Can You Handle Work Tension and the Stress that Comes with It?Tension and stress related to job can be diagnosed through answers to various questions like: 1. Does the idea of quitting the present job make you happy? 2. Do you ever feel like singing to yourself: “Throw this job”? 3. Will you give preference to an actual hazardous storm hovering your office over attending another monotonous office meeting? 4. Is the allowance for unemployment more attractive to you than actually following the job routine? 5. Has your work become too bored for you? 6. Don’t you find any motivation or creative feeling to continue in your present job? 7. Your relations with your boss or with other colleagues create more and more disputes and arguments, leaving you with unpleasant memories?
In case the answer is in affirmative to the above-mentioned queries, and then there is no doubt that you have been going through stress at one time or another during your job. Although this stress is not confined to any particular kind of employment or work, jobs of secretarial nature or management duties in a big enterprise may produce more stress than working as a postman or working at a farm. There are varying levels of stress with each job, in some the stress level is high, and in others it is low. But stress is not a negative factor always. It becomes problematic only when one cannot cater to all the requirements of the job in a given time, and within his available potential and capabilities. When he is unable to reach the targets beyond his control, the stress level starts rising till it reaches a critical stage. As far as job stress is concerned, there are 2 approaches towards this phenomenon: I will mention here the method that I have used myself, but I won’t recommend it for others. This method is called “I’m Tough as Nails”. The steps involved in this approach include blaming others for all that goes wrong, never taking a pause in your work, continuing work and by not allowing others to take any break either; reporting to the boss about the failures and mismanagements and incompetence of other colleagues; temporarily calming yourself through some pegs of beer, shouting at your partner and kids. This way you finish off your day, ready to resume the same activities the following day. You can also try to relax using the following method. It consists of two steps: firstly one must ponder over improving his performance vis-à-vis the duties he is supposed to carry out; the second one relates to his boss, that how his boss can minimize the stress related to some particular job-assignment. Let’s have a look at these two strategies one by one: Things you can do to reduce stress: 1. Organize yourself When we follow an organized routine, we get satisfaction but when the things are not planned we become highly uncomfortable as we can’t achieve the targets. One must set one’s priorities, plan one’s day; use a road map to reach places easily without getting lost and without wasting time.
2. Respecting the deadlines: The usual working hours include 9 hours work. But if we try to squeeze in 12 hours of work in the same 9 hours, it will be a big blow to all your plans. It is just like putting a square peg in a round hole that will definitely result in frustration and accumulated work.
3. Avoid being perfect at every stage: You cannot make everything perfect both at home and at office. Just do your best and drop the rest of the perfection for some other leisure time. The stress enters when you try to bring perfection at each stage and don’t succeed.
4. Don’t try to be a Superhuman: You must not forget that it was the tortoise that won the race. So keep working steadily at your own pace, keep up your work according to your own rhythm and see the happy results.
5. Keep positive thinking: Negative approach makes you frustrated and energy less. Always try to think in an optimistic way about your work and don’t forget to say well done to yourself whenever you achieve one of your targets, even if other high ups don’t acknowledge your efforts. Such accomplishments are important to boost up your morale.
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