7 Reasons

Tag: Job

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why People Still Wear Watches When They Have A Phone

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why People Still Wear Watches When They Have A Phone

    Billions of people around the world have a mobile phone or have access to a mobile phone and according to a report from the U.N. 6 of the world’s 7 billion people have access to a mobile phone while only 4.5 million people have access to a toilet. That says a lot about the society we live in.

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why People Still Wear Watches When They Have A Phone

    1.  Exercise. People these days are starting to go running more often and the amount of money that it costs these days to buy a phone that will keep a track of your route while you’re out on a run and your pace, it’s a lot of money to just drop it and break it.

    That’s why running watches are so popular these days. They’re a fraction of the cost of a smart phone and they do everything that you need whilst out on a run and there’s no worries about dropping it and breaking it, it’s strapped to your watch so it’d have a job!

    2.  Fashion. These timekeeping devices are somewhat a staple in any fashionista’s ‘diet’ and they’re also an ideal way to sort of round-up and bring together an outfit by adding that finishing touch.

    In terms of fashion with watches, it isn’t as much about the fact that you have the time on your wrist as it is that it’s about what the watch signifies.

    3.  Polite. As we explained in the opening paragraph, there are 6 billion people in the world who own a mobile phone yet, as common as it is to be seen on your phone these days there are still some people out there who are a tad more traditional and can be easily put off by the amount of time people spend on their phone.

    You could be out for a nice dinner and chatting away nicely until someone just pulls out their phone and “checks the time” you can probably presume that they’re looking for a way out of the conversation.

    For this reason, it’s better, and handier if you have a watch. So if you do just want to “check the time” you just need a flick of the wrist. However, if you do want to get out of the conversation then you always have the back up of your phone!

    4.  Conserve Battery Life. This has a double-barrelled meaning. Yeah, you’d be saving your phone’s battery life if you just left it in your pocket but you’d also be saving your own battery life.

    The biggest thing though is that you’ll waste your phone’s battery life. Also, if you genuinely are just looking at the time on your phone then there’s a chance that someone has tweeted you, emailed you or even Facebook-ed you. Then, that leads to you spending more time on your phone and then wasting more of your battery life.
    It’s just easier to have a watch on, like we said previously, it’s just a flick of the wrist if you’ve got a watch.

    5.  Your Job. There’s a number of different professions out there that probably wouldn’t be ideal for someone to be sat checking the time on their phone so, that’s why it’s great to have a watch. Could you imagine if you went to see a psychologist and they were sat there on their mobile phone.

    There’s a number of different professions out there that actually make a massive use of watches, like the medical profession as it’s certainly frowned upon to be talking to your doctor or a nurse and they’re on twitter on their phone. It’s just rude. Sometimes, it’s a good job that watches are still in use.

    6.  Weatherproof. Depending on where you live will depend on the kind of watch you need. If you’re lucky and you live near a beach then you’re definitely going to be inclined to get a watch to wear. Let’s face it; there’s not many, if any, mobile phones these days which are too compatible with the elements that make up a beach.
    The heat can also cause your phone to overheat and malfunction and with the price of smartphones these days, the last thing you want to happen is for your phone to break.

    Of course, there’s sand too at the beach which everyone knows can get in all sorts of annoying places! Moving on from the beach, it rains everywhere in the world and if you’re caught out with your phone out, ‘just checking the time’ you could end up regretting not buying a watch!

    7.  Health Reasons. We all know how ‘Health & Safety’ mad the world has gone and there’s numerous studies out there to show how using your mobile phone for x-number of hours a day or days a week can cause x, y or z problems to you.

    None of these things are ever spoken about when it comes to watches. You don’t hear about people getting brain tumours from using their watch too much, or wrist tumours from wearing it too much. So, if you do get a watch, just keep reminding yourself that you’re not doing any damage to yourself by using that instead of a brand new mobile phone.

    This article has been provided by the Watch Supermarket team. If you want a brand new watch at a great price then why don’t you check out our range?

