Hasta La Gadget!

“Work without love is slavery.” — Mother Teresa

“Why You Hate Work” was the eye-catching title of an op-ed in the New York Times several weeks ago. The phrase really bothered me, I guess because what the article had to say was right on the money. However, in addition to citing numerous research data that support the hyperbole of the title, the authors provide a list of sound solutions to meet the challenges discussed.

The lead author Tony Schwartz is CEO of The Energy Project, a consulting firm that specializes in helping companies increase employee engagement, or as I like to call it Employment Enjoyment. They open with a heart-chilling statement that all too many people can relate to:

“The Way we’re working isn’t working. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a job, you’re probably not very excited to get to the office in the morning, you don’t feel much appreciated while you’re there, you find it difficult to get your most important work accomplished, amid all the distractions, and you don’t believe what you’re doing makes much of a difference anyway. By the time you get home, you’re pretty much running on empty, and yet still answering emails until you fall asleep.”

Wow, what a commentary on our work-life relationship! Their research consistently shows that increasing numbers of not only middle managers, but top-level executives as well, are feeling these same pangs of exasperation and frustration. They reference a study by a clinical psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School whose research focuses on employee burnout. In his recent study of 72 senior leaders, he found that every one of them reported signs of burnout.

As I have pointed out in previous discussions of employee engagement, only 21 percent of employees in the western world are engaged in their work. Globally, according to numerous Gallop poles, the number drops to an unbelievable 13 percent! That’s a tragedy, as it says that the vast majority of people are not even close to reaching their human potential. Schwartz and Porath conclude that “For most of us, work is a depleting, dispiriting experience, and in some obvious ways, it’s getting worse.”

Much of the problem is due to the ever increasing demand on employees’ time, taking most of them into a space where it exceeds their capacity and therefore the where-with-all to truly access their innate talents and achieve an end result that is beneficial to the company, to the customer and to them. Why is this is happening?

First, we have become a global community with business competition never as fierce as it is today. Second, subsequent to the financial crisis, there isn’t an industry that hasn’t reduced its workforce by one means or another, and yet, the demand on employees has increased. And third, although stellar growth of digital technology has provided ready access to endless information, and in some cases, even access to wisdom and knowledge, we are constantly overwhelmed with our hyperspace connectivity. Sometimes we just feel emailed to death!

What’s the path out of this conundrum? The need for employees to be more efficient and do more in less time and with fewer resources will not go away any time soon. How do we deal with this in a way that not only gets the job done well, but also provides value and fulfillment to employees? The Energy Project has some concrete suggestions.

In a joint study with the Harvard Business Review of 12,000 white-collar workers across a broad range of companies and industries, they found the following outcomes to be nearly irrespective of industry or company. Employees are more fulfilled and productive when four core needs are met:

1. Spiritual — First and foremost, doing more of what they do best and like to do, and feeling connected to a higher purpose. In my book BALANCE: The Business-Life Connection, I say they have found their innate Essence and connected it with a Need in the world that makes it a better place. They are working at their Life Purpose. That leads to Gratitude, which is always a source of long-term Fulfillment. The spiritual core need is the strongest factor in increasing employee job satisfaction and company loyalty. It’s simple. It starts with the leadership team. If they are energized by the vision and mission of the company, their very actions spread like a viral contagion. Everyone wants to be part of a dream that makes the world a better place. Thus, the leadership and the employees become much more engaged when their work provides them with opportunity to make a positive difference in the world.

2. Mental — Focusing deeply on their most important tasks and defining when, where and how they get their work done. They don’t want to be distracted by endless and often useless poorly managed meetings. This is most often a trust challenge for employers. We have been educated and programmed with the “nose to grindstone” model. If an employer cannot see an employee working hard and long hours on the shop floor, he wonders whether the employee is truly working and contributing. The more effective channel to engagement is to provide the employee with a task and timing for delivery and then let him or her, within negotiated reason, decide where and how to get it done best for the company. The quality and quantity of the output should be the measure of performance and not physical observation of long hours of effort.

3. Emotional — Let’s face it, we all want to be loved. Feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions by management and their peers is a powerful driving force for all employees. Study after study over the years tells us that after a certain level of financial reward, feeling a sense of appreciation and value is the most important motivator for employees. Have a sense of caring by the employee’s supervisor increases their level of engagement and loyalty to their company.

