Managing Stress In The Workplace

In the 1999 film Pushing Tin a huge rivalry erupts between a cocksure air-traffic controller and a new arrival. Their spats are carried out in front of the rest of the control team, which comprises a collection of oddball characters into whose hands you would not really want to place your life. One such character, nicknamed Doctor Freeze, makes a brief appearance but not in his job as a controller guiding planes onto the runway. We learn that Freeze earned his nickname because he froze under the stress of the job some time earlier and he lost his nerve to the extent that he has not been able to return to work since, as each attempt he makes ends in retreat. The entire workforce is alerted to Freeze's arrival in the car park and bets are taken on how far he will get this time before he crumbles. As he prepares to leave his car Freeze repeatedly assures himself that "it's a big sky; lots of room." By the time he reaches the doors of the building, however, he lives up to his name and then bolts back to his car as the winners collect their money.

It is quite a funny scene in what is a fairly good film, but if such a thing happened in reality then Freeze's colleagues should hang their heads in shame. To be taking bets on how far a person will get before the stress they are suffering from disables them is as harmful as it is cruel. Help and support are what are needed in cases of stress in the workplace, a complaint that is certainly no laughing matter.

I have previously written an article on the early signs of stress for this website, and here I am concentrating on ways to keep your stress levels at a minimum while at work. As in that other article, however, it should be mentioned that exercise and a healthy diet reflect positively on the stress levels, while smoking and over-indulgence in alcohol have a negative effect.

If you feel that you are struggling to cope at work, then you could try the following:

Downsize Your Workload
A whole bar of chocolate is more appetising than one of the individual squares that make it up, but sometimes the bigger picture is not the best view. If you are working on a large project then the sheer amount of work to be done can cause anxiety. Look only at the immediate tasks in that project and break them down into manageable pieces and you may find that your stress levels are similarly broken down. Large projects can be daunting for us all, but we're in good company. The writer John Steinbeck said of undertaking a new project,

"When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate."

By breaking down his workload in this way and not looking at the bigger picture, Steinbeck overcame that 'desolate impossibility' so emphatically that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Get Your Priorities Right
When we have something unpleasant to go through, say a funeral or a trip to the dentist, it is generally less stressful to get it over with in the morning. Having an unpleasant appointment late in the afternoon means that the whole day is spent in dread of it, and thus stress levels are kept at high. The same goes for your list of daily tasks at work - you should aim to get the most pressing out of the way first. It is far better to have your day become less stressful as it goes on than to have those daunting tasks hanging over your head all day. Prioritise your workload in a way that gets the most stressful jobs out of the way first.

Delegate Where Possible
Delegating tasks should never be thought of as passing work on to others so you have more free time yourself. Nor should it be seen as a sign of weakness on your part. The fact is that delegating some tasks to others can actually increase the productivity of the one who designates them.

Stress impedes productivity and an overloaded schedule is a sure fire way of increasing anxiety levels and slowing down production, something you don't need when faced with the added pressures of maintaining quality and meeting deadlines. By delegating some of your workload to others, some of the weight will be lifted from your shoulders and you will be in far better shape to get on with your own tasks. Your own productivity will increase and potential hold ups will have been avoided. Delegating tasks in this way actually maintains the smooth running of the operation.

Of course stress in the workplace is a very broad subject and the advice above addresses only a fraction of the ways this complaint can manifest itself. If you feel that you may be suffering from stress then the first step should be to see your doctor. Ignoring it and hoping it will go away of its own accord could see you end up like that other doctor I mentioned in the first paragraph.