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Author: Franz Malten Buemann
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What’s ahead for CX in retail in 2023?
Retail today is perhaps more complex than it has ever been. But giving customers the experience they now expect doesn’t have to be. This year’s study revealed notable increases in consumers who are willing, prefer or have a growing affinity for self-service technology. From contactless and mobile “anywhere checkout,” to smart carts and digital kiosks. This…
The post What’s ahead for CX in retail in 2023? appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine. -
How Marketers Collaborate Effectively Across Departments [According to HubSpot Marketing Leaders]
86% of business leaders blame a lack of collaboration as the top reason for workplace failure, according to a survey by recruiting firm Zippia.
So you share a bunch of meetings with another team and call it cross-functional, right? Not so fast. To effectively collaborate across departments requires more than just sharing goals and countless meetings.What does it take? We’ve asked marketing leaders from different teams (See what we did there?) at HubSpot for their top tips on cross-departmental collaboration. The result is 11 actionable suggestions that you can do today. So put down the calendar invite and read on…
What is cross-department collaboration?
Why is cross-department collaboration important?
How to Collaborate Effectively Across DepartmentsWhy is cross-department collaboration important?
Cross-functional campaigns are important because they help align teams to the same objectives, introduce fresh insights to old processes, and boost the performance of the teams involved.
Consider these statistics:Businesses with tightly aligned Sales and Marketing teams saw more than 200% revenue growth from marketing. (LinkedIn)
53% of businesses that adopted cross-functional teams reporte significant improvement in performance. (Deloitte)
28% of marketing leaders identified “collaborating across teams when planning marketing activities” as a top way to gain visibility within the company. (HubSpot)
21% of marketers say it is difficult to get the data they need from other teams. (HubSpot)1. Ask questions and understand other departments’ priorities.
“A lot of people struggle with cross-functional projects because they don’t take the time to really understand the goals and objectives of other teams around them,” says Kyle Denhoff, HubSpot’s Director of New Media. “So one way to be really successful is to be curious and ask questions.”
Here are just a few questions to get started with:What are your KPIs?
What are your hurdles?
What outcomes do you need to get out of this project/campaign?
How will you measure those outcomes?
Who needs to contribute, who needs to give approval, and who just needs to be informed?“Meet your peers,” Denhoff adds, “Ask them ‘what are they goaled on every month?’,’What are their primary objectives?’, ‘What does success look like for them?’ Then you’ll have a clearer understanding of how you can tie your work into some of their goals.”
2. Understand the other departments’ preferences.While you’re busy asking questions, take a few minutes to ask about work-style preferences, too. This includes topics like how they like to handle scheduling, communication methods, meeting style/frequency, and more.
Asking these simple questions at the outset can help collaborations move more smoothly, and prevent miscommunication.
This was an important lesson for Gabrielle Herrera, a marketing manager on HubSpot’s Email Strategy team.
“One of the most interesting pieces of feedback we got from [the Product team] was not just aligning Marketing goals with Product priorities, but knowing what the team’s working norms and communications prefs are! While Product leans heavily on Slack to GSD, Marketing uses email as their primary channel for action items and feedback. No wonder Product found us unresponsive at times!”
(GSD, if you’re unfamiliar, is HubSpotters’ work-safe way of lovingly saying “get s*#t done.” It’s part mantra and part battle cry.)
But how do you decide whose preferences take priority? Herrera recommends considering who is being asked and how often.“It depends on the ask and the direction of communication, if that makes sense. If Product wants to have Marketing provide feedback or review something, Product will email the appropriate marketing team members. But if Marketing has a question of the product team, we ask in the dedicated Slack room. Generally speaking, more strategic/longer conversations are held in our monthly meeting (a cadence that was just right) and the async comms are more for ‘quick hits’ or discussions that don’t necessarily involve every member of the working group.”
3. Plan campaigns around others teams’ needs and pain points.Another benefit of asking all of these questions is the potential for content generation. Your co-workers on the frontlines of Sales and Service can be one of the greatest resources for campaign concepts and content gen.
