Feeling Overwhelmed? Taking a Vacation from Your Desk Can Make You More Productive

COVID-19 forced many of your clients to work and school from home. While being held in captivity, they discovered that their homes do not function, look or feel how they want them to be, especially if they are spending almost all of their time under one roof. On BKBG’s recent Peer-to-Peer calls, many Shareholders expressed a world class problem – having too much work and not enough personnel or materials to service all of the demand.  

Consider what your team does every day. How much time is spent processing information as opposed to taking care of existing clients and prospecting for new ones? Everyone suffers from information overload. A Lexis Nexis survey found that more than 50% of white-collar workers spend more than half their workday receiving and managing information rather than using that information to be more productive and effective. If this applies to your team, there is no better time than the present to look at BKBG Affinity Partner Breakfront Software. The program automates showroom quoting, managing leads, ordering, scheduling, controlling project costs and running showroom operations. www.breakfrontsoftware.com.

How can you avoid having your brain say no more and not get caught in the avalanche of information overload? David Brendel offers five suggestions in a HBG blog.

Daydreaming is good! Do it often. Neuroscience research finds that the brain remains active when the mind wanders resulting in enhanced perception, attention and cognition. Additionally, research found that daydreaming is essential to learn, solve problems and set goals. “This may help to explain why some of our best ideas come when we are in the shower, not sitting at a computer, ” writes Brendel. This is a great claim to use to help sell complex shower systems!

Overpreparing for meetings and presentations is not productive. Obsessing about what you are going to say at a prospective client meeting or the minute details of your PowerPoint

presentation can be counterproductive. Instead, consider thinking about almost anything else as the presentation approaches to help reduce the stress. Don’t obsess over key decisions. Depending on the issue, it may be more effective to spend less time making key

decisions provided you are focusing on bigger picture issues. When you get bogged down in the minutia, you tend to lose sight of the forest.

Learn how to breathe. Many BKBG Shareholders and Preferred Vendor Partners don’t have time to take a yoga class in the middle of the day. Consider instead taking some of the benefits yoga and meditation offer to help you to think more clearly during the day. You may benefit from periods of rhythmic, controlled breathing for a minute or two while at work and trying to slow your breathing to take deeper and longer breaths.

Work less. Research finds that even the most accomplished individuals cannot work longer than 5 hours at a time. 

Consider taking several short breaks during the day to recharge your batteries. Also take a day off once in a while to give your brain a rest.

Give these suggestions a try and let us know how they work for you by sharing your experiences on the BKBG Teams chat platform.