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In my previous article, I touched upon the 10 reasons b ehind stress due to long working hours in the current home-bound life. So the obvious question is how do we combat it and what are the solutions? Read Stress due to pronlonged working hours... at home! Four months research combined with a lot of personal hits-n-misses helped me come up with the below list of 8 solutions: 1. Work — Life Separation: Yes, that’s the new way to live in times of a pandemic. The way most of us are working from home, we know when to begin our day, but we don’t know when to stop. And that is critical. Now that our offices have entered our homes, we need to understand how and when to separate the two. 2. Back to School-like Timetables: And after all these years, I am finally able to understand why they were there in the first place. But as an adult who has finally got rid of the hustle to reach office on time, it is very difficult to make a daily schedule, let alone stick to it. But trust me, it is worth the effort. Sleeping at 2 am and waking up just 10 minutes before your daily team call at 9:30 am will do no good. In fact, doing that tossed away all the healthy habits I had inculcated in my daily schedule over months! I know it is easier said than done, and it might take 2–4 weeks to get used to your daily schedule, but once you do, you will feel more productive and be able to have that work-life balance back. Prioritisation is key, but execution of that prioritise tasks is even more important. So don’t make a time-table only to pin it to your desktop or study table, rather make an effort to stick to it for a couple of days and you will feel the difference. Enjoying the article so far? Hit like! ❤️❤️ 3. Blinders on!: Our world is filled with a lot of distractions, the most common foe-cum-friend being our mobile. The lust to check out our social media pages every now and then hogs on our productivity and limited timelines. It takes a lot of practice to not pick up your mobile phone every minute, but it is worth the effort. Studies show that staying glued to the screen just before you drift off to sleep causes more stress than your office workload. However, having said that, I know how difficult it can be especially if we are on phones attending official calls throughout the day. We don’t realise when to put the phone down. From my personal experience, I have been taking a 5–7 minute no-phone break after every long call which lasted for an hour or more. It comes as a breather. You can also try to set personal time limits for online random surfing, provided you stick to it. 4. Connect with Family & Friends: Whether you are staying at home alone, or with your family, lockdown has impacted everyone. While those staying alone might have a bigger battle to be fought, we cannot ignore the struggle of those home–bound with people around. In either case, if you feel that mundaneness has slowly trickled in and captured your daily life, I suggest you try resorting to some activities to break it. Set a certain time to digitally connect with your family, friends, or just someone with whom you can relate and feel like talking to. It is bound to act as a better stress reliever and a great break from work than your online social media activity. 5. Pick up a Hobby: It took me a while, but finally managed to pick up reading just before going to bed and now it is one of the highlights of my day, something to look forward to after a day’s hard work and reporting. Picking up an indoor hobby like cooking, baking, gardening or even painting will give you something to look forward to besides waiting for the next series after Dark to watch on Netflix. You can even try maintaining a diary to keep a log of your progress made on a daily basis. It will also give a space for you to vent out all the frustration or routineness. For some, that pleasure might be found in maintaining a manual diary instead of a digital one. 6. Exercise or Meditate: It helped me in correcting my sleeping schedule. Besides yoga in the morning in the morning, I take an hour-long walk post dinner, bathe and slip into bed with a nice book and a cup of green tea. It is my technique of self-rewarding for all the hard work I put in throughout the day. For you, exercise could be running, Pilates or yoga in the morning. Meditation can be very helpful in having a peaceful and agile mind if done regularly and consistently. See what suits your body the best and helps you stay mentally and physically fit and include it in your daily schedule. 7. Eat well: Ever since the lockdown kicked in, our eating habits went for a toss. Many of us have been binging on anything that is readily available and seldom working it out. I personally saw my habit of having a healthy breakfast drift away ever since my cook got locked out too. So I looked out for healthier options that don’t require much effort. I resorted to soaked sprouts for breakfast and healthier binging items like fox nuts (makhane) or gram instead of potato chips for that 4 pm hunger call. Or an even easier option, fruits. Instead of gulping down bottles of aerated beverages in this season of high temperatures and humidity, resort to healthier versions like a lemonade and iced tea. 8. Take small breaks: You can take healthier breaks away from the digital screens like grabbing a healthy snack, listening to music, meditating for 5–10 minutes or just reading a few pages from your book; basically any activity that brings you a smile. You can always look at adopting one or more solutions listed here. Ultimately, it is easier said than done, but the fact remains that it is up to us if we want to create a work-life separation. Since working from home seems to be the new normal and is here to stay, we might as well look out for solutions to make our lives easier and less frustrating.

