Adam Kirk Smith

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How to Take a Break While Still Getting Things Done

In the modern workplace, it’s easy to lose sight of one of the most important components of a hard day’s work: breaks. When it comes to productivity, quality, and even your own personal health and attitude, the simple act of taking a break can be a game changer. In previous studies, the simple difference of having a lunch break has increased employees’ desire to be an active member of the company they work for.

The tricky part is figuring out how to use breaks to your advantage as you navigate the responsibilities and cares of each day. Haphazardly replacing work with breaks is hardly a recipe for success. However, understanding the value that regular breaks at healthy intervals can have on your personal and work life can be an important first step in learning how to implement the lost art of taking a break into your daily routine. 

The Art of Taking Breaks

Being knowledgeable about the necessity of taking a break can be a key factor in turning a seemingly endless, exhausting string of workdays into an indefinitely manageable workload. As already mentioned, it can help with not just your productivity, but also things like your mental health and creativity. In turn, this translates into better work as well. Breaks can also allow for more activity, leading to better physical health, and can help prevent things like decision fatigue.

In other words, taking breaks isn’t just an excuse to be lazy. A break is nothing more than a brief reprieve from work. It’s not copping out, and it’s not abandoning or even ignoring responsibilities. It’s a concept that managers and employees alike must take the time to understand, as this will help them resist the urge to treat proper breaks as something to be frowned upon. 

On the contrary, a well-earned series of breaks — in moderation, of course — should be actively promoted by management in order to ensure that their employees are rested and fit to work on a daily basis. Managers should strive to see stepping away from work for a few minutes, hours, or days (depending on the circumstances) as a deliberate attempt to recharge and refuel. 

In fact, a proper view of breaks in the workplace leads to both higher productivity and a greater feeling of value and respect. This is significant, as it is one of the top concerns for modern workers.

It’s also important to understand the distinction between taking a break from a specific activity and stopping work entirely. Sometimes a break can manifest as the simple act of switching between tasks. This has been shown to increase creativity and sharpen problem-solving abilities. 

While the length of time spent on each task varies, no more than two hours should be spent on any one task at a time. When employees make a purposeful effort to shift to a different kind of work, it can be the perfect way to recharge their creativity while simultaneously maintaining their momentum.

Unplugging After Clocking Out

We’ve already covered the idea of workday breaks. These short, common breaks can manifest through a proper lunch break, stretching, and moving between different tasks to keep our minds rested and our momentum chugging along at full steam. 

However, the proper application of taking breaks goes beyond any single work day. There’s also the common idea of “unplugging” from work when you’re done for the day. Genuinely disconnecting from your tasks when you’re done working is a critical element if you want to avoid long-term burnout.

The medical field is a perfect example of how the division of work and life can be extremely important. Nurses, for example, are encouraged to pay particularly close attention while on a shift, but then to specifically make an effort to avoid allowing work to encroach on their personal lives while off the clock. This allows them to function better both at work and at home.

Just as a clarification: This doesn’t mean you can’t work outside of typical work hours. In fact, sometimes it’s recommended. In an era where freelance and remote jobs are part of the business world, the 9-to-5 workday has become largely irrelevant for many professions. 

Instead, if your hours are flexible, take time to discover what time of the day or night you work best. If it makes sense to work when others are resting, then do so. Again, just make sure to unplug from that work once you’re done for the day.

The Real Deal: Long Breaks

Finally, we have breaks that last for extended periods of time. It’s easiest to forget the long breaks or to excuse the need for them, as they demand the largest amount of solid time uninterrupted by work. However, the restorative power of taking several longer breaks throughout the year to recharge is widely seen as more than just a perk; it’s a necessary part of any successful career. 

Without the chance to completely break free from the cares and concerns of the workplace from time to time, it can once again be very difficult to ward off long-term burnout. While they may be less common, it’s important to take the time to incorporate these long breaks into your work routine. 

Using Breaks to Your Advantage

Taking short breaks every couple of hours, genuinely unplugging from work at the end of each day, properly utilizing vacations and longer periods away from work are all essential. Taking breaks is a critical component of both a well-lived life and a successful career. Breaks allow us to be healthier both physically and mentally. They also allow us to be more productive and creative, as well. The simple act of taking a break when you need one can be the key to boosting both the quantity and the quality of your work on a daily basis. 

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How can a knowledge base improve your e-commerce business?