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Kick-Start Your Career By Being A Volunteer

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Kick-Start Your Career By Being A Volunteer

    If you are finding it hard to break into a new field, maybe you should be looking a little further out. Most employers demand relevant experience and proven skills, which those looking to start a career just do not have. A quick stint of volunteering overseas could give you the experience you need and help your CV stand out from the pack.

    7 Reasons To Kick-Start Your Career By Being A Volunteer

    1.  Thrills. So you need to build up skills for a new career? Well, you could just grab a lowly position locally and push papers waiting to be noticed or you could get some real-life experience and some real thrills by volunteering in exotic locations around the globe.

    The only papers you will need to get in order are your travel visas as you get the chance to see beyond the tourist trail in Thailand, Fiji, China or the majestic landscapes of Africa. Escape the daily drill and get a real thrill in stunning locations all over the world.

    2.  Skills. Of course volunteering is not all about the thrill. Employers demand evidence of real skills, and volunteer organisations such as Projects Abroad (http://www.projects-abroad.ca) can give you the chance to gain these in fields as varied as journalism, care, medicine, archaeology, teaching, development, human rights, conservation, marketing and many more.

    These are skills learnt in real situations and practiced in difficult circumstances: they prove you can cut it when the going gets tough.

    3.  Put yourself on the map (1). Volunteering overseas will reveal your commitment to a profession so much more than a 10-week training course can. It makes your intentions and dedication crystal clear and helps your CV to stand out from the pile. After all, a couple of months in Tanzania are a talking point – a training course is just another bullet point.

    7 Reasons To Kick-Start Your Career By Being A Volunteer

    4.  Put yourself on the map (2). You will be placing yourself on the map in more ways than one, however. Volunteering overseas is an intense experience shared with a team of international volunteers. You will bond quickly with other volunteers and be coming home with cheap holiday opportunities with new-found friends all over the world.

    5.  Take a hip trip. With the advent of voluntourism – that is, volunteering on projects to travel the world – volunteering is sexy. Many say it is the best way to travel – letting you really get to know the places you visit while you gain new skills and meaningful experiences.

    Recent celebrity volunteers helping make it the ultimate hip trip include George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Bono, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Charlize Theron.

    6.  Try before you buy. Volunteering overseas is a great way to try before you buy, or look before you leap. If you are thinking of applying for overseas work, it is the ideal way to test the waters before taking the plunge.

    Similarly, if you are thinking of entering a new field, it offers a great way to see if the grass really is greener. There are organisations that offer short projects to make this possible – care and community and sports programs for 16-19-year-olds, for instance. Here you can find additional information on this project. Volunteering is a great way to not believe the hype and see for yourself.

    7.  Budge the drudge and catch the buzz. Sitting behind the computer conducting online job searches and firing off endless CVs is a bore. It can sap your energy, motivation and enthusiasm. Volunteering overseas lets you gain the skills you need to get those interviews and will gives you a buzz that will help you impress at those interviews.

    Stop waiting for an opportunity and start doing something that will create it. See you on the next rung of the career ladder!

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Run Out Of Money Every Month

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Run Out Of Money Every Month

    It’s getting harder to save money for your future with the euro being inflated every year. However, there are some things that are completely within your control. Before you complain about how expensive everything seems to be getting these days, check your ego at the door and make sure you’re not committing these seven deadly spending sins.

    7 Reasons You Run Out Of Money Every Month

    1.  You’re Shopping Way Too Much. Shopping is fun. Heck, what girl doesn’t like a new dress or pair of shoes? Shopping sprees aren’t just a female problem either. Men can get carried away on designer stuff too. If you have a shopping addiction, try putting away the credit card for a few days. If you still think you need a new pair of pants or a shirt, then consider visiting a charity shop – especially if you’re hooked on ModCloth.com offerings. You might be able to find some nice vintage stuff for much less than what you’ll pay retail.

