" 9 Daily Habits That Will Make You Happier"

These minor changes in your daily routine will make a major difference in your life and career.

Happiness is the only true measure of personal success. Making other people happy is the highest expression of success, but it's almost impossible to make others happy if you're not happy yourself.

With that in mind, here are nine small changes that you can make to your daily routine that, if you're like most people, will immediately increase the amount of happiness in your life:

1. Start each day with expectation.

If there's any big truth about life, it's that it usually lives up to (or down to) your expectations. Therefore, when you rise from bed, make your first thought: "something wonderful is going to happen today." Guess what? You're probably right.

2. Take time to plan and prioritize.

The most common source of stress is the perception that you've got too much work to do.  Rather than obsess about it, pick one thing that, if you get it done today, will move you closer to your highest goal and purpose in life. Then do that first.

3. Give a gift to everyone you meet.

I'm not talking about a formal, wrapped-up present. Your gift can be your smile, a word of thanks or encouragement, a gesture of politeness, even a friendly nod. And never pass beggars without leaving them something. Peace of mind is worth the spare change.

4. Deflect partisan conversations.

Arguments about politics and religion never have a "right" answer but they definitely get people all riled up over things they can't control. When such topics surface, bow out by saying something like: "Thinking about that stuff makes my head hurt."

5. Assume people have good intentions.

Since you can't read minds, you don't really know the "why" behind the "what" that people do. Imputing evil motives to other people's weird behaviors adds extra misery to life, while assuming good intentions leaves you open to reconciliation.

6. Eat high quality food slowly.

Sometimes we can't avoid scarfing something quick to keep us up and running. Even so, at least once a day try to eat something really delicious, like a small chunk of fine cheese or an imported chocolate. Focus on it; taste it; savor it.

7. Let go of your results.

The big enemy of happiness is worry, which comes from focusing on events that are outside your control. Once you've taken action, there's usually nothing more you can do. Focus on the job at hand rather than some weird fantasy of what might happen.

8. Turn off "background" TV.

Many households leave their TVs on as "background noise" while they're doing other things. The entire point of broadcast TV is to make you dissatisfied with your life so that you'll buy more stuff. Why subliminally program yourself to be a mindless consumer?

9. End each day with gratitude.

Just before you go to bed, write down at least one wonderful thing that happened. It might be something as small as a making a child laugh or something as huge as a million dollar deal. Whatever it is, be grateful for that day because it will never come again.

"B2B Marketing Predictions for 2013"

Change, innovation, progress, while these terms should always be associated with the positive, for marketers entrenched in their current methodologies, the future can seem down right scary as the lines blur. The ways in which consumers can now discover, consume and engage about products and services, makes it a challenge for marketing professionals to keep up. 

It only makes sense that with dynamic change, some concepts fall by the wayside, while others emerge to further our goals. Here are some pertinent predictions for 2013.

Is outbound marketing over?

2012 saw the continued growth of social media and the ‘Big Data’ explosion – will 2013 deliver more of the same, or are there more new strategies and functions on the horizon?

According to Useful Social Media’s research with over 100 CMOs, 2013 will see:

• The death of push marketing

With the advent of inbound marketing, it’s long been predicted. But will 2013 really be the end for outbound? We’ll get back to you on that in 12 months’ time…

• More customer centricity

The companies that understand their customers and prospects best and put them firmly at the centre of everything they do will have the greatest success.

Will your marketing be retro and responsive?

Meanwhile, on the Marketing blog, they’re predicting B2B will see the rise of:

• Responsive websites

By 2015, mobile is expected to surpass the PC as the most popular way to get online. All websites now need to resize automatically to the screen they are viewed on.

• Retro offline approaches

Apparently, more brands will decide to go retro and personal in an attempt to cut through the noise facing decision makers with a return to direct mail! Who’d have thought it?

Is marketing automation taking over?

The use of marketing automation continues to rise as businesses see the rewards those already using it well are reaping. SiriusDecisions has some predictions for how it will evolve:

• More choice, more functionality

The solutions available will become more sophisticated; and email marketing solution providers will enter the automation space by adding increased functionality to their existing systems.

• Advanced tactics

Those best-in-class companies that are already using it well will up their game even further with more advanced lead scoring processes.

The Modern World of Marketing

Change can be a scary thing, and making the exodus from our comfortable world where we know how everything is done won’t be easy. But businesses who do manage to adjust to the new environment may be the ones to ‘inherit the Earth.’

One example is the move many marketers are making towards streamlined measurement and metrics to keep track of how they are doing. Research has proven that businesses that use revenue performance management in conjunction with marketing automation are the best performing businesses out there.

The Brave New World is coming, whether we like it or not. So how do we learn to survive it? Predictions for B2B marketing in 2013 include the extended use of automation and the rise of responsive websites. What predictions have you got?

