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Whats your elephant? Maybe youve heard that old saying: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The idea is that the best way for tackling large, overwhelming tasks or projects is to break them down into smaller, more manageable steps. But that doesnt address the obvious problem: Nobody wants to actually “eat the elephant. So, how do you motivate yourself to actually get started? I learned a great trick some years ago from fellow Inc. columnist Jeff Haden, author of The Motivation Myth. Its a technique founded on principles of emotional intelligence, the ability to identify, understand, and manage emotions effectively. Best of all, its far simpler than you might expectas you can tell from its name: The Two-Week Rule. Whats the Two-Week Rule, and how can it help you beat procrastination, find motivation, and reach your biggest goals? It all comes down to the psychology of how motivation works, and how that knowledge can help you manage your emotions. (Sign up here for my free email emotional intelligence course.) How to use the Two-Week Rule to reach your biggest goals Over the years, Hadens had the chance to interview successful people like Shark Tank investor and billionaire Mark Cuban, NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal, and professional tennis great Venus Williams. Through those interviews, Haden learned some interesting things about the psychology of motivation. Motivation isnt something you get from the outside, nor is it something you find within, Haden told me in a recent interview. Motivation is something you create through a cycle of a little bit of effort, a little bit of success that feels goodbecause it always feels good to get better at somethingand that gives you enough motivation to get you to the next day. That cycle just continues to repeat, and it can take you a really long way,” says Haden. In other words, while motivation is part of the cycle, its not the beginning of the cycle. And heres where the two-week rule comes in. The two-week rule is about as simple as it sounds: Commit yourself to a project for two weeks. Then, evaluate your progress and decide whether you want to move forward. To illustrate, Haden uses the following example: Let’s say you want to run a marathon. At the beginning, you may only be able to run a mile; still, you commit to training for two weeks. After day one, you’re thinking there’s no way you’re ever going to be able to run the full race. This thing is hard, much harder than you anticipated. That fact alone is so overwhelming, you’re tempted to give up. But you’ve committed to a full two weeks, so you force yourself to keep going. After a week, you still haven’t seen much improvement. Im sore,” you think to yourself. “Im tired. My knees hurt. I dont really enjoy this.” But you also think: “Thank God I only have another week to go.” At the end of two weeks, though, things look different. You’re a little faster. A little fitter. You’ve developed a new routine and you’ve found your flow. Now you say to yourself: Hey, Ive actually gotten somewhere. Im not at 26 miles yet, but Im much better than when I started. And that progress may be all you need to keep going. Why the Two-Week Rule works The beauty of this rule is you can commit to almost anything for two weeks. At the end of that time, you’ll have data you can actually use to make a decision about moving forwardand many times, the motivation you need, too. But what if you cant even get yourself to commit for two weeks? Or, what if you try, and discover its not really something you want to do? Then its probably not a goal you wanted to achieve anyway, Haden says. And thats a good thingbecause if you try it and find out you dont really want it, it comes off your list of things you want to do. You get rid of the guilt associated with not doing it.” “And now, you can focus on some of the things you really want to do instead. So, whatever major project you’re trying to tackle, try the two-week rule: Commit to doing it for just two weeks. Once you do, you’ll finally have gotten started eating the elephant. And at the end of those two weeks, theres a good chance youll have improved your efforts, you’re starting to see progress, and most importantly, you’ve found the motivation to keep going. By Justin Bariso This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
The United States and Pakistan reached a trade agreement expected to allow Washington to help develop Pakistan’s largely untapped oil reserves and lower tariffs for the South Asian country, officials from both nations said Thursday.Officials did not specify where the exploration would take place, but most of Pakistan’s reserves are believed to be in the insurgency-hit southwestern province of Balochistan, where separatists say the province’s natural resources are being exploited by the central government in Islamabad.“We have just concluded a deal with the country of Pakistan, whereby Pakistan and the United States will work together on developing their massive oil reserves,” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.“We are in the process of choosing the oil company that will lead this partnership,” Trump added. “Who knows, maybe they’ll be selling oil to India someday!”Total U.S. trade with Pakistan was an estimated $7.3 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the United States Representative, which said on its website that U.S. exports to Pakistan in 2024 were $2.1 billion, up 4.4% ($90.9 million) from 2023. U.S. imports from Pakistan totaled $5.1 billion in 2024, up 4.9% ($238.7 million) from 2023, it said.There was no immediate comment from the Baloch nationalists and separatist groups. Balochistan has long been the center of violence mostly blamed on groups including the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, or BLA, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 2019.Separatists in Balochistan have opposed the extraction of resources by Pakistani and foreign firms and have targeted Pakistani security forces and Chinese nationals working on multibillion-dollar projects related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.Oil reserves are also thought to exist in the southern Sindh, eastern Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the “long-awaited” deal and thanked Trump for playing a key role in finalizing it.Pakistan had been pursuing a trade agreement since May, when Trump mediated a ceasefire between Pakistan and India following an escalation triggered by Indian airstrikes on Pakistani territory in response to the killing of 26 tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir.Pakistan’s Finance Ministry said in a statement early Thursday the agreement aims to boost bilateral trade, expand market access, attract investment and foster cooperation in areas of mutual interest.The breakthrough came during a meeting in Washington between Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb and senior U.S. officials, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer.The deal includes a reduction in reciprocal tariffs, particularly on Pakistani exports to the U.S., the statement from the ministry said.