The British television presenter and lifestyle coach Amanda Hamilton shares her views on health and nutrition.
Under a stern editorial admonition that in no way should I do "yet another sanctimonious piece about 10 resolutions for a wonderful new year you", I thought I'd write nevertheless about a bit of inspiration that came my way at the end of 2009.
If you're sitting there wondering what to do as the world seemingly spirals rapidly out of control, then I recommend you order an intriguingly titled book by Tim Ferriss, called The Four Hour Working Week.
Now, granted such a title may strike you nauseatingly as yet another mini-triumph of wishful positive thinking, but bear with me a little further.
Ferriss is a young American with entrepreneurial aspirations who took a few years in the corporate machine to realise that there was more to life than status according to your cubicle size, aggressive time-wasting clients and a life that provided a little more money at the end of the month. His goal? To "escape the nine-to-five, live anywhere and join the new rich". Not unambitious, I think you'll agree.
It caught my eye, because one of the things that my husband and I - both entrepreneurial types who love business but frequently despair about the hours we spend working - have found is that unless you have a laser focus, creating and running your own business can take over your life. Last year, even nine-to-five, Monday to Friday, came to seem a wistful pipe dream, despite our best intentions.
The result? The things that matter (to us: family, exercise, friends, travel, reading) have tended to be compressed into second-rate times of the day, if not squeezed out altogether; so much for being the mistress and master of our destinies.
An irony that has not escaped us is that in a business predicated on the need to detox, de-stress and calm down, we have often fallen short of our own precepts - not quite slaves to the machine, but getting there.
As regular readers of this column will know, hammering away at work all the hours of the day (and frequently night) rarely brings good health. So, remembering the proverb "Physician, heal thyself", we decided to apply some of Ferriss's youthful but surprisingly good wisdom to our lives in 2010.
Ferriss's premise is: test the most basic assumptions of the work-life equation. First, how do your decisions change if retirement isn't an option? Second, what if you could use a mini-retirement to sample your deferred-life reward before working 40 years for it? And, thirdly, is it really necessary to work like a slave to seek to live like a millionaire?
As he says, asking these questions often leads to the inescapable conclusion that common-sense rules of the real world are a "fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions". Such as? Well, who came up with the rule that a person's best economic contribution comes from a five-day, nine-to-five working week? Who came up with the belief that you should spend all your healthy middle years slaving to enjoy the benefits when, in all likelihood, you won't have the health to enjoy them properly when retirement comes? You no doubt get the drift.
So what is Ferriss's answer? Underpinning it is a world that has been turned upside down by the internet, the potential of which to unlock the four-hour working week is within all of our grasps, or rather our laptops.
Ferriss challenges prevailing notions of work with a new approach that seeks to deliver "relative wealth" and "eustress" (a term coined by the endocrinologist Hans Selye referring to stress that is healthy, or gives one a feeling of fulfilment or other positive feelings rather than absolute wealth and stress). How?
First, by elimination: delivering more time by killing the "obsolete notion" of time management with techniques wonderfully entitled "selective ignorance", a low-information diet, and - I love this - "ignoring the unimportant".
Second, automation: delivering more money by creating an automated cash flow using arbitrage, outsourcing and so-called "rules of non-decision".
Third, the grandly titled liberation, which Ferriss calls (and you have to laugh here) "the mobile manifesto for the globally inclined", in which the concepts of mini-retirements, flawless remote control and escaping the boss are enthusiastically outlined.
Where does that leave us? Well, our focus this year is to follow The Talented Mr Ferriss's system (check his very entertaining blog, www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog) and see if we can deliver the time (Fridays off, at least, to go mountain-biking), income (obviously) and mobility (a year's winter in Aspen and summer in Sicily, anyone?).
If that is not a rather enticing recipe for dealing with stress and everything that goes with it, I don't know what is.
10 tips for entry-level job seekers
- Have an up-to-date, professional LinkedIn profile. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, set one up today. Avoid poor-quality profile pictures with distracting backgrounds. Include a professional summary and begin to grow your network.
- Keep track of the job trends in your sector through the news. Apply for job alerts at your dream organisations and the types of jobs you want – LinkedIn uses AI to share similar relevant jobs based on your selections.
- Double check that you’ve highlighted relevant skills on your resume and LinkedIn profile.
- For most entry-level jobs, your resume will first be filtered by an applicant tracking system for keywords. Look closely at the description of the job you are applying for and mirror the language as much as possible (while being honest and accurate about your skills and experience).
- Keep your CV professional and in a simple format – make sure you tailor your cover letter and application to the company and role.
- Go online and look for details on job specifications for your target position. Make a list of skills required and set yourself some learning goals to tick off all the necessary skills one by one.
- Don’t be afraid to reach outside your immediate friends and family to other acquaintances and let them know you are looking for new opportunities.
- Make sure you’ve set your LinkedIn profile to signal that you are “open to opportunities”. Also be sure to use LinkedIn to search for people who are still actively hiring by searching for those that have the headline “I’m hiring” or “We’re hiring” in their profile.
- Prepare for online interviews using mock interview tools. Even before landing interviews, it can be useful to start practising.
- Be professional and patient. Always be professional with whoever you are interacting with throughout your search process, this will be remembered. You need to be patient, dedicated and not give up on your search. Candidates need to make sure they are following up appropriately for roles they have applied.
Arda Atalay, head of Mena private sector at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Rudy Bier, managing partner of Kinetic Business Solutions and Ben Kinerman Daltrey, co-founder of KinFitz
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Profile
Company name: Jaib
Started: January 2018
Co-founders: Fouad Jeryes and Sinan Taifour
Based: Jordan
Sector: FinTech
Total transactions: over $800,000 since January, 2018
Investors in Jaib's mother company Alpha Apps: Aramex and 500 Startups
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
THE BIO
Bio Box
Role Model: Sheikh Zayed, God bless his soul
Favorite book: Zayed Biography of the leader
Favorite quote: To be or not to be, that is the question, from William Shakespeare's Hamlet
Favorite food: seafood
Favorite place to travel: Lebanon
Favorite movie: Braveheart
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
How to donate
Send “thenational” to the following numbers or call the hotline on: 0502955999
2289 – Dh10
2252 – Dh 50
6025 – Dh20
6027 – Dh 100
6026 – Dh 200
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
Everton 1 Stoke City 0
Everton (Rooney 45 1')
Man of the Match Phil Jagielka (Everton)
Tom Fletcher on 'soft power'
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Normal People
Sally Rooney, Faber & Faber