6 Proven Ways to Keep Your Work Stress at Bay

Learn how to manage office stress effectively

Believe it or not, stress prevails in almost every organization. If you feel that you get stressed out quite often at your workplace, don’t worry you are not alone.

According to the stress survey conducted by Everest College, a staggering 83% of workers in the US suffer from stress at their workplace.

That’s a staggering figure. However, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that many of us take work-related stress lightly and do little to minimize its adverse effects.

As a working individual, you need to understand that long-term stress can lead to not only a decline in your productivity but also cause serious mental and physical health problems.

It doesn’t matter whether your manager or your employer acknowledges the presence of stress at the workplace or not. If you are feeling stressed at work almost every day, it means that stress is actually lurking inside your office space and you need to take steps to fight it.

To help you with this and to manage stress levels at work, here are some easy and tested ways that can help:

Organize Everything

Staying organized is a crucial thing to keep work stress in check. However, when it comes to staying organized, it’s not just about having a clean and well-organized desk that matters. For sure, it helps to keep a clear mind but what also matters is that you organize your time properly as well.

For instance, organizing your daily work routine is one of the many things you can do to make sure that stress remains at work. Schedule it in such a way that you don’t have to look for things to do. It would save a lot of time that would have otherwise been wasted juggling randomly from one task to the next.

Remember - by organizing your time and things around you, you can easily achieve the mental peace that you are looking for.

Set Your Priorities Right

Let’s face it, we all have stringent deadlines and to meet them we need to be at our best every day.

One of the easiest ways to achieve this, every single day, is by identifying the tasks that need most of your attention and prioritize accordingly.

Invest a little time in creating a daily to-do list with tasks organized according to priority - the ones being the most important scheduled according to your most productive hours. You can opt for a simple task management tool/ app for this.

While some tasks are easy to accomplish, others demand you to be at your optimal productivity level to get completed on time. Thus, you need to schedule tasks smartly and make sure that you work on the most important tasks during your most productive hours.

Eat Healthy and Get Good Sleep

The impact of diet on mental health is no longer a theory but a well-established fact.

Following a poor diet plan and eating unhealthy food items can lead to the development of psychological distress. Mood swings, anxiety, and depression become evident in a person who sticks to an unhealthy diet.

Therefore, you should stick to a balanced diet and prefer eating nutritious meals. A protein-rich diet plan with low-sugar intake can improve your mental health and help you to cope up with stress easily.

In a similar way, getting proper rest is another important factor that suppresses stress. Lack of proper sleep will restrict your body from getting restored to its maximum energy level.

So, it is advisable for you to get 7 -9 hours of sound sleep each night. Also, you shouldn’t use any device for at least one hour before going to sleep.

Exercise Regularly

Our health is the first thing that gets affected when we spend most of our day working while sitting on a chair.

Lack of physical activity not only makes you lethargic but you also become prone to a number of health problems.

By exercising regularly, you keep yourself in good shape and feel energetic.

Apart from the physical benefits, regular exercising uplifts your mood and helps you to concentrate better. Moreover, it is also proven that physical exercise allows you to de-stress.

You should spare at least 30 