It’s Good to Know: 10 Ways to Save Money on Gas

Editor’s Note:
It can be hard to think about spending money on fashion and style when your mind is on high gas prices. Here are some useful tips so you can spend some of your disposable income on other things… and still be able to get around town.

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From The Denver Post:

1. Lighten up. Leadfooting at 75 miles per hour instead of 65 will cut your fuel economy by 10%.

2. Avoid the rush hour. Plan trips or stagger your work hours to minimize stop-and-go traffic, which burns more gas than going at a steady speed.

3. Take a load off. Carrying an extra 100 pounds in the trunk cuts fuel economy by 1%.

4. Use your overdrive. If you have a manual transmission, shift up as soon as possible.

5. Keep an eye on your tire pressure. For every 3 pounds below the recommended tire pressure, fuel economy drops about 1%.

6. Keep your car tuned up. A clogged air filter can cut mileage by as much as 20%; a faulty oxygen sensor can cut it by up to 40%.

7. Use the most efficient grade of oil for your car. Using 10W-30 in an engine designed for 5W-30 can cut mileage by 1% to 2%.

8. Use regular gasoline unless your owner’s manual says otherwise. High-octane fuel won’t improve performance in cars that don’t require it.

9. Park in the shade. Fuel evaporates more quickly in direct sun, and air conditioners need more fuel to cool hot interiors.

10. Choose efficiency. A car that gets 30 mpg saves $600 a year in gas costs over one that gets 20 mpg. (We’re assuming $3.00 per gallon and 15,000 miles driven.)

(Sources: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy at greenercars.com; U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency at fueleconomy.gov)

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This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Why You May Not Be Making As Much Money As You Think You Should

By Michael Masterson

If you’re lucky, loving your job is its own reward. But when it comes to satisfying your sense of self-worth - and building wealth - the size of your paycheck can have a big impact. In fact, a 2006 study commissioned by the American Business Collaboration found that 49 percent of respondents listed salary as the factor that’s most important to their satisfaction at work.

So if you’re not making as much as you think you should be, is it time to start looking for a new job?

Before you start scanning the “Help Wanted” section of the newspaper, take a good hard look at what you do. Is your work really worth what you think it is?

I had a conversation yesterday with a writer - a friend I’d hired to work on a newsletter I consult on. It was contract time, and I had promised him “the best deal possible” - which is exactly what he got. He wasn’t satisfied. “Let’s face it,” he told me, “The success or failure of the newsletter’s renewals depends on me - and my writing is good.”

“I agree that your writing is good,” I told him, “but in the business of newsletter publishing, my opinion doesn’t count.”

What does? As JDG, a colleague of mine, likes to say, there are three sacred letters when you are in business - ROI (return on investment) - and they are the jury when it comes to determining the quality of what you’re selling.

Writers - screenwriters, novelists, magazine writers, and advertising writers - are valuable in business if and to the extent that they can generate positive ROI.

Writers who understand that can become very skilled very quickly and make a ton of money. Writers who refuse to believe that are doomed to spending the rest of their careers unhappy and underpaid.

But it’s hard to explain this to a writer who’s new to the business world. He feels, understandably, that since he’s smart and clever and works so hard, his writing is - or has to be - supernal.

Most writers I know (including yours truly) would like to think themselves equal to the greats: H.L. Mencken, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ernest Hemingway, etc. And given the time, energy, sweat, and blood they put into their writing, why shouldn’t they get paid a ton of money?

That’s what Stephen Gaghan used to think. Gaghan - who directed and/or wrote screenplays for many films, including Traffic, Syriana, and Rules of Engagement - found that no one listened to him when he was a mere screenplay writer. But when he became a director, he had an important revelation:

“Decisions, actual decisions, upon which money would be spent and movies created, were happening in flurries. The studio and producers were no longer impenetrable, implacable forces aligned in the cause of movie prevention but well-tuned, experienced machines for the production of movies. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be pulling together and they were looking to me to help them do it. In fact, as far as I could tell, the moment you remove the screenwriter, things actually begin to happen,” Gaghan wrote in an article for The New York Times.