4. Physical — Opportunities to renew and recharge while at work. Every two to three hours of intense effort, this could take the form of a 15-miute walk around the block or the building, a brief meditation, or even a 10-minute catnap. For example, The Energy Project study found that employees who take a break every 90 minutes of intense work achieve 30 percent higher levels of focus than those who take just one break during the day. They also report 50 percent greater capacity to think creatively and 46 percent increase in a sense of well-being. When employees work well beyond the normal 40-hour work week, their efficiency drops substantially and they feel less engaged. At Catalytica Pharmaceuticals, a company my colleagues and I built in less than 5 years from 5 people to 2,000 people and a billion-dollar publicly-traded enterprise, we had a mediation room, which was used frequently by employees to recharge and renew their creativity. It works!

This research shows that the more each of these four core needs is met, the more productive, loyal and satisfied are the employees. And, when employee performance escalates, a positive impact is felt on the bottom line, as well. Employees are significantly more engaged.

Schwartz and Porath remind us of a well-known study carried out by the Gallop organization. In a 2012 meta-analysis of 263 research programs involving 192 companies, Gallop found that companies in the top quartile of engaged companies, when compared with the bottom quartile, had 22 percent higher profitability, 10 percent higher customer ratings, 28 percent less theft and 48 percent fewer safety incidents.

Finally, a word about trust as it pertains to Employment Enjoyment. Trust is the most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction, productivity and engagement. Inspired leaders know this and behave in a way that demonstrates complete trust. In my work over the years in founding and leading the growth of companies, I have found four company values that imbue trust throughout the company.

1. Be sure that all employees know that what they are doing is contributing in some way to a better world. It often is the case, but if not articulated clearly, employees may not recognize the value of their efforts.

2. Assure that all employees know and understand the overall strategy of the company.

3. Create the means for employees to clearly see how their efforts directly contribute to the corporate strategy.

4. Provide periodic feedback to all employees as to the company’s progress and the impact of their efforts.

The implications here are that you can’t command enthusiasm, creativity and passion. These are gifts that employees bring to work every day. They use these gifts if and only if they are engaged. Engaged employees, in fact, engaged people in general love to serve. Engagement was an option in the past; now and for the foreseeable future it’s an absolute necessity for long-term profitability and success.

Employee engagement is a powerful force. When accessed by the core needs mentioned above, even though employees are working with fewer resources and expected to deliver more, there is a remarkable triple win. Employees produce more, finds greater fulfillment, the company profits increase, and the world becomes a better place in which to live.

It’s simple human physics. When employee engagement climbs from 20 to say 60 percent, the employee is three times more productive and a happy camper, as well. Everybody wins. This is the only way in which companies can succeed for the long run under more demanding criteria. What are you waiting for?

Lottery winners, athletes and other instant millionaires, who haven’t adopted the strategies of the wealthy, often find themselves broke within a few years of their windfall. Meanwhile, many European royals and American aristocrats preserve their estates through the centuries. What do the wealthy know that you don’t?

Here are 10 ways that rich people think differently than you do.

1. Rich people don’t put their money in jars.
2. Rich people think about earning money before paying bills.
3. Protecting your principal is paramount.
4. Take advantage of free money.
5. Compound gains at 10 percent.
6. Stop making everyone else rich.
7. Self-insure.
8. You’re the CEO; Your CFP works for you.
9. Throwing money at problems is the wrong answer.
10. Tax strategies.

And here are the two cents on the details…

1. Rich people don’t put their money in jars. Rich people deposit their money into as many tax-protected and financial-predator-proof, protected accounts as possible. Why? To reduce their tax burden. To compound their gains at a lower (or free) tax rate. To prevent their own hands from dipping into the jar. And to ensure that if anyone in the family has a lawsuit, the estate is protected from any judgment. (In the U.S., your retirement plans are protected from everyone and everything. That’s how O.J. Simpson played golf and lived in a beautiful home in Florida, even when he owed $33 million to the Goldman family and hadn’t paid a cent to them.)

2. Rich people think about earning money before paying bills. Do you worry about your bills incessantly? If you were to add up the amount of time you spend earning income, and thinking of ways to increase your passive and active earned income, would it dwarf the amount of time that you spend worrying about bills and worrying about the economy? Or does fear give you paralysis by over-analysis — keeping you from doing anything to improve your situation? Do you look for solutions to your challenges, educate yourself on how to improve your earning potential (in both passive and active income) and get smart about protecting your assets?

3. Protecting your principal is paramount. Wealthy people lease their real estate instead of selling it. They preserve their capital instead of “reaching for yield.” They don’t lend money to people who have no hope of paying it back. And, they base their annual budget on the returns they make on their investments, rather than depleting their retirement accounts and trusts to pay down their mortgage and credit card debt.