This is a guest post from Brayn Wills. He currently holds the position of knowledge management expert at ProProfs. He is responsible for creating unique and relevant content on knowledge base tools and keeping track of the latest developments in the realm of knowledge management. In his free time, he is either reading a new book or exploring offbeat destinations.

The internet has more than 4.3 billion users today, providing a unique opportunity for e-commerce businesses to thrive across the globe. However, the success of such businesses is not as automatic as one might think. Although online transactions have gone up rapidly, the competition to position products at the top and generate steady sales is on the rise. Today, e-commerce businesses contend with the challenge of delivering customer service and developing customer loyalty. But there is a way out of this – an e-commerce business can create a knowledge base to solve these challenges.

Generally, buyers want to help themselves as they shop and will only contact support staff when they are not able to do so. According to a report by Forrester, 53% of online buyers in the US are likely to abandon an online order if they are unable to find quick responses to their questions by themselves. As such, it makes perfect sense to offer them the informational resources they need to achieve this goal. So, in what ways can a knowledge base improve your e-commerce business?

  1. Enhances customer satisfaction

A knowledge base enables customers to find solutions to their issues or queries fast and without having to contact support teams. By doing so, it gives them a delightful user experience that is likely to keep them coming back. Unlike calls or live chats, a knowledge base serves as an interactive support desk whose utilization gives customers a sense of accomplishment. Businesses can enhance customer experience by making their online  knowledge repositories more context sensitive and user-friendly. With features such as tooltips, popups, and light boxes, you can give your information repository a whole new look while making it easy for your customers to locate the information they need.

  1. Aids in quick customer response

Your customers do not have the patience and time to go through numerous pages of content to find the answers they need to complete an online purchase. In most cases, all they want is a quick access to those answers. If a prospective customer has a specific question about your business, they’ll assume they can find an answer by simply searching your website using specific keywords. If you do not have a knowledge base in place, this kind of search will return a negative response. This will discourage them and most likely result in cart abandonment. On the other hand, if you have a well-resourced online repository, a search will return positive results and provide the answers your customer needs to make an informed purchase decision.

3. It helps your customer support team

Empowering your customers to solve their issues and find answers to their queries lifts a considerable load off your customer support team. This means the team can concentrate on other important customer queries that cannot be addressed through the customer support knowledge base. Having fewer customers to help also means that your customer support staff will work in an environment that is less stressful, and therefore, will be able to provide quality services to your clients.

In addition, you can continuously expand your information repository by ensuring that customer queries that are not addressed therein, but have been resolved by your support are integrated regularly. This is important because a regularly updated knowledge center will be rich in content and will be the leading ticket deflection factor for e-commerce businesses.

4. Helps reduce employee costs

E-Commerce businesses need to run around the clock. As such, an information center is useful in reducing the workload that customer support teams have to undertake. Instead of hiring staff to work in shifts 24/7, an e-commerce business that has such a center in place can work with day staff only and not worry about supporting customers during the night. More costs can be reduced during recruitment and induction of new employees. This is because knowledge centers are more cost-efficient when it comes to providing staff with the information they need to know about their company and the products or services it offers. Rather than spending time and money on training programs, incoming employees can learn from the experiences and knowledge of other staff through an internal knowledge base software.

5. Drives traffic to your e-commerce site

More people will be drawn to an information center that features valuable, well-written content. This easily translates to more traffic for your site. To achieve this, the articles you place on your knowledge bank should be generated using the specific keywords that customers use to search for information online. This ensures that your content ranks highly on search engines while increasing your chances of having prospects visit your site. Once they get the answers they are looking, your prospects are likely to spend more time on your e-commerce site and as they browse through your online store, will more likely end up making a purchase. Search engines such as Google are also likely to rank your site highly on their search results since they consider the time spent by visitors on web pages a key factor in ranking and search algorithms.

6. Streamlines internal cooperation

As your e-commerce business grows, your teams or departments will become more intertwined. And as collaboration among teams increases, communication can be difficult to maintain in some instances. At this point, having a centralized repository for your internal information will be necessary. An in-house information repository allows you to place everything your team needs to know in a single place in an organized manner. It provides a digital space for your employees to store information and share it with each other. This not only makes your company look smart, professional and up-to-date, but it also reduces confusion among employees. It also enhances synergy and reduces management costs as it allows them to work independently without having to be supervised constantly.

