Bloomsford Academy

Back in 1994, shop opening hours were relaxed and Sunday opening became the norm. Suddenly, there was no day that ‘forced’ us to chill out and do a jigsaw puzzle. 12 years ago, Facebook launched, which sapped any spare minutes we had left – God forbid you miss an update from a school friend from 25 years ago! Twitter launched in 2006 and Instagram in 2010, and with the now-ubiquitous smartphone, today we carry these technologies everywhere. Certainly they save us time in some ways, but there is no doubt that we’re inundated with pings and updates that occupy our brain capacity and eat up any spare time. Technology has revolutionised our work lives as much as our personal time. In the last few years, the number of new businesses in the UK has leapt to record levels, as more people take advantage of the opportunities technology presents. As competition becomes more intense, however, so does extra pressure for business owners.  gettyimages-151329130.jpg

Working the night shift has long been known to have a negative impact on your wellbeing and productivity. But what exactly is it doing to our bodies and how can we counteract the negative effects? wellbeing, banner1 Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the biggest impacts of working overnight is disrupted sleep.  A study of police officers  found a link between working the night-time or evening shift and getting fewer than six hours of sleep a day. The research from the Workplace Health & Safety journal, also showed that there was twice as much chance of experiencing bad quality sleep when people slept for six hours or fewer. In a separate study, shift workers were also fond to have an  increased risk of diabetes  – which was especially prevalent in men who had irregular working hours. A study in the journal PLoS Medicine showed that rotating shift workers’ increased Type 2 diabetes risk was likely linked to working shifts impacting insulin activi

You may think that success will make you happy, but science disagrees: happiness makes people successful, not the other way around. Positive psychology research has demonstrated that happy people achieve more.  wellbeing, banner1 “When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it”, writes Shawn Achor in The Happiness Advantage.   Happiness can galvanise job performance , raising sales by 37 per cent, productivity by 31 per cent, and accuracy by 19 per cent. That’s all well and good, but what if you’re having a bad day or even consider yourself a ‘glass-half-empty’ person? Luckily, research has shown that you can train your brain to feel happiness . Here are a few simple tricks to help you feel happier right now. 1. Be grateful In a  study on the effects of gratitude , university professors Robert Emmons and Michael McC