Stock photos don’t a great reputation. They’re cheesy and are easily recognizable, so a lot of marketers avoid using them. But I’d like to argue that stock photos aren’t the issue, it’s how you choose them.

Genuine top-quality stock photos expand your marketing opportunities. So let’s go through some common stock photo concepts that make your content look poor and then some good alternatives to consider.

1. Exaggerated facial expressions

Human emotions are an essential element of photos, which impacts the perception of the whole message you strive to deliver. Having a limited budget on hiring a professional model or finding persons to cover a topic related to them, photographers have flooded stock websites with images of people expressing fake joy or anger.

Credit: Pixabay

When picking a photo for your projects, keep track of people’s emotions and facial expressions. Make sure they appear natural, just like the photographer captured them in a real-life scene all of a sudden. This will make the content feel more genuine rather than cheap and staged.

Credit: Liza Summer, Pexels

2. Doppelgänger models

There are tons of stock photos out there of people wearing all-too-similar outfits, looking like weird doppelgängers.

Credit: Freepik

Nowadays, more and more photographers aim for photo styling, color schemes, model authenticity, and diversity. When you look at their works, you can imagine what the characters are in front of you, what they like, and what they don’t. They have different stories and backgrounds, which make each photo real and vivid.

But if they’re all wearing the same-ish outfit, those stories will fall flat — so make sure to go for more interesting ones.

Credit: fauxels, Pexels

3. Ridiculous metaphors and allegories

Although stock photography intends to illustrate concepts and deliver a clear message covering various situations, some photographers generalize the topic and create plain visuals to express an idea.

Using all their imagination and photo editing skills, they tend to produce tons of content that, unfortunately, lacks originality.

Credit: Pixabay

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting leaving metaphors and conceptual photography exclusively to professional artists. Many stock photographers are good enough at illustrating creative concepts, but it’s on you to choose the right ones.

Credit: Rakicevic, Pexels

Credit: cottonbro, Pexels

4. Over-editing

During the golden age of fashion magazines with flawless imagery, stock photography looked perfectly polished too. Today, things have changed, and photos that look natural have become the new black — which is why you should avoid over-edited gloss pics like the one below.

Credit: Pixabay, Pexels

By choosing real-looking photos with blemishes and imperfections, you have far better chances that your content will resonate with your target audience.

Credit: cottonbro, Pexels

5. Cheesy clipart

You can’t have an article on stock photos without mentioning clipart.

Clipart portrays abstract concepts like ‘leadership’, ‘motivation’, ‘teamwork’ etc. As many stock websites are available for authors of any skill level, who are eager to sell their content, the number of cheesy clipart that portrays a concept in the most obvious way has grown exponentially.

They fail to grab attention and are hardly able to drive action.

Credit: Pixabay

Are there any alternatives? Sure.

Consider choosing more appealing and fresh imagery. For example, take 3D illustrations, which are still not outdated (the keyword is still !), or make a collage with several relevant photos.

But, please stay away from any images demonstrating abstract concepts literally!

Credit: Freepik

So the next time you’re choosing a stock photo for a project, keep these five examples in mind.

But also remember that the golden rule of stock photos is to always think of your target audience and don’t forget about the context. The image you’re going to choose should be a perfect match between your product and clients.

Remember that the right message delivered to the right audience at the right time is a key to a successful marketing campaign.

How I went from teacher to developer in just 10 months

So you’re interested in our subbrand Growth Quarters? Then join our online event, TNW2020 , where you’ll hear how the most successful founders kickstarted and grew their companies.

This article was originally published on ult by Sky Houdeib. . cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world.

A click, a swoosh. Then a click and a swoosh again. Repeating rhythmically. Then a thud and it’s silent for a moment. Then it restarts. It’s 2:00 am and I hear this sound coming from my patio. I only moved in that week and wasn’t familiar with the house’s particular noises. This sound was odd. So I went to investigate.  What I found stirred a change in me.

In 2017 I decided to learn code with no tech background or relevant experiences. I’d never attempted to code before, and was approaching my forties. Yet within the span of ten months, I was working as a front-end developer for a startup.  Sounds like a miraculous transformation but it wasn’t. It was the culmination of a long journey. It required changes in my attitude and lifestyle, with constant work towards the next step.

