Facing Stress. Review on Handling Stress

Stress is defined as a * state of mental or emotional strain due to difficulties faced *. Its some thing we face every day in life, either at home or work.  Stress could be due to many reasons, the pressure to finish a task within a deadline, personal problems at home, financial problems, in fact its quite a vast area and I don’t think a single article could solve the stress related problems. Stress has been recognized as one of the major factors affecting productivity at work place. And in recent times there have been many cases of suicides due to the high stress at work. Students are also not immune from stress, due to the pressure they face in getting grades.

Being an IT professional myself, stress is something I face most of the time at my work place. The IT field can be very stressful and the pressure is very high at times. But I guess its part of every field be it in management, BPO, medicine, defense. In fact people in professions like medicine and defense, have to deal with stress carefully as it could prove to be the difference between life and death. Based on my experience over the past 5 years, I am giving some of my thoughts on how to handle stress better. This is again based solely on my experience in IT field, and some of it might not be necessarily relevant.

Love whatever you do

When you enjoy whatever you are doing, you cease to work. The biggest motivation to do better is the love of the job. When you really don’t like what you are doing, whatever assignment is given to you, seems to be a chore, and you just concentrate on finishing it. And when the emphasis is on finishing the job, instead of trying to know what you are doing, the end result is boredom and a certain sort of déjà vu feeling creeps in. You hate what you are doing, and that increases the stress a lot. Of course its really quite difficult to get the work you really love to do, but in case you are stuck up with a thankless task, try to finish it off soon, without wasting too much time.

Don’t bite off more than what you can chew

One of the major reasons for stress is we tend to do everything ourselves, in the hope that this would impress our superiors. And then we end up complaining we are burdened with too much work. Remember one thing you are a human being, and you have certain capabilities and certain limitations. Don’t try to be a super hero and exceed your limitations. You just end up getting tangled in knots and the stress becomes more and more. Try to assign parts of your work to other team members, and this reduces the burden on you, as well as getting others involved in the task.

One man army approach doesn’t work

Watching Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone go around single handedly knocking down an army of baddies in a Hollywood flick is quite thrilling.  But in real life, there are no one man shows, it’s a total team effort at work. Whenever you are stuck in a task, and unable to proceed further, take the help of some one else, who could be the best person to solve the problem. Remember you are not a super genius, who can solve every problem by yourself. The task needs to be completed, and if more than one hand is needed, don’t hesitate to take it. And yes once the task is over, you could maybe analyze it better. But never consider it infra dig to ask the help of another person to solve your problem.

Don’t put off  till tomorrow what you can do now

One of my greatest weaknesses was I had a tendency to keep putting off things instead of tackling the problem or task right from beginning. The result was the work would just pile up and then I would have to spend  long hours getting things done. One of the best ways to avoid stress is not to let your work pile up. I faced an awful lot of problems with this. Due to the work piling up, I would go into a rush hour mode to get it done within deadline, and the result was I would end up making silly mistakes which would affect the quality of the work.  When you are given a problem to solve or a task to be done, do it as soon as possible, the longer you delay, the longer the hours you would have to spend to beat the deadline.

An idle brain is not necessarily a  Devil’s workshop

Newton discovered the concept of gravity while he was idling in a garden. Kekule discovered the structure of benzene while he was dozing in a bus. We might not make such monumental discoveries, but yes being idle for short periods of time is quite beneficial. As human beings, our mind is accustomed to take the load only for a certain period of time. You keep on working without rest, your brain would be the first to cry halt, and you just don’t know how to proceed further. Perfect recipe for stress out here. Many of us have this tendency to keep working for hours together, in the mistaken belief that this would get results. In fact the only thing it does is decrease your productivity and increase your stress levels. Now working long hours is something totally unavoidable in today’s world. In such a case keep taking some short breaks, go for a walk, or just relax for some time. Read some magazines or newspapers, do some gup shup with your friends, anything just to break the monotony.

Late night pressures

One of the common factors which induces stress is the fact that we have to interact with clients who are on the other side of the world, and this causes us to stay back late in the night. Or in case you are in IT field, you have some tight deadlines, and you need to stay up all night to finish the work. Something which has become very common in today’s work place and which is unavoidable. In such a case excuse yourself for about 20-30 min, refresh yourself, change into a lighter clothing, and have your dinner. In this way you would be better prepared to handle the late night schedule. Very often people keep on staying for long, and what happens is when it comes late into night, and you have not taken a break, you are irritable, tired, hungry and you just cannot concentrate on your work in such a way.

Avoid smoking, pills and drugs

Smoking or taking pills to beat stress wont reduce your stress levels. In fact its bound to cause unnecessary side effects and you are going to have double the stress. And as for taking drugs to kill stress, don’t even entertain such fancy notions. You will only be ending up making a junkie of yourself, and your stress levels will increase later when you look at your hospital bills. Remember your body and mind are the best healers, and overdependence on drugs and pills, are just going to turn you into a nervous wreck.

These are just some of my thoughts based on my experience in my field. And its up to you to see how you could make use of them.