Trying to Lose Weight or Eat Healthy? Stay Away From This List of 13 of the Worst Frozen Dinners.

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Don’t Eat That! 10 of the Worst Restaurant Meals

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How to Stop Being a Victim and Imagining the Worst (and Take Back your Personal Power).

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30s Tip: What is The Worst Mistake?

The worst mistake is not to make any.

Featured photo credit:  Snowboarder crashed in the snow via Shutterstock

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The Absolute WORST Day to Take a Vacation (It’s Not When You Think!)

I need a vacation.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working like crazy getting my book ready for publication, and laying all the groundwork to promote it. I coordinated with my 30 contributing authors to get their chapters polished and ready, I got the books designed, printed, and then shipped out to reviewers, and I’ve written dozens of guest posts to help spread the word.

Not to mention producing two video trailers, putting together a sweet launch offer, coordinating with reviewers… and doing everything I have to do as part of day-to-day client work.

All to say that I’m tired, and I could use a break.

And the book is done, launched last week – isn’t it time for me to be able to kick back and enjoy the fruits of my labor?

The prevailing wisdom states that our lives should follow a pattern that looks more or less like the one depicted to the right;

We choose a new goal – something that is important to us, that we’re willing to put time and energy into achieving.We work towards that goal. A lot. There are setbacks along the way, but we keep on trucking.We evaluate our success. As long as we haven’t achieved that goal, we buckle down and get back to work.Finally, we achieve the goal. Success! Victory! Now it’s time to reward ourselves with a vacation.

And of course, when we get back from vacation, it’s time to set a new goal, and start the whole cycle over again.

This is the prevailing wisdom, and according to the prevailing wisdom, I should be packing my bags right about now; after all, the book is published, the guest posts are written, the marketing is all done – in other words, the work has been completed, and the goal has been achieved.

Except that the prevailing wisdom is wrong, wrong, wrong. To understand why it’s wrong, we have to understand where it came from…

The prevailing wisdom comes from the corporate reality, and in that setting, the prevailing wisdom makes sense.

The job of managers in a corporate environment is to make sure that other people do theirs. To do that effectively, they have to do two things (in addition to giving clear instructions and allocating the actual work, of course):

Manage employees’ motivation. If employees aren’t motivated to get the job done, then they probably won’t. It’s the manager’s job to keep employees motivated to keep on working.Manage employees’ energy level. If employees are tired or burned out, then they won’t get much work done, either. It’s the manager’s job to manage workloads, and make sure that doesn’t happen.

Putting a vacation at the end of a project helps to achieve both of these objectives; it rewards employees for their hard work, which helps to keep them motivated, and it gives them an opportunity to recharge, so that they’re ready for more hard work when they get back.

But that logic doesn’t work if you’re running your own business, and in charge of your own income.

For one, you shouldn’t need a vacation to reward you for your hard work; the results of your hard work should be all the reward that you need. That’s the beauty of doing your own thing – at least part of the reason why you do it is that you love it, and find the work itself to be motivating.

(This intrinsic motivation is also why I believe that entrepreneurs are capable of doing so much more actual work than corporate employees; if you want to learn more about that, check out Dan Pink’s RSA Animate video about his book Drive.)

But even more importantly, because it doesn’t factor in two very important things: momentum, and the landscape of opportunity…

Momentum is a funny thing. You can’t touch it, or see it, but you can definitely feel it, and it can do wonderful things for your business. It is also the first big reason why you shouldn’t take a vacation after a big win.

Here are three basic rules for understanding momentum:

Wins create momentum.Action after a win multiplies momentum.Inaction dissipates momentum.

Simple enough, and pretty intuitive, right?

The upshot of these rules, though, is that after your big win, you should be doing everything that you can to ride and multiply the momentum, rather than taking a break and letting it dissipate.

There’s an even better reason to work after a big win, though: wins change everything.

Goals, by definition, are about changing something – if everything stayed exactly the same, then you wouldn’t have to work to achieve it. We have a lot of different kind of goals, but they all boil down to making us healthier, or happier, or better off. In other words, they’re about making our worlds a little bit better.

Better is good, but better is also different. It’s hard to change just one thing and leave everything else the same. Changing one thing changes everything. And when everything changes, new opportunities open up.

Now let me ask you, as an entrepreneur – when new opportunities are opening up, is it time to take a vacation, or is it time to seize those opportunities? Any entrepreneur worth his salt would say that it’s the latter – that’s just a part of the mindset that allows entrepreneurs to do what they do…

You know how when you start thinking about something, suddenly you start seeing it everywhere, as though you were “magnetically drawing it into your life”?

