This time of year many of us are promising to improve our health and fitness levels. Unfortunately these good intentions often don’t last for long. So how’s this for motivation: the chance to win $25,000 in cash!

Bodybuilding and fitness site bodybuilding.com has joined with Optimum Nutrition to run a twelve week personal transformation contest with prize packages worth a total of $100,000. The contest is open to US residents and those wanting to take part need to register before 31st January 2011 and upload “start” photos.

After twelve weeks the winners (one male, one female) will be decided according to two factors: “biggest physical and mental improvement and most inspirational and helpful to others.” Each grand prize winner will receive $25,000 plus other prizes. Ten runners up will each receive $2,500 and prizes.

Ryan DeLuca of bodybuilding.com said:

We set out to create the biggest transformation challenge anyone has ever heard of – no strings attached. Not only that, it was our goal to equip everyone with the tools needed to truly be a success. I must say, we have done just that. If this doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will.

For full details of the contest, terms & conditions and registration visit the Transformation Challenge website.

The life coaching industry in Britain could be set to get a boost according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

According to a Telegraph source the current government is planning to give pregnant women and girls under 21 “several years” of one to one life coaching. This will be delivered by nurse practitioners via a reformed health visitor network. The plan follows a trial in some 60 areas of the country that found specialised coaching had significant positive benefits for young mothers.

There are, of course, arguments that this is the sort of thing that young people should get anyway from family, friends and society in general. However the reality is that many don’t so such a scheme has definite potential.

The 2010 Motivation Show in Chicago has announced a slew of initiatives to help it go green and reduce its carbon footprint.

The most obvious change is the choice of location: the McCormick Place West building which has received LEED Certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) from the U.S. Green Build Council. However there are other changes, in particular to reduce the amount of paper products usually generated by trade shows.

For a start all exhibitor material will be distributed online and online forms will be used for exhibitor data collection. For show attendees the most visible change is that they’ll no longer be mailed a badge. Instead they’ll be sent an email confirmation of booking which includes a barcode. They to print this out and on arrival it’s scanned and they’re given an RFID badge.

Behind the scenes the Motivation Show is working with its general services contractor GES on initiatives such as recyclable carpet padding, energy efficient lighting and biodegradable trash bags.

Putting aside the possible privacy issues over RFID name badges it sounds like a very positive green move for the show.

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great Hogmanay and are now fully recovered, ready and eager to grab 2010 and the opportunities it offers.

I’ve said before that I don’t like New Year resolutions, I consider them an excuse for failure. However that doesn’t mean ignoring the change of year. It’s still a powerful symbol that we can harness to boost our motivation and personal development.

Even though I don’t do specific “resolutions” I do use the New Year as an opportunity to look back over the recent past and forward to the future. It’s a good time to take stock of where I am and where I want to be – as well as who I want to be.

So although I don’t do “task based” resolutions (eg “go to the gym twice a week”) I do think about more general achievement based plans (eg “live a healthier lifestyle”). At this time I find it more useful to concentrate on the outcome rather than the method.

Of course these objectives need eventually to be translated into actions. So the New Year is also a good time to look at the system(s) I’m using for this (GTD, Eisenhower matrix, Pomodoro, etc) and make sure that a) they meet my needs and b) they’re up to date. Essentially I treat the New Year as a time not for low level resolutions but for a much higher level annual review.

As a wise sage once said: “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun”.

If you run a team, a department or a whole company then how do you set pay? Do you reward your best performers more money or do you prefer an equal pay system?

Many people fear that paying some people more than others at similar levels of seniority creates tension: those paid less might resent the higher paid and possibly even try to undermine them.

New research from the University of Nottingham School of Ecconomics suggests that the opposite could be true: employees might resent equal pay.

The researchers found that in a roleplay experiment an equal pay system demotivated those working hardest. They came to resent their fellow workers who were doing less for the same money and subsequently eased up themselves. By contrast those who were paid based on performance worked much harder.

Johannes Abeler, co-author of the study, said:

Equal pay is often referred to as a cornerstone of a fair wage scheme and is one of the most prevalent pay modes. But in a work environment, the equity norm demands that a person who puts in more effort should receive a higher wage. In other words, if equity is important, the often-heard slogan ‘equal pay for equal work’ implies ‘unequal pay for unequal work’.

Of course this research was based on a very simple experiment. The report itself is careful to stress that:

The results in this paper should not be interpreted as arguments against wage equality in general. They rather suggest that equal wages come at a cost that has to be weighed against their potential benefits.

(A point apparently lost on much of the British press).

There are many interacting factors in a real workplace. For example, should “performance” be defined by effort or results? How do you reward workers for helping their colleagues to excel? Perhaps most importantly of all, how do you ensure the process is transparent without creating an adversarial management framework?

No doubt academics will study these issues at some future date.