Breaktify Thoughts

Enhance Your Productivity in 20 Minutes or Less: A “Smart Break” is the Key

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:04:00 -0500

If you tend to feel “run down,” “burnt out,” or just plain tired by mid-afternoon, you’re not alone. Many studies show that people naturally experience a drop in energy and alertness around 3 p.m., when the body’s circadian rhythms take a plunge. Chronobiologists call this time of day “the breaking point.”

Unfortunately, many people attempt to get through this natural low time in unhealthy ways. They raid the office vending machines, believing that caffeinated beverages and sugary snacks will give them the energy they need. While the soda and candy does give them a short energy spurt, within an hour they often experience the “crash” and end up feeling more tired than they did initially. Even worse, they repeat this cycle daily.

Rather than succumb to the lure of the vending machine, consider taking a 10- to 20-minute “smart break”—a break that physiologically and psychologically rejuvenates you so you can refocus on your most important tasks. By doing so, you will feel more energized for the balance of the day, with a net gain to the overall quantity and quality of your work.

The smart break is smart for a number of reasons:

1. It’s specially designed to give you a high-powered recovery period that recharges your physical energy, emotional balance, and mental focus.

2. It affords a quick “attitude adjustment” interval, during which you can check your mental thermostat and consciously turn it a few notches to the positive.

3. It’s a performance booster, enabling you to review your daily objectives, stay focused on key priorities, and make the last quarter or so of your work day as productive as possible.

Time for your action, start a new healthy habit with Breaktify, now!

(excerpt from Peter McLaughlin)

Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) is potential harmful for your health

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:08:00 -0500

Lately, one of my friend got fired, he could not perform his job because of RSI. This seems seriously ridiculous, but actually RSI accounts for 34% of all lost-workday injury and illness — and costs almost $20 billion annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) is a potentially healthy problem from performing a repetitive task, especial anyone who uses a computer regularly. Unfortunately, most people are not well-aware about RSI and do not understand how serious RSI can be.

If you:

Use a computer more than two to four hours a day
Don’t take frequent small breaks
Don’t exercise regularly
Work and live in a high-pressure environment
Keep your fingernails long
Over-Weight
Don’t sleep well
Feel stressful infront of computer

You may be at risk for developing an RSI.

Repercusions of RSI

When your RSI was at its worst, you may be unable to open doors, prepare your own food, do laundry, drive, write, type, and shake hands. This can last for years and you will not unable to type regularly for about three years. In addition to limiting your day-to-day functionality, this decreased independence can cause a significant emotional burden.

Since RSI is not covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act but it can limit your ability to perform at work, then your employer may fire you if you are unable to perform your job because of your RSI.

There are 8 easy ways to reduce your risk of developing RSI

1. Take breaks

When using your computer, every hour or so, get up and walk around, get a drink of water, stretch whatever muscles are tight, and look out the window at a far off object (to rest your eyes). Use a break reminder app to stop forgetting taking break

2. Use good posture.

If you can’t hold good posture, it probably means it’s time for you to take a break from typing. Don’t sit up straight!

3. Optimizing workstations

Work stations should be reviewed initially and with each office move. Adjust your chair, monitor, keyboard, mouse, laptop. Alternate keyboards and mice periodically.

4. Exercise regularly.

Strengthening, stretching, and aerobic exercises. It’s not the intense but the frequency that you do exercise that much more important.

5. Only use the computer as much as you have to.

Don’t email people when you could walk down the hall or pick up the phone and talk to them. It’s not only better for your hands - it’s friendlier. Talk more.

6. Avoid using mouse or keyboard except you have to

There are voice recognition apps that can help you to interact with computer, for example Google Voice search or plug-in into your browsers to help input data using voice.

7. Don’t overuse your body. Remember that RSI resulting from accumulate of stress and strain on part of your body, so even you texting to much with your phone can be harmful .

8. Remember that you are not exception, you can get RSI. When you know there is something wrong with your body, don’t hesitate to ask for help. The sooner RSI is discovered, the better.

Learn more about this healthy problem

Use Breaktify as a reminder to take breaks and do exercises regularly.