“The agreement enhances Pakistan’s access to the U.S. market and vice versa,” it said. The agreement is also expected to spur increased U.S. investment in Pakistan’s infrastructure and development projects, it added. The ministry said the deal reflects both nations’ commitment to deepening bilateral ties and strengthening trade and investment cooperation. Munir Ahmed, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was created in 1914 to protect consumers from corporate overreach. Under Donald Trump, the 110-year-old bipartisan agency is now being converted into a weapon of censorship and repression for the administration to wield against its political enemies. Last week, the FTC hosted a workshop with the unambiguous goal of spreading disinformation about one of the administrations favorite targets: trans people. The event, which was titled The Dangers of “Gender-Affirming Care” for Minors, brought in a group of professional anti-LGBTQ+ bigots to air conspiracy theories and medical disinformation about trans people, with the stated mission of eliminating gender-affirming care for trans youth. Instead of doing the FTCs actual jobprotecting Americans from the excess of Big Tech companiesthe workshop participants instead spent hours discussing disproven anti-trans talking points that the right continues to present as fact. Participants called for the FTC to investigate medical providers who offer gender-affirming care to minors, under the claim that these doctors are engaged in unfair or deceptive business practices. Not only would this intrusion clearly overstep the FTCs authority, it also illustrates how Trumps FTC would weaponize proposed internet censorship laws like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to target queer and trans people and their medical providers. Activists have repeatedly pointed out how anti-LGBTQ+ censorship would be supercharged under laws like KOSA, the online safety bill that Democrats and Republicans have been trying to push through Congress for years. The bill would allow the government to weaponize the FTC by giving the agency the power to pressure social media companies to remove any content that is determined to be harmful or causing distress to children. This language is intentionally vague, and organizations like Fight for the Future have warned it could easily be used to censor anything the government doesnt likefrom online LGBTQ+ communities and medical resources to information about abortion. Weve been here before: The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) promised to protect people online, but all it resulted in was sweeping censorship of online communities as social media companies moved to cover their own bottom line, exactly as they would act if KOSA passed. So, who would get to decide what is harmful or stressful to kids under KOSA? Under a previous version of the bill, lawmakers proposed allowing state attorneys general to decide what kind of content constitutes harm and should be censoreda green light to any state with laws that already discriminate against queer and trans people. The bills supportersincluding Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and the right-wing Heritage Foundationhave explicitly stated it would enable them to protect kids by censoring trans content. This is in line with the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda presented in Project 2025, whose architects describe their quest to criminalize pornography and LGBTQ+ pornography as one in the same, and propose making it a crime to promote transgender ideologyin other words, to erase trans people from public life, and punish anyone who refuses to do so. KOSAs Democratic supporters nevertheless insisted the new law wouldnt be used to censor LGBTQ+ content. But opponents of the legislation pushed back, leading to the bill being dropped twice since its first introduction in 2022. Human rights and civil rights groups have been clear: The inherent problem with KOSA is the duty of care built into the legislation that would encourage companies to censor content the government might take issue with. In a newer iteration of the bill, lawmakers tried to remove this roadblock by walking back their proposal to give enforcement powers to state attorneys general. Instead, the bill now proposes giving this power to the FTCthe very same FTC that just ran an hours-long anti-trans propaganda event. The FTCs sham workshop” made crystal clear that the agency would use these new censorship powers to carry out Trumps anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. Far from being neutral experts, the people invited to the FTC event by the Trump administration represent far-right NGOs like the Heritage Foundation, as well as groups like Moms for Liberty and Do No Harm, which have both been designated as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many of the participants have been paid to travel around the country giving testimony about the supposed dangers of LGBTQ+ healthcare, and have been directly involved in harassment campaigns against LGBTQ+ people and their allies. The meetings participants parroted the repeatedly-debunked theory of rapid onset gender dysphoria, cited widely-discredited junk science papers, and described lifesaving medical interventions like puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormones, and surgery with sensationalist terms like sterilization and mutilation. They also repeated a deranged right-wing hoax about a secret plot by hospitals to forcibly transition children. These are the same lies that have been consistently amplified by the Trump administration, with the plainly stated goal of ending trans healthcare in the U.S.not just for minors, but adults too. In reality, gender-affirming care is supported by every major medical organization in the country, and there is wide scientific consensus that it overwhelmingly improves the lives of trans people. For years, studies have consistently shown that access to hormones and clinical support drastically reduces rates of depression and suicide, particularly for trans youth. The rates of regret for gender-affirming surgical procedures remain extremely small, with some studies recording it as low as 1.7% to 2.1% for minors. Further studies also show, consistently, that the small percentage of people who later de-transition overwhelmingly do so not because they were tricked into gender-affirming care, but because of external pressure and strucural discrimination against trans people. But like everything in Trumpworld, the purpose of the FTC workshop wasnt to discuss facts or evidence. The administration purposely excluded trans patients, healthcare providers, parents, allies, and anyone else that would challenge its bigotry. At a time when the agency should be pushing back against the countless abuses of monopolistic Big Tech companies companies, the event had nothing to do with the agencys mandate of protecting consumer rightsjust like its use of laws like KOSA will have nothing to do with protecting children. Instead, it shows how Trump has transformed the agency into yet another tool of repression and propaganda to destroy the rights of queer and trans people in the U.S. Online communities are a lifeline for many LGBTQ+ people, especially for queer and trans youth who are often in desperate search of affirming spaces. Giving the FTC censorship powers with KOSA would allow Trump to destroy these communitiesas well as others used by abortion-seekers, activists, and anyone else the administration has deemed an enemy.
Category:
E-Commerce
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