When you work for yourself, it’s likely that you’re tucked up at your desk for most of the day. Running your own business, while very satisfying, can be hard sometimes – keeping up with all the tasks you’ve set, sticking to deadlines and making sure your clients remain happy. It’s easy to think that there aren’t enough hours in the day!

But wait.

If you’re one of those people who feel guilty even thinking about stepping away from the computer (and apparently 1 in 5 of us are), then you need to re-set your thinking.

The truth is, NOT allowing yourself a break once in a while is bad for you. Yes, ‘powering through’ can have a negative affect on your mental state and actually make you LESS productive!

It’s all down to science I’m afraid. The human brain isn’t designed to concentrate on just one thing for a long period of time, so focusing on a set task for say, a few hours, will begin to have an adverse affect and your brain may start to wander. If you’ve ever been in the middle of a project, with ideas flowing left, right and centre – then suddenly, nothing. Complete blank. Creative block at it’s best – then you’ll know what I mean.

The secret?

Taking a break. And it doesn’t even have to be a long break. Even a ‘microbreak’ of between 30 seconds and five minutes will really benefit you. And doing so BEFORE you loose focus is even better – it can boost your happiness, give you greater satisfaction in your work and increase your productivity by up to 13%.

A two-minute break gives you the time to stand and stretch – pushing oxygen to your brain, waking you up and shaking off that lethargy. And looking away from your screen, even for a minute, can relieve the symptoms of eyestrain.

When you’re working at home and there aren’t any colleagues around to remind you to get some down time, make the most of natural breaks. As a work from home mum I find some of my best ideas come on the school run – for the 30 minute stroll to the school gates I’m not tied to the computer or my note book and my mind is free to wander wherever it wants.

But if the school run isn’t compulsory for you then take the dog for a walk, pop to the local shop for a treat or simply put the kettle on and stare out of the kitchen window for five minutes. It all helps. And that quick break you said you didn’t have time for will actually help you work at your best and ensure that you get the job done!

 

 

If the idea of working for yourself and running your own Virtual Assistant business sounds like something that might be for you, then find out more by heading over to http://myvabusiness.co.uk

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We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

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The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

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This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

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Changes to our Privacy Policy

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