“I don’t completely agree with this system,” Gaghan continued, “but there is a reason nobody listens to the screenwriter: He isn’t accountable. The screenwriter is like an economist or political commentator who says, ‘If you don’t cut interest rates right now, there will be a 3 percent decline in housing starts next April.’ But nobody checks back next April. Nobody remembers or cares. Because you don’t have to act on the decision, you aren’t responsible for the fallout. You are an adviser, not a builder. And if ‘real housing starts’ decline by 20 percent and the construction industry lays off thousands - well, you still have your comfy chair and nice view out the window.

“For the director, it is the exact opposite. The time for theorizing is over. It is yes or no, and pretty soon you have an aesthetic. Period.”

The same holds true for other advisory professions: accountants, artists, architects, attorneys, IT specialists, customer-service managers - basically anyone on staff or hired to help. The number of exceptions are few:

• CEOs
• profit-center managers
• salespeople
• anyone else whose compensation is primarily (not incidentally) based on the success of the end product

If you want to make a good living, be good at what you do. Accountants and artists and screenwriters who are good will be recognized as good. If they promote themselves and shop around for the best compensation, they can make very good, very steady, and relatively low-stress incomes.

And if you want to take that route, you can still build wealth - slowly and carefully - by following the advice we’ve been giving you in ETR about investing and saving.

But if you are not satisfied with that and want to get cut in on the bigger money, you have to step up to the line and do what the big-money people do. You have to be willing to risk not only your time but also your financial safety.

This is a hard lesson for most people to learn. And if you see no sense in it, I can’t imagine you’ll be persuaded by the little story about Stephen Gaghan’s conversion. You may choose to spend the rest of your life feeling under-appreciated and under-compensated, just as so many do. That won’t get you what you want - but you will have the feeling that you’re getting screwed to warm you up at night.

My friend, the newsletter writer, is a smart guy. He’s going to argue his case as hard as he can and get as much as he can to do the job. But he’s doing something else too. He’s learning how to write marketing copy. He’s learning the principles of selling. And he’s studying the marketing business as closely as he can.

Some day in the future, he’ll step over to the other side and be fully accountable for the financial success or failure of his literary output. When that happens, he’ll be negotiating contracts with writers who may want more than he is willing to give them. Then he’ll come to his own conclusions about this age-old debate. I’ll be interested in seeing what he does.

“Even Noah got no salary for the first six months partly on account of the weather and partly because he was learning navigation.”

Mark Twain

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This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

“Stress Makes You Fat” and Other Diet Deceptions

By Al Sears, MD

With nearly 72 million Americans on a diet, it’s no wonder that diet options abound. But many of these so-called solutions won’t make a big difference in your fat-loss efforts. And some can have serious negative effects.

Fortunately, you can lose fat safely and easily. But first, you need to know just why you should avoid three of the most deceptive diet choices around.

The Cortisol Blame Game

Visit the website for the diet pill CortiSlim, and you’ll see a newly transformed woman claiming, “Stress was piling on the pounds!” The makers of this diet pill advertise that cortisol is to blame. Cortisol is a natural hormone that’s produced by your adrenal glands in response to stress - but does cortisol add weight? No.

Have you ever seen a caged animal at the zoo that appears to be stressed by living in captivity? When animals are under stress, increased cortisol will suppress their appetite. Over time, they become thin and start to waste away. The same is true of humans.

Cortisol gives your body the chance to pool all of its stress-fighting resources in order to deal with a crisis. Under those conditions, your appetite will disappear. Think back to the last time you were panicked or upset. Having lunch was probably the last thing on your mind.

Several weight-loss products try to link cortisol to weight gain by pointing to a single Yale University study published in 2000 that showed that women who respond poorly to stress tend to have a belly. True, excess cortisol can affect where your body stores extra calories as fat. But cortisol itself does not cause weight gain.

Fat Burners and Metabolism Boosters

Products in this category claim to help you lose weight by raising your metabolic rate. Contrary to the hype you may have read, the increase is very slight.

