This weird research-backed, goals-setting hack actually works

This weird research-backed, goals-setting hack actually worksThis weird research-backed, goals-setting hack actually worksOver the past four years, Ive discovered many incredible ways to hack my habits, set better goals, and improve my life. I have taught myself to love running, dramatically improved my diet and found the focus to write a bestselling book. Understanding how the mind works and using it to affect my daily behaviors has yielded tremendous dividends.However, there is one goal thats nagged at me for years that despite my best efforts, Ive never been able to achieve - going to the gym consistently. I hate lifting weights. Hate it. I disdain the strain, the sweat, the smells - all of it. The only thing I like about working out are the results. Unfortunately, theres no way to enjoy the benefits of going to the gym without, you know, actually going to the gym.Thats leid to say building muscle is all that important. Diet has a much greater impact on body weight and health th an exercise. But given that Ive already hacked my diet and no longer struggle with eating right, I wanted to finally get to the bottom of this stubborn challenge.Why was this one goal so hard to set? If I could figure out a way to overcome this challenge, perhaps it would provide insights into how to tackle other difficult to achieve goals.Habits vs. erfahrungs There is a differenceRecently, it seems habits are everywhere. A slew of new books, not to mention countless blog posts and apps, guarantee a whole new you by harnessing the power of habits. However, almost all of behauptung well intentioned authors promise too much. Many over-prescribe habits as a solution to problems they just cant fix.So what are habits, really? According to Dr. Benjamin Gardner, a psychologist focusing on habit research at Kings College London, habit works by generating an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. Habits are simply how the brain learns to do things without deliberatio n. These impulses can be put to good use, but only certain behaviors can become habits.Building a habit is relatively simple - just harness the impulse. For new habits to take hold, provide a clear trigger, make the behavior easy to do, and ensure it occurs frequently. For example, by completely removing unhealthy food from my home and eating the same thing every morning, my diet became a healthy habit. I extracted the decision making process out of what I eat at home.However, if the behavior requires a high degree of intentionality, effort, or deliberation, it is not a habit. Although proponents of habits tout them as miracle cures for doing things wed rather not do, Im sorry to say thats snake oil. All sorts of tasks arent habits and never will be. By definition, doing things that are effortful arent habits.Unfortunately, this means behaviors that require hard work and deliberate practice arent good candidates for habit-formation. For example, although I make time for it every da y, writing is not a habit. Writing is hard work. If I waited for an impulse to write, Id never do it. To get better at writing requires concentration and directed effort to make sense of the words as they go from the research to my head and then to the screen. Similarly, lifting weights isnt a habit because getting stronger requires working harder.So if these type of behaviors arent habits, what are they? Theyre praxiss. A routine is a series of behaviors regularly practiced. Routines dont care if you feel an urge or not, they just need to get done. When I finally realized I would never succeed at making going to the gym a habit, I began looking for how to establish a routine instead.Now lets get back to the meat of this technique, goal setting.Burn or burn The ultimate goal-setting hackA word of warning. Before I share one technique I used to finally get myself to go to the gym regularly, I need to share a few disclaimers.First, this technique, as effective as it is, can be danger ous. It is a very good way to get you to do a routine but provides no safeguards against doing the wrong thing again and again. Goal setting will hurt you if you set the wrong goals. If youre doing something counterproductive, this technique will only get you to do more of it. For example, doing tons of sit-ups wont help you (and may actually hurt you) if youre also drinking sugary sodas every day.Second, this method is not good for getting other people to do things. This is for personal use only so dont try and force it on people who have to do what you