Most career-change stories begin once a decision is made and the hard work begins. But the truth is that before you get there there is a long process of figuring things out and setting yourself up for success.

It’s usually “the montage” part of the story. In this article I want to slow it down and share with you that process; what motivated me to look for a new career and the personal changes I made to be ready for it long before I started learning the new skills.

Let’s start from the beginning. What motivates us to embark on a career change? And one step further – what pushes us towards any great change?

Smells like teen advice

As I approached my late thirties I started to evaluate my life and my choices. The thing about your thirties is that almost all the decisions that lead to your current life were made when you were in your teens – or at most, a very inexperienced individual. When you made those decisions you didn’t know much about the older you. You couldn’t have known how your experiences would have shaped you and how your priorities were going to change.

In my teens, for example, my priorities were very different from what I was feeling in my mid-thirties. Sure, I had lived out many of those experiences I had wanted to, but at a point I realized that my hopes for the next 10, 20 or 30 years were on a different path. This was the first spark of encouragement towards a new life.

Teaching English in Spain

I was teaching English in Spain and it was something I enjoyed. But I wanted to build a career that was more fulfilling and I wanted more financial stability. Growth as a teacher is limited and usually takes you straight out of the classroom and into more managerial roles. The classroom was what I loved about the job. I knew I had to look somewhere else to reach what I felt was my potential.

Health

Around that time, my Dad —a life-long smoker— was diagnosed with lung cancer. In a few short and very hard months, his health deteriorated and he passed away. I was a smoker at that time, too.  Of course, I knew it was bad for my health. But the tragic thing about humans is we often fail to appreciate the seriousness of something, even when it’s so obvious until it touches us directly. After my father passed, I could no longer turn a blind eye. I had to face the fact that my lifestyle would have devastating effects on the lives of the people I loved. It was time to start taking care of my health.

Drive

The final piece of this puzzle was my drive. I’d become intimidated by new challenges. Something had changed because big challenges and risk-taking were nothing new to me. In my early twenties, I relocated from Lebanon to the UK. At 25 I dropped a career in the restaurant business and went to university. By my late twenties, I had relocated again this time to Spain. Learning a new language and building a life from scratch once again.

So I wasn’t new to the difficulties of a big challenge. I knew the hard work it required and I knew that it could be done. But life throws at you experiences that change you, sometimes in subtle ways that aren’t always noticeable. And it’s not just life, it’s also our own actions, routines, and habits. It’s easy in the end to find yourself putting limitations on your own abilities and objectives. Limitations that come from nothing but your own mind.

Becoming aware of all this is very important. And it is the first step to changing things. But it’s only the first step and without doing anything about it, it is not going to change on its own. It’s also the kind of moment where the people closest to you can have a great impact. My partner, Elena, who is also my closest friend, was in endless conversations with me. These were vital in reflecting, building motivation, and deciding to move forward.

The search

One day on a visit to a science museum we picked up a kids book about coding. We followed its instructions and created our first HTML and CSS Hello World. It was thrilling. This seemed to be like a very interesting career option to pursue. But how did the search lead me there to begin with?

In pop culture, people seem to always be “searching” for stuff. Searching for love, searching for themselves, searching for a way out. And I dislike the idea of the search. It gives the impression that whatever it is we are seeking is already out there waiting to be discovered. And all we have to do is “find” it.

I can hardly find myself in the neighborhood where I live. That’s not how I view the world. I prefer to exchange the word “search” with “create”. Create love. Create yourself. Create a way out. That’s what makes sense to me. What we want isn’t already out there. But it’s something we can build, piece by piece. One step at a time. It’s something we create, not find.

Quit smoking

Creating the new version of me as I saw myself by my late thirties had to start with the first and most important step. Quit smoking.

I knew I had to address the constant nagging voice in my head. The one who knew I shouldn’t be smoking. Every day where I continued to smoke was another day that left me feeling like a failure. It was a barrier. A mental one. And a self-imposed one.

So one hot summer day, with the great support and motivation of Elena, I got rid of all my smoking paraphernalia and I quit smoking. It took me two weeks to stop thinking of myself as a smoker and start to notice improvements in my health. Two weeks! That’s all it took.

It wasn’t easy. But that great barrier was worth only two weeks of fighting. And I couldn’t have invested those two weeks in anything better. And it makes you think, why did I trap myself in a self-made prison for so long?