Even ephedra, one of the best, is only modestly successful at raising metabolism - perhaps by a fraction of a percent. This natural herb was banned by the FDA, but that ban was overturned by an appeals court in August 2006. Today, ephedra is starting to make a comeback, despite the fact that its metabolism-boosting properties are negligible.

One of the more popular fat burners claims that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. This product uses a less-effective ephedra substitute, synephrine, which is supposed to increase your metabolism without the “harmful stimulants” used in other weight-loss products. Other ingredients in this product include caffeine, glucuronolactone, and taurine - the same ingredients found in Red Bull. If you feel any effect from it, it will be from the combination of synephrine and caffeine.

You should think of products like these as stimulants - not fat burners. They may help wake you up and give you a temporary jolt of energy, but so does a good cup of coffee.

Carb Blockers

To ease your guilt after splurging on bagels or pasta, carb blockers may seem like the answer. The term “carb blockers” sound magical… until you realize that what they’re actually blocking is an important digestive enzyme.

The idea of taking something that will interfere with your body’s ability to digest food is not a good one. In fact, it’s dangerous. Your body absorbs essential vitamins and nutrients in the form of carbohydrates. By blocking them, you are robbing your body of what it needs to survive.

The active ingredient in most carb blockers is a white kidney bean extract called phaseolus vulgaris. This substance prevents the enzymes in your stomach from digesting starches.

Dietrine, a well known carb blocker, states on its website: “One Dietrine capsule taken prior to a meal can block up to 1125 calories from fat and carbohydrate foods.”
There are no reliable clinical studies to support such a claim. In fact, the only respectable study, published in the Alternative Medicine Review, concluded that “no statistical significance was reached.”

Flip Your Body’s Fat-Burning Switch

Truth is, I have had more success with my patients by using a single exercise strategy than I’ve seen with all the dieting and supplement strategies combined. If you’re a regular ETR reader, you’ve heard me talk about this strategy before: Exercise in short bursts. By exercising this way, you can burn fat for up to 24 hours after you finish. Even while you sleep.

This type of exercise teaches your body that storing energy as fat is inefficient. Fat is a low-energy, slow-release fuel. It’s not good for providing you with quick high energy. So if you don’t exert yourself long enough to make good use of your stored fat during your actual exercise routine, your body gives it up afterward, during the recovery period.

You can use any number of exercises to turn your body into an automatic fat burner. The only rule is that the activity has to use enough muscle mass to challenge the rate at which you’re using energy. I like bicycling and swimming, because they’re low-impact and don’t have as much risk of injuries as high-impact exercises like jogging. What you choose will depend on your level of fitness.

Here’s how to get started:

• Perform a light warm-up and stretch before each exercise session.
• Begin with 20 minutes every other day. (This averages to only 10 minutes per day.)
• Exercise at an easy pace at first, and increase it gradually.
• As your fitness improves, increase the intensity of each session.
• After a few weeks, break each session into two short bursts of exercise - two six-minute sets separated by six minutes of focused recovery at a gentle easy pace.

Eventually, you can go with even briefer episodes of gradually increasing intensity.

The most common error people make is assuming you must work at a higher level of perceived exertion to get results. This is not true. The point is to start with what is a comfortable level of exertion for you. Then, as that level of activity gets easier, you focus on increasing the level or resistance of the activity rather than the duration.

“Thank you for calling the Weight Loss Hotline. If you’d like to lose a half pound right now, press 1 eighteen thousand times.”

Randy Glasbergen

 

[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears is a practicing physician and a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health. Short bursts of activity form the basis of his PACE program. You can get more information about it HERE.]

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This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Dancing Your Way to Success

By Paul Lawrence

It was 1978. A Friday night in June at Fort Lauderdale Middle School. I still remember every detail.

Andy Cleva was in the center of the gym floor, dancing with Charlotte Bolton. Howie Miller was out there too, with Debbie Barry. All of them were moving to the beat of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack. And the girls were smiling as if they’d been named queen for a day.