tell them, like employees or your kids.Finally, this isnt the only method you can use and admittedly this is a rather brute force strain of behavior change. If learning to love a behavior is an vorkaufsrecht, I recommend trying a different technique. For example, Ive written about finding your MEA your Minimum Enjoyable Action. The MEA method is great for simple behaviors you enjoy doing. I learned to love running because I always enjoyed going on walks. Finding my MEA proved very effective at slowly improving my stamina until running replaced walking as an enjoyable pastime.However, there are certain things we just dont like doing, but we must do anyway. These behaviors require diligence, grit, hard work and consistency. This is where what I call the burn or burn technique comes in.How it worksPick your routine. For me, my routine was hitting the gym.Book your time. Make time in your schedule for the routine. If you dont reserve the time as you would booking an appointment or important meeting, the routine wont happen.Find a crisp $100 bill. Other denominations will work too but it has to be an amount youd hate to lose.Find a lighter.Buy a wall calendar and place it somewhere youll see every day. My calendar is in my closet and its the first thing I see when I get dressed in the morning.Tape the $100 bill to todays date in the calendar and place the lighter somewhere visible near the wall calendar.Now you ha ve a choice to make. Everyday, when the time comes to do your routine, you can chose either option A and do the routine, which in my case was to feel the burn in the gym, or option B and literally burn your money. You cant give the money to someone or buy something with it, you have to set it aflame.Yes, I know its technically illegal to destroy government tender but the reason this technique works is that you should never have to actually burn the money. Instead, the threat of watching your money go up in smoke makes this technique work. Ive been on burn or burn for six months now and I havent burned a bill yet. (UPDATE Im going on 17 months now and still havent burned the bill.)Why it worksAs radical as burn or burn sounds, theres good science to support why its so effective. For one, its no surprise we hate losing money. But why not pay yourself for doing the routine instead of taking money away? Social scientists tell us humans feel the psychological pain of loss twice as powerf ully as the satisfaction of a gain - a phenomenon known as loss aversion.Furthermore, people are notoriously awful at predicting their future actions. Sure, Ill go to the gym tomorrow, Id say, but when tomorrow came, Id find an excuse. The theory of hyperbolic discounting helps explain why what we say we will do in the future is not what we do when the time comes to actually do it. We are present-biased, meaning we fail to properly value benefits we wont realize for some time. These psychological tendencies conspire to keep us from doing the things we know we should.The burn or burn technique works by binding us to a financially painful contract so we cant weasel out of it when the task needs to get done. In fact, a similar technique was shown to be amazingly effective at helping smokers kick their addiction to cigarettes. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that when smokers were asked to risk their own money, they were much more likely to quit.Unfor tunately, the researchers in the smoking study found that very few smokers would agree to risk their money. Perhaps these test subjects knew that if they wagered their own cash, theyd have to actually stop smoking, something they likely did not want to do.I too struggled with starting burn or burn because I knew it meant Id have to actually do the uncomfortable work. Then, I finally realized how ridiculous this line of thinking was. Why would I resist a goal setting technique that virtually guaranteed I would accomplish my goal?If I wasnt ready to commit, then I should forget the goal altogether. But if I really wanted it, I should gladly put money on the line to make sure Id do the heavy lifting. After several weeks of difficult deliberation, I finally made my decision. I nailed the calendar to my wall, taped my money to the date, and put my lighter on the shelf where it still sits today and every day.Nirs Note This article on goal setting was originally published in early 2016 but got such a great reader response that I decided to expand and update it along with adding the video above. Let me know what you think in the comments.This column first appeared on Nir Far.