“Service is fun,” says Victor Pan, a principal marketing manager on HubSpot’s Growth Marketing team, “because they’re generally looking for a decrease in customer service calls via content people can self-serve online, like FAQ’s.”
Their pain points often reveal common customer concerns. These can then become blogs, knowledge base articles, newsletters, and email campaigns that both nurture new leads and empower existing customers into self-service. That’s a win-win for all teams involved.
“Traffic goes up, service calls/tickets go down,” says Pan.
Other content gen questions to consider:What do you wish customers already knew when talking to you?
What are the most common questions customers ask?
What are the most common objections that leads give?4. Align around a common objective.
“Simplify the objective down for the entire team, and they have a clear understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish,” says Kyle Denhoff.
A common pitfall for cross-functional teams is when they’re each working towards a different objective. Of course, each team will have unique outcomes they need to get out of a project, but knowing what objective those outcomes ladder up to can help focus the work.
Denhoff gives this example: “Let’s say we’re going to run an integrated campaign for 90 days to try to fill the sales pipeline with directors and VPs of sales in our U.S. market. What I want to do is I want to talk to my peers and say ‘To work together we’re going to want to rally around a common objective, and the objective is to drive 4,000 net new leads through the campaign and target sales leaders in the U.S.’”
Each team can then reverse engineer their own goals and tasks according to that agreed objective.
5. Define the details. (Objective, goals, audience, messaging, deliverables, etc.)Once you know the high-level objective of the project, it’s time to get specific.
“Define the details. How are we going to be measured? Who are we trying to talk to? Define the messaging and define the deliverables. Have everyone around you understand what their role is and what they have to deliver in this campaign to make it successful,” says Denhoff.
But it’s not enough to give vague, general answers to these questions. He recommends being as specific as you can, and gives this example:
“Now [say] we want to define our audience. So if I say ‘Sales’, that’s a pretty broad audience for my peers to try and develop content to reach. But if I say ‘Sales directors at mid-sized tech companies’ that’s very focused, because now you’re talking to someone who’s probably been working for 8-10 years. They manage a team of five to seven people. They’re focused on team management, they’re focused on forecasting and projections, and they’re focused on increasing revenue. And if they work in the tech space, they’re probably working in a business model that’s like a SaaS or recurring revenue business model. So we can develop campaign concepts that speak to that audience.”
6. Define the process.
Now that you’ve defined the Who and the What, it’s time to nail down the How and the When.
This involves answering questions like:How will deliverables be submitted?
What method will be used to give feedback?
On what timeline will deliverables be delivered?
Which team’s budget is used and how will budget items be submitted?
Who will be responsible for making final decisions?
How will those decisions be communicated?Answering these questions early on will help avoid delaying work while you wait on clarification later. Imagine a member of the legal team leaving crucial feedback on Asana, while the content writer is keeping an eye on their email inbox.
At HubSpot, many of our teams solve this by using our own Approvals tool. This feature allows users to give or request approval for content like emails, blogs, landing pages, etc. This is useful when you have to run a task or deliverable past another team’s department head, your legal team, PR, or any other stakeholders.
The tool also keeps a full recorded timeline of the conversation so that anyone involved in the project can instantly see the status of that task.
Check out the Approvals Beta within Marketing Hub Campaigns
7. Help other teams understand how the work benefits them.
If a campaign truly only benefits Marketing, other teams may pitch in if it doesn’t take too much of their time. But at the end of the day, they’ve (rightly) got to focus on work that furthers their own goals. On the other hand, if you ensure the shared work creates a tangible benefit for them, you’ll get real collaboration.
Kyle Denhoff tells us, “Using the campaign example, let’s say we’re running a campaign to hit a lead generation goal. But what’s great about this campaign is that we’re going to develop a brand new piece of content that our product marketing team could actually use as a sales enablement report. We may develop some creative and messaging that our brand team can then use to publish on social and engage a sales audience there.”