How many times have you heard of the Unbelievable Offers, especially by a B2C brand? Buy a Juicer Mixer and get a wall clock free. Buy a bed mattress and get 2 pillows free. Buy a vacuum cleaner and get couple flight return tickets to the US free. Yes, you read it right. As a Salestor, I have been sifting through some of the worst sales promotional disasters of all times. While I have a list now, this one deserved a separate post. The Hoover Debacle Hoover Vacuum Cleaners was an American brand built with trust over decades in the 20th century and destroyed due to greed. The vacuum cleaner company had become not only a house hold name, but a verb too. “I am Hoovering the dining hall.” The story of this brand began in 1908, when a department store janitor, James Murray Sprangler, was suffering from extreme dust allergy. Necessity gave rise to a huge invention, which happened to be the first model of a vacuum cleaner. He received the patent and soon sold it to his brother-in-law, William Hoover who started the company with the same name. Hoover’s products caught on like wild fire in America, and then Europe. By late 1980’s, market dynamics like brewing British recession and eye-catching new entrant Dyson caused Hoover’s British market share to dwindle below 50% and profits to decline from £147 mn to £74 mn. Their warehouse inventory was piling up along with their worry. Their new talking-vacuum model failed to impress the audience and hence they were forced to take immediate measures to combat the situation. But acts of desperation don’t always result in favourable outcomes. And then the Devil Knocked In 1991, a small travel agency JSI suffering from similar effects of market dynamics approached Hoover with an idea of a grand Sales Promotion. They offered to reward every Hoover customer two return tickets to a destination in Europe on purchase of £100 or more. This sounded like just the plan to revive their drooping revenue. Hoover launched the deal, but with a highly exhaustive process in place to discourage the customers from applying. It was a sell-out, a clear winner. By the end of 1992, Hoover’s products were flying off the shelves. Their stock was back on track and so were their profits. But greed can destroy wisdom and it did so in case of Hoover. For their second Sales Promotion, they decided to launch couple return flight tickets to America! As per their Risk Assessment Team, it was a recipe for a massive disaster, but Hoover had just proven the mettle of the offer with their European flights. Ignoring the caution raised against it, they launched the campaign. The offer was that on a minimum purchase of £100 worth Hoover products, the British customers were entitled to win two return tickets to New York or Orlando worth £600 that time. Hoover didn’t expect more than a handful customers to make the purchase of an amount as high as £100. Fire on the Mountain.. Britain went crazy on hearing this offer. Hoover was the talk of the nation and the market reaction was grander than what the management was prepared for. It was a reaction that should put a huge grin on the face of the management, except for the fact that Hoover’s manufacturing had to be put on a 7-day overtime to meet the demand. They had thought that a few customers would agree to take up the exhaustive application process for getting the tickets. However, much to their chagrin, customers were all prepared for the battle. The main challenge was that customers were spending only the basic minimum amount required to qualify them for the offer and that did nothing to aid Hoover in meeting the costs of the flights it was ultimately supposed to pay for. 300,000 customers were eligible, 10 times Hoover’s forecast, but the sales were about £119 per vacuum offering a revenue of £30 apiece. Two return flights to the US costed £600. So the total sales stood at £30 mn, while flights costed a £100 mn. Hoover was practically in a soup. ..Run, Run, Run! Hoover was forced to resort to deceitful measures like: 1. Claiming that customers had filled the form incorrectly 2. Offering flights that departed from airports hundreds of miles away 3. Sending request forms during Christmas time hoping to utilise a two-week holiday window in delaying the exchange of forms. Customers soon realised that this offer was a farce and this led to nationwide protests. The once most trusted brand was tarnished as a deceitful and unethical player. This led to the worst and quickest decline a company has seen. What followed was a lot of firing the top executives, legal battles and losses to the tune of £24 mn on sales of £390 mn. Liking the article so far? Show some love! Like it! ❤️❤️ The End of an Era Hoover never recovered from this disaster. Its products were tagged the least reliable by customers and British Royal Family withdrew its Royal Warrant status. Unwanted Hoover products that were bought solely to win those flight tickets flooded the market thus forcing Hoover’s warehouses to pile up with inventory. Michael Gilbey and Brian Webb, Director and Vice President — Marketing respectively, whose brainchild this Sales Promotion idea was, not only destroyed a 90-year old brand but also the careers of their own and Hoover’s President, William Foust’s. For the next six years, Hoover battled many suits in courts across the UK and finally 220,000 lakh got to fly. Although, there still remained lakhs of people who didn’t. Ultimately, one of the most trusted companies of the century was sold off to an Italian giant for £106 mn at a loss of £81 mn. 6 Learnings from the Disaster As a Salestor, we have a lot to learn from such Sales Disasters: 1. Never promise the customer something you cannot, or don’t have any intentions to, fulfil. 2. Customer is not a fool so make your offer believable. 3. If due to unforeseen contingencies, you believe you cannot fulfil the offer, try and be honest with the customer. It works better than most other excuses/stories and will save you from losing customers’ trust. 4. Every business needs to take risks time to time, but they need to be well evaluated. While there are times you need to listen to that inner voice and take some risk, be wary of the thin line difference between intuition and over-confidence. Get the facts in place to support your decision backed by intuition. 5. Listen to the consultants and Risk Managers when they try to warn you of a bad decision. YOU had hired them for a reason. 6. Don’t try and dupe customers. Your tricks wont last long and will tarnish your existing image. Despite such a fiasco, there have been a lot of Sales Disasters worth taking a lesson from. I will be back soon with some more such interesting true stories. Read The Evolution of a Salestor