RBS Bonuses Cut By 90 Percent

RBS Bonuses Cut By 90 PercentRBS Bonuses Cut By 90 PercentIn other not-so-cheery RBS news, over the weekend reports surfaced about the bank considering cutting 20,000 jobs before the end of the month, whenits expectedto unveil its next round of billions of dollars in losses.

Salary Negotiation Tips Know How Much Money Youre Worth

Salary Negotiation Tips Know How Much Money Youre WorthSalary Negotiation Tips Know How Much Money Youre WorthAsk yourself, What range would the company have to pay to find someone like me?The Ten Commandments of Salary Negotiation (parte 5) Salary expert Jack Chapman offers 10 lessons on salary negotiation in the vein of the Ten Commandments.Your skills and talents are worth something and you want to get paid the fair-market value when a company makes you a salary offer. But what is your market value? Dont trust the hiring company. Find out for yourself.You can easily research the jobs salary range. Your goal is to find typical job salaries for people with similar experience and skills in your industry.In other words, answer the question, What range would the company have to pay to find someone like me? Put another way, If I dont take the job what would the company have to offer to find someone as good as me? Without having this kind of salary data you wont be able to substantiate y our case for the salary you want.Your fair-market value is not one tidy number, but a range. It is a composite of three components your objectively researched value, your individual value and your future value.Once you know the job title and perhaps the job description, youll be able to hone in on your objectively researched value or, simply put, the present going rate.The Internet in general, augmented by your librarys subscriptions to data, should give you enough data to get a fix on the competitive rate.These sites can help shape your opinionPayScale.com - collects ongoing salary data directly from visitors.Salary.com - collects salary data from companies and customizes it to location, size of company, etc.CareerJournal.com - has articles about salary trends.Bureau of Labor Statistics - supplies surveys of corporate payroll data and employee questionnaires.You wont get one simple numeric answer, but with an hour or so of effort, search and printouts, you can get a range for t he pay-level comparison. Once thats done, the two other factors above should be calculated.Your individual value accounts for your special training, assets, skills, competencies, etc., that are of value to your employer. Finally, take into account any long-term rewards like profit-sharing, wertzuwachs bonuses, raises, stock options, etc., that are part of your package to determine your future value.Blending these three numbers gives you negotiation power. Instead of Heres what Id like, you can say, Heres the range of what others are paid, and why I should be paid the top of the range.Read other installments in this seriesPart 1 Salary Negotiation Tips Thou Shalt Not Speak Too SoonPart 2 Salary Negotiation Tips Thou Shalt Not Regret Salary DisclosurePart 3 Salary Negotiation Tips Let the Employer Make the First Salary OfferPart 4 Salary Negotiation Tips Thou Shalt Not AgreePart 5 Salary Negotiation Tips Know How Much Money Youre WorthPart 6 Salary Negotiation Tips Thou Shalt Covet Th ine Own Benefits and PerksPart 7 Salary Negotiation Tips This Is the Job Thou CovetethPart 8 Salary Negotiation Tips Thou Shalt Not Worry about Earthly EconomyPart 9 Salary Negotiation Tips Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of Thy Salary in VainPart 10 Salary Negotiation Tips Honor Thy Wealth and Prosperity