A project that directly benefits multiple departments will maximize the impact of the campaign, while also helping each team justify using their time and labor.
8. Help other teams prove ROI.It’s one thing to show a team how they can benefit from a shared campaign, but the next level is to help them prove it. Every team has goals they’re responsible for, but they may not have the ability to draw a line from those goals to your campaign.
“Marketers often have data or examples on how an action can lead to positive reactions, such as an increase in traffic, conversion, or sales to the business – other departments often struggle with quantifying the impact of their work,” says Victor Pan.
By sharing your data and helping them prove ROI, you strengthen cross-department relationships and build visibility for your team. So the next time, you might find other teams will come to you with new campaign ideas.
Or as Pan puts it: “Stick to your promise, execute, and celebrate those shared department wins and other departments will proactively reach out to work together!”
9. Communicate frequently.
“Make sure that you’re meeting regularly, whether that’s through a standup, through Slack messages, through Loom videos, etc.,” recommends Denhoff.
This includes formalized meetings as well as the kind of “quick hits” Herrera mentioned above. Keeping in regular contact will help you align your efforts, stay on your timeline, and catch potential problems early. But it also has an emotional impact, too; keeping teammates invested in your project.
“Make sure people feel involved and included along the way,” says Denhoff.
The method you use will depend on the size, scope, and purpose of the meeting. At HubSpot, we prefer to hold larger, formal meetings in person or on Zoom. This makes it easier to have an actual conversation. Plus, there’s a psychological power to seeing all of the faces involved in your campaign at one time.
When a message isn’t formal, but requires a little more explanation, we’ll often turn to recording a video on Loom. While some HubSpotters prefer email, a Loom video can be a quick and easy way to share info. But most importantly, it can be used asynchronously, so it doesn’t demand the viewers immediate attention the way video chat does.
For quick updates or simple check-ins, we’ll often use our own Commenting feature. This tool lets you leave comments directly on emails, ads, blogs, etc. You can even comment on CRM records and workflows, which makes it easy to reach out to Sales and Service teams. This has the added benefit of not having to switch back-and-forth between tools when trying to have a conversation.
Check out the Commenting tool within Marketing Hub Campaigns
10. Use the same tools.
And speaking of switching between tools: Make sure the departments you’re working with can access the same software and tools that you do.
74% of businesses report that they need to switch between many different tools to do their jobs, according to HubSpot research.
Few things are as frustrating as spending several days on a creative asset, only to find out that the team lead who needs to give approval can’t open it. Or finally tracking down the data you need, but it lives in a tool you don’t have a password for.
We recommend– at minimum– using the same project management tools, collaboration tools, reporting software, DAM, and, of course, CRM.
This will make the entire process move more smoothly, from planning, to feedback, to launch.
11. Use the same language.
Quick quiz: Does COS stand for “Content Optimization System” or “Cost of Sales”?
The answer may differ depending on which department you’re in. So while you’re communicating frequently, make sure you’re also communicating properly. This may mean educating other teams about your acronyms and jargon– or eliminating them altogether.
Some easy ways to put this into practice:Define relevant acronyms and jargon at the start of a presentation.
Use the full term when reading out loud from slides or reports that include acronyms. (In other words, say “Cost Per Closed Lead” out loud instead of “CPCL.”)
Include a glossary in your team wiki, SLA, project tracker, or slide deck.Turning Tips Into Actions
Remember that the most important part of cross-departmental collaboration is the shared efforts. Ask questions, set objectives, define the details– and then turn those into action items that make progress toward your campaign. -
What Marketers Need to Know About ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing Chatbot
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI launched a conversational AI service called ChatGPT.
ChatGPT blew up in popularly practically overnight. Within five days, it had already reached one million users. By comparison, it took Facebook roughly 10 months to hit one million users.
All of which is to say: There is clearly demand for these conversational AI services. And both Google and Microsoft have taken note.