    2.  You Drink So Much Coffee, Your Blood Is Now At Least 50 Percent Caffeine. Coffee can be addictive, and Starbucks is a pretty popular place, but there’s no need to go there three times a day. Even once a day gets expensive. If you need your coffee fix in the morning consider getting a pour over kit. The initial cost of manual pour over equipment pales in comparison to what it will save you over time. If you spend £2.60 every day on coffee, you will benefit from getting manual pour over equipment. In one month you’ll spend enough on Starbucks to buy yourself a decent filtercone holder, some nice filters, and some decent coffee. Two month’s worth of coffee will get you an excellent coffee grinder.

    The benefit? The learning curve is not very steep, it takes just as long to stand in line as it does to make your own coffee at home, and a manual pour over results in a stronger and better cup of coffee than what most retail places will sell you.

    3.  Those Late Night ATM Runs – You Know The Ones. Are you a night owl? Do you spend a lot of time at clubs, pubs, and after-hours parties? Going to the ATM to reload your wallet with cash takes its toll. There’s no easy solution to this problem other than taking it easy on the partying. Staying home and reading a book might not sound like much fun, but your bank account will thank you.

    4.  You Are Paying For More Channels Than You Can Possibly Watch. There’s nothing wrong with having cable T.V. In fact, it might add to your life in some way. However, there comes a point when enough is enough. If you’re paying for so many channels that you can never possibly watch all of them, it may be time to rethink your service plan. If you ever find yourself turning on your T.V. and thinking “oh wow, I didn’t even know I had this channel,” then it might be time to consider going with a cheaper package or perhaps cutting your cable down to the bare minimum.

    5.  You Eat Out So Often, You Haven’t Seen The Inside Of Your Fridge In Three Weeks. Eating out once in a while is fun. You don’t have to do the dishes, and you can usually get something that you find difficult or impossible to prepare yourself at home. However, if you’ve forgotten what the inside of your refrigerator looks like, or if the food in there has started to look more like a science experiment than leftovers because of all of the mold, then consider making more meals at home. Staying in has a wonderful positive effect on your bank account.

    6.  You Spend More Time On Your Hobbies Than You Do Working At Your Paying Job. Having hobbies allows you to stay active when you’re not working. However, when you spend more time on your hobbies than you do working at your “day job,” there’s something wrong. Maybe you should make your hobby your new job (by starting a business oriented around it) or find a new job that allows you to earn money from doing whatever it is you really love doing.

    7.  The Only Time You Step Foot On A Sidewalk Is To Get To Your Car. Automobiles allow us to get where we want to go faster than we ever could by walking. However, there’s a benefit to walking: it’s cheaper and allows us to get exercise. Consider walking or biking to work, if you live close enough.

    Guest post written by Elizabeth Goldman and brought to you by Wonga – the short term loan experts.

  • 7 Reasons I Am The New Rebecca

    7 Reasons I Am The New Rebecca

    7 Reasons I Am The New RebeccaHello. Regular readers of 7 Reasons will know that on Sundays we do things a bit differently. Well, today is very different. What you are about to read is a job application. A live job application. We have a lot to get through so I’ve broken it down for you.

    If you are a regular 7 Reasons reader head straight to (A).
    If you are a POKE employee (particularly one who is in charge of hiring me) head to (B).
    If you are the person who keeps finding our site by Googling ‘hot woman’ your day has finally arrived. Just stare at the picture.

    (A) Yes, so this is a live job application for the position of Social Media Copywriter. Very briefly here’s what has happened so far. On Thursday the London-based agency POKE announced they’d be running a live recruitment process via twitter on Friday. The aim was to find a new Rebecca to replace the current Rebecca who is going off to play her recorder or something. This was poor timing on POKE’s part as I was at a wedding on Friday. So, I needed a plan. I set myself up as @TheNewRebecca and then requested a bit more time. Luckily, I got it. Which is why I am able to apply today. Right, got that? Good. Ignore (B) and read my job application.

