Why You Should Never Take Your Smartphone to Bed

Why You Should Never Take Your Smartphone to Bed

 LISA EVANS‎

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It’s 11pm and you’re sitting in front of the TV, checking your smartphone for late-night emails, maybe checking in on family and friends’ activities on Facebook and looking up the menu of the restaurant you’re planning to dine at tomorrow evening. You then head to bed, place your smartphone on the side table and try to get some shut-eye.

If this routine sounds familiar, read on. It turns out, using your smartphone, tablet or computer right before bedtime can set you up for an unproductive tomorrow.

Blue Light Blues

Nitun Verma, a physician and co-founder of PeerWell, a company that treats chronic disease via a smartphone app, says smartphones emit blue light that tricks the brain into thinking it’s in the wrong time zone. This effect peaks at the 480-500 nanometer wavelength. (The iPhone 6 produces about 550 nanometers.) Blue light, Verma says, advances the time that melatonin is released. Melatonin is the hormone that tells us when to go to sleep.

“It helps people fall asleep earlier in the evening and it helps them be more alert when they wake up in the morning,” says Verma. Exposure to blue light in the evening tells the body not to secrete melatonin yet, it’s not time to sleep, and throws your circadian rhythm for a loop.

To explain this further, Verma compares city and country lifestyles. Farmers who wake up at dawn and go out to work, Verma explains, are getting lots of bright light in the morning but as soon as the sun goes down, they go to sleep and wake up with the morning sun warming their faces. In the city, by contrast, most of us wake up in a dark room and at night we’re surrounded by bright phones, bright computers and bright TVs that emit a very cool light (blue light). “This causes a lot of problems where people have racing thoughts, difficulty falling asleep and the mornings are quite foggy mentally,” says Verma‎

Decreased Mental Alertness

Using a smartphone at night can keep your brain on high alert and prevent you from getting a good night’s rest. “It’s not just a light issue; it’s actually an activity issue,” says Verma. “If the phone is the portal to the world then you’re bringing the world to bed with you if you’re bringing your phone to bed with you,” he says.

With all the notifications and messages from apps, smartphones keep our brains on high alert when they should be shutting down at night. “If you have the phone in your hand, there’s part of your brain that’s always going to be ready to react to the phone,” says Verma. “Just holding the phone in your hand triggers the habit and it’s very hard to relax unless you get rid of those triggers, meaning you’ve got to put the phone away.”

Make Your Devices Sleep-Friendly

If putting away the phone or tablet at night isn’t an option, there’s another way you can help ensure your devices don’t interfere with your sleep. Blue-light screen filters such as Ocushield or Sleep Shield reduce the amount of blue light emitted by your devices. Verma also recommends diming the lights on smartphones, tablets and computers. Apps such as Twilight filter the blue light emitted by your device after sunset, while F.lux allows your screen to run normally during daylight hours but transitions to a warmer color at night. That can also be effective at reducing the amount of blue light you’re exposed to at night, protecting your sleep hours.

Verma also suggests turning off non-essential notifications to avoid interruptions in the evening hours, allowing you to relax just before bedtime.‎

7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit

7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit‎

People at the top of every profession share one quality — they get things done. This ability supercedes intelligence, talent, and connections in determining the size of your salary and the speed of your advancement.

Despite the simplicity of this concept there is a perpetual shortage of people who excel at getting results. The action habit — the habit of putting ideas into action now — is essential to getting things done. Here are 7 ways you can grow the action habit:

1. Don’t wait until conditions are perfect – If you’re waiting to start until conditions are perfect, you probably never will. There will always be something that isn’t quite right. Either the timing is off, the market is down, or there’s too much competition. In the real world there is no perfect time to start. You have to take action and deal with problems as they arise. The best time to start was last year. The second best time is right now.

2. Be a doer - Practice doing things rather than thinking about them. Do you want to start exercising? Do you have a great idea to pitch your boss? Do it today. The longer an idea sits in your head without being acted on, the weaker it becomes. After a few days the details gets hazy. After a week it’s forgotten completely. By becoming a doer you’ll get more done and stimulate new ideas in the process.

