with concentration, it has been shown to improve test scores.

Test Yourself

Testing yourself can help your ability to retain information, since any re-visiting and repetition of a subject will always help to embed the knowledge. Ask a friend to test you or see if there are any online resources that will check your knowledge

Doing this you can consolidate your knowledge of a topic or area and transfer your learning to long-term memory, which will happen if you continue to actively use the information. As a bonus, it also helps you know what you don’t know and to determine which areas you need to revisit.

Write it down

Writing down new information is a practice that many people use to retain information. This works because writing by hand turns on parts of the brain involved in learning and memory. Taking notes by hand, rather than even using a keyboard, may boost how well new information is retained.

Studies have shown that writing notes by hand is much better for long-term memory of ideas, or conceptual information. This is vindication for all of us who have ever said “I remember it better when I write it down”.

If you need anymore help with work-life balance, Infero has Time Management and Stress Management Courses in these areas.

XLOOKUP – The New Improved VLOOKUP

In Microsoft Excel, everyone has heard of the VLOOKUP function. It is one of the most used functions within Excel and the function that most people want to learn. This is not surprising, because VLOOKUP is extremely useful and can be used in a wide variety of situations. It is capable of very complex data analysis, but can also be used very simply. In essence VLOOKUP does what it says on the tin. It looks things up. So why have Microsoft, effectively, created a replacement for it?

Although VLOOKUP is used by millions of Excel users every day, it is not without faults. In fact, many Excel users use alternative formulas because of this. VLOOKUP has three main issues:

Only Left to Right

VLOOKUP only works from left to right. That is, it can only find a result value in a column to the left of the value that is being used as the look-up value. In the example below, if the Employee IDs were in a column right of the AGEs, it wouldn’t work.

The Column Number Issue

The column with the result required is designated by an index number. This means that if we want VLOOKUP to return data from the 2nd column of our data, we need to type in 2. The problem comes if another column is inserted into our data. Although our VLOOKUP will still have an index number of 2, the value we want to return may not be in the 2nd column anymore. At best, we won’t get the result we expect, at worst the VLOOKUP may stop working altogether.

VLOOKUP Defaults to an Approximate Match

LOOKUP functions in Excel can return an Exact match, meaning that they will only give a result if they can find precisely what we are looking for, or they can return an approximate match, meaning they will return the result nearest to the value we were searching for. Even though 99.9 % of the searches done with VLOOKUP are for an exact match, VLOOKUP default to an approximate match.

XLOOKUP fixes all these issues and more:

Left Lookup

VLOOKUP will not allow a left lookup to be performed. Before XLOOKUP, this could be done by using a combination of INDEX and MATCH functions, but this was quite complicated. Now a left lookup can be completed simply by using the XLOOKUP function.

The XLOOKUP function looks up the age and returns the Employee ID.

Column Number

XLOOKUP allows the returning of a value from a particular column simply by selecting it or typing its range within the formula. A column number need not be specified and so the formula can’t be broken if columns or rows are inserted or deleted.

Exact Match

By default, the XLOOKUP function in Excel 365/2021 performs an exact match, unlike VLOOKUP.

XLOOKUP is only available in Office 2021 and Office 365. VLOOKUP will remain available in Excel, but there are many more benefits in using XLOOKUP, such as being able to return values from above and below, as well as from left and right. To find out more and to learn how to use this new function fully, why not try one of our Excel courses.

How You can Improve Your Presentations Skills With These Simple Steps

Public speaking and presenting are very important skills to master, especially in the workplace. Presentation skills are increasingly important in almost every role. In fact, in surveys of employers, good communication skills, both written and verbal, are seen as two of the top five most desirable attributes of employees.

Here are our guidelines to help you improve your presentation skills:

Confidence

Confidence is one of the most important traits to have whilst presenting. A confident speaker will have an authority that reassures their audience that they know what they are talking about. They are also much more likely to get their message across. However, saying that you should be confident and actually being confident are two different things. Luckily, there are methods that you can use to help to build your confidence:

Preparation: The three most important things that you should do for your presentation are; preparation, preparation and preparation. There is no substitute for taking the time to thoroughly plan, prepare and write your presentation. Preparation will not only make you confident about the material, it will enable to craft a coherent structure for your presentation that will most effectively get your message across. Remember, the more that you prepare, the better that you know your material and the more confident you will be.

Rehearse your Presentation: Once you have written the presentation, rehearsal allows you to see if it actually works. It lets you see if the presentation slides are effective and also if the overall timing is correct. The more you can rehearse the better, especially if you can rehearse in the place where you are going to be delivering the presentation. An added bonus is if you can practice the presentation in front of others. Even practising in front of friends or family can help to build your confidence.

Know your Audience: Being familiar with your audience can greatly help your confidence. If possible, analyse your audience prior to the presentation using research and surveys. If this isn’t possible, you can always take time to talk to and get to know your audience immediately prior to your delivery. This isn’t always easy, but getting to know and understand those that your are delivering to can definitely boost your confidence.

Concise and simple

Another key thing to remember is to keep things simple. We have all been in presentations where the presenter has overwhelmed us with too much information. Another of the benefits of all that rehearsal that we talked about earlier is that it will enable you to spot and remove any unnecessary information.

It almost goes without saying that you should avoid jargon, especially when you are talking to a group of people unfamiliar with your topic. Even when you are talking to peers and experts, keep technical terms to a minimum. If you must use them, spend time so that you are able explain them in simply.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

– Albert Einstein

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm shows that you believe in your content. Enthusiasm is also infectious. If you care about your topic, your audience is liable to, too. It’s important, however, to convey that enthusiasm:

Change your Tone or Emphasis: It is vital that you vary the way you talk during the presentation. Speech is both verbal and vocal. How you say something is just as important as what you say. Emphasis for key words or concepts, pausing, speeding up or slowing down appropriately can all aid you greatly. This is somewhere else where rehearsal can help you greatly.

Speak Up: Vary the volume of your voice and the pitch. Again practice helps with this. You can even use emotion appropriately to convey your passion and enjoyment about the topic.

Research

It is almost redundant to say that you should have the best understanding possible for the topic you are discussing. If you are unsure, then this is likely to show. Knowing a subject well helps with your confidence too.

And don’t forget to prepare by researching potential questions that may come up. Not only will this help you to deal with these issues if they do occur, it is almost certain to improve your own understanding. Once again, you can ask colleagues or friends and family to mock-ask you possible questions to get practice answering them effectively.

Focus on your Audience Needs

Most importantly, you need to remember the prime reason you are doing the presentation in the first place and who it is for. The presentation is for your audience. It is not for you. When working and worrying about it, it is easy to forget this crucial point.

Always remember that it is what audience needs and wants to know, not what you can tell them, or want to tell them, that is of primary importance. And presentations are two way things, like all communication. As you deliver your presentation, always be focused on your audience’s reaction and respond appropriately to it.

For professional help from our dedicated team have a look at our communication skills courses or presentation courses to help you stand out in the workforce and impress your co-workers.

How You Can Make A Difference In Your Life During National Walking Month

What is national Walk Month?

Ditch your car and carry on past that bus stop because May is National Walking Month. Get fit by walking to work or school and perhaps even raise money by participating in a sponsored walking event.

You can help the British Heart Foundation by getting involved. Or maybe the Children’s Cancer and Leukemia Group, an organisation dedicated to helping detect cancer in children, which holds a number of fundraising events throughout the year to help fund their world-class research and the support they provide to the families involved.

If you wish to get involved in #WalkThisMay, here are some ways you can make a difference:

  • Organise a sponsored walking event at your school, work place, home or in the wider community. Raise money and get health benefits as you do so.
  • Take part in Walk to School Week commencing on the 21st May and use any money saved on fuel or parking as a donation to the CCLG. Even if you don’t go to school, you can you can still get involved by walking to work instead.
  • Have a friendly competition with your friends or colleagues and see who can walk the furthest, or the fastest, or can raise the most money within the month!
  • Do the #try20Challenge which encourages you to walk at least 20 minutes every day for the whole month. This can be a sponsored event to which friends and family can donate.
  • Sign up for a walking event later on in the year and use May as the perfect time to kick start your training

Five Benefits to Walking over Driving!

  • It’s free: Walking is both good for you both physically and financially. There is no cost in using your legs. Currently the cost of running a car is increasing incredibly because of the exponential rise in the price of fuel.
  • Less Pollution: Unlike cars, walking doesn’t cause pollution, whether that be carbon dioxide or sound pollution. As we all want to minimise our impact on the environment, now may be the perfect time to ditch the car for those shorter journeys.
  • Health benefits: Walking as a form of exercise has many health benefits. It strengthens the heart and lungs and makes us less susceptible to pulmonary disease.
  • It makes you feel better: Studies suggest that walking improves mental health, and time outdoors getting fresh air helps clear the mind and relieve stress.
  • Parking: There is none! Walking into a town means you don’t have to drive around for hours looking for an affordable place to park. It makes the whole trip less stressful and there’ll be no more reversing into tight spaces.

Remember while this month is about raising money for charity, the changes you make can be kept for the rest of the year. Or even longer.