I wanted to be out there too. But instead, there I was, leaning against the wall with most of the other boys. Sure, we were cracking jokes and trying to act cool. But secretly, of course, we all wished we could be the ones dancing with Charlotte or Debbie. We couldn’t … because we didn’t know how. Only in eighth grade and already missing out on a great opportunity!

Whether it’s a middle school dance, the senior prom, a wedding, a bar mitzvah, or a company party, there’s a lot to be said for knowing how to dance.

Thank about it for a minute. Go to a reception, and who’s having the most fun? The dancers.

Go to a rock concert, and who’s enjoying it most? The folks who are up and dancing in the aisles.

The fact is, knowing how to dance makes you look and feel like a winner.

Look at Fred and Ginger. Gene Kelly. Or, more recently, Arnold with Jamie Lee in “True Lies” or Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman.”

When these people get up and dance, they are sophisticated and in control. Certainly James Bond knows how to do a tango. And the unmitigated (see Word to the Wise, below) success of the recent ABC show “Dancing With the Stars” demonstrates how fascinated people are with this skill. It was the number one rated show in the nation on its final night, with over 22 million viewers.

It was that experience in my middle school gym that spurred me to action. I decided I wasn’t going to let it happen again - and I actually started studying MTV videos to learn some basic moves. It felt awkward at first, but eventually I became one of the guys out on the floor with the ladies. Fast-forward to 10 years later, and I was nothing short of a professional dance instructor myself!

Having been a professional ballroom dance teacher for many years, I can tell you that there’s nothing like the feeling of confidence you have when you know how to dance. And, as I always told my clients, it really doesn’t take much to be considered a good dancer in social circles. Go to your cousin’s wedding armed with a few basic steps, and you’ll be considered the John Travolta of the family.

Some people think they simply can’t learn to dance, but I don’t believe that’s true. In the 10,000+ lessons I gave in my career as a dance instructor, I never once came upon someone who couldn’t be taught. According to Jeff Bettany of the Saskatoon DanceSport Association:

“Genetics may account for as much as 80% of dance skills such as foot speed, dynamic balance, and so on. But even if you are not a born dancer and may not make it to the Olympic games, there is still a place for you if you are dedicated. Don’t assume that because you were never good at sports that you won’t be able to dance.”

Most people simply want to be able to dance with their spouse or a friend at a social gathering. And in that case, there is no need to learn anything fancy. If you know a basic Latin dance like the Merengue, a bit of swing for rock ‘n’ roll, the Hustle for classic disco or top 40 dance music, and a little slow dance, you’ll have virtually all the bases covered.

Here are some tips to help you look “smooth” on the dance floor:

 

• Don’t squeeze your partner’s hands too hard.
• If you’re not sure of which dance to do to the music being played, wait until some other people get on the floor and see what they’re doing.
• Sometimes more than one type of dance can be done to a piece of music. So if you’re dancing one style and you see someone dancing something else, don’t assume that what you’re doing is wrong.
• Relax and have fun when you dance socially. Unless you are charging people to watch you, there is no reason to feel pressure.

Whether at a relative’s wedding or an important business affair, being one of the few who can get up and really cut a rug will increase your enjoyment and give you an edge over everyone else who’s there.

“Dancing is a wonderful training for girls; it’s the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.”

 

- Christopher Morley

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This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Eliminating Stress

by Michael Masterson

You can’t lead a happy, healthy, and productive life when you are feeling crummy. You can’t work very well. You can’t be creative. And you can’t enjoy the company of others.

So why is it that so many people, so much of the time, are downright miserable?

Is it the existential situation - the psychological default program that kicks in when we realize we are alone? Is it the result of thinking we are alone when we are not? Is it what happens when we live without purpose, as Victor Frankl suggests? Or is it merely too much sugar?

Answer: All of the above.

But what do you care? You can’t avoid getting into a funk now and then. However, you can learn to recognize the onset of a bad mood and get yourself out of it before it ruins your day (or your life).

I should know. I’m a moody bastard. If I could gather up all the time I’ve spent fretting, frowning, grousing, and/or complaining, I’d have enough to become a medical doctor and start my own emergency clinic. (That would cheer me up!)