Photo credit: Blurred marketing lines – courtesy © Dmitriy Danilenko – Fotolia.com

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Sookie

Tomorrow People

Sookie Shuen is the community manager at Tomorrow People, a leading UK inbound marketing consultancy, that provides free advice and updates through a five step inbound marketing methodology.

"Eyes of the world on UK again for G8 summit"

One year on from the Olympics, the eyes of the world will again be on the United Kingdom next summer, as we host theG8 at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland.

Some people ask: does the G8 still matter, when we have a G20? My answer is “Yes”. The G8 is a group of like-minded nations who share a belief in free enterprise as the best route to growth. And as eight countries making up around half of the world’s entire GDP, the standards we set, the commitments we make, and the steps we take can help solve vital global issues, fire up economies and drive prosperity all over the world.

Lough Erne 2013 will be focused on three ways in which we can support the development of open economies, open governments and open societies to unleash the power of the private sector. Advancing trade, ensuring tax compliance and promoting greater transparency.

First, trade. There is no greater stimulus for growth in the world economy than trade and no more important battle than the fight against protectionism. As the G8, we have a collective responsibility to drive forward trade liberalisation.  I am already leading EU efforts to finalise a free trade agreement with Canada and to launch negotiations with Japan and America over the next year. I want G8 leaders to seize the opportunity of the discussion at Lough Erne to agree how we will accelerate progress across our ambitious trade agenda. To take just one example, the EU and US together make up nearly a third of all global trade. And an ambitious deal between the two could provide an enormous boost to jobs and growth adding over £50 billion to the EU economy alone.

Second, taxes. People rightly get angry when they work hard and pay their taxes, but then see others not paying their fair share. So this G8 will seek to maintain the momentum generated by the G20 on information exchange and the strengthening of international tax standards. We will look to go further including, for example, on tax havens by improving the quality and quantity of tax information exchange. And we will work with developing countries to help them improve their ability to collect the tax that is due to them too.

Third, transparency. The G8 has a long history of advances on development - and this G8 will be no different. The UK is meeting our commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of our gross national income on aid from 2013 – and we will be holding other countries to account for their promises too. We will also be leading the way in the battle against hunger with a special event on food and nutrition a few days before the main meeting, to follow up on this year’s Olympic Hunger Summit.

But I believe the UK’s track record on aid gives us the legitimacy to use this G8 in a radically different way by supporting what I call the “golden thread” of conditions that enable open economies and open societies to drive prosperity and growth for all. These include the rule of law, the absence of conflict and corruption, and the presence of property rights and strong institutions.

Transparency and accountability are vital for this. Too often, development at the G8 has been about rich countries doing things to poor countries. But at Lough Erne, we in the developed world will concentrate on issues that involve us putting our own house in order and helping developing countries to prosper. Take the issue of mineral wealth. We need to make sure that, for developing countries, this is a blessing not a curse. So the UK is leading efforts in the EU to require oil, gas and mining companies to publish key financial information for each country and project they work on. And I want this G8 to drive greater transparency all around the globe so that revenues from oil, gas and mining can help developing countries to forge a path to sustainable growth, instead of fuelling conflict and corruption.

These defining advances in trade, tax and transparency could lay the foundations of long-term growth and prosperity for generations to come. But to achieve them we also need to cut through the bureaucracy of traditional international summits.

So Lough Erne 2013 will return the G8 to its roots. The original leaders' fireside chat which inspired today's G8 gatherings took place at the Chateau de Rambouillet in 1975, organised by the then French President in response to the need to address worldwide economic problems. They held searching discussions, and issued a succinct declaration just 15 paragraphs long.

Nearly forty years on, we will go back to those first principles. There will be no lengthy communiqué. No mile long motorcades. And no armies of officials telling each other what each of their leaders thinks – or should think. Instead we will build on the approach taken by President Obama at Camp David this year: one table and one conversation with G8 leaders holding each other to account and ensuring that good intentions really do become vital actions to advance growth and prosperity across the world.

I look forward to welcoming my fellow leaders to Lough Erne and to showcasing Northern Ireland to the world as a modern and dynamic part of the United Kingdom that is open for business, with huge potential for investment and tourism.

Northern Ireland’s transformation over the last two decades was made possible by the courage of so many people across all sections of its community. Their determination and leadership has inspired the world. And we must show the same resolve to make sure this G8 delivers growth and prosperity for the United Kingdom and for the world.

"The True Measures of Success"

About a dozen years ago, when I was working for a large financial services firm, one of the senior executives asked me to take on a project to better understand the company’s profitability. I was in the equity division, which generated fees and commissions by catering to investment managers and sought to maximize revenues by providing high-quality research, responsive trading, and coveted initial public offerings. While we had hundreds of clients, one mutual fund company was our largest. We shuttled our researchers to visit with its analysts and portfolio managers, dedicated capital to ensure that its trades were executed smoothly, and recognized its importance in the allocation of IPOs. We were committed to keeping the 800-pound gorilla happy.