Yes, it is a very real thing. Who would have thought that we would have to deal with stress while working from home. Availability of the employee at home coupled with the anxiety due to closed markets and drooping economy has pushed everyone to slog more, thus leading to more stress while working from home than working in an office setup. There are 10 reasons why working from home is turning out to be more stressful: 1. Drooping economy and closed markets: Covid-19 has brought a lot of economic turmoil the world over. Global economy is slated to increase at a negative rate in FY21. Shut markets everywhere proved to be a curse for many industries and this situation made the corporates anxious. Thus, the trickledown effect came onto the employees along with the fear of facing a salary cut, or losing the job. 2. Anxiety due to physical absence of staff: No, you cannot get physical signature of the manager in-charge on that invoice or that agreement. I mean, Courts of Law are allowing digital hearings now so corporates are obviously expected to do the same too. But it does become a hassle in more cases than one. You don’t have the liberty to physically summon the IT guy to look into an out-of-sync Outlook or a bad internet connection. You cannot rely on a smooth and hassle-free group Presentation if the guy who is supposed to take over form you suddenly goes offline. You cannot have a smooth Quarterly appraisal session with your manager if you don’t have high-speed internet. 3. Assumed availability of the employee 24x7: “Well, you are just sitting at home, right? So why don’t we connect at 10:30 pm tonight to discuss the POA for Q3?” “Well, we cannot because I am sitting at home, but my army of maids clearly isn’t! My spouse and kids have turned ravenous. I have been working for 16 hours non-stop now. And moreover, today is Sunday.” If you have had such a conversation, even if the response given to your manager was only in your head, you can be rest assured that you are not alone. Being home bound has made everyone assumed available 24x7. And you cannot even apply for a leave to go on your annual vacation. Things have turned so awry that many of my friends have been applying for a leave just to get a breather from work since there are no weekends away from work now. 4. The Act of a Vanishing Weekend: Is it Sunday or Monday today? I and my husband end up asking each other this question a lot of times. The boundaries have vanished, and we seldom look forward to the Friyay! now. Liking the article so far? Show some love! Hit ❤ at the end of the article! 5. Staying glued to the screen: Laptop, mobile or TV, we have multiple screens around the house that are addictive and, surprisingly, together cause more stress than our office workload. With nowhere to go, we obviously have lesser options for entertainment too. 6. Lonely, I am So Lonely!: So your part-time homemakers (read maids) aren’t in your life and so are your parents away in your home town. Surviving on 2-minute noodles twice daily has made you hate the dish which was once the love-of-your-life. Restrictions on ordering food from outside, which probably are also mental in nature, is making the current situation more difficult for you. 7. Which fire to put out first?: In this forced home-bound life, absence of fixed guidelines on which fires to put out first troubles more than the long list of to-do’s. Attend to the kids first, prepare an edible meal (other than 2-minute noodles) first, or before anything else, work on your Q3 Sales projection due today? 8. Disconnect with Family due to WFH: Who would have thought, but when stress steps into our lives, staying at home or in office converges into one result: less time for family. Ever since lockdown kicked in, I have lesser been able to connect with my family over phone than before. This was never the case when I was spending 75% of my weekly time in office. Just being home doesn’t count as family time if you never look over your laptop, or put down the phone. 9. Gone are the Meals and Chai breaks: You get up 10 minutes before your 10 am concall, wash up and sit down with a badly (or hurriedly) prepared cup of tea. At 12 when the call finishes, you realise the rumbling sound isn’t your neighbour upstairs, but your stomach. You need to eat. You have your breakfast (if you can call that a breakfast) at 12:30, your lunch at 5 pm and dinner in your bed just before you are about to doze off. And who remembers what chai breaks were? Meals have become just another task to be done to keep our stomachs filled. 10. Your New Friends — Headache, Backache and Sleep Disorders: Expected. With the kind of lifestyle we have plunged into, our healthy habits have gone for a toss. With screens as our new constant companions and breaks shrunk to zilch, peace of mind cannot co-exist. And did I mention weight gain? So life at home is far from easy these days, but there is always a solution. It might need some work to become a part of our fatigued lives, but will be worth the effort. And I will be back very soon with the list of solutions! Read Surviving Prolonged Working Hours.... at Home!