Everyone eventually experiences work stress, no matter how much they love their work. At first, work stress can make you miss deadlines, forget tasks, and even be absent-minded during work. These effects are just in the short-term, however. It can eventually be chronic if you don’t take steps to cope with work stress. It will then be harmful to both your physical and mental health.
Unfortunately, work stress is all too common. Some people dealing with work stress don’t even know they are experiencing it. They will be, instead, inclined to think that it comes with the job. No matter how stressful your job can be, there are steps that you can take to cope with work stress efficiently, making your work more comfortable for your mental health. Here are some of them.
Learn to Detach
Detaching means to put your mind off work after the day ends. When detaching, you should have something to make your brain go to pre-stressor level. Usually, people do their hobbies after work, like playing video games, watching their favorite series, etc. By doing this, you’re mentally switching off your brain, which is essential to reduce your stress levels significantly.
This is because stress can accumulate even after work if you constantly think about it afterward. In short, recovery only occurs when our minds return to pre-stressor level, so we must cease thoughts about work to avoid increasing stress by doing our hobbies.
Utilize Short Breaks
It’s a common habit for people to do nonstop work, especially on a busy day. However, it increases our stress levels, especially if we don’t take breaks. Besides regular breaks like your 15-minute and lunch breaks, you should also utilize micro-breaks that last 10 minutes.
If your stress levels are increasing, take a ten-minute break to close your eyes and meditate or do breathing exercises. They are more than enough to lower your stress levels. It’s a simple but very effective technique to be mentally sharp throughout the day. It’s always important to resist the urge to work nonstop and recover later after the day is over or during the weekend. This is counterproductive as later on, you’ll be less efficient with work because your sharpness won’t be 100%.
Plan Ahead
Sometimes, our stress levels can increase before we even start work. This is especially true when you constantly battle traffic or push through hundreds of people on the train. You’re stressed when you finally arrive at work, lowering your efficiency. That said, it’s always important to stay organized by planning before the day starts.
For example, if you take care of the kids before they go to school, you can prepare their snacks or pick a breakfast for them and prepare the ingredients for the next morning. If you can afford it, you can also sleep a little earlier to prepare for all of this and go to work before the rush hour.
Create a Comfortable Work Environment
Sometimes, our stressors can be right before our eyes, specifically, our desks. This is especially true if your desk is cluttered with paper, pencils, pens, etc. It can even be your uncomfortable chair that is making you stressed. Having a much more comfortable and cleaner work environment will make you less stressed and even more motivated at work.
For starters, you can clean up your desk free of clutter. Put the paper in your folders or holders and buy a pencil case for your pens and pencils. If you can, you can also ask for a replacement chair and get a more comfortable one.
However, if one of your stressors is noise, there are also some things you can do. For example, you can wear noise-canceling headphones, or if music doesn’t distract you from work, you can also listen to music instead to drown out external noise and concentrate more on the task at hand.
Ask for Help
If you think you’re getting too stressed even after following the tips above, you can always go to people you can rely on to ask for help in your daily life. For example, if you’re constantly stressed because you keep going late to your workplace, you can ask your parents or a friend to carpool your kids to their school.
You can even ask for help from a medical professional. Doctors usually prescribe medicine for their patients when they have work stress problems. Luckily, some of them can be bought over the counter. However, if you’re planning to buy in bulk, it can be quite expensive. That said, you can look for BuzzRx prescription savings to save you the stress of expensive prescription medicine.
Final Words
Work can be debilitating and even deadly if you neglect it for too long. Luckily for us, there are several things we can do to cope with work stress, like being more organized and keeping our workplace more comfortable. You can follow the tips above if you’re looking for ways to cope with work stress.