Sitting is Killing You

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:01:00 -0500

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, there is one thing nearly all modern Americans have in common: we sit all the time. Though our great shift towards computer-based work has done great things for productivity, it has, unfortunately, done terrible things for our health. From increased risk of heart disease and obesity in the long term, to sharply hampered cholesterol maintenance in the short term, the negative health effects of sitting are starting to weigh heavily against the benefits. Even the medical field – the greatest advocates of reducing sitting time – is plagued by this new health issue. Though doctors and nurses get plenty of walking time, it usually falls to the secretaries, billers, and coders to do all the sitting. And, as we can see, something has to change.

Sitting may not kill you anymore…

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:41:17 -0500

Today with the advantage of technology, we usually spend most of our time in front of the computer/TV: +9 hours/day , more than sleeping. And this increase risk of death up to 40% even if you keep exercising. There are some thoughts on how to avoid this situation.

Problems with sitting all day

First, we must understand how sitting is silently killing you. According to this infographic, the problems come with sitting are:

- Sitting makes us fat. During 1980 to 2000, sitting only increase 8% but obesity double. Sitting consumes almost no energy.

- Electrical activity in leg muscles shuts off when sitting.

- Calorie burning drops to 1 per minute.

- Enzymes that help break down fat drop 90%

- Good cholesterol drops 20%

Want to change but not persistant to do it

A lot of people want to get out the chair and exercise, but most of them fail. The reason is very simple: it’s really hard to keep persistant of getting out the chair and exercise every 30 minutes. You can do it several days, and after that everything is the same as before: you keep sitting in front of computer for hours without noticing it.

The problem is not that people don’t want to change, but they may be wrong on how to change a habit.

Don’t use your will-power to change a habit

Will-power is like muscles, you have a limit “will-power energy” everyday, and if we burn all of those “energy”, we will not be able to control ourself not to do something we don’t want anymore. For example, it’s easy to avoid eating junk food in the morning, but in the afternoon, when you are tired, your blood glucose is low, and your will power is very low, and it’s hard to resist eating. So if you use will-power to change a habit, it may works for several days or weeks, but it will fail in the long run.

Instead, change your *environment* around you:

- if you don’t want to watch TV, don’t buy one.

- if you want to wake up early, then sleep early, instead of use the alarm clock

- if you want to focus in computer instead of hanging around facebook, install a facebook blocker program.

etc…

Measuring and tracking

Another important point when trying a change a habit, you have to keep measuring your progress by tracking it. You will not want to break a habit as if you know that you are done it continuously for weeks. Try to use some tool like Delta KPI to measure your progress in whatever goal you want to achieve. Trust me, it work magically.

The solution to avoid being killed by sitting

Now you may understand something about building a habit in theory, so next we will apply it into practice to keep us regularly exercise for every 30’. Actually, it quite simple: don’t try to force ourself to exercise using will-power, instead, use a program to force us to get of the chair every 30’, here is how it works:

Automatically remind us to exercise.
Not just reminding, but forcing us to exercise by hide all the application windows so that we cannot work anymore.
It also has to track whether we have skip take a break or not and show us the history on how long we have been in front of computer everyday, how long we had break, how many breaks that we have skipped, the top users who not skipped their breaks etc…

The good side effect

By keep exercise regularly every 30’ will bring other good side effects:

It increases productivity - people’s focus ability is good at around 30’, after that the focus ability is decreasing (you may not notice it) and productivity decreases. So exercising help bring back energy and freshness into your mind. Eventually, we improve a lot in our working result.
It can help us learn how to exercise effective & correctly. If you usually exercise, then you will discover (and want to discover) what is the best way to exercise. Eventually, bring you a happier life by avoiding a lot of health problems from not exercising. In short, it’s not only solving the sitting problem, but the very bigger one: the lacking of exercising in most people in modern society.
Help people around you. As you exercise regularly, it will make people around you notice: your colleagues, your friends, your family. Then they will learn about it and apply to them. And they will be healthier and happier. Simple.
Save our nation a lot of money from health care. The lesser people get health problems, the better.
Building a better working environment. When people exercise together, they will be more open to talk and be friendlier, the stronger relationship is built, then the organization can be better. That’s how a small thing can help building a better society.