Grumping around is not only wasteful; it’s limiting and potentially destructive. When you feel bad, you lack the emotional strength to try new things or overcome obstacles. As a consequence, you tend to spend your time on very ordinary chores, the kinds of tasks that will ensure the same old ho-hum life.

I once read a book on optimism and pessimism that made the case that the difference between feeling sad and clinical depression is not one of kind but of degree. If this is true, two conjectures come immediately to mind:

1. That moodiness should be actively combated, because moodiness can lead to despair.
2. That despair is an extreme form of moodiness, and so some of the techniques that eliminate moodiness can cure clinical depression.

Versions of despair - cynicism, anger, and fear - have no place in your business or personal life. If you let them in, you will give up too easily - and that can cost you.

Bad feelings are usually triggered by stress - some external event that creates a feeling of emotional discomfort. To lead a psychologically comfortable life (free of unnecessary stress and open to happiness and other good things), you must learn to recognize stress in its early stages and do something to reduce it.

Avoiding a bad mood is much like avoiding a common headache: If you can feel it coming on early enough and get some aspirin into your system, you’ll never be in pain. But if you wait till the pain is planted in your head, you’ll have a very difficult time getting rid of it.

One way to deal with stress is to get rid of the external cause of it. If, for example, a new client is a royal pain, figure out how to deal with him or pass him off to a competitor. If a new set of regulations is making your routine work difficult, master them and they’ll cease to give you stress.

Another, sometimes more practical, way to defeat stress is to change the way you react to it. As Victor Frankl pointed out in his classic book “Man’s Search for Meaning“, it is impossible to control the external circumstances of our lives. We must accept what comes to us with equanimity.  But we do not have to accept the way we respond.

Frankl argues that if you see a purpose in your role in life, you’ll have a much easier time avoiding the stress of not knowing what to do. Two thousand years ago, Marcus Aurelius said, “If you are distressed by anything internal, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to the view you have of that thing. How you view anything is a power you can revoke at any moment.”

Here are 12 ways to deal with problems without getting stressed over them:

1.  Forgive yourself for feeling bad. Depending on your biology, your upbringing, and your circumstances, you may feel blue rarely, sometimes, or often. Accept it as normal.

2.  Count your blessings.

3.  Take a nap. You’d be surprised by how often you can make yourself feel better simply by taking a 10-minute catnap.

4.  Take a stress break. If you work as hard as I do, you will be forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown unless you do something about it. One of the best things you can do is schedule at least two (and preferably three or four) stress breaks every working day.

• A stress break is not a stress break unless:

• You get at least 10 feet away from your desk.
• You are completely distracted by it.
• It lasts at least five minutes.
• It relaxes you.
• It energizes you.

If you have good control over your daily schedule, you can plan stress breaks between tasks. Ideally, you’ll want a five-minute break every 90 to 120 minutes. If your schedule is too frenetic or unpredictable to do it that way, use an egg timer and simply break away from whatever you are doing when it rings.

5.Cut out the crap food. Remember, sugar and starch are poisons. Be aware of how they affect your moods.

6. Spend as much time as you can with upbeat people. Moody people are often helpful, productive, inspiring, and useful. But they are always an emotional drag. If your life involves moody energy-sappers, refresh with positive friends.

7. Follow Dale Carnegie’s Three C’s: Don’t criticize. Don’t condemn. Don’t complain.

8. Make sure you are getting enough sleep. If you are not sleeping well, chances are you are irritable and somewhat unproductive. This is a vicious circle. Get out of it. Get some sleep.

This will not only keep your stress level in check but will also improve your overall health. And remember this: The sleep you get before midnight is twice as good as the sleep you get afterward. So go to bed early. In fact, your entire health-and-fitness program should be based on the “early to rise” concept. Get to bed early enough so that you can wake up refreshed and stress free, eat properly, get your cardio workout done, and get to work at least an hour before you have to. (Two hours earlier is better.)

