5 Essential Activities That Will Make Your Brain Healthier

Our brain is the most important part of our body. It’s what makes us who we are, and we can’t live without it. Most of us love taking care of our physical bodies, but we often don’t prioritize our mental health as much. That’s why in this post, we’re going to show you the five essential activities that will make your brain healthier.

Let’s start with:

1. You are what you eat

The first thing you should know about the brain is that it’s made up of 60 percent fat

This means that the more good fat we can put into our bodies, the better it will be for our brain health.

Some foods with good fat include:

Mackerel	Flax-seeds	Sunflower seeds
Herring	Pumpkin seeds	Sesame seeds
Sardines	Chia seeds	Walnuts
Anchovies	Tuna steak	Omega 3 rich eggs

Once you have this part down, it’s just about keeping the bad stuff (i.e. sugar, bad fat, drugs) out of the brain.

Simple enough right?

2. Socialize it off

A laugh a day keeps the doctor away?

Being around people you enjoy is a great way to keep your brain healthy. When you’re laughing and smiling, your brain releases “feel-good” chemicals, such as Dopamine.

In a study of 2,249 California women published in the July American Journal of Public Health, researchers reported that older women who maintained large social networks reduced their risk of dementia and delayed or prevented cognitive impairment.

The message is clear: form bonds instead of walls. Come together, instead of isolating from one another.

3. Learn another language

Speaking of socializing, a great way to get your social life going while learning a new skill is to learn a language.

We’ve written extensively on the benefits of learning a language, but here are the highlights:

i. Enhances your focus

ii. Improves your native languages

iii. Prevents common brain diseases

In fact, learning a new language can prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease and dementia by 4.5 years. This is a far more powerful than the best drugs which only delays the symptoms by 6–12 months.

The best method to reap the benefits of socializing and learning a language is not using a software solution, like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone, but by speaking it with native speakers. This allows you to learn a new language while learning about the different cultures of people around the world.

We all have time to learn something new, and it starts with re-prioritizing your schedule for self development.

4. Sweat it off

This one should come with no surprise. If you’re doing any sort of exercise, you’re already ahead of the game.

But Mark McDaniel, PhD, professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests “a combined program of aerobics and weight training. Studies show the best outcomes for those engaged in both types of exercise.”

So if you’re doing just weight training or just aerobic fitness, it could be worth your while to switch it around once in awhile.

5. Plan for the future

Whether you’re twenty-five years old or about to retire, maintaining a strong sense of purpose for the future is a necessity for keeping your brain alert and healthy.

Studies show that when individuals were simply planning a trip (i.e. booking a flight ticket), they reported higher levels of dopamine in their brain. This means that just planning for the future alone can be beneficial to your brain, even if you never take that trip.

Having something to look forward to is what helps us maintain optimism, which is essential for our brain and overall health.

Continue to improve yourself, develop new skills, and never stop learning. It may just save your life.

Over to you

What do you think about these healthy brain activities? Is there something that we missed?

We’d love for you to share this with your friends and family members!

13 Business That Are Getting Smart by Using Pokemon GO

7 Benefits of Outsourcing IT Services

Businesses can benefit from using managed IT services, and here are some of the benefits you get by outsourcing IT Services.

1. Control IT Cost

Outsourcing converts fixed IT costs into variable costs and allows you budget effectively. In other words, only pay for what you use when you need it.

2. Reduce Labor Costs

Hiring and training an IT staff can be very expensive, and temporary employees don't always live up to your expectations. Outsourcing lets you focus your human resources where you need them most.

3. Trained, Experienced, Qualified, Certified.

If you’re not IT trained, how do you assure an employee is qualified? Certifications like Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) are important, but so is experience.

4. Increase Efficiency and Competitiveness

Organizations that try to do all IT Services in-house themselves can have much higher research, development, and implementation time, all of which increase costs and are ultimately passed on to customers.

5. Quickly Implement New Technology

A quality outsourced IT service organization will have the resources to start new projects right away. Handling the same project in-house might involve weeks or months to hire the right people, train them, and provide the support they need. For most implementations, quality IT companies will bring years of experience in the beginning saving time and money.

6. Reduce risk

Every business investment carries a certain amount of risk. Markets, competition, government regulations, financial conditions, and technologies all change very quickly. Outsourcing providers assume and manage much of this risk for you, with specific industry knowledge, especially security and compliance issues. They generally are much better at deciding how to avoid risk in their areas of expertise.

7. Compliance and Security

Is your firewall up to date? Do you have a DMZ installed? Do you audit your Workstations and Servers? Has your company implemented PCI security standards and work to maintain those standards? For example, Businesses have more ways than ever to prosper by taking many forms of payments such as Credit and Debit Cards, Gift Certificates, E-Checks, Wire Transfers to name a few, but with these forms of transacting also comes the need for due diligence. By outsourcing a qualified Manages Services company who is familiar with PCI Compliance standards you can rest assured that your company is minimizing the risks associated with maintaining client data, credit card numbers, sensitive competitive information and more.

5 Key Benefits of Outsourcing Your Finance & Accounting (F&A) Operations

The modern global market is highly competitive whereby companies give finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) serious prioritization in order to have their internal F&A functions standardized, streamlined and fully functional.