Diet and workout

At the same time, paying attention to my health meant addressing two other important cornerstones. Diet and exercise. I started working out regularly. I went swimming to fight my smoking urges. And I dropped most of the junk and processed food from my diet and started paying attention a lot more to what I’m eating.

A quick disclaimer. I’m not a statuesque fitness freak. I’m not on a strict broccoli diet. Nor is my BMI something to make documentaries about. I’m talking about a move towards a healthier lifestyle in general. This includes a healthier diet and regular exercise. But I’m still eating my pizza.

It’s hard to overestimate the impact of these changes. Taking care of my body meant that I  felt better and healthier than I have for years. And once those healthier routines became established it was easy to persist. This gave me a boost of physical energy. But it also put me in a better frame of mind. It gave me a boost of confidence. I had faced battles I previously felt were difficult. So I was more open to facing new bigger challenges. It felt doable. This was the right base to be able to build on.

But what did I want to do?

I spent plenty of time investigating possibilities within teaching. At one time I was close to packing up and going back to university again to specialize. But none of the options I explored spoke to me or got me excited. I tried things. I started little courses here and there. Experimented with this and that.

This is the unglamorous part of the story of a career change. You don’t get there suddenly. It takes a load of other attempts that don’t lead anywhere.

The noise at 2:00am

I looked out into the patio. It was a brightly moon-lit evening. The patio was empty. There was that sound again. It wasn’t coming from the patio at all. That was just the echo. It was coming from the other side of the house.

And that’s when it clicked. Over on that side, down the hill, there was a skate park. It was someone skateboarding! Skateboarding in the dead of night. In the freezing winter cold. Again and again. Up and down. Falling and getting up.

I went back to bed and sat there listening to the unknown skater practicing their moves. And I realized that this was exactly the missing ingredient for me.

It reminded me of when as a teen I picked up the guitar for the first time. And you look at the mountain of stuff you’ll have to do before you become any good at this. It’s intimidating and scary. But you take it one step at a time. And you learn something new every day. And you work hard and push yourself. And you become consumed with wanting to understand everything about guitars and guitar playing.

And that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want simply a career move towards something “better.” I wanted a challenge that seems insurmountable. Something that doesn’t only push me out of my comfort zone, but forces me to expose myself to my fears. Something that makes me want to work as hard as my skater friend at 2:00 a I knew in my heart that it wasn’t the time for half measures. It wasn’t too late to start learning something completely new from scratch. It was the right time!

Coding

Right at that same time Elena was on her own quest. She was exploring improving her career options. She was also passionately thinking about why there were so few women in STEM careers. Those two intersected as she started to explore software engineering. It attracted her both as a viable career option and because there was (and is) an underrepresentation of women in tech.

I quickly got excited when I watched and listened to her talk about code. It was an area I had always admired and found intriguing. Though I thought it was something inaccessible by someone like me. We started looking for more information on how realistic it is to learn to code and what options exist.

After writing our first Hello World, we moved from exploring the career path to actually doing tutorials and trying things out . It became clear this was a viable career choice. And that programming is as exciting as it is challenging.

Once we felt we understood our options and how we could work it into our lives and constraints, we made the decision. We decided to pursue a career change full steam ahead.

The temperature outside had become mild and agreeable, and yet, I could still hear the click and swoosh of my unknown skater still practicing deep into the night. And I knew I was ready to take on this challenge and work just as hard.

I hope you find this story useful. I think we have a tendency to reduce our journeys to bite-sized stories that only highlight the best parts. Those moments paint a skewed picture. I don’t want to sound cliche but nothing comes suddenly, nothing comes easy without consistent hard work. That hard work goes beyond minimum requirements for a career change.

The key to productivity is distinguishing ‘habits’ from ‘routine’

Trying to build good habits can often backfire. Here’s why it’s important to know how habits are formed and when it’s better to stick with a routine instead.

Habits are hot. Self-help articles extol the power of habits and books on the topic sell by the millions. Yet, like many pop psychology topics, the conventional wisdom about the effectiveness and application of habits is frequently outdated, misapplied, or flat out wrong. Building habits to change behavior the right way can be a wonderful tool to improve your life. But false notions about what habits are and what they can do can backfire.