9. Exercise. Intense exercise will tire you out, but it won’t reduce stress. Walking, biking at a medium pace, swimming slowly - these are the sorts of exercise that can reduce stress.

10. Play. Again, be cognizant of what forms of play reduce stress and which add to it. Golfing is mostly, from what I’ve seen, a stress producer. So are most competitive sports. Yes, they’re fun if you have a competitive nature. But they don’t reduce stress.

11. Work to improve things. If you are bummed out about problems at work, do this: Compose a list of your five most pressing incomplete jobs. Then break down each job into specific tasks that can be accomplished in an hour or less. Arrange those tasks in order of priority. Finally, choose one. Just one. Put everything else out of your mind and get to work on it. Immediately. No excuses.

12. Listen to classical music. Researchers have discovered many interesting things about the effects of classical music - especially Mozart’s - on the brain. For example:

• In 1996, the College Entrance Exam Board Service conducted a study of all students taking their SATs. Students who sang or played a musical instrument scored an average of 51 points higher on the verbal portion and 39 points higher on the math portion of the test.
• In a controlled University of California study, students who listened to 10 minutes of Mozart before taking SATs had higher scores than students who didn’t.
• Major corporations like Shell, IBM, and Dupont, along with hundreds of schools and universities, have started using classical music to cut learning time in half and increase the retention of newly learned material.
• And in a University of Washington study, people who listened to light classical music for 90 minutes while copyediting a manuscript caught 21% more mistakes.

Even if you rarely listen to classical music, give it a try. “The Mozart Effect” will help you on some level by having a positive, lifelong effect on your health, learning, and behavior.

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This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

14 Ways to Save as Much as $100 on Your Next Airfare

by Lori Appling

1. Shop after midnight during the week.

Most airlines post their specials right after midnight. If you shop then, you’ll have a better shot at getting the cheapest fare.

2. Check out a smaller airport.

An area’s main airports tend to be more expensive than those that are just a little out of the way. You might find a cheaper fare at White Plains than JFK or La Guardia in New York, or at Fort Lauderdale than at Miami International in Florida.

3. Book more than 21 days in advance.

By planning your trips and booking your airfare three or more weeks in advance, you will have a much better chance of getting a lower rate.

4. Fly on the less-traveled days.

Flights are generally cheaper on days that fewer people travel on. Tuesdays and Thursdays are your best bet.

5. Know how to work a bid site.

Online bidding sites like PriceLine don’t let you place multiple bids unless you change your criteria as well. Limit your criteria on your first bid — only enter one set of dates or one airport, for instance — so that you can resubmit later if you need to.

6. Comparison shop for dates.

Lots of times, it’s hard to guess which departure and return dates will give you the best deal. Look at the prices for a few different date combinations to see which is cheapest.

7. If you have to fly during the holidays, think about flying ON the holiday.

While lots of people travel on the days around a holiday, the holidays themselves aren’t generally popular traveling days . . . which can mean reduced fares.

8. Try a European airline.

When traveling between European cities, check into discount airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet. You can find some great discount rates.

9. Sign up for your favorite airline’s e-mail newsletter.

Lots of airlines offer an e-mail newsletter that can alert you to special deals before they are made generally public.

10. Keep your eye out for discounts even after you purchase a seat.

If you find a much better deal after you’ve already bought your ticket, it may be worth the cancellation fee to rebook the discounted flight.

11. Group rates can reduce fares by one-third or more.

When traveling with a large group, call the group sales agent at the airline and ask about group discounts. Groups of 20 or more often pay one-third less than single travelers.

12. Know your averages.

Keep tabs on prices quoted in newspapers and directly by the airline. This will help you recognize a deal when you see it, so that you can jump on it.

13. Find a fare-finder site that lists both published and discount fares.

Some sites list only published airfares and leave out discounted fares. Be sure to search for flights on a website that lists both.

14. Travel as a travel writer.

You don’t have to give up your day job (most travel writers I know are freelancers turning a weekend trip or a once-a-year family vacation into a little cash on the side). All you have to do is take good notes about what you did and then recommend — or discourage — others from following in your footsteps. You may even earn a few hundred . . . maybe even a few thousand . . . dollars for your trouble and find someone else to foot the bill on your travel expenses.