Part of my charge was to understand the division’s profitability by customer. So we estimated the cost we incurred servicing each major client. The results were striking and counterintuitive: Our largest customer was among our least profitable. Indeed, customers in the middle of the pack, which didn’t demand substantial resources, were more profitable than the giant we fawned over.

What happened? We made a mistake that’s exceedingly common in business: We measured the wrong thing. The statistic we relied on to assess our performance—revenues—was disconnected from our overall objective of profitability. As a result, our strategic and resource allocation decisions didn’t support that goal. This article will reveal how this mistake permeates businesses—probably even yours—driving poor decisions and undermining performance. And it will show you how to choose the best statistics for your business goals.

Ignoring Moneyball’s Message

Moneyball, the best seller by Michael Lewis, describes how the Oakland Athletics used carefully chosen statistics to build a winning baseball team on the cheap. The book was published nearly a decade ago, and its business implications have been thoroughly dissected. Still, the key lesson hasn’t sunk in. Businesses continue to use the wrong statistics.

Before the A’s adopted the methods Lewis describes, the team relied on the opinion of talent scouts, who assessed players primarily by looking at their ability to run, throw, field, hit, and hit with power. Most scouts had been around the game nearly all their lives and had developed an intuitive sense of a player’s potential and of which statistics mattered most. But their measures and intuition often failed to single out players who were effective but didn’t look the role. Looks might have nothing to do with the statistics that are actually important: those that reliably predict performance.

Baseball managers used to focus on a basic number—team batting average—when they talked about scoring runs. But after doing a proper statistical analysis, the A’s front office recognized that a player’s ability to get on base was a much better predictor of how many runs he would score. Moreover, on-base percentage was underpriced relative to other abilities in the market for talent. So the A’s looked for players with high on-base percentages, paid less attention to batting averages, and discounted their gut sense. This allowed the team to recruit winning players without breaking the bank.

Many business executives seeking to create shareholder value also rely on intuition in selecting statistics. The metrics companies use most often to measure, manage, and communicate results—often called key performance indicators—include financial measures such as sales growth and earnings per share (EPS) growth in addition to nonfinancial measures such as loyalty and product quality. Yet, as we’ll see, these have only a loose connection to the objective of creating value. Most executives continue to lean heavily on poorly chosen statistics, the equivalent of using batting averages to predict runs. Like leather-skinned baseball scouts, they have a gut sense of what metrics are most relevant to their businesses, but they don’t realize that their intuition may be flawed and their decision making may be skewed by cognitive biases. Through my work, teaching, and research on these biases, I have identified three that seem particularly relevant in this context: the overconfidence bias, the availability heuristic, and the status quo bias.

Overconfidence. People’s deep confidence in their judgments and abilities is often at odds with reality. Most people, for example, regard themselves as better-than-average drivers. The tendency toward overconfidence readily extends to business. Consider this case from Stanford professors David Larcker and Brian Tayan: The managers of a fast-food chain, recognizing that customer satisfaction was important to profitability, believed that low employee turnover would keep customers happy. “We just know this is the key driver,” one executive explained. Confident in their intuition, the executives focused on reducing turnover as a way to improve customer satisfaction and, presumably, profitability.

" 7 Changes For Higher Productivity"

Keeping your focus can be quite the task and as much as you don’t want to admit it, you love distractions. It turns out there really aren’t any secret tricks to staying more focused, but it’s certainly easier said than done.

I spoke with Tony Wong, a project management blackbelt and an expert in keeping people on task, so I thought he would be a good person to ask for some tips on staying productive. 

Here are a few of his tips for staying productive:

1. Work backwards. When you break down work into smaller chunks it makes it easier to designate the specific tasks necessary to complete the overall goal. Simply writing down “launch the company website” on your to-do list isn’t the most effective strategy. 

2. Stop multi-tasking. Switching quickly from task to task does not work. Studies shows that changing tasks quickly makes you dumber than being stoned. This means that your IQ drops by five points. Your IQ while multitasking could even drop 10 points, 15 for men, five for women. This means that men are three times as bad at multi-tasking than women.

3. Eliminate distractions. Make a point to shut out whatever it takes to get you to focus. This means locking your door, shutting off your phone, or even turning off the Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and remain there until your task is complete. 

4. Check your email on a schedule.  Checking your email constantly only lowers productivity. Set two or three times during the day that you plan to check and send emails.

5. Use the phone. Email conversations seem to slowly be eliminating the normality of a phone call. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead. 

6. Create an agenda. Most people dive head-first into their day, which often leads to panicking as they read through their emails. This accomplishes nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day. 

7. Work in intervals. It’s important to recharge throughout the day. Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge.