Workplace Challenges
How to reduce your stress at workImagine working only four hours a day, nine months a year and earning all the money you need to do exactly what you want with all your free time. Does that sound like your life? Tag and Catherine Goulet |
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 [ 2007-05-08 ] |
FabJob.com
That's the life a futurist of the early 20th Century predicted the average worker would be living by the 21st century.
Although Michael Moore portrays in Fahrenheit 9/11 that George W. Bush has similar work hours, we doubt that most working Canadians are getting off that easily.
Despite the introduction of many labor-saving devices, Harvard University Economist Juliet Schor found by the 1990s people were working the equivalent of one month a year more than they did at the end of World War II.
It seems that whenever a significant new "labor saving" product or service is developed we use it so much our workload actually increases. After all, wasn't our work supposed to be made easier by voice mail, faxes, cell phones and email?
Instead, many of us find we are constantly on-call, frequently interrupted, and overwhelmed with communications that people expect to receive immediate responses to. That's on top of the already heavy workload existing in most organizations. For some workers, the best way to deal with the overload is to take an extended stress leave.
If switching from double lattes to decaf isn’t enough to reduce your stress at work, here are some steps you can take to get your workload under control:
Spend your time working on things that are important. Many of us are tempted to work on easy tasks first so we can have a sense of accomplishment. Time spent on those "easy" tasks can quickly add up, creating even more stress when there isn’t enough time left for the important work.
Set daily goals. When scheduling your time, assume that something unexpected will come up and build in a cushion of time to deal with it. To minimize the stress of meeting self-imposed deadlines, avoid making promises about when tasks will be completed. If you must commit to a date, be conservative. If you consistently underpromise and overdeliver you could earn a great reputation while reducing your stress.
Aim to meet or even exceed expectations, but don't try to achieve perfection. Wherever possible, delegate routine tasks even if you think you can do them better than someone else.
Unless you are on call, work on eliminating interruptions. Select a time of day when you will return phone calls and emails. Other times, let your voice mail take messages for you and set up an email autoreply letting people know you will respond within 24 hours.
When you are feeling overwhelmed, say so. Companies want to keep good employees so most bosses want to know when you are having difficulty. But instead of just saying "I can't do it," offer some possible solutions.
These techniques probably won't help you enjoy the life of leisure envisioned by those early futurists. But they can make your work more manageable, and might even reduce your stress enough to let you go back to drinking double lattes.
Tag and Catherine Goulet are founders of FabJob.com. This article is an excerpt from their book Dream Careers. Visit www.FabJob.com to discover your dream career.
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