The idea of building a habit is very appealing. The popular notion that tasks can be put on autopilot makes habits sound effortless. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply make a habit out of doing tasks like exercising, journaling, paying bills, or running a side business? Unfortunately, you can’t. Habits don’t work that way.

What are habits?

According to Dr. Benjamin Gardner, a habit researcher at King’s College London, “habit works by generating an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought.” Habits are a type of learning. By forming a habit, the brain frees the mind to do other things without deliberation.

As a child, you needed reminding to wash your hands after using the toilet. Children must focus on the task of turning on the water, dispensing the soap, lathering up, and cleaning their hands. As an adult, you do this automatically (hopefully) and you’re able to think about other things as you take the steps to wash your hands.

Only some behaviors can become habits

By definition, behaviors that require concentration, deliberation, or extended effort, are not habits.1 This isn’t just semantics. We shouldn’t try to form a habit out of a task that can never become one. If we do, will be sorely disappointed.

When we fail at forming a habit, we tend to blame ourselves, rather than the bad advice we read from someone who doesn’t really understand what can and cannot be a habit.

If behaviors that require conscious thought, like cleaning your apartment or writing in a journal daily, are not habits, then what are they? They are routines. A routine is “a sequence of actions regularly followed.”

To change a behavior you need to understand the difference between a habit and a routine. Otherwise, it’s like using the blunt end of a screwdriver to bash in a nail. It’s possible, but you’re likely to give up or hurt yourself. You should have used a hammer instead.

How do we tell the difference between behaviors that are good candidates to become habits and those best left as routines? To answer that question we need to start with a more fundamental question, “Why do we do anything?”

Like what you’re reading? This article draws on my book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. it here and subscribe to my newsletter to receive more great articles.

What is motivation?

For years, we thought that Sigmund Freud’s “pleasure principle” is the basis of human motivation. He promoted the idea that behavior is driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner popularized the notion that reinforcements and punishments drive conditioned behavior.

But, we now know that motivation is not driven by pleasure and pain. Rather, neurologically speaking, motivation is the desire to escape discomfort. All human behavior, even the itch of desire to do something pleasurable, is in fact prompted by pain. It’s called the homeostatic response.

Our brains get our bodies to do what they want through discomfort. When we’re cold, we put on a coat. When we feel hunger pangs, we eat. Does feeling warm again or eating food bring pleasure? Of course. But that good feeling comes after we’re spurred into action by an uncomfortable sensation prompting us to take action.

The same rule applies to psychological discomfort. When we feel lonely, bored, or uncertain, we act to relieve our emotional disquietude. We might see a friend to relieve loneliness, or watch a show on television when we’re bored. We may look up something online to satisfy our uncertainty — all because we seek to escape these uncomfortable sensations.

The difference between habits and routines

If all behavior is prompted by discomfort, then habits and routines must follow the same rule. How and when we feel the discomfort of doing, or not doing, a behavior is critical to understanding the difference between habits and routines.

Recall that part of the reason people find the idea of building a habit so appealing is the notion that they can put unfun tasks on autopilot. Tasks like paying bills or doing the laundry annoy us. They hang over our heads until the pain of not doing them gets to be too much. However, if some magic laundry-folding fairy appeared and told you not to worry about the task, you’d happily go about your day. Turns out your brain comes built in with just such a magic pixie, it’s called procrastination.

When we procrastinate, we tell ourselves we’ll avoid the task for later. Doing so is a telltale sign the task is a routine and not a good candidate to become a habit.

Imagine intending to wash your hands and the water suddenly shuts off. If you’re in the habit, not doing the behavior would feel strange, even uncomfortable. Even if the magic habit fairy told you your hands had been cleaned and there was no need to wash them, it would take you several days, if not weeks, to undo this habitual behavior.

I recently experienced just such a predicament when the water to my bathroom sink was shut off because of construction in my building. I needed to use the kitchen sink to wash my hands for a week. Even though I was fully aware that the bathroom sink wasn’t going to work, I kept turning it on day after day out of habit. Every time I lifted the faucet handle and no water came out, my habit was interrupted and I’d get annoyed. I knew the faucet wouldn’t work, but I kept attempting to do the behavior with little thought.