3. Remember that ideas alone don’t bring success – Ideas are important, but they’re only valuable after they’ve been implemented. One average idea that’s been put into action is more valuable than a dozen brilliant ideas that you’re saving for “some other day” or the “right opportunity”. If you have an idea that you really believe in, do something about it. Unless you take action it will never go anywhere.

4. Use action to cure fear – Have you ever noticed that the most difficult part of public speaking is waiting for your turn to speak? Even professional speakers and actors experience pre-performance anxiety. Once they get started the fear disappears. Action is the best cure for fear. The most difficult time to take action is the very first time. After the ball is rolling, you’ll build confidence and things will keep getting easier. Kill fear by taking action and build on that confidence.

5. Start your creative engine mechanically – One of the biggest misconceptions about creative work is that it can only be done when inspiration strikes. If you wait for inspiration to slap you in the face, your work sessions will be few and far between. Instead of waiting, start your creative motor mechanically. If you need to write something, force yourself to sit down and write. Put pen to paper. Brainstorm. Doodle. By moving your hands you’ll stimulate the flow of ideas and inspire yourself.

6. Live in the present - Focus on what you can do in the present moment. Don’t worry about what you should have done last week or what you might be able to do tomorrow. The only time you can affect is the present. If you speculate too much about the past or the future you won’t get anything done. Tomorrow or next week frequently turns into never.

7. Get down to business immediately – It’s common practice for people to socialize and make small talk at the beginning of meetings. The same is true for individual workers. How often do you check email or RSS feeds before doing any real work? These distractions will cost you serious time if you don’t bypass them and get down to business immediately. By becoming someone who gets to the point you’ll be more productive and people will look to you as a leader.

It takes courage to take action without instructions from the person in charge. Perhaps that’s why initiative is a rare quality that’s coveted by managers and executives everywhere. Seize the initiative. When you have a good idea, start implementing it without being told. Once people see you’re serious about getting things done they’ll want to join in. The people at the top don’t have anyone telling them what to do. If you want to join them, you should get used to acting independently.

Note: This list was inspired by The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. The book is highly recommended.

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Why the Future of New Business Is Social Selling

Why the Future of New Business Is Social Selling


 MONICA ZENT 

If you thought social media was just about being social, think again. Today it’s about “social selling.” 

Potential investors, employees, colleagues, clients and customers are literally at your fingertips. But it is up to you to build relationships and establish trust. And that is what social selling is all about.

Social selling is no longer optional for your business. It’s a powerful strategy that can help sell your ideas, establish credibility, secure funding, attract talent and win customers.


Social networking takes up nearly a quarter of all time spent online and reaches more than 75 percent of all Internet users. If you’re engaging with your target audience on any level via social media, whether for business development or promoting your brand, that is social selling.


As Dale Carnegie wrote in his timeless bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, building relationships and changing people’s thinking are the linchpins of success. Today, social selling is the optimal tool for achieving both.

Here are three steps to help you leverage the power of social selling:

1. Do your homework.
The basis of every good relationship is understanding. Take time to understand your prospective customer, talent, investor, co-founder, business partner or client. Building a relationship with this person starts with knowing who they are.

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social sites give us access to key information about each other. In an era when people are quick to open up online, you’re able to discern whom it makes sense to connect with and uncover valuable information about them, from their job to their alma mater to their reading habits.

As Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said, “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.” Because people are increasingly willing to share through social media, it is easier for you to identify and learn about your targeted customer or group.


2. Be authentic.
Once you identify people you want to have in your network, begin to engage with them. Find common ground and use it as an entry point to initiate dialogue and establish a connection.

Making friends is easy when you’re authentic. Like walking into a dinner party where you know only the host, your inclination when striking up conversation with other guests is to find a common thread. Find it, and you’ve got an authentic conversation starter.

It’s no different on social media. Interact authentically by responding to someone’s blog that you truly liked or give a shout out to a recently promoted prospect. Ultimately, you’ll be in a better position to create a tailored and authentic “pitch” with relationships already in play.

3. Nurture your relationships.
The next step is to deepen your relationships, the crux of selling anything -- including your credibility. People want to invest in, work for and partner with professionals they know and trust. Forge relationships; don’t seek transactions. Social selling is about engaging with people in a disarming way. It’s about giving and receiving. Nurturing relationships takes time and calls for authenticity at all times.