    (B) Hello future colleagues. Some of you might be here because you are following @TheNewRebecca (good choice) others might be here because you’re doing the sifting process. Whichever it is I shall try and make this as painless as possible. So, sorry I couldn’t be with you on Friday for the live application process, I was at a wedding. The good news is I have no more Friday weddings in my diary this year so I will make it into work five days a week. Hopefully you appreciate that kind of commitment. Right, that’s the formalities out of the way, here are my responses to the tasks.

    #poketask1. We have two Thor premiere tickets to give away on Orange Film Club. Think up a comp & tweet how you’d announce it.

    Quick! Help Thor save #OrangeWednesdays! Upload your most rousing speech to http://on.fb.me/oowfc. The best wins two Thor premiere tickets!”

    #poketask2. Someone complains that @PizzaExpress was too busy on Weds because of #OrangeWednesdays. Extinguish their grumpiness in a tweet.

    Ah, the by-product of being a genius. We all turn out on #OrangeWednesdays I’m afraid. (PS: Fancy beating the queue next time? Book ahead).

    EDIT: On Wednesday 13th April, @TheNewRebecca decided she’d be clever. She tweeted, “Yet again Pizza Express is heaving because of #OrangeWednesdays. I need someone to extinguish my grumpiness.” Unfortunately this backfired substantially when some even cleverer bod hiding beneath the guise of @OrangeFilm promptly replied, “We tried to respond with your #poketask2 response, but alas, it was over 140 characters. tsk tsk. ;)”. Now, I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t. Attention to detail is something of a forte of mine. So I checked. And I was right. 139 characters. Perfect. But then it dawned on me. Not many people have a username as short as ‘@’. Not liking defeat, I replied, “My defence: Yes, my response is 139 characters leaving little/no room for a username. However, it’s a DM. More special that way.” But I knew I was pushing the boundaries. Thankfully the time was just gone 6pm. The deadline for entries wasn’t for another 24 hours. Time then to reword my #poketask2 response taking into account a 14 letter username (based on @TheNewRebecca). So, here it is. My new #poketask2 response:

    Ah, the by-product of being a genius. We all turn out on #OrangeWednesdays I’m afraid. (Psst: The really smart ones book).”

    #poketask3. Tweet three ways you’d get people to enter your competition from task one.

    1. Pop-up video on the Orange Wednesdays website showing Thor (probably me in a Thor-like costume) urging people to act if they don’t want the darkest forces of Asgard destroying Orange Wednesdays. This would also be posted on the Orange Film Club facebook page and tweeted via the relative Orange accounts.

    2. SMS alerts sent out to Orange customers telling them that the existence of Orange Wednesdays is under threat.

    3. Regular tweeting of incoming videos throughout the contest from @orangefilm and @orangethefeed.

    #poketask4. Oops. We just wrote ‘exited’ instead of ‘excited’ on our Facebook wall & everyone’s saying we’re half-baked. What do you do?

    I write: “And when I say ‘exited’, I clearly mean ‘excited’. It’s true, I am having severe problems with my ‘c’s today. You should count yourselves lucky though, already today I’ve been asked to leave the office twice because of problems with my ‘r’s.”

    #poketask5. Someone’s posted on Orange Film Club: “Tracy, you’re an idiot”. What you would do/say?

    It depends on the context. If I feel it could be construed as ‘banter’, I would leave it and monitor the conversation. If, on the other hand, it was clearly posted with malicious intent I would delete it and write a general reminder to everyone that we are a friendly bunch and abuse won’t be tolerated. There’s a place for that type of thing and that place is ITV2.

    Of course it could have been Tracy who posted the message herself. In which case she is an idiot and I would ‘like’ the status.

    #poketask6. Think up a sticky, smart hashtag for our new project all about personalised Royal Wedding memorabilia. (Yep, you read that right).

    #DuchyUnoriginals

    #poketask7. Righty. That’s today’s tweet-a-thon over. Anything else you want to let me know?