4. Take advantage of free money. When you can borrow in the low single digits, that is almost free money. Instead of paying off your home or all of your student loans early, start focusing on reducing the interest to four percent or lower and compounding your investment gains at 10 percent or higher. The power of compounding is why you need to save and invest now, even if you have debt, and why you should think about ROI before paying everything off. Remember. If you deposit 10 percent of your income into a tax-protected retirement account, and that earns a 10 percent annualized gain, you’ll have more money than you earn within seven years, and your money will make more than you do within 25 years.

5. Compound gains at 10 percent. I had a friend who had a windfall of a million dollars. She wanted to pay off $100,000 in debt and then learn how to invest the rest. I said, “Why do you want to go from being a millionaire to a thousandaire?” Rich people think about paying off $100,000 debt with the 10 percent interest that they will earn on a million dollars — in one year. Check out the chart below, which shows clearly that 10 percent is exactly what stocks and bonds have done over the 30-year period.

Over the last five years, NASDAQ has more than tripled, going from 1372 to 4397.93. That is a gain of 38 percent every year!

Performance the Nasdaq Composite Index
March 2009 to June 26, 2014

Source: Money.MSN.com. Used with permission from Microsoft.

6. Stop making everyone else rich. Most people buy a car, get a job, get a home, get insurance, turn up the air conditioning and run out of money before the end of the month. You might think that rich people just have it easier because they have more money. However, the truth is that anyone can live a richer life if they start thinking more strategically. Healthy people can cut their health insurance in half with a Health Savings Account and a high deductible health insurance plan. Commuters can slash their gasoline bills by riding a bike or buying a hybrid or an electric car. Everyone can save (up to 90 percent) on their energy bills with a few smart, low cost conservation tricks.

7. Self-Insure. Are your life insurance payments killing your budget? Is your annuity really as safe as you have been led to believe? Most of us, outside of the few unlucky who will die early, can build up a far more secure future by having a solid investment plan, an informed will and tax-protected retirement accounts than we can by making the insurance companies rich.

8. You’re the CEO; Your CFP works for you. Rich people hire specialists and hold them accountable. Do you consider your CFP and CPA your friends? Or are you the CEO of your life, hiring financial experts to work for you? Do your CPA and CFP provide you with a rationale for their investing strategy and quarterly reports on their returns?

9. Throwing money at problems is the wrong answer. Rather than thinking money can solve all of the problems of friends and family, legacy wealth understands that writing a check is rarely the right answer. In The Queen of Versailles, Jackie Siegel gives thousands of dollars to a friend to try and save her home from foreclosure. The bank happily took the money and then just foreclosed on the home a few months later. So, who was Jackie really helping? Her friend, or the bank? If Jackie really wanted to help, she would have helped her friend design a better life plan, rather than giving her a few months extension on something that was bound to fail.

10. Tax strategies. By now you have heard that Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney pay less in taxes (on a percentage basis) than their secretaries. How? Long-term capital gains are taxed at 20 percent, or lower in some cases, including no capital gains in qualified retirement accounts. So, if you’re earning every penny you make, and getting taxed above 20 percent, then you are definitely working too hard. It’s time to learn how to make money while you sleep.

By Caroline Young

Whether it’s on a giant billboard, in a cheesy commercial, or filling a glossy page of a magazine, unhealthy temptation surrounds us every day.

Typically, frequently-advertised foods are the very ones we crave: foods high in ingredients like sugar, fat, and salt. Specifically, fast food restaurants’ advertisements and menus send environmental cues, which can trigger addictive overeating. Highly-processed fast food can become a craving, which is seen in statistics of obesity.

But just what makes certain ingredients so addicting? Why does it feel like we need more and more of them, the more we eat them?

1) Processed Baked Goods

Eating just one Oreo seems like it is just not an option. But why? Studies show an ingredient in many baked goods, High-Fructose Corn Syrup, can actually cause reactions similar to those made by drug abuse. When a sweet craving hits, opt for a more nutrient-dense snack like berries or another fruit with some cinnamon on top of oatmeal. And you may want to think twice about adding artificial sweeteners to your cup of coffee, because chances are, it may lead to greater sugar cravings later.

2) Soda With Caffeine

Soda’s combination of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, with caffeine, is the perfect addictive recipe. The caffeine goes directly into your bloodstream and blocks adenosine receptors, stimulating the adrenal gland to produce the flight or fight chemical adrenaline, which gives people a feeling of energy. In so many words, the body is being forced into an unnatural state that often leaves it exhausted later. And it’s easy to forget when you’re drinking a coke that you’re drinking tons of calories and sugar too. Only one can of Coke has 11 teaspoons of sugar. Acidic soda can also eat up and erode teeth enamel. If gaining weight and decaying teeth isn’t enough reason to avoid soda, the over consumption of soda can cause psychological effects. Studies show drinking too much of a caffeinated soft drink has actually caused or amplified a patient’s mental disorder symptoms.

