Stress is in its own way useful in life. But an excess can result in headaches, muscle tension, fatigue, sleeplessness and even depression. Geoffrey James from Inc.com offers 6 easy tips to reduce stress.
- Find your oasis of calm. It is not uncommon nowadays to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week where before it was 8 hours a day, five days a week. Create an oasis by having your computer and mobile phone switched off for an hour before you go to bed and an hour after you get up in the morning. It demands considerable discipline and self-confidence, but the result is worth it.
- Focus on easy priorities with huge impact. If you have a long list of things to do, divide them up according to what is important and the impacts that getting them done will have. You will find that a number of things you have to do are easy, but the impact huge. So do those first! You will see over time that you will achieve 80 % of your targets by carrying out 20 % of your tasks. So as a bonus you can afford to ignore something really demanding whose impact is negligible anyway.
- Discuss your workload with your boss. Sometimes the demands made of your position are almost nonsensical, which leads to permanent stress regardless of what you are working on at that time. Draw up a list of what needs to be done and a time budget for it. If the result is unrealistic, speak to your boss about it, show him and ask him to decide the priorities.
- Stop watching the news. Outwith news on market developments, news generally produces negative emotions in us – fear, tension or frustration. So if you don’t absolutely need to watch the news for your work and are battling high levels of stress, it is better to avoid watching.
- Don’t worry about what you can’t control. The economic situation, traffic jams, what mood the people around you are in and so on. It is certainly good to see all these things coming, but then just get on with it and don’t let them throw you off-balance any more. You will unnecessarily raise your stress level and waste energy.
- Avoid nervous people. We are programmed by nature to mirror our surroundings. In other words, other people’s stress is actually infectious.
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