Some people call it “the secret” or the “law of attraction”, but I call it the “red Honda effect”. Thinking about something doesn’t magically draw it towards you, but it does focus your attention, so that you start noticing it around you (just like when you’re thinking about buying a red Honda, you start seeing them everywhere).

The same effect is at play when it comes to looking for opportunity. Just developing the mindset that opportunity is there, just waiting for you to find and seize it, will expand your frame of reference and allow you to see more possibilities.

(Want to read more about this? Check out Mindset by Carol Dweck, or Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson.)

Long story short? When things are going well, there’s always the opportunity to make them even better! :D Now, just to be clear, I’m not advocating the stereotype of the workaholic entrepreneur who never takes a break or vacation.

Entrepreneurs don’t need vacations to stay motivated, but we do need to manage our energy level, and vacations are a big part of that; it’s important for us to take breaks, breath some fresh air, and get some perspective on what we’re doing. In other words, even though we don’t need vacations as rewards, they’re great for resting and recharging – just so long as we don’t take one at a time that will take away our momentum, or kill an opportunity.

For an entrepreneur (or anyone who is in charge of their own income), vacations don’t come when projects are complete. On the contrary – they should come when the projects are still in progress, but you’re tired, and need to recharge to carry the ball the rest of the way:

Make sure not to skip the celebration box, because it’s important!

As the diagram indicates, our projects aren’t as nice and neat as the projects of a corporate employee, with a start, middle, end, and vacation before the next one. Our projects are messy, and blend into each other in a continuum of work and the pursuit of opportunity.

That’s great, and we wouldn’t have it any other way, but it’s also important to pause and celebrate the wins.

After the launch, my wife and I went out to a nice restaurant, and raised our glasses to toast my book finally being done and launched to the world.

But then the next day, I got back to work… ;)

What about you? Do you believe in a vacation after a big win, or do you agree that this is the time to look for new opportunities, and build on your momentum?

(Photo credit: Beach chair and umbrella from Shutterstock

Danny Iny (@DannyIny), a.k.a. the “Freddy Krueger of Blogging”, teaches marketing that works at Firepole Marketing. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark and Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on building engaged audiences from scratch (available on Amazon, or as a free download).

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The 5 Absolute Worst Months to Start GTD

Some months are the worst...

David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology is one of – if not the – most highly-touted way you can improve your productivity on multiple levels.

But implementing it isn’t something that you can just “get done”.

GTD can be dififcult for those stuck in their ways and trying to adopt it on their own. Sure, the David Allen Company provides resources that can help you get into it more efficiently and effectively, but it’s still a lot to wrap your head around.

Many people have to adjust their entire way of thinking when they try to use GTD, and that takes a whole lot of time, focus and effort. So choosing when to start GTD is critical.

Rather than offer the best times to start (which I may do in a later post), I’m going to go a different way. I think that by suggesting the worst months to start GTD you might just stand a better chance of committing to a start date, as opposed to waffling on one or trying to start right now.

This month is a bad one to start GTDing because it basically begins the summer season (for those living in the Northern Hemishpere). It’s a time where people want to enjoy their time, and not spend it learning how to best spend their time. Distraction levels are high due to the warm weather and the fact the kids (if applicable) are out of school.

Ask yourself this: Would you rather start to practice “Mind Like Water” or actually “be in the water” during the month of July?

In July, get out of your head…and get to the beach.

This is a month where traveling is a big thing. Spring Break for a lot of students, warmer weather in the tropics for those North Americans seeking refuge from the cold – March doesn’t even like a full month once you factor a vacation in there.

When you’re thinking about getting away at this time of year, it’s best not to think about getting things done at this time of year.

Don’t you have enough to do during this month? Doesn’t everybody that you’ll need to communicate with have enough to do that you’ll have trouble even syncing up with them when you need to – even without GTD as your ally?

The holiday season is stressful enough for many; don’t over-season yourself by tackling the adoption of a productivity system on top of things. You’ve got enough to do in this month without having to learn how to do it better.

Another time of year that seems to slip away just as quickly as it arrived. Summer is over, school is starting up and everyone at the office is hopefully refreshed from a few long weekends over the last couple of months. September is a time best spent getting connected with where you’re at so far in the year as opposed to tweaking how you got there.

The month may leave quickly because of all of the “starting” happening all over the place, but most people seem to take the entire month just to get back into a routine. So settle back into that routine while looking at it for what it is this month. Save the looking at it for what it could be for a month in the future.

This one may sound a bit odd, especially considering that most resolutions are made (and often broken) in January. But think about it. You’ve just come out a holiday season that basically has lasted for all of December (and those in the United States have been in that mode since Thanksgiving) and now you’re asking yourself to commit to putting a system in place to get things done – and you’re asking yourself to do this without any recovery time.

