Contrary to what you may think, the Bathtub Model of Leadership is an interesting analogy and could come in handy to all those who manage project teams. Watch this 2 min video explaining the model:

Need to check if your IT deductions are right? Nithyanand Yeswanth, a software professional from Bangalore, has put together a handy Indian Income Tax Calculator for Salaried Individuals. The Income Tax Calculator has been built in the form of an Excel sheet and we’ve shared the same here.

(Link via Joe Felix)

After speaking to a few friends who weren’t in the Internet space, I figured that they were unaware of the plethora of tools that were available online which they could use at their workplace. So, I’ve put together a list titled Internet tools for the workplace. This list shall be updated regularly as and when I find something of use. Updates shall also be posted on this blog.

I personally hate meetings. However, while I keep them to a minimum, some meetings are unavoidable. So might as well make the best of it by following the advice given in these 3 articles:

• 5 tricks to keep meetings short
• How to start meetings on time
• How to run a meeting like Google

Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

This is a guest post by Mr. Yash Asher – Online Marketing Specialist. He also blogs about Online Media at Asheresque.
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Who is the most efficient employee in your office? The one, who remembers everything, can pull out old mails in a jiffy, the kind that makes the rest of us look like monkeys attempting to play chess. You want to kill him but not before finding out his secret.  Have a look at his email inbox. I have a hunch you will find levels of organization an army general would be proud of.

For the rest of us mere mortals there are 2 options
• use Gmail as mail client (not allowed in most companies)
• or use Xobni (inbox spelt backwards, currently works well with MS Outlook)

Xobni allows you to
• Search your mails super fast (it will index your mails to be able to do this)
• Find documents exchanged in a jiffy
• Find contact details in a jiffy, no 4-5 right-clicks any more, you don’t even need to create the person’s profile in your mailbox, Xobni extracts this information from emails automatically
• Be aware of the network people operate in. No more “what’s the name of this guys boss?”
• And all this without navigating away from the mail you are currently focused on. Hence, you can reply to anyone with complete knowledge of your past interactions.

Plus the killer app as far as I am concerned is the analytics engine. With Xobni you can know what is the time of the day a person mail to you regularly, what is his her standard response time, how many times have you had to mail him, and how often does he respond, speed of his response, etc. Just a look at this information can help you schedule your conversations with everyone better.

It even allows you to integrate your Linkedin account with your inbox and build professional networks beyond the office emails.

While this will not solve all of your work problems but definitely give you a much larger degree of control over your mailbox and will free up your time.

For more information and to download the app check out Xobni.com.

PS: Check our list of Internet Tools for the Workplace.