Given that dilatory and inefficient F&A management is contributory to a slow-paced performance growth; accounting outsourcing services are thoughts that most CFOs contemplate. Be it reviewing financial statement, developing operating budgets or cash flow management, they want quality services on lower financial investment from their outsourcing partners in order to materialize remarkable efficiency results in their F&A functions.

Here are some of the benefits of outsourcing your F&A:

1. Cost Reduction

Industries have long attributed imprecise and cost-burgeoning aspects of financial functions to their failure to understand the importance of FAO. To state otherwise, industries believe that if they had externalized accounting processes in early stage of their business, they would probably have reduced operating costs and improved business productivity level significantly.

2. Efficiency-driven Results

To say the least, FAO really drives the efficiency and improved business performance to any organization. Due to increasingly tough outsourcing market worldwide, outsourcing companies face the pressing need to adopt latest technologies and client-satisfaction-centric business strategies. In view of the circumstances, client companies can expect efficiency-driven results for their outsourced projects, as vendors can’t afford the risk of losing clients by providing substandard services.

3. Access to Best Talent Pool

Undoubtedly, if you externalize an accounting process to a vendor, you invariably get an access to vast talent reservoir, effective and useful for your business to scale up. Start-up, small and medium size organizations usually make a cost-efficient business strategy involving externalization of internal F&A process so as to get their accounting functions streamlined.

4. Faster Turnaround Time

In brief, outsourcing enables an organization get quality services within the deadline, thus helping it many ways. A client gets service within the deadline as its outsourcing partner has all requisite resources essential to streamline client specified accounting process with faster turnaround time.

5. Cost Savings

Since accounting processes are too complicated yet very substantial parts within an organization, staffing an entire account department with new workforce will involve budget-draining recruitment and training processes. To avoid this, an organization outsources entire or part of the whole accounting functions to save considerable amount on operating costs.

5 Most Important Advantages of BPO

The Outsourcing market is growing tremendously in the coming few with increasing years with an increasing advantage as discussed below:-

1. Productivity improvement:

get very little time to formulate strategies. BPO saves time and helps the executives to explore new revenue areas, accelerate other projects and focus on their customers. This leads to improvement in the productivity. Better educated or skilled people perform the task efficiently and thus improve productivity.

2. Optimum utilization of the resources:

BPO enables to the corporate executive to concentrate upon core business areas. Conventionally executives spend more time in management of details and they BPO enables optimum utilisation of resources of scarce resources. Outsourcing helps to capture new efficiency and reallocate the resources. This increases the efficiency and productivity. Availability of skilled employees and adoption of sophisticated technologies leads to utilisation of resources and productivity.

3. Reduction in cost:

Cost savings can be significant to any business. BPO not only helps in reducing cost but also increase productivity and raise revenue significantly. Cost reduction is possible through process improvements, re engineering, and use of technologies that reduce and bring administrative and other costs under control. Outsourcing helps the company maintain lower rates with better service solutions, thereby giving them a better market position and even a competitive advantage.

4. Improved Human Resource:

Improved HR is another great advantage of outsourcing business processes. Cost effective manpower is yet another important factor of importance in BPO. Companies today, require productive and efficient human resource that can generate economies of scale. Due to outsourcing business can save Human resource cost, depending on their priorities. Outsourcing gives a company the ability to get access to skilled and trained manpower at extremely low rates

5. Focus on core business areas:

Efficient business strategy is essential to take the business to the top. Outsourcing enables the top management level to hand over critical but non-core activities of the business to the third party. This facilitates top management level to concentrate on the core activities.

About the Director

Aruna Fernando

Managing Director –FCMA (U.K.), CGMA, MHRP

• Director – Non Executive

Sri Lanka State Plantation Corporation (2012 T0 2013)

• Hon. General Secretary for 2012/2013

Organisation of Professionals Associations (OPA)

• President of CIMA Sri Lanka Division- 2007/2008

• Member of the Governing council of the National Institute of Business Management (NIBM) - 2007/2008

Mr. Fernando is a CIMA Fellow member and CGMA with over 25 years of experience in the financial and business industry.

He started his career as an Audit Trainee in 1980 and then moved on as an Accounts Executive for Air Lanka Ltd. In 1987, he joined Computer Link Data Systems (Pvt) Ltd as an accountant and was then appointed as the Finance Director in 1991.

It was in 1992 when Mr. Fernando embarked on his own venture Micronet Information Systems (Pvt) Ltd, which focused in computer maintenance and marketing of computer products. The business grew from there and in order to cope with the demands of the market, in 2012 Micronet Global Services (Pvt) Ltd was established. Micronet global Services (Pvt) Ltd primary focus is On-site Manpower Deployment Services (OMDS), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Financial and Accounting services and Headhunting with a current workforce of over 1000 employees.

Aside from his activities as the Managing Director for the Micronet Group. Mr. Fernando is involved in other organizations where his knowledge and expertise is desired. Mr. Fernando was  a member of the Governing Council of National Institute of Business Management (NIBM) and currently serves as the Director of Ambassador Teas (Pvt) Ltd and holds the position of Accounting Profession representative of the Organizational Professional Association (OPA) for the year 2015/2016.