This strategy generates 40 percent more qualified leads than cold calling and allows you to build genuine connections. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower cost. Although these statistics might refer to a more traditional sales process, entrepreneurs would be remiss not to take notice.‎

Does Persistence Really Pay? ‎

Does Persistence Really Pay?
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Kaitlin Madden 

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The fact is, many workers and job seekers struggle with persistence nowadays. It can be hard to keep going when your job search proves fruitless after months of hard work,
you still haven't gotten that promotion you were hoping for or it seems like your "big break" is always just out of arms' reach. With so much time and energy put into our efforts to persist, doing so to no avail can cause us to wonder if our persistence will ever pay off.


According to Caroline Ceniza-Levine, co-founder of SixFigureStart, persistence does pay off, so long as we remember one thing about our path to achieving our goals: There is a difference between smart persistence and blind persistence.

"Persistence to a goal pays off as long as you can be flexible on how you get there," Ceniza-Levine says. "If your job search isn't yielding offers, then whatever you are doing is not working. You may have the right role and companies in mind but your marketing, your interview technique, your networking approach, or something else about how you are presenting yourself to these prospects is off. Or the prospects themselves may be wrong for you."

With that in mind, here are a few strategies for successful, smart persistence.


Pursue your goal from all angles
According to Tyler Tervooren, author of the blog "Advanced Riskology," persistence works best when there's a method to your madness.

"Persistence does pay, but only if it's persistence with a real strategy" he says. "If, in the worst economy of our time, your strategy is to send out a résumé and say 'Here, hire me please,' you're never going to get anywhere no matter how many times you do that. On the other hand, if your goal is to make enough money to support yourself and you're willing to try a bunch of different things like submitting an online résumé or portfolio, going to networking events, meeting influential people in different industries or even starting your own business, then yes, persistence pays off," he says.

To elaborate on Tervooren's example: As a job seeker your overall goal may be to find a well-paying job in your industry. You decide that you will send out 10 résumés per week until you get a job -- but after months of searching, you are yet to land a position. While your ultimate goal may be a realistic one that's well within your reach, your way of going about getting the job is unrealistic.


Instead of just sending out résumés: Seek out new networking opportunities by joining a professional organization or volunteering in your community and engage the companies you'd like to work for on Twitter and LinkedIn and take a class online or at a local community college to freshen up your skills and enhance your resume, consult a professional résumé writer to make sure your résumé is fine-tuned and captivating .You need be willing to try any crazy idea you get to make your goal happen; give up on the tactics that aren't working and pour more into the ones that look more promising. Do that over and over again and you'll get what you want.


Take off your blinders:
While it's important to have goals, it's also important to make sure you don't get so set on one particular path that you miss out on other opportunities that may prove equally rewarding.

"You cannot get so stuck or focused on that one goal that you forget to see other opportunities that might be even better than your original goal," says Jason O'Neill, teen entrepreneur and author of 'Bitten By the Business Bug.' "While goals are good in theory, if someone doesn't reach their goal, they often feel like they failed. However, if they take off their blinders, keep their eyes open, they just may see some other direction they never even thought of."


Accept that waiting is part of the process:
It's important to remember that your goals won't happen overnight, and that you need to maintain a positive attitude in order to persist successfully. Believing that your goals will happen in your ideal time-frame will only lead to discouragement, so be willing to wait for your reward.

"The ability to delay gratification is vital," says Dr. Sylvia Gearing, a clinical psychologist in Dallas and owner of Gearing Up Counseling Centers. "Sacrificing short-term pleasure for a long-term goal is key here. Success has everything to do with tenacity. The world is full of intelligent, talented people who never achieved anything -- simply because they gave up."

Essentially, while persistence is necessary in achieving any goal, blind persistence isn't. Pouring your time and energy into a method of achieving your goal, when that method isn't working, is a waste of time. Trying every avenue you can think of in order to achieve a goal, on the other hand, is when persistence really does pay.
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Millionaire Efficiency: How to Structure Your Day Like the Rich

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Millionaire Efficiency: How to Structure Your Day Like the Rich

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle.