7. Stores company knowledge

The frequency with which people leave their jobs is on the rise and professional networking has everything to do with it. A survey conducted by LinkedIn shows that 89% of people who are building their careers got their current jobs due to good networking. In the event of  job transition, employees leave the companies they work at and carry on with the knowledge and experience they have accumulated. Then it becomes a challenge for the team that is left behind to pick up the pieces. Creating an internal knowledge base for your business guarantees continuity and reduces the cost of training new staff significantly. Further, documenting business data increases the value of your business. The knowledge center can be shifted from an intangible asset into a valuable, transferable asset should you decide to sell your business.

The Bottom Line

A knowledge base is an excellent tool for businesses that want to scale their customer service program and enhance customer satisfaction. Making resources such as troubleshooting guides, how-to articles, FAQs, and any other information relating to your services or products your customers might need available empowers them to solve their issues with ease. At the same time, an online repository makes it possible for your customer support staff to work on tasks that are most important to the business and reduces staff costs, enabling your business to maximize profits.

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Pros and Cons of Having a Negative Mindset at Work

This is a guest post from Jilian Woods. She is a freelance journalist and a contributing writer. Apart from her day job, you may find Jilian engaged in volunteering or doing yoga.

Many employees come into work with a negative mindset to some degree. This could be a generally negative mindset of knowing a day is going to be bad or negative in the sense that they don’t like working with the people around them. That said, in this article we are going to take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages a negative mindset may offer.

Pro: Prepared for Worst Case Scenarios

First, let’s start off with a positive side of having a negative mindset. When someone consistently thinks the worst, they are prepared for that situation to happen. So, when your business runs into a problem, these individuals are usually well-equipped to handle emergency situations.

This is particularly true when someone has realistic expectations. Strategically, this can allow an employee to have plans B, C, and D ready in case plan A doesn’t work. This preparedness will serve companies well as they will always have just-in-case scenarios ready if a concept doesn’t take off as they want it to. Remember, there’s no such thing as being too prepared in business and backup plans can also help increase productivity.

Con: Stifled Creativity

When someone is constantly being negative, they may not push themselves to think differently. Without thinking about how something or a process could be improved upon, they are failing to innovate.

We don’t often think of creativity as a skill that can be learned but it, like any other skill, can be cultivated. For instance, no one was born being able to write, yet it’s a skill that almost any college student has to have. If this skill is lacking, they may use some essay help that can be found on resources like this one.

Pro: It Offers Balance In the Workplace

If there is a prime example of too much positivity in a work environment, it was Jeffrey Immelt’s “Success Theater” at GE. This concept was rather simple: CEO Jeffrey Immelt only wanted to hear what was going right for GE. This was a mentality that bled down to all levels of the company. It created an almost toxically positive environment for the corporation with no one seeing to flaws and failures.

The result of this management style was that all problems – big or small – that GE faced during this time were largely ignored. This overconfidence and a general disinterest in hearing any bad news allowed problems to grow to such a size that they were untamable and led to significant financial loss. This problem could have been avoided if the organization allowed for any negativity in its ranks. If more members of the company were able to highlight problems, many of them could have been avoided.

It isn’t just GE that has dealt with this issue, though. If there’s anything that can take down a company quickly, it’s human nature’s aversion to conflict and natural anxiety in delivering bad news. With the introduction of employees who have more realistic modes of thinking, these teams would have access to varied viewpoints rather than simply accepting a singular, not all-encompassing view of the company’s status.

The concept of this type of thinking wouldn’t even necessarily have to be limited to outright objection either. Oftentimes, these thinking styles rather manifest in the form of caution or intense critical thinking.

Con: Discourage Hard Work

The best outcomes typically come from hard and careful work. Unfortunately, always expecting the worst of a situation sometimes means being discouraged from striving towards a positive outcome. After all, if it isn’t going to happen, why strive towards it?

This is a pitfall that employees with a less than positive mindset need to avoid. While in the case of being prepared for failure is great when faced with missing the mark, the initial effort towards a positive outcome is needed for a chance to make the desired outcome happen.

As a counterpoint to this, though, some have argued that the insistence of something failing is a drive to continue to work harder on it. A motto of “well, it probably won’t work, but let’s see what we can do to change that” might be present.

Conclusion

Negative mindsets within organizations are often seen as a, well, negative attribute. However, a negative mindset can be both an asset and a drawback. There are improvements that can be made to a completely negative perspective, but there are also benefits of this mindset as well. For the ideal perspective, these strengths and weaknesses should be balanced.