And people wonder why resolutions don’t stick.

January is a better month to spend reflecting on the year that just passed, to prepare yourself for the year ahead and recover from the holiday blitz you’ve just experienced.

The big idea behind GTD is that it will help you in your quest to get things done. The worst idea is to pick a month where you have less of a chance of completing that quest.

So, during which of the 7 remaining months will you start GTD?

(Photo credit: Close Up Calendar Page with drawing-pin by Shutterstock)

Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, and "productivityist". You can follow him on Twitter, listen to him regularly on his podcast, ProductiVardy, and read more from him at MikeVardy.com and at Vardy.me.

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5 Worst Pieces of Business Advice From Hollywood Movies

There are some movies that give great business advice. And there are some movies that give, shall we say, questionable advice for the sake of advancing the plot. If you’ve been taking your business advice from movies, you’re probably already in rough shape. But if you’ve been taking guidance from these quotes in particular, then you’re really in trouble. Here are some of the worst pieces of business advice from movies.

1. Wall Street (1987)

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.” -Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)

Wall Street is the classic movie about business and investing. But while some of the advice fits perfectly with the story line of the film, a lot of it doesn’t necessarily work in the real world. Everyone knows Gekko’s “Greed is good” speech, but looking at the last few years in investing news, it’s clear that greed, while necessary for a functioning capitalist system, can still do a lot of damage.

Let’s take a look at AIG just a few years ago to illustrate this point. After the “great September bailout”, AIG execs seemed to be driven by an insatiable greed. The week after the September bailout, AP reported that AIG executives traveled to California for a decadent company retreat which cost a reported $444,000 and featured spa treatments and golf outings. Then on the 17th of October, AP reported that AIG executives spent $86,000 on a hunting trip in England. News of this spending spree came just days after AIG received an additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve, on top of a previous $85 billion emergency loan given to them the month before.

Is greed good? I’d say, like all good things, it is only good in moderation.

2. Office Space (1999)

“Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.” -Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston)

While this may be a valid point, this conversation ultimately leads to Peter and his friends stealing over $300,000 from the company they work for. And while we were not designed to stare at computers all day, that doesn’t mean that embezzling money is a good way to get around that draining business requirement.

3. The Godfather (1972)

“It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” – Michael Corleone (Al Pacino)

Business is always personal. It is the decisions of people that direct the paths of companies, and it is always people who make the mistakes attributed to a specific company. It’s important to make decisions based on what’s best for the company, and not just what’s best for you, but if you’re going to take the advice from Michael Corleone, make sure you keep the other side of the coin in mind. There is no business without people, and can be no people without businesses to support them.

All that being said, let’s not forget what happens to Sonny.

4. Working Girl (1988)

“You can bend the rules plenty once you get to the top, but not while you’re trying to get there.” -Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith)

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in recent memory made their millions by being innovative and bending the rules. If Mark Zuckerberg had tried to make his fortune “the traditional way”, would he have had such a high net worth so early in his life?

Sometimes, bending the rules can backfire. But thinking outside the box and pursuing an entirely new business concept can be what sets you apart from the pack. So feel free to bend the rules on your climb to the top. As she says later in the film, “I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life working my ass off and getting nowhere just because I followed rules that I had nothing to do with setting up, OK?”

5. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)

“I realize that I’m the president of this company, the man that’s responsible for everything that goes on here. So, I want to state, right now, that anything that happened is not my fault.” -J. B. Biggley (Rudy Vallee)

Personal responsibility is what keeps corporations successful, honest, and in touch with their shareholders. The higher up you get in the corporate food chain, the more important it is to stay in touch with that need to be personally responsible for your work. Sure, when something goes wrong, you will have to take the heat. But if something goes extremely well, don’t you want to make sure you get full credit? You can’t have it both ways, you know, so you’ve got to take responsibility for what happens on your watch.

Oh, and a word to the wise: it’s probably not the best idea to take business cues from anyone in a musical.

What other Hollywood films feature dubious business advice? Tell us in the comments below, follow us on Twitter, or take the conversation over to Facebook.

Tucker is a writer and social media professional living in New England. When she's not staring into a tiny electric box, she engages in pointless acts of stupidity at BadBoozeReview.com and posts daily at MargeryJones.com

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The 10 Worst Energy Zappers and How to Beat Them

Let's face it. If you are trying to accomplish anything in life, whether it is work, raising a family, or even having fun, you need to have energy. When we run into trouble in the form of bad moods or poor productivity, its usually because we are low on energy. Oddly, many of us willingly subject ourselves daily to factors that suck us dry.