Becoming a millionaire is not usually an accident.

Sure, you can win the lottery but the chances are 1 in 304 billion. And with modern medicine getting better and better your wealthy parents might just live longer than you do! You need a plan.

Now, I’m not pretending to be a millionaire. But I have had the privilege of growing up around a few. And my business is doing okay.

In this article I’m going to talk about some of the daily habits of the rich and successful. Hopefully you can apply them to your own business life and get closer to that magic number.

A word of caution about millionaires

I grew up in middle-class family that enjoyed both prosperous times and really difficult times. I am part of a family where my uncles and my grandfather are exceedingly wealthy but my father isn’t. This strange situation gave me insights in to both the attitudes and habits of the rich and successful and those that didn’t quite make it.

I once heard someone close to me say that you can only become rich if you come from a rich family. And while it is probably statistically more probable, it is also a load of shit. Now, I am not going to pretend that growing up around people who have made massive fortunes does not give you an incredible insight in to how to behave and think like a successful person. It does. But it also cripples a lot of people with arrogance and laziness. And for every millionaire’s child who also became a millionaire, there is a millionaire’s child who squandered it all.

And then there are the countless number of self-made successful people. People who did it without the advantage of good advice from grandparents.

Genetic millionaires?

Becoming a millionaire is a lot like becoming a professional sports player. Sure, your genetic gifts and upbringing are a huge advantage but, for the most part, you would choose to have average genetic abilities but be hard working, diligent and smart as opposed to genetically gifted and none of the other things.

Millionaires are made by thinking and acting like a millionaire; not being brought up by one. Understanding this is possibly your biggest step.

How to structure your day like the rich

Let’s get into the juicy part of the post – what exactly can you do on a day to day basis that will help you become financially successful? Here are some things that I have noticed my family and other millionaires doing.

1. Get up early

Take 100 millionaires from around the world and I bet not one of them sleeps in til 8.30am. Most of them are up at six or seven working away while everyone else is still eating breakfast.

Getting up early is something that great athletes, history’s most remarkable saints and the world’s richest all do. Muhammad Ali would go jogging while it was still dark before starting his actual training. The Buddha and many of the Tibetan yogis would wake sometimes as early as 3am to start meditating. And most business people are up before the sun.

If you want to have both the energy and the time to fit in everything that needs to be done in a rich person’s day you need to start getting up earlier. Start small but gradually try and get moving as early as if healthy for you.

2. Exercise daily

Most of the rich people I know and have read about exercise on a daily basis. Now, whether this is a cause of being rich or a result of it I am not sure. It is a heck of a lot easier to play some tennis when you have several million in the bank.

Here’s the interesting thing; most of those rich guys and girls that play tennis and hit the gym every day also did so whilst their companies were still growing. It is not just a new-found rich person’s hobby. And the reason for this is that the more energy you expend exercising the more energy you create. People who are fit and health get sick less and they can work longer hours with better concentration than those who eat a high fat diet and just get by on caffeine.

So is it really easier to play tennis when you have millions of dollars? I’m not so sure. Most millionaires are busy as hell from sunrise to well after sunset dealing with new projects, day-to-day affairs and different commitments. They make time for exercise anyway.

3. Don’t entertain self doubt

If you are anything like me you will spend a good part of the day doubting yourself. It is something I am constantly working on. But the fact of the matter is that if you want to become a millionaire you need to start thinking like one. And they don’t waste time on thoughts about failure.

This attitude shift is probably the hardest part of becoming successful. In today’s world we are pressured into doubting ourselves on so many levels. We worry about bills, taxes, healthcare, the terrorist threat level, the economy’s stability… we doubt everything. And that doubt trickles down to ourselves. We hate risk.

Rich people hate risk as much as us but they deal with it anyway. You need to take more risks. Calculated ones. It is like bravery – bravery is said to be not the absence of fear but the mastery of it. Its not that rich people don’t have self doubt, they just deal with it better than most.

If you eat a lot of sugar and fat you will eventually feel lethargic. If you take a lot of drugs you will eventually wreck your brain. If you follow after self doubt all day you will eventually fail at what you’re doing. Often times before you even begin.