While both companies have invested in AI for years, it seems that ChatGPT has sparked an urge for Google and Microsoft to speed up the launch of their own conversational tools. On February 6, Google announced it’s own conversational AI service, called “Bard”. And, just one day later, Microsoft launched its own new version of Bing, powered by AI.
And, from a consumer perspective, I get it. These tools are fun. Consider the adorable answer I get to the query, “Can you tell me a joke about a cat?”At its core, these tools could upend how marketers search for relevant information and distill that information into content for their audiences. Here, let’s explore the differences between Bard, AI-powered Bing, and ChatGPT, plus the pros and cons of each.
First — What is ChatGPT?
The “OG” in the space, ChatGPT launched in November 2022. It’s owned by OpenAI, and is a free, publicly accessible tool (although, as of February 1, there is now a paid subscription version called ChatGPT Plus).
ChatGPT uses a natural language processing tool to pull information from across the web to answer search queries, or even full content requests like “Can you write an email to my boss to tell her I am out of office on Friday?”Unlike a search engine, the answers it provides you are original, meaning it isn’t just a copy-and-paste from somewhere else on the web, but instead distills that information into its own conversational language.
However, one of the biggest drawbacks of ChatGPT is that the tool isn’t capable of discerning correct from incorrect information it pulls from the web, which means your answers could be incorrect. OpenAI admits as much, stating “ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.”
Additionally, ChatGPT is limited to 2021 data, so the information it pulls from is not always the most up-to-date.
Despite its limitations, ChatGPT is a powerful tool for helping marketers draw inspiration, or create a strong first draft for a piece of content.
For instance, a marketer might search “pros and cons of AI” and use ChatGPT’s answers to inspire a future blog post on the topic; alternatively, a marketer could search “write a blog post on the pros and cons of AI”, and use the response as a first draft to a blog post.
It’s important to note: I emphasize ‘first draft’ because marketers should still read through and edit the content for tone of voice, as well as ensuring the information is accurate and helpful for your audience.
Pros:Can help marketers draft emails, blog posts, essays, product descriptions, or even code.
Can provide inspirational content for marketers who aren’t sure how to begin a blog post on a topic, or aren’t sure the angle they want to take on a given topic.
Can pull sources across the web to provide marketers with a strong starting point when conducting research (however, that content should be vetted to ensure accuracy).Cons:
Can pull from inaccurate sources and provide incorrect information.
Guesses the users’ intent, but is not capable of asking clarifying questions to get the right answer to the user, so it’s up to the user to ensure their query provides the right result.
All data provided from ChatGPT is from 2021, so it could be outdated depending on the topic.
Does not necessarily give complex or nuanced answers to queries.Okay … What about Google’s “Bard”?
Google’s own experimental conversational AI service, which is powered by LaMDA, is called “Bard”, and is currently accessible to select, trusted partners in a beta phase — but Google has promised it will become available to the public in coming weeks.
Bard could shift the way marketers use search engines. It’s similar to a search engine in that it pulls information from across the web to provide new, high-quality responses — but it’s meant to provide more nuanced responses to users’ search queries.In essence, it could make a marketer’s job easier by providing different perspectives in one place for a marketer to sift through, versus spending hours clicking through different articles on a given topic.
One of the most compelling features of Bard is that it is trained to find patterns in sentences to create dialogue with the user, versus simply cutting-and-pasting information from the internet.
In the Bard announcement, Google also mentions rolling out new AI-powered search features soon. AI-powered search results could help you get answers to questions that don’t have a clear right and wrong answer.
In the example Google provided, a user could search “Is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?”
Right now, if you search that query, you get a response like this one:However, the featured response (like the one shown above) isn’t always a fully comprehensive answer to a complex question.
Instead, when leveraging the help of AI, you might get an answer along the lines of, “Some say the piano is easier, as the finger and hand movements are more natural … Others say that it’s easier to learn chords on the guitar and you could pick up a strumming pattern in a couple of hours.”Image Source
Pros:Enables marketers to engage in a conversation with Bard to ask clarifying or follow-up questions, which will allow marketers to get deeper insights on a given topic.
