Raise Your Marketing IQRaise Your Marketing IQ

Between holiday parties, last-minute deadlines, and Secret Santa exchanges, you’ve got less than a week before things start getting really hectic around the workplace. Do yourself a favor: Take a little holiday breather in this week’s open thread.

Photo submitted by ozw.

The open thread, as always, is your opportunity to chat it up with fellow Lifehacker readers about whatever happens to float your boat this week. You can ask questions, offer advice, discuss Avatar—nothing’s off-limits (save completely inappropriate, unquestionably offensive, or hateful speech). Remember that you can also continue your open thread conversations at any time during the week in the #openthread hashtag forum, but our weekly Friday call is where your question will be read by the most eyeballs. To join in you’ll need a commenter account, but that’s easy enough to accomplish. Let’s get open threading. Happy Friday, everybody!

If it always seems like you manage to get sick around the holidays, semester breaks, and other pauses in your hectic schedule you’re not imagining it. Use exercise to protect yourself from the “Let-Down Effect”.

Photo by soopahgrover.

How does this let-down effect work? Researchers at UCLA have been studying how stress hormones interact with your immune system. When your body is stressed, the release of stress hormones in the body stimulates the immune system—ostensibly to protect you from getting a cold while fleeing from saber-tooth tigers. When the stress diminishes, things get bumpy:

In the immediate aftermath of stressful times — perhaps following an anxiety-producing project at work or a major family crisis — when you finally have time to take a deep breath and unwind, that’s when illness can unexpectedly strike. Just when you’re letting down [your] hair, your ability to fight off illnesses may let you down.

“This effect has been associated with conditions such as upper respiratory infections, the flu, migraine headaches, dermatitis, arthritis pain, and depression,” says Schoen, a psychologist and assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCLA.

It seems cruel, but when you finally take time to unwind after the stress of a busy semester or quarter at work, your immune system takes a break too—finally believing you’re out of harm’s way and everything is OK.

Staying in a constant state of stress just to boost your immune system obviously isn’t the solution, everyone needs a break and extended periods of heightened stress will eventually wear you down and negate the immune system boosting properties of the stress hormones. Fortunately, while your brain might be a complicated reasoning-machine, your body is quite primitive and has little ability to distinguish between types of stress. Although most people wouldn’t consider exercise to be on par with the stress of a demanding job, exercise stimulates the body and bolsters the immune system in a similar fashion. You don’t have to start hitting the gym for an hour a day to see the benefit either—spend ten minutes a day walking stairs, taking a walk after dinner, or doing some basic exercises like pushups.

For more information about the let-down effect and how you can stay healthy around the holidays or vacations, check out the full article at the link below. Have your own tips for staying in tip-top shape even when the drinks are flowing and your manager’s rants are a thousand miles away? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

In just a few weeks, 2009 will be behind us—and likely your checkbook will be happy to see it go. But before the holiday madness ensues, take a little time to prep your pocketbook for a richer 2010.

Between layoffs, furloughs, budget cuts, and regular bank implosions, 2009 frankly sucked. Many people—myself included—closed their eyes, stuck their fingers in their ears and chanted “la la la” all year when it came to checking in on plummeting investment values and income. But, for better or worse, December is the time to take a deep breath and assess how you did this past year, set yourself up for some tax savings in April, and recharge your savings and retirement plans.

Here are a few good money moves to make before you ring in the New Year.

Set up or review your automatic savings plans. Even if your income took a hit this year and expenses went up, there are still ways you can find an extra few bucks per month or week to sock away in a savings account. Instead of relying on your pea-brain to remember to do this by hand, opt into a set-it-and-forget it automatic savings plan. If you did automatic savings deposits in 2009 already, look hard at the number. Did you save as much as you wanted? Did you need to adjust it down? Did you stop the plan halfway through the year in a panic? Restart your automatic savings plan for 2010. Even $25 a week is better than nothing.