Here is a list of the top 10 energy zapping offenders and how you can avoid them.
Lack of Sleep
Duh, right? Well how come we don't get enough sleep? It needs to be a priority and you need to muster up the proper motivation to make it happen. Now, not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep, but some do. How do you figure out how much you need? Experiment. Measure how much you need by how you feel the next day. Are you dragging with droopy eyelids all day if you only sleep for 7 hours? Then that's not enough. If you feel mostly alert, then you've hit on the right amount for you.
Sugar
Avoid it. If you must eat sweets try to combine them with fiber which slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream. Most fruits naturally have both the sweetness and the fiber. The next time you have a candy bar or can of soda, watch for the subsequent energy dip that occurs within 30-60 minutes. Be prepared to nap because that's what you will feel like doing.
Caffeine
I'm sorry, but caffeine is the big lie. Don't hate me. It's simply the laws of physics. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Caffeine follows this law. Initially you will see a kick of energy from caffeine, but everyone pays the price later in terms of tiredness, insomnia, or irritability. This is obviously a personal choice, but there are many, including myself, who have improved their life by eliminating or decreasing their caffeine intake. Here is an article with both pros and cons to help you decide if you want to kick the caffeine habit.
Lack of Exercise
If you don't use it, you lose it. Your muscles store and therefore provide energy. Exercise gives you energy especially if you do it on a regular basis. Shoot for 20-30 minutes everyday to improve your energy levels. Another simple thing you can do is take a 5 minute break every hour to get up from your work to stretch and walk around a bit. So if you're feeling lethargic, get your blood pumping by moving your body. If you're feeling exhausted on a particular day, see #1 and get some rest instead.
Not Enough Oxygen
Many of us have shallow breathing most of the time. When we do that we're not getting enough oxygen which is the element we need to burn fuel inside our bodies for energy. Deep breathing will serve another important purpose and that is moving fluids through the lymph system. Your lymph system eliminates toxins which in turn frees your body to work on more important things like your goals! What to do: 2-3 times a day take 5 minutes to do 10 slow long deep breaths. Breath in slowly, hold, and then release slowly too. You'll be amazed how good this makes you feel!
Processed Foods
The more live foods you eat, fruits and vegetables, the more alive you will feel. Seek to eat healthy foods: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and good fats such as found in salmon, walnuts, flax seeds, and olive oil. Here are some additional healthy eating tips.
Dehydration
This is an often overlooked cause of fatigue. When you don't get enough water, blood flow to your organs, including your brain, is slowed down making you tired. At a minimum, be sure to at least drink enough water to replace what you lose through your daily activities. This amount will vary from person to person. While many people scoff at the 8 glasses per day rule, it is indeed a good rule of thumb (as explained here). It is also important to note that your water needs can come from juices and other beverages, but bear in mind that caffeinated drinks will make your body shed water so you may need to drink more if you drink a lot of caffeine. Be safe about it and just drink more water.
Stress
Life is stressful by definition, but for many of us, we make it worse by overfilling our schedules. Instead, stop trying to do it all. Figure out what is most important to you. Cut out the rest. Trim your schedule. Learn to say no. And try meditation. By simply meditating once or twice a day for 10-20 minutes will make a huge difference in your stress levels. If you're tired in the middle of the day a "meditation nap" is a great way to rejuvenate your energy. Another thing to elevate your happiness and decrease stress is to practice gratitude and be mindful of keeping your internal voice focused on the glass being half full.
Chronic Pain
Daily pain can take the form of debilitating back pain or as simple as chronic foot pain from wearing tight shoes. The thing with chronic pain is we become used to it to a certain degree. Many people just live with it. This is not good, because chronic pain robs you of energy. Pay attention to your body to identify any pain you are experiencing on a daily basis and come up with a plan to alleviate it. So, for example, if you always feel enormous relief upon taking off your shoes at night, you might want to find more comfortable shoes. If you have sciatica pain you might want to begin a slow regimen of simple stretches such at toe touching and hip opener stretches. If you are having knee pain, and are carrying extra weight, losing some weight might help relieve that daily pain. Other pain relieving strategies include stretching, massage, acupuncture, or a pain management program from a doctor who specializes in this.
Toxic People
People who are negative can rob some of your energy too if you let them. There are a few actions you can take. Make a commitment to not engage with negative people. Don't fight with them. Don't expect better from them. Instead, try to practice compassion for them. Maybe their negativity is a reflection of pain in their life. Focus on that when having to deal with them. Be kind and make it a point to spend time with positive people every day.Wishing you tons of energy. Please share your best energy tips with us in the comments!

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