4. Exploit what works and what works for you

One of the best bits of advice I have ever been given is to exploit what is working. This means doing lots of testing and taking advantage of trends that are working at the moment.

The internet marketing world is a confusing place. You can work on developing a community, sell a blog, start some black-hat operation, or start up a trendy fashion blog. The choices and options are endless.

And within all those endless choices there is lots of room to get lost, get distracted from what is working. So if you find something that you are obviously good at and something that is making you money you should try to exploit it for as long as you can. Don’t waste hours in the day looking for something new when you have something that works.

5. Take an hour for lunch

A lot of new business people will come in to the game thinking that they can’t afford to take breaks, ever. Well you can. You are not that busy. Unless you are a surgeon, a lawyer due in court or stuck in an inflexible shift you have time for an hour lunch break.

Most of the rich people I know stop for at least an hour for lunch. Its not that they want to head off for fancy lunches and goof around; its because they recognize it as important for efficiency. If you constantly strain your eyes they get sore and you get a headache. The same is true for your concentration. You need to relax it. You need to move your legs, get the blood flowing and get some sunshine. It opens your mind and rejuvenates your spirit.

Don’t fall in to the laziness of working through lunch. Be disciplined and make the time for a proper break.

6. When you stop work, stop work

One thing I remember about my father during his successful days is that he never brought work home with him. He often got home at 7 to 7.30pm but he never did any work after that. That was family time. Rest time.

As a self-employed business owner I often fall in to the trap of working long into the night believing that I will get more work done. The irony? I rarely do. I am usually so tired that I don’t function properly or completely wiped out such that the day after is a write-off.

Don’t do it. Stop work at 5pm or 6pm and don’t do anything (including checking emails on your phone) til the next morning.

7. Make time each day for study

The great thinkers, politicians, business-people, generals, etc. of history all took time out of their day to study. Every day.

This is an extremely important point that many people overlook. Your education is not done once you finish College. It is not done once you crack your first $100,000 a year. You need to constantly learn about new methods and ideas.

The most important thing, however, is to study people’s failures. Look at what people and company’s did wrong so you can avoid those mistakes. History need not repeat itself with your bank account or product launch. Find out where others went wrong so you can avoid it.

8. Review your performance each night

I once heard Muhammad Ali say that one of the reasons he was so good was because he thought about and “felt” each successful punch for three seconds after he had done it. Scientists later discovered that this method had helped his muscles remember how to do it such that it became natural.

Similarly, I once heard Buddhist lama say that every night he sat up in his bed before going to sleep and thought about his day. Had he done more good than bad? If so then he felt happy about that and then went to sleep. If not he thought about all the negative and lazy things and made a promise not to do them tomorrow.

This is really smart. If you want to become successful at anything you need to evaluate your performance all the time. What mistakes are you making? What are you doing right? You need to know all the time.

Why all of this is bulls$t

Here’s the truth. Becoming a millionaire is a total waste of time unless you are going to use that money to help people.

Warren Buffet (2010’s richest man in the world) and Bill Gates have convinced other billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to charity when they die.

It was Carnegie who said that, “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”

He is right.

Owning a successful business is hard work. It takes a massive amount of energy and time. While other people are out having fun and traveling or seeing shows you are in your office with a coffee and a computer working hard. So make sure you are doing it for the right reason. If you do it so you can have a nice car or house or so you can impress someone you hardly care about then I have the sad suspicion that you will have a lot of regrets on your death bed.

If, on the other hand, you want to make some money so you can help those less fortunate than you, contribute to charities and genuinely make a difference in people’s lives then chances are you will feel pretty happy about what you have had to sacrifice.

