EDITION 772
1 JULY 2019

As another week slips by, here are 10 things which caught my attention and may have escaped yours. This newsletter is sent to 50,000+ subscribers each Monday. Please share on social media and forward to your colleagues and friends so they can subscribe, learn and engage. I'd be very grateful if you did.

1. How to change your bad habits. Every one of us has a career-limiting bad habit. Whether it’s weak interpersonal skills, a tendency to procrastinate, or good-but-not-great technical prowess, one of the biggest impediments to our upward mobility is a habit we can’t get rid of. But a few small changes can help. [MORE]
    
2. A handful of private school-educated elites hold many of Britain’s top jobs. The Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission found 39% of people in high-ranking jobs in politics, the judiciary, media and business had been privately educated, compared with 7% of the general population. In contrast, just 5% of male football stars went to private school. The Times
    
3. Turning self-doubt into a strength. Rather than fight against or judge our self-doubt, we can use such feelings as a place to start thinking about the steps we can take to achieve our goals. How can we start? Talk to yourself. Objective self-talk, when we advise ourselves the way we’d advise a friend, can help us develop a sense of self-efficacy, the feeling that we are capable of performing the necessary tasks to succeed. [MORE]
    
4. Constitutional experts say Boris may never enter No 10. Boris Johnson might never enter 10 Downing Street, say two constitutional experts. According to professors Robert Hazell and Meg Russell from the University of London, Johnson’s legitimacy would be challenged if just a handful of Tory MPs declared that they could not support his administration. “This would pose a serious dilemma for the Queen and those advising her,” they say. The Guardian
    
5. Giving a presentation? Ditch the script, go with a map. When you commit to memorising a talk, you lock yourself into delivering your presentation in a single, rigid way. Make one slip from your script and your brain is prone to go into panic mode Instead of a script you create a presentation roadmap. Know the succession of points you’d like to express and the general order you’d like to communicate them. Unlike a script, a map can offer a sense of where you’re heading but some wiggle room in how you get there. [MORE]
    
6. If you work on holiday, there are some ground rules. For some of us, doing some form of work while away is all but inevitable. Two-thirds of employees told Glassdoor that they work while on holiday, and Randstad reports that some 53% of employers expect employees to be available while out. How can you pull this off without feeling drained? Set clear boundaries. Devote specific periods to work, with the rest dedicated to off time. Prioritise big picture thinking over routine tasks. And turn off all messaging tools. Editor
    
7. Want to buy a home in UK? You need to earn £54,000 on average. First-time buyers in the UK need an average income of £54,000 in order to buy a property, a rise of 9% from 2016. Data released by the property website Zoopla found that the household income required in London was £84,000. In Liverpool, which had the lowest required household income before tax of the 30 cities surveyed, it was £26,000. According to Zoopla, the average price of a home in London is £482,000 compared with £219,000 for the UK as a whole. The Guardian
    
8. Women exposed to air pollution risk early menopause, say scientists. Two separate studies have suggested a link between living with heavy air pollution and a risk of earlier menopause and infertility. The scientists behind the research, in Italy and the US, believe that such pollution may speed the ageing of women’s reproductive systems. A study in Modena found women living in the most polluted neighbourhoods were three times more likely to have a low ovarian reserve than those in the cleanest areas of the city.New Scientist
    
9. England and Wales jail ‘shameful’ numbers of people. According to the Prison Reform Trust, more than 140,000 people were sent to prison in England and Wales in 2017 – the highest rate per head in western Europe, and almost twice as high as Germany. Daily Mail
    
10. The bottom line. £35bn is the difference between what people collectively owed the taxman last year and what they actually paid, according to HMRC. The so-called “tax gap” is £2bn bigger than it was in 2017. The Independent