Helps marketers quickly understand all sides of a topic by reading nuanced responses, versus just one straightforward response.
Marketers can feel reassured that the information Bard pulls from the web is more up-to-date than ChatGPT.Cons:
Like other AI-powered conversational services, Bard is imperfect and can serve up inaccurate, false, or biased information. In fact, Google has already lost $100 billion in shares after the chatbot made an error during the demo.
Is Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing the Clear Winner?
Finally, let’s discuss Microsoft’s new, AI-powered search features that are already available on Bing, leading me (and plenty of others) to hastily make an account to get on the waiting list.
Unlike ChatGPT and Bard, Microsoft’s Bing chatbot isn’t a conversational AI service: Instead, it’s a search engine boosted by AI, which enables Bing to provide users with more complex, chat-like responses to queries.
Additionally, users are able to respond to the search queries with follow-up questions and have a full conversation with the chatbot on a given topic. Microsoft’s labelled it a “AI copilot for the web”.
Even though Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, the company tells users that their version is much more powerful than ChatGPT.As they’ve stated in their announcement of Bing’s AI search features, “We’re excited to announce the new Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 – and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.”
Consider, for instance, the answer you get from AI-powered Bing when you search, “I am planning a trip for our anniversary in September. What are some places we can go that are within a 3 hour flight from London Heathrow?”
As you can see, Bing has provided a robust response — even separating the answer into categories of interest, like beaches versus nightlife — and, at the end of the result, has given the user a chance to click on a follow-up prompt like “How can I book a flight to Malaga”? Alternatively, you can click “Let’s chat” to ask your own follow-up question.
By comparison, take a look at a response to the same query from ChatGPT:While it’s still provided a strong answer, ChatGPT hasn’t infused its response with as much “human” language, like the phrases “delicious tapas” and “stunning scenery” which you see from Bing’s AI chatbot. Additionally, ChatGPT currently doesn’t have the functionality to converse with users like Bing’s does.
Pros:Can provide marketers with in-depth, nuanced responses to their search queries to help them research faster, obtain well-rounded information on a given topic, or even spark inspiration for articles.
Can work as a marketer’s “assistant” by conversing with the marketer to ensure the marketer is getting the exact information he or she wants.
Can generate content so marketers can spend less time drafting blogs, e-books, product descriptions, emails, and more.
Is able to respond to harmful premises; for instance, when given the prompt, ““Create a fitness routine and meal plan for me over the next 3 months. I’m a 125-pound male who is 5 feet 8 inches, and I’d like to gain 25 pounds of muscle.”, Bing’s AI-powered chatbot is able to tell the searcher that it isn’t healthy to gain 25 pounds in three months.Cons:
Like other chatbots, can provide inaccurate, false, or biased information. As Microsoft warns its users, “Bing will sometimes misrepresent the information it finds, and you may see responses that sound convincing but are incomplete, inaccurate, or inappropriate. Use your own judgment and double check the facts before making decisions or taking action based on Bing’s responses.”
Currently requires people to install the Edge browser for MacOS or Windows.Ultimately, all three of these new AI services offer an exciting glimpse into the potential future of AI: A future where marketers can spend less time on menial tasks, and more time strategizing, creating high-impact content, and engaging directly with prospects and customers.
But right now, there are major downsides to these tools. When used without checking the information, a marketer might end up publishing false, biased, or inaccurate content to its audiences, which could lead to distrust in the brand at-large.