3) White Bread

Do you wonder why it’s hard to steer clear of the breadbasket when you’re out at dinner? When it comes down to it, any processed and high-glycemic carbohydrates, like white breads, are hard to stop eating and make us crave more. One study shows people who consume more nutrient dense, low-glycemic carbs are less likely to overeat. Examples of lower-glycemic foods are most fruit, beans, and whole grains, which release glucose more slowly into the bloodstream, and helps to balance blood sugar and fat storage.

4) Potato Chips

Potato chips are high in salt and fat. When we bite into a greasy, fatty potato chip, our nerve endings send signals, which travel up to the pleasure center — the hypothalamus — of our brains. We eventually overload the pleasure center, and crash. Then, we want more, more, more. Even the “healthier” chips, like baked veggie chips, are usually high in fat. Instead, snacking on foods like baked kale “chips” is a better option when you have a hankering for a salty and crunchy snack.

5) Highly-Processed Meat

Cold cuts like ham and bologna, hot dogs, bacon, and sausage are all — yet again — jam-packed with salt and also various chemicals like sodium nitrates. Many of them also contain tons of preservatives and lots of fat. Specifically, hot dogs and sausage can contain up to 23 grams of fat. Consider fresh meats, like skinless poultry and roast beef instead.

6) French Fries

We all know it’s hard to just eat a couple of French fries, especially when we need that salty fix. That salt in those fried potato sticks is precisely what keeps us hooked, and always wanting more. One study reveals that sodium intake creates sensitivity to dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s pleasure centers. There is actually a connection between salt and addiction-related pathways in the brain. In fact, the same gene group that regulates your appetite for salt also regulates cocaine and heroin addictions.

7) Ice Cream

Also full of fat, calories, sugar, and often the addictive high-fructose corn syrup, ice cream can be difficult to portion. Realistically, we’re not going to eat a half-cup of ice cream, which is the typical serving size for grocery store ice cream brands, like Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen-Dazs. For example, a half-cup of Haagen-Dazs White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle has 18 grams of fat, 310 calories, and 28 grams of sugar. Most people will eat at least one cup of ice cream at a time, doubling all of those numbers. Instead, go for Greek yogurt and fruit, or frozen grapes, or frozen bananas. And if you must have the ice cream, consider the lower-fat and lower-calorie ice cream at the store.

The foods on this list are calorie-dense, lack nutritional value, and can be addictive. While most of us indulge in these foods every once in a while, if you find yourself constantly craving these addictive foods, consider writing down the situations when you start craving them. Where are you? What do you see? Do you smell something? What time is it? Becoming more aware of why you get cravings can help you make very positive changes to your eating habits

What do you think is the most addictive unhealthy food?

More From BuiltLean:

Are Hunger Hormones Making You Hungry?
7 Simple Tips To Control Hunger
8-Week Workout Program For Burning Fat

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On Monday, “X-Men” director Bryan Singer took to Instagram to post a teaser for “X-Men Apocalypse,” the next installment in the franchise.

With “X-Men: Days of Future Past” still surging through the box office, already grossing more than $712 million, Singer is wasting no time getting fans excited for the follow-up.

The director’s Instagram post featured what appears to be the partial first page from the “Apocalypse” script:

(Story continues below.)

While the photo offers few plot details, it contains a mention of the Four Horsemen characters. In the comics, the Horsemen are mutants who either volunteer or are brainwashed by the villain Apocalypse to do his evil bidding. Each of these characters takes the name of one of the biblical four horsemen of the apocalypse: Death, War, Famine and Pestilence.

Fans of the comics will note that one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen is the mutant Angel, played onscreen by Ben Foster in “X-Men: Last Stand.” There’s no word yet on whether or not Foster will reprise the role in “X-Men Apocalypse.”

Screen Crush notes that the Horsemen were teased in the “Days of Future Past” end-credit scene, which showed Apocalypse in his younger days in Egypt, accompanied by four hooded figures on horseback.

“X-Men: Apocalypse” is scheduled for a 2016 release.

With their flashing lights, roaring fans, and Blade Runner-esque designs, a lot of tabletop vapes these days place more emphasis on maintaining hyper-precise temperature gradients than in providing a relaxing and enjoyable user experience. The new Cloud Evo takes a refreshingly zen approach.

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