If you take anything away from this post I hope it is this. I hope you will work for the benefit of others or else turn off the computer and go and spend time with your kids.‎

Attitude: The Power of Positive atittude in the Workplace

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Attitude: The Power of Positive in the Workplace
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By Mary Jane‎
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• Did you know that 75% of employees are unhappy in their current job?
• Have you ever thought about how your attitude affects…
• Personality and work performance?
• Your employees, your customers, your relationships and your work environment?
• Workforce diversity, career success, and teamwork?
• Bottom-line results?
It all starts with attitude! A positive attitude is a priceless possession for personal fulfillment and career success. It is also an essential element for creating a positive workplace. It’s what really matters…
When we think about the basics elements of human relationships, we think primarily about the attitude we each bring to relationships, whether they are personal or professional in nature. What is the first thing you remember about someone you meet? Chances are it’s their attitude!
Noted authors, Elwood Chapman and Wil McKnight say, “The attitude you bring with you everyday will significantly affect what you can see, what you can do, and how you feel about it.”
We all know what a positive attitude sounds like, but how can we define it?
Simply stated, Chapman and McKnight describe it as the way you look at things mentally, your mental focus on the world. It’s never static; it’s always in flux – the result of an on-going process that’s dynamic and sensitive to what’s going on.
Events, circumstances, and messages – both positive and negative – can affect your attitude. A positive attitude can be infectious!
Let’s face it… no one can be positive all of the time! What we do know is that a positive attitude makes problem solving easier and the more you expect from a situation, the more success you will achieve (The High Expectancy Success Theory).
Nowhere is your positive attitude more appreciated by others than when you are at work. How does a positive attitude about diversity impact the world of business? A major change had taken place in recent years in the workforce: the generational and cultural mix of employees has become more diversified. The performance standards are the same, but the workforce mix is different. Business is complex and competitive – with comparable resources, including people. People with a positive attitude are looking up and forward and are more likely to work to higher standards of quality, safety, and productivity – individually and as a team. Working near a person with a positive attitude is an energizing experience; he/she can change the tone and morale of the department and make others feel more upbeat. Sometimes the reason people lack a positive attitude is simply that they don’t realize that they have a negative one!
A positive workplace is about the people and their positive outlook about their work and the organization that make the business thrive. The war for talent exists. Do we want to hire and retain people with positive or negative attitudes? The answer is obvious…Hire for attitude; the mechanics of the job can be taught. A company gets its edge from the attitude of its people – its leaders, its supervisors, front-line, back-office, entry-level and long-term employees. Employees want to feel valued and appreciated and will most likely be more engaged and stay with an organization, as a result. The higher the engagement levels, the more their attitude barometer rises. The higher the attitude barometer rises, the more business results improve.
Building and maintaining healthy, effective relationships in all directions – with people your work for, people you work with, and people who work for you – is a key to success. Business is a team sport, that’s a given. Nothing contributes more to the process of building effective work relationships than a positive attitude. More business successes are won on attitude than technical achievement. A supervisor who demonstrates and knows how to build a positive attitude can lead a departmental workforce with only average experience and skills to achieve high productivity and successful performance. It’s called “teamwork” and it happens often!
It’s important to remember that we all have a choice – to be either positive or negative in any situation – and we make those choices every day. By keeping our power and being aware of our own attitude and choices, we can protect ourselves from external circumstances and people’s negativity. Safeguard your attitude by solving personal conflicts quickly, taking the “high road” if someone behaves unreasonably or unfairly, insulating or distancing yourself from a person with whom you have a repeated conflict, focusing on the work and changing your traffic pattern to avoid people who pull your attitude down. Remember: Your attitude belongs to you and you alone!
Be open to new people, ideas and processes that create positive changes and improved bottom-line results. The business world consists of many people who are different from you. We’re dependent on each other to achieve common goals. We need to understand and work effectively with all the labor resources. Opportunities for us to learn about other generations, backgrounds and cultures broaden our perspective with new ideas, talents, and points of view – it all affects bottom-line results!
A word of caution – don’t go overboard by becoming a noisy cheerleader who spends more effort on projecting your attitude than nurturing it. Above all, don’t try to be someone you are not! Be who you are… Project the real thing! Be authentic!
Life is a learning journey and all we can do is to strive to do our best each day.
A wise person once said, “If you place more emphasis on keeping a positive attitude than on making money, you’ll be successful and the money will take care of itself.”
Be good to yourself, enjoy the ride and make a Positive Impact on your career and workplace with a positive attitude!
A Positive Workplace Means Business! ‎