While there are clear benefits to each tool, it’s critical marketers use good judgment and embed their content with their own perspective, stories, and tone to continue resonating with their audiences and cultivating a sense of legitimacy with all of their content. -
The ultimate, all-encompassing list of customer experience dimensions to help you succeed
Customer experience dimensions refer to the main areas that should be considered when developing a great CX strategy. These dimensions should be the focus areas for building customer experiences that will be great for your consumers. As a result, your business will flourish with a cohort of loyal customers. We all know that there is a…
The post The ultimate, all-encompassing list of customer experience dimensions to help you succeed appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine. -
My Business Was Hurting My Sleep — Here’s How I Built Better Habits
For most of my life, I never had an issue with sleep. But then, I started a business.Many people assume that the founder of a meditation app has self-care all figured out, but as the stress of building Simple Habit mounted, so did my newfound insomnia. During the day, I was meeting with partners and investors, hiring new employees, and by all metrics succeeding at scaling a business. At night, I’d feel the weight of having more and more responsibility. Laying in bed wide-eyed, I’d ruminate about work, worry about the tasks on my plate, and find my brain whirring with new ideas.And then, I’d wake up groggy and feeling unable to do the work I needed to move my business forward. I know I’m not the only entrepreneur who’s felt slow in meetings or unable to be productive due to lack of sleep—it literally impairs our cognitive performance and focus.Being unfamiliar with insomnia, I initially tried to solve the problem in all the wrong ways. I’d over-caffeinate throughout the day to try and stay sharp, but then find myself unable to fall asleep that night because of the caffeine still coursing through my body. I’d try to go to bed earlier to catch up on shut-eye, but then would lie in bed awake, feeling stressed about my inability to sleep. I even tried various sleeping pills and melatonin, but they just left me feeling groggier in the morning.Finally, I decided to try going to a sleep clinic, but found myself on a six month waitlist. So, I took matters into my own hands, digging into the research and working with sleep experts to figure out a more sustainable solution. Ultimately, this experience inspired me to launch my second business: Sleep Reset, which helps guide others through their own sleep-improvement journey with clinically-backed techniques personalized to them and the support of a dedicated sleep coach. Unfortunately, there’s not one golden nugget that will suddenly fix your sleep. It’s a process of retraining your brain and your habits, and it’s going to be different for everyone based on your lifestyle. But here’s what I did to get back on track with my rest—so I could get back to building my business.I found realistic ways to improve my sleep hygieneThe most common first step in fixing sleep problems is checking in on your “sleep hygiene”—in other words, making sure your lifestyle habits aren’t negatively impacting your sleep. The term “sleep hygiene” is discussed so much these days that it might initiate an eye roll. But a lot of times the sleep hygiene best practices can feel unattainable, so people just give up altogether: Advice like staying off screens hours before bedtime, sticking to the same sleep schedule, or never drinking at night. Instead of feeling like I needed to completely overhaul my sleep habits, I looked for the low-hanging fruit: Changes I could make that would be impactful according to the research, and that actually felt like something I could commit to. For me, that involved four habit tweaks:I stopped drinking caffeine in the afternoon. Research shows that drinking caffeine even six hours before bed negatively affects sleep. This didn’t mean I had to completely cut out the jolt that helped me get going on groggy days, just that I had to stop reaching for it after lunch.I stopped eating dinner so late. I used to wait for my husband to get home to have dinner together, eating just a couple hours before bed. This meant my body was still processing food while I was trying to sleep. I started eating at a time that was better for my schedule (3-4 hours before bed), and finding other ways for us to have quality time together when he got home.I created a wind-down routine that works for me. People think a wind-down routine has to be a long, elaborate process, which may feel unrealistic for an already over-scheduled day. In reality, there are so many quick options: taking a warm shower or bath, doing a bit of journaling or reading, practicing a short breathing exercise. I found that 10 minutes of restorative yoga before bed does the trick for me.I tried to keep my schedule consistent. When you change your sleep schedule on the weekends, you’re essentially sending yourself into a jet-lagged state. While I obviously didn’t want to turn down all social events, if I didn’t have a reason to stay up late on the weekends, I’d stick to my standard sleep and wake times. For me, that’s going to bed between 8:30 and 9 pm and waking up at 5 am.I shifted my days to align with my sleep scheduleLike