I Stopped Buying Overpriced Salads and Then This Happened

I Stopped Buying Overpriced Salads and Then This Happened The plight of millennials is a hot topic these days. If its not our  fixation with social media and self-gratifying gadgets, its our seemingly apathetic approach to adult responsibilities. Mortgages, parenthood and job  longevity? Ha ha. And then, my word, what  about  those spending habits? How rash! Splashing cash without a real care in the world (or career for that matter). Wanting this and that we cant afford it but well take it; paying  for it later along with that hefty student loan and credit card debt (best gap year EVER). According to a range of reports and experts, it would appear  were all financially doomed; every last one of us selfie-taking budget-breaking  Gen Y-ers. Theres an  SBS article doing the rounds at the moment, entitled  I Stopped Eating Smashed Avocado and Now I Own a Castle.    Its a really entertaining read in response to another article by The Australian  which  highlights (and totally  generalises)  the ill-ordered priorities of brunch-obsessed millennials. The messages (while not totally literal in either castle or house?) are  just as poignant as they are comedic. Looking past the sarcasm and stereotypes (I know several twenty-somethings with home loans, sturdy jobs and children), what can we take away from both reads? Splashing cash on unnecessary items is  causing millennials  more money troubles than many would care to admit. Such ignorance to the bigger picture manifests neatly in our extravagant dining behaviours, which we gloat about online (my eggs are better than yours).  But is regular weekend brunching really  to blame for our monetary misfortunes, or is it just the social scapegoat for its slightly older and more boring cousin, known as lavish weekday lunching? Lets talk about food We need it to live Consuming it brings us joy Most singular items are within our immediate price range It makes for great daily Instagram content And, it can also be the perfect recipe for disaster. For want of trying to defend the brunching phenomenon Im inclined to engage in from time to time, I want to turn your attention to what I see as a far more harmful  habit, also guilty of robbing  our hip-pocket. That is, the  whole buying food out every day thing, instead of bringing it from home. Yes,  Im talking about  spending 5 times as much money as we should be on vegetables, fruit, caffeinated milk, eggs, yoghurt, porridge, muesli bars, meat and bread just to have  someone hand it to us over a counter in a paper bag or cup tray to take back to the office. The real millennial monster isnt smashed avo, its overpriced salads (5 times a week) When  we were kids, bringing  a  packed lunch every day  was normal (at my school anyway). Inside a brightly coloured lunch box thered be a sandwich waiting for us, alongside some fruit, a yoghurt and  maybe some cheese strings or a  biscuit  if we were lucky. Our pocket money was used  for a  new game,  clothes or kept in the  piggy bank for later; we certainly werent spending it on SALAD! Somewhere along the line things  changed. It happened around the time  we started earning a real salary and, instead of fulfilling our childhood dreams by  jam-packing snap-lock bags full of anything we want from our pantries, we opted to do away with the lunchbox altogether and splurge on fast food every day; a brand new kind of freedom altogether. Its just what everyone in the office does! I think our younger selves would have trouble digesting  the absurdity of this! Some simple  maths When you consider the premium paid  for packaging, plastic wrappers and pre-prepared food, its safe to say that buying lunch from a cafe or outlet every day is an unnecessary expense. Reading the aforementioned article on exorbitant brunching behaviours inspired me to do a bit of simple arithmetic (yet another thing my child self would struggle to swallow   voluntary maths, youve got to be joking). So, instead of dangling the  comfortable retirement carrot yet again (which  millennials  clearly dont respond to), I thought Id see  what real luxury might look like now, if we were to cut back on some of our mundane weekday food buys for a year. I stopped  buying a coffee every day and  now I Own an  Apple Ipad Pro!  At £2.50 a pop, buying a coffee 230 days of the year amounts to £575 Its a fair chunk of money considering there are a million and one ways to make your own coffee for cheaper. I stopped buying two coffees every day and now I Own a Delonghi Primadonna Elite coffee machine.  If you stop buying  two coffees  every day, you will save £1150 in a year! I cut out the blueberry muffin too and now I Walk past the bakery every morning in my Christian Louboutin heels.  Cutting out a £2.00 muffin every day will see your wallet grow by an extra £460 then rapidly diminish when you realise you can afford an amazing pair of kicks! I stopped buying a juice every morning and now I Eat an apple every morning as I walk to work in my new Gieves Hawkes suit. Dropping the daily   £4.00 cup will allow you to pick up a brand new £920  getup. I stopped buying overpriced salads for lunch and now I Am holidaying in  Australia for a month over Christmas. Saying no to the £8.00 sweet potato and feta salad could give you an extra £1,840 to spend on travelling the world! I stopped buying sushi for lunch and now I Carry my  homemade sandwiches in a real Louis Vuitton handbag. If you curb your tendency to splash out on a fresh sushi lunch pack every day, you could be the owner of a flash handbag with a £2,300 price tag. I stopped buying pre-made fruit salads and chocolate cake  at 3pm and now I.. Have The X Factor  playing on my brand new 3D television every  Sunday night while I bake some homemade cookies. Okay, okay, Ill stop there. Final thoughts I am in no way endorsing not eating as a means to affording luxury items; Im simply suggesting that maybe brunch on the weekend isnt actually so detrimental to us millennials, as long as we do away with  weekday wastage  and revert to a home-packed lunch like the good ol days.

Monster Resume Writing Service: Can It Really Help You Land The Job You Want?

Monster Resume Writing Service: Can It Really Help You Land The Job You Want?How does a Monster resume writing service compare to other ones that are available? There are a lot of them available online and many of them will promise quality work and the best possible result. Is this really the case?Resume writing service may sound perfect when you search for them on the Internet. Most of them do provide well-written resumes that can help you land interviews that are really competitive. However, when you are browsing the web for these services, you will notice that there are only a few that can actually deliver what they say they can do.Resume writing service does not have the time to actually sit down with you and make your resume. They will first analyze your resume, write a summary and send it back to you. If you follow up with them and ask questions about the details of your resume, you may end up wasting your time and money. So, how can a resume writing service to be good?In order to find out, you need to find a company that can give you some assurance. You can search through several companies and see which one actually provides the best job placement service. The ones that can answer all your queries and provide accurate and up-to-date information will do the best job.When you research the company, you should look for a few free samples. You should take note of the questions that you have, such as if you want to know if your resume has been checked before you send it. You should also be sure that they can provide you with the kind of service that you expect. After all, the more information you get about the company, the better.Make sure that you understand all the terms and conditions of the agreement that you signed when you signed up with the company. Most companies provide some form of a disclaimer that outlines your rights in using their services. Before you sign up, check for this and ask any questions that you have regarding the agreement you are sign ing.The best resume writing service will provide you with all the information that you need, including sample resumes, and the kind of feedback that you can use. Look for an experienced resume writer that has been in the industry for quite some time. These people know what they are doing and can create a resume that will help you land interviews quickly and easily.If you are looking for a good resume writing service, look for one that offers the above mentioned qualities. This is the way to get the best results in getting the job you want, and a well-written resume can certainly help you achieve this goal.

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese How to Get Your Team on the Same Page

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese How to Get Your Team on the Same Page When you have acritical deadline approachingon a big project, as a manager you are hyper-focused on doing everything you can to ensure your team meets it. Then it happens. Your worst nightmare. You arrive for work one day expecting to get a status update that shows progress being made on systems and key details, but you instead discover: Several team members involved in asquabble over who is supposed to being doing what. At least a quarter of the team doing duplicate work. Half of the team focused on long-term work that isnt critical,putting the key project on the back burner. After reaching for your jumbo-sized bottle of Maalox you keep in your desk drawer, its time to assess why your team can never seem tofocus on what matters. Why do they always seem to be confused about what theyre supposed to be doing and why? Havent you written them a million emails?Sat in meetings for hoursoutlining whats to be done and when? Well, yes, you probably have. But that may be part of the problem. It could be that your teamisntfocused on what mattersbecause youre not presenting a compelling enough message and leaving them on auto-pilot for too long. If you want to get your team better focused (and quit the Maalox habit), heres what you need to do: Change the way you deliver a message.Those Zen presentations where you present a metaphorical image with a few words? The photographs, bullet-point presentations and other messages you convey to your team via PowerPoint? Not as effective as good old whiteboard visuals, findsresearchby Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Zakary Tormala. In an experiment, he found that participants were more engaged by a whiteboard presentation and retained more of the information later than other methods. An added bonus: the participants found the person giving thewhiteboard presentationto be more credible than if the same person gave a PowerPoint or Zen presentation. Craft a better narrative.While you may put a lot of thought into a big presentation to bosses or customers, you may just wing it when it comes topassing informationto your team. After all, theyre paid to listen to you, so what more do they want? According to Zach Friend, a former spokesman for the Obama campaign and a communications expert, they need to feel anemotionalconnection to your message. In other words, while youre presenting facts about a project (when its due, key components, etc.) you also need to frame it so that it strikes a chord with your team. For example, you may explain that your customer is a David versus Goliath story, and the teams efforts willenable a small businessto survive and help people keep their jobs. To craft a good narrative, Friend, author of On Message, suggests: Grabbing your teams attention with a challenge or compelling question. Giving your team an emotional experience by narrating the struggle to overcome that challenge or finding the answer to the opening question. In other words, allow each listener to put himself or herself at the center of the narrative. Galvanize your listeners response with a resolution that calls them to action. Touch base often. Managers must remember that no matter how much they may wish it to be so, teams dont operate on automatic pilot. Without frequent communications, they can quickly go off course, finds research by Alex Sandy Pentland, the director of MITs Human Dynamics Laboratory. Pentlandexplainsthat his research shows that in a typical team, about 12 communication exchanges per working hour may be about optimum, but more or less than that can cause the team performance to decline. In addition, everyone needs to be given a chance to talk, as dominant motor-mouth team members can l (read the rest here)