(Ed. Note: Lori Appling is the director of AWAI’s travel writer programs and editor of the weekly online newsletter The Write Way to Travel. She is sponsoring a trip to Argentina at the end of March for those of you interested in learning a few tricks about the carefree lifestyle of a travel writer. For more details click here.)

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This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

14 More Good Rules for Getting a Better Job

Jeffrey Fox tells the following story in his book “Don’t Send a Resume”:

 

Douglas MacArthur, the legendary World War II Army general, was looking to hire a new aide. After a staff review of candidates, MacArthur interviewed the “short list.” One of the potential aides was a young lieutenant. At the beginning of the interview, the general asked the lieutenant, “Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

 

“No, sir,” answered the lieutenant, who then asked, “Sir, what is your view of the role of the Army in winning the war here in the Pacific?”

 

For one hour, interrupted only by the lieutenant’s occasional “uh-huh” and “Could you elaborate?”, the great general talked. At the end of the “interview,” the lieutenant was offered the job. Later, MacArthur told one of his colonels that the young lieutenant was one of the most intelligent officers he had ever met.

 

I had the same experience in graduate school. I spent a quarter of an hour telling a visiting scholar how much I liked his books and what an important critic he was and asking him fan-club type questions. He later said to the department chairman, “That young man is extremely bright. He’s one of your best students, in my view.” He formed that opinion without hearing a single thing about me or what I could do and without hearing a single opinion of mine except how much I like him.

 

This is important to remember when you are seeking a job. It’s useful in any interview but especially so if you get to talk to the person you’ll be working for.

 

14 More Things You Can Do to Get a Better Job

 

That said, let’s round out this week’s discussion with 14 more ways to get a better job — from your current employer or a new one.

 

1. Your cover letter should be very personal. It should indicate that you (a) know the company in some detail, (b) like the company, and (c) believe you have something specific and valuable to contribute to it.

 

2. If you include a resume, make sure it is tailored to the individual company.

 

3. When talking about yourself, don’t use self-serving cliches (such as “a passion for customer service”) that virtually any job candidate can make. Instead, use facts, incidents, and numbers to reveal your qualities and capabilities.

 

4. When you are talking or writing about your accomplishments, focus on what you have done recently (say, in the last few years).

 

5. If you have no relevant experience, don’t try to pretend you do by making a job at Burger King sound like rocket science. Here is where you make up for your lack of experience by showing specific knowledge of the company and industry you aim to work for. If you’ve done your homework well, you will be seen as a blank sheet with great potential (always desirable).

 

6. Don’t summarize your career, experience, or skills. State the facts briefly and clearly once.

 

7. Don’t say what your career objective is. No one cares but you. Your job, as the salesman and the sales product, is to talk about the needs and desires of your prospect, not yourself.

 

8. When you go for an interview, have a specific objective in mind and work hard to achieve it. If you haven’t been promised it by the end of the interview, ask for it (nicely).

 

9. A hiring interview is a sales call. Don’t talk or tell. Answer, ask, and listen.

 

10. Consider “showing” something — a customer survey, industry data, etc. — that illustrates the work you’ve already done and helps make the case that you can contribute to the company’s success. The tactic of showing is a time-honored staple of strong sales people.

 

11. If you interview at a restaurant, don’t drink alcohol and/or order something and eat very little of it.

 

12. In your research, discover dress preferences, if any, of the company you’re interviewing for. Don’t be a rebel. Conform.

 

13. Don’t try to befriend your prospective employer. Be friendly instead.

 

14. If you feel you might not get the job you are seeking, suggest that you can do a project for the company on a free-lance basis. Perhaps even for free. “That way, you can find out if I can do what I’ve promised,” you can say, “without any risk on your part.” This works in selling vacuum cleaners. It should work for you.

One final word from Jeffery Fox: “If you don’t know why the company should hire you, it’s a good bet the company won’t know either.”

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This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.