A habit feels uncomfortable when we don’t do it, exactly the opposite is true of routines. This is where people get into trouble confusing habits and routines. They expect routines to be as effortless as habits, while the only thing about routines that’s easy, is how easy they are to skip. Not doing an effortful task, like doing the laundry or writing in a journal, is easy to forget because such behaviors are not a habit, they are a routine that requires effort.

How habits are formed

Some self-help books claim habits form by simply providing a reward after a cued behavior. In the behaviorist tradition, they base their claims on research showing how a lab animal, like a mouse, can be taught to memorize a path through a maze in search of food. However, while this form of learning, called operant conditioning, works well for a mouse in a maze, the model is often misapplied for humans in the real world.

Operant conditioning can be effective when a scientist in a lab coat sets up the task for test subjects to complete. However, in life, we are thankfully not trapped in cages and mazes, we must moderate our own behavior. Unfortunately, we must be scientists attempting to design our own actions. Offering ourselves extrinsic rewards makes conditioning our own behavior very difficult. It can be exceedingly hard to resist cheating. Setting up arbitrary prizes risks overemphasizing completing a goal for the sake of the reward, instead of learning to enjoy the process.

Start with a routine

First we have to accept that only certain kinds of behaviors can become habits, and that certain behaviors will never become habits. Only then can we take the first step to change our repeated behaviors. For those actions that can turn into habits, we can begin by making them into routines. As long as we know the difference between a habit (a behavior done with little or no thought) and a routine (a series of actions regularly followed) we can plan accordingly and not be disappointed.

Hold the time

Since we can’t count on routines to happen automatically the way habits do, we need to make sure to allocate time for them. Many people go through their days with aspirations to accomplish a list of tasks. But without dedicating time on their calendars to do them, they never get everything done.

Setting an “implementation intention,” which is just a fancy way of saying that you will plan what you are going to do and when you are going to do it, has been shown to boost the likelihood of following through.3 Without a dedicated time reserved for your new routine, chances are it’ll never get done.

If you’d like to know more about how to properly schedule your day, read this article and try this free online schedule maker tool you can use to plan your day.

Welcome discomfort

It’s important to expect that learning and repeatedly doing a new behavior requires effort. Expect discomfort and know that you’ll have to push through it. Along with setting expectations that new routines won’t be effortless, you can learn coping techniques to deal with discomfort in a healthier manner.

For instance, you can learn to re-imagine the difficulty in a positive way by telling yourself a different story. Instead of focusing on how hard writing or exercising every day can be, think of the difficulty as part of the journey. Know that everyone who has ever made a routine out of this behavior has struggled at some point.

If you desire to go to the gym regularly but dislike exercise, find ways to see it differently. Envision every drop of sweat as a sign your body is getting stronger. Learn to see the burn as tiny muscle fibers getting better at doing their job, as your body rises to the challenge. Perception is a matter of perspective, no matter the routine, you can choose to re-imagine your discomfort as a good thing. This may seem like a stretch for someone who hates exercise, as I once did. But it’s useful to remember that many people have learned to love the very same difficulty you despise. If they can see it differently, why can’t you?

Pre-Commit

Before a behavior can become a habit, it needs to become a regularly performed routine. But given how effortful routines can be, it’s far too easy to skip a difficult task. Thankfully, making a pre-commitment is a fantastic way to ensure you do what you say you will do.

For instance, if writing or exercising daily is a routine you want to adopt, finding someone to hold you accountable will increase your odds of success. Sites like FocusMate, make finding someone to work alongside easy (note: I liked FocusMate so much I decided to invest in the company). You can also pre-commit to a routine by using software like Forest on your phone and Freedom on your computer to prevent distraction and keep you on task.

Do it right

By not expecting every aspiration to become an effortless habit, you increase your odds of success. If it’s the right kind of behavior, one that can be done with little or no conscious thought, the routine can become a habit.

It’s important to remember not to try and turn hard-to-do behaviors into habits. Doing so risks frustration and failure. Instead, accept that it’s perfectly fine that some behaviors will remain routines and expect them to never become effortless. By focusing on forming solid routines through the steps outlined above, you’ll have a better chance of sticking to what’s important to you, while increasing the odds that some routines may blossom into habits.

This article was originally published on Nirandfarom by Nir Eyal. You can read the original article here .