    Well yes, there is actually. I think this would be a good point to announce that my name isn’t really Rebecca. Nor do I own a pair of orange shutter shades or a splendid moustache. The finger though, is very much mine. So who am I? Well, when I’m not being The New Rebecca, I call myself Jon and one of my side-projects is this, 7 Reasons. The premiss of 7 Reasons is simple. To give seven reasons for something, every day. And that is what my co-founder Marc and I have done since latter 2009. Topics have varied from 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Date A Polar Bear to 7 Reasons You Should Not Kayak Across The Pacific Ocean to – just because it is mentioned in the tasks above – 7 Reasons To Have A Pizza Express Tattoo. Anyway, given that there were seven tasks, it seemed logical to use 7 Reasons. And it’ll also up our unique visitor count which will please Marc no end.

    And one final thing, just to show you I get results from innovative social media use, I met my fiancée by paraphrasing this guy.

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Teaching Is (Mostly) The Best Job In The World

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Teaching Is (Mostly) The Best Job In The World

    A few weeks ago, you may remember Liz Gregory telling us why Summer was great. There was so much agreement with her in the 7 Reasons HQ that we just had to get her back on the sofa. Thankfully, Liz was only too keen to make a reappearance. And this time she’s bought along her box of chalks. Or are they marker pens? I can never tell when I’m sans contact lenses. If you didn’t check out Liz’s blog – Things To Do In Manchester – last time, then you better do it today. Unless you want detention. Right, enough of the stupid school quips, I’m off to the bike sheds.

    Chalkboard

    1.  Holidays (Part One). We may as well deal with any resentment up front, so we’ll start with holidays. I get 11 weeks per year. Teachers in schools get more. I understand that people in the real world get insultingly poor amounts of annual leave, and I feel bad about this. But no-one, anywhere (that includes you, Cameron) will take my glorious six-week summer off me.

     

    2.  Holidays (Part Two). Last year the afore-mentioned six week summer break began on July 7th. The Ashes series started on July 8th. This point needs no further expansion.

     

    3.  The Students. Yes, I know this one is hard to believe; even a cursory glance at The Daily Mail will indicate that the youth of today are a snarling, feral mass, pausing from their casual sex and drug-taking only to mug passing old ladies and commit knife crimes. You may be disappointed to learn that actually, today’s teenagers are pretty much the same as any other generation of teenagers: moody, unpredictable, funny, witty, charming…in short, they are good company. Although I do query some of their musical taste, and the overall aesthetics of wearing one’s jeans halfway down one’s backside.

     

    4.  Talking About What You Love, All Day Every Day. I teach English, which means that rather than answer telephones and push bits of paper around a desk all day, a typical Monday might include reading Wuthering Heights (and indeed performing the Kate Bush caterwauling classic as a Christmas treat), acting out bits of Streetcar Named Desire (Stellllaaaaaaa!), and teaching how to write scripts, articles or short stories….it’s amazing.

     

    5.  Seasonal Celebrations. Christmas is fun, sure. Christmas in a college with hundreds of sixteen-year-olds who are desperately excited but are trying equally desperately not to show it is even better. Students are also very keen on the confectionary that tends to accompany such seasonal celebrations, and bring it in by the bucket load; there is surely not a teacher in existence who has not felt their waistband constrict at Easter or Christmas due to a surfeit of Quality Street.

     

    6.  Stationery. This may actually be specific to English teachers, but every September the pain of a new academic year is soothed by an almighty trip to Paperchase to stock up on novelty pens and notebooks with monkeys on. This is an essential part of teaching, and its impact on the economic stability of Britain must not be overlooked.

     

    7.  Students Suddenly Realising You’re Not Ninety. I am not particularly advanced in years, but to my youthful charges I may as well be approaching my hundred and twelfth birthday. Until, of course, you are spotted outside of work, wearing jeans, talking to friends, and maybe (gasp) drinking wine. This prompts much admiration, as students recognise you for what you truly are – a plucky old person with a life outside college. This will raise your kudos above every member of the maths and science departments almost instantly.