4 Common Salary Negotiation Hurdles ( How to Overcome Them)

4 Common Salary Negotiation Hurdles ( How to Overcome Them)4 Common Salary Negotiation Hurdles ( How to Overcome Them) You set up a meeting with your manager. You sit down, feeling confident. You ask for a raise . And then, you receive pushback. Bringing up salary discussions with your employer is nerve-racking enough - when you run into an obstacle, you might just feel like giving up altogether. But if you can summon up the courage to push back, theres a good chance youll succeed 84 percent of people confident enough to negotiate are successful.Of course, you have to be careful in your approach - theres a right way and a wrong way to counter a rebuff. To help you prepare, weve compiled some of the most common salary negotiation hurdles job seekers and employees run into, as well as expert advice on how to handle them.Occasionally, you see characters in movies or TV shows going to their bosses, hat in hand, to explain that they need a raise since because they hav e a new baby on the way, or just put a down payment on a house. But approaching salary negotiations from a self-serving perspective is rarely effective. Instead, share what youve done for the company that justifies getting a raise.Come up with a list of your accomplishments, such as revenue youve generated for the company, successes around cutting costs, improving efficiencies or customer satisfaction youve achieved, recommends Steve Saah, Executive Director of Robert Half Finance & Accounting . Communicate specific examples during the salary negotiation process to strengthen your case for why you deserve a raise.When employees demonstrate that their efforts have had a materie (positive) impact on the organizations, companies often reward them financially to a) incentivize them to do more great work and b) stay at the company for longer - hiring and training new employees is expensiveRebuttals like this are exactly why you need to do your research before arriving at the negotiatio n table. If you dont have a concrete idea of how much you deserve to be paid, you wont be able to effectively respond.You are much more likely to get a raise if your boss believes by walking out the door that you can earn at least 15 percent more than your current salary. While threatening to quit is not a good negotiation technique, educating your boss about what the market is paying for your skills (assuming its much higher than what youre making) sends the same message in a less offensive way, says Marc Prosser, Co-Founder of FitSmallBusiness.com .One free tool worth leveraging is Glassdoors Know Your Worth salary estimator - just enter a few data points like your job title, company and location, and youll get a free, personalized estimate of your market worth.A response to this statement could be, Based on my research, the market rate for a position similar to mine is in the range of ____. Use that as a starting point for the discussion, Saah suggests.If youre skeptical abou t the veracity of this statement, it might still be worth lightly pushing back. You can do this by meeting the employer on their level, and talking about things in terms of dollars and cents.Begin by understanding what the dollar value of salary increase that you want is. Say it is $1,000. Then determine ways that you can identify - or have already identified - $1,000 in potential budget savings or revenue increases and propose some solutions to your manager. This will show that you respect the budget process and are sensitive to managing the bottom line, says Patrick Lynch, President of staffing firm CMP .But if you come to realize that its truly out of their hands, ask when you can revisit the conversation - and hold them to it.You might say, I appreciate your point of view or the financial state of the company right now. What do I need to do to earn consideration for a raise or promotion in the future? Then, work on any areas identified and show your progress, says Linda Swin dling, author of Ask Outrageously The Secret to Getting What You Really Want .Finally, see if you can negotiate for perks or benefits that dont cost any money.Discuss other non-monetary perks, such as additional time off, telecommuting one day per week or more flexible hours if the company cant bump up your pay, Saah proposes.At this point, what you should do next really depends on your personal circumstances. If youve tried all of the above tactics to no avail and arent willing to leave your current position, you may just want to revisit the conversation at a more opportune moment. But if youre prepared to walk, you might as well put the ball in your employers court one brde time.State in as polite a way as possible that there is a market rate for your talents, and that it is your hope that your current employer will make it a priority to pay you in accordance with your market rate and the contribution you are making to the organization, advises Brett Hoogeveen, co-owner of leader ship & culture consulting firm MindSet, LLC . What you are saying here is that you want to stay with your employer, but that you are making it clear that the employer needs to take accountability for keeping up with market rates if they want to retain your talent.If your employer comes around, great If they dont, its time to keep an eye open for new opportunities. If a company isnt willing to pay you what you deserve, another company likely will.