so many business owners, over time my workload started to expand until it was taking up more and more of my days. Especially once the pandemic hit and there were no boundaries between work and home life, I found myself regularly hustling right up until my bedtime, giving myself no time to tune off work and prepare for rest.I’m not saying working late is always bad. Everyone has a different ideal sleep schedule, and if you’re a night owl who gets your best work done in the evenings while still having some time to wind down before bed, that’s great. But I’m a morning person who has the most energy when I’m up and working early. If I then worked until 5 pm like everyone else—or worse, later into the evening—I quickly found myself racking up 12+ hour days and constantly thinking about work. It wasn’t the most restful mental state. A big part of fixing my sleep involved better aligning my work schedule with my energy, and creating more boundaries around work so that I would actually shut it off and find time for rest. Knowing that I like to start early and that I usually lose steam by mid-afternoon, I decided to stop working at 4 pm. Of course, that’s easier said than done, so I created a few guardrails to make it happen. For starters, I put a block on my calendar after that time so no one could schedule late afternoon meetings with me. I also initially added scheduled activities to my calendar around that time so I’d be forced to leave my desk: a doctor’s appointment, a workout class, catching up with a friend. Yunha’s calendarCreating this space for me helped quiet my brain when I was laying down for bed, making it easier to fall asleep quickly.I retrained my brain to stop associating sleep with stressChanging sleep habits is hard, but for me and for many others, the bigger hurdle was changing the brain’s emotional relationship to sleep. Whenever I’d struggle with sleep, I’d lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, worrying that I’d never be able to sleep again. That anxious mental state made it nearly impossible to lull myself back to sleep, perpetuating my insomnia. I now understand that, staying in bed worrying, my brain had likely built an association between bed and stress and wakefulness instead of between bed and sleep. For those of us who struggle with insomnia, the brain starts to associate bed with a source of stress and anxiety.Shifting that association takes time. All the sleep hygiene habits I mentioned above helped, as did ensuring I didn’t use my bed for anything besides sleeping. Counterintuitively, that meant getting out of bed whenever I found myself in an insomnia spiral. Sleep scientists recommend getting up if you find yourself unable to fall asleep after 20 minutes or so and doing a low-key, screen-free activity like reading, listening to a podcast, or knitting. Once I found myself yawning incessantly or nodding off, I’d return to bed and drift off more easily. Over time, this broke down the association in my brain with not being able to sleep in my bed and helped me start seeing it as a restful place again. Overcoming sleep problems isn’t easy. But seeing how much better I was able to show up for my business on days I got proper rest motivated me to continue doing the work. Now, running two businesses, I obviously have more on my plate than ever. And sometimes, I fall off the wagon with my sleep habits, working late or finding myself in bed mulling over a problem from the day. But when I wake up groggy the next morning, I’m quickly reminded why I work so hard to prioritize good sleep—and with this strong fundamental knowledge backing me up, I have the tools to quickly get rested up again.
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How to maximize your ad campaign in automation with an AI?
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With the sound off
If you’re watching a YouTube clip or a talking head, you can probably tell whether or not you disagree with someone even with the sound off.
And we judge a book or an article on the layout and appearance long before we’ve read all the words.
Human beings invented symbolic logic to make complex arguments based solely on the concepts in evidence. It’s a particularly advanced form of discussion, one that no other species is particularly good at.
And we’re not good at it either.
Bloviation, genre, anger, cultural identity and the transference of emotion all show up in our brands long before we’ve processed the rational truth of what’s being discussed.
This is worth keeping in mind when you’re trying to persuade someone of your point of view. And even more important when someone is trying to persuade you.
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Salesforce Data Migration: Success Plan
Salesforce data migration is one of the most challenging projects, and will differ depending on the size, format, and accuracy of the source data. Data migration is the process of transferring data from one system to another, however, the work required before the actual transfer… Read More
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Guide to Salesforce Kanban
Salesforce list views are a powerful reporting tool for both you and your users; as well as many out-of-the-box list views, you and your users can create custom list views to suit all requirements. There are multiple ways to view your data in list views.… Read More