Managing Stress in the Workplace
Managing Stress in the Workplace
Stress is everywhere—Home, school, and the work place. The sooner you learn how to manage it, the better. However, not everyone is very good at managing stress. To know the best way to manage stress, I have interviewed several businessmen and most of the following ideas of managing stress are based on their experiences.
It was Christina Adzima’s senior year, and there was one final academic hurdle before her high school graduation—the 20-page term paper. The Stratford, Connecticut, student had been on schedule with the project all year, meeting each deadline. Then, two weeks before the full draft was due, her dog died. Christina just couldn’t seem to get the paper started, and suddenly it was the night before it was due. “It was the first all-nighter I had ever pulled, and I vowed I’d never do it again,” she says. As a student, stress can affect many areas of your life. Keeping up your grades, writing college essays, struggling with the decision of where to go to college, homework, tests, after-school sports, a part-time job, and your social life may all be making demands on your time. And after graduation, when you’ve left school to enter the work force, will the stress subside? Not likely. While it can be difficult to deal with stress, the sooner you learn how to manage it, the better.
The ability to handle stress has almost become a requirement in most jobs today. According to the 1997 National Study of the Changing Work force by the Families and Work Institute in New York City, jobs are the biggest stressor for most Americans. In fact, job and workplace stress are three times more likely to affect a person’s emotional well being than children, again parents, spouses, commuting, housework or any other personal demands. Despite this, employers appear to be doing very little about it.
Potter, an expert in workplace behavior and psychology, in her book Overcoming Job Burnout. “Across the board, no matter what profession, no matter what level, virtually everybody says they have too much to do and not enough time to do it.”
When something inside tells you that things are not quite “right,” how do you know if it is stress? Look for these telltale signs that stress is building up: lack of concentration, forgetfulness, being disorganized, having trouble doing simple tasks, feeling anxious or depressed, having...