Max out your retirement savings. If you’re lucky to 1.) have a job and 2.) have it at a company that matches your retirement plan contributions, congratulations. Everyone else wants to kick you in the shins, especially if you’re not taking advantage of it. Employer retirement contribution matches is free money that you can only get your hands on if you’re making the initial contribution. In the spirit of “pay yourself first,” make sure you’re putting away the maximum amount you can possibly stand into retirement, and take advantage of the tax benefits and employer matches that comes along with that. Even if you’re self-employed, you’re still going to retire at some point, so make sure you’ve got yourself a plan in place. How much you should save for retirement has everything to do with your current age, when you want to retire, and the type of lifestyle you want to live when that happens. Retirement calculators abound online; here’s SmartMoney.com’s retirement worksheet.

Get your last tax deductions in. If you think things were bad for you this year, they were worse for charities. When people pinch pennies, charitable donations are the first things to go down. But you can still save money on your 2009 tax return by donating stuff and cash to the charity of your choice by the end of this year. Likewise, if there are work-related purchases that you can write off—go to town. Just make sure you’re hanging onto your receipts and are ready to itemize come April.

Get your 2009 free credit report. Every year you’re entitled to a free credit report from the three major reporting agencies, and if you haven’t snagged your 2009 report, now’s the time to do it. Don’t listen to the URL that the guy in the commercial is singing about; the one you want is Annual Credit Report. This report doesn’t include your FICO score, the credit rating that has a whole lot to do with whether or not you can get a mortgage. If buying a house is something that may happen in 2010 or beyond, it’s worth spending the $30 or so to check your FICO score.

Jot down your accomplishments at the office this year. You won’t find this advice in many money magazines, but what you did this year at work will have a lot to do with how much income you pull in in the future. When things get better for your company and raises are (finally) doled out, you want to make the case to your boss or manager that you deserve more money. Best way to do this: write down all the things you accomplished at work in 2009 that you’re proud of. When it’s time for the performance review, your ability to instantly recall all the reasons why you’re the employee your company should reward will affect the size of your next paycheck adjustment. If you decide to move onto a new job? With your accomplishments written down, putting together your resume will be easy.

Calculate your net worth and get a 2010 budget set up. If setting up personal finance software like Quicken or Mint has been on your to-do list, now’s the time to pull the trigger. January is the perfect time to start tracking your money like you always intended, and personal finance software makes it very easy to monitor your net worth and keep a budget. If the idea of fighting with Quicken or Microsoft Money makes you want to run the other way, try out a simpler, automated web-based money tracker like Mint. (Here’s more on why I stopped being paranoid and started using Mint.)

Get your will and insurance ducks in a row. December is also the right time to review your insurance policies and will. Did you move this year and forget to change your renter’s insurance information? Is your car insurance plan up to date? Are you using the best healthcare option your employer offers? This grown-up paperwork is rarely fun, but it matters a whole lot if things go wrong—and having it in order will help you sleep at night.

Of course, if you need specific help reviewing investments or making important decisions about your will or retirement plan, be sure to check in with a professional financial planner (which I am not). What else are you doing this December to get ready to grow your money in 2010? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, looks forward to seeing less red and more black in 2010. Find her at Smarterware and on Twitter.

We all know that first impressions are powerful things. Billionaire Steven A. Cohen makes the most of first impressions taking a deep breath and holding it before he enters a room. How about you?

Poorly named weblog The Art of Manliness rounds up a few tips for commanding a room, including this interesting nugget from Cohen’s playbook:

Before he makes his appearance, he takes a deep breath, filling all of his lungs. He then holds his breath and walks into the room. As he talks, the air is naturally exhaled. This simple action increases blood to your face and makes you look “more radiant and lively,” and consequently more confident.

By taking a deep breath you force yourself to not only stand up straight, but also give a quick rush of blood to your head, giving you a slightly flushed and cheery look. It might sound silly, but people are always interested in meeting someone with energy and spunk. Just remember to exhale, because no one wants to talk to a corpse—unless it’s Halloween.

Do you have a ritual when meeting people for the first time? Share your first impression rituals in the comments.