The Foolproof Graphic Design Resume Strategy

The Foolproof Graphic Design Resume Strategy Whispered Graphic Design Resume Secrets As an excess bonus, you also receive a work interview tracker that will help you keeping track of passed and upcoming job interviews. Infographic resumes are very new trend. Boost your opportunities to receive a desirable job with this expert CV freebie. Dont be generic by merely listing your abilities and experiences. You want to create your resume unforgettable, so opt for a vorlage that you may inject your personality into. Youre searching for infographic resume templates. The template is devised by A distinctive and modern resume template with experience timeline along with education timeline. Each template gives structure, examples and tips so you dont need to start from scratch when creating your resume. Whispered Graphic Design Resume Secrets The times you need to use a creative resume are fewer than when you ought to use a formal resume. Its content-packed layout is fantastic fo r engaging employers with several facts, from experience to education. Everyone hopes to put on an opportunity to impress potential new employer at a job interview, but theres no denying that interviews can be quite stressful Keep in mind, each resume needs to be different, based on the job in question. Infographic resumes supply you with the chance to creatively show off your finest asplatzdeckchens. They are not for everyone, however, and sometimes a traditional resume will be more appropriate, depending on the situation. All About Graphic Design Resume Downloading the readymade designer Resume Templates will supply you privilege of getting the very best opportunity of expressing yourself in the most effective method. Layers are simple to edit and create the manner in which you want them to be. Good-looking resume templates appear more professional and provide the impression that youve spent some time in making a high quality document. Light blue is utilized to accentuate headings for far better content hierarchy. The Truth About Graphic Design Resume A good deal of graphic designer job positions can be found in various industries and fields of expertise. Theres no need to be worried about looking to discover a job working for somebody else since there are a lot of opportunities for people like you to get started working at home. You will have the ability to pick and choose what kind of work feels suitable for you. Theres such a wide choice of jobs to select from, that its just about impossible NOT to find work after you start looking. The True Meaning of Graphic Design Resume Based on the kind of application process youre addressing, it could be appropriate to include samples of your work in your CV. Including an expert photo of yourself is a fantastic idea for creative resumes. Both may be used to create chronological or functional resumes. Get your fantasy job with the support of this completely free expert PSD freebie. Get exploring and perhaps you are spotting something you feel is going to earn an effect on your job seeking process. If you wish to make sure your task is perfect then its absolutely necessary you dont neglect the accuracy and professionalism of the job. Still, it is a great concept to make your resume reflect your perfect work atmosphere. Folks use a variety of resume templates which use different schrift of design approaches, but ultimately its always likely to come to the simple fact that your resume should convey a very clear message above your skills, your experience, and also why youd be the ideal candidate for the position. Although designers are by and large predicted to create fancy layouts, they also will need to have the ability to write well. It can be exceedingly tiresome trying to make the resume from scratch. Pandora comes with a colorful header, left sidebar and standard layout. The Good, the Bad and Graphic Design Resume It is essential for art directors to realize your work. There are five things that you ought to know while creating your resume. Now that you know what things to search for, its time to begin. If youre having trouble getting attention, be sure that you have a look at our tips to receive your resume noticed. The requirement of graphic designer resume occurs whenever you dont know exactly the ideal option for your requirement. Otherwise, you could also employ a graphic designer that will help you out. If you would like to be a graphic designer, you can showcase your graphic design abilities. Outstanding work by a number of the very best graphic designers in the designer community at the moment. A resume ought to be treated among your key design jobs. These templates can provide you a number of designs and features. If youre a designer, you obviously need to set yourself aside from the competition and showcase all your design skills on that single document. A Motion graphic designer resume needs to incorporate an appropriate graphic designer job description and the above template can help you to acquire the most appropriate description according to your requirement.

Battling the Skills Gap by Asking the Right Interview Questions - Spark Hire

Battling the Skills Gap by Asking the Right Interview Questions - Spark HireThe questions you choose to ask your candidates are crucial and form the foundation of your interview. By asking the right questions, you will gain insight on important things to know about a potential hire. If you ask close-ended questions, you wont learn anything about how a candidate works and if they will be a successful team member.Below are some interview questions you should be asking your candidates that will help ensure that you overcome the skills gap and hire top-notch talentTell me about how you continue to expand your skills.You will want to hear about all of the skills the candidate has and which skills theyve worked hard to develop. Asking this question will not only help you identify a candidates relevant qualifications, but can help you gauge how serious a candidate is about professional growth.Whats your least favorite thing about your current ort?You will know a candidate is not right for a position if they answer this question by saying their least favorite task is something that they will be required to do frequently. This question will also help you determine if a candidate fits into your company culture a metric that should not be dismissed.What is your strongest qualification for this position?This is an important question to ask because it will give you insight on which of their skills a candidate is most confident about. You will also be able to determine what a candidate believes to be the most important aspect of the position they are interviewing for.Ask a situational skill-related question about the position and how the candidate would handle this problem.Have a candidate explain how they would go about dealing with a problem they may potentially face on the job. A candidates response will allow you to judge their professionalism, skill level, and how well they can work with other people.Download Spark Hires whitepaper, 5 Ways to Use Video Interviews to Ju mp the Skills Gap, to learn about other strategies to connect with the great talent you need.Image thinglass/BigStock.com