PM4DEV Blog

The plain fact is that some project meetings can be very, very boring. It's not uncommon for members of a team to zone out through long sessions in a conference room. However, doing so can have a negative impact on your career. A meeting is usually organized by the project manager and he or she expects that all members of the team will attend and contribute to the discussions in a constructive manner, so there are expectations that you need to meet and if you do not pay attention or seem distracted during the meeting your supervisor and colleagues will notice. So here are the ways on how to pay attention in project meetings.

1. Get your sleep. Well-rested staff have a better chance of paying attention and really understanding what's going on, and the result can put you further ahead in your professional goals. Think about having a cup of coffee if you think it will help you to really focus in when things are going on in a meeting.

2. Make a list of your questions prior to the meeting. Taking your comments and questions with you will help you stay involved, which will give you a better chance of keeping your attention focused throughout the entire session.

3. Find a good seat. If there is a kind of "blind spot" in the back of the room, avoid this area and stick to places where you will have a good view of projected screens or focal points and where you can hear what is being said by presenters.

4. Keep the meeting on track with proactive comments and questions. Even if you don't have anything written down for a particular topic, you might be one of those people who rightly observes that a speaker is wandering, getting away from appropriate topics, or taking much too long to get across what he or she has to say. In these instances, you can do yourself and everyone else a favor by helping to focus the meeting, staying engaged and actively interjecting when appropriate.

5. Take notes during the meeting. Writing things down keeps you more engaged, and you'll come away with those choice bits of information that will help provide detail on future events or projects. It might help to file the notes that you take so that you have access to them if there's a scenario where they could come in handy.

Regular backups are vital insurance against a data-loss catastrophe. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that most people learn only from bitter experience. Developing a solid backup plan requires an investment of time and money, but the cost is far less than the often-impossible task of recreating data for which no backup exists.

Files can be lost from your computer in any number of ways—you might accidentally delete a file, or a virus might wipe one out. You can also have a complete hard drive failure. When a hard drive dies an untimely death, it's kind of like having your house burn down. Important personal items are usually gone forever—family photos, significant documents, downloaded music, and more.Thankfully it's a really simple process these days to back up your content to a second, separate location. By doing so, your files can be protected against viruses or complete computer failure. This makes it easy to retrieve and place them on a new hard drive and get going again.

Today, there are many options for backing up your content. You don't need any sophisticated equipment—you can use CDs, DVDs, external hard drives, flash drives, network drives, or even online storage like Windows Live SkyDrive. It might be a good idea to back up your data to multiple places. For example, you might choose to back up your content onto both an external hard drive and to an online storage site.

• Develop a is of all the folders and documents you need a backup
• Select the most convenient backup tool. If you have a large set of data to backup an external hard drive is the best choice. For old or historic data you can use CDs, DVDs, this is data that you don’t use regularly
• Select the software to help you manage the data backup. Windows comes with a backup tool, but there are other applications, (some for free) that can help you make a backup of all your files.
• Define regular intervals to back up your data
• Backup your data per schedule
• Test the backup data to ensure the backup is complete and that you can access it.

By following these simple steps you will be able to have a backup process that will give you some piece of mind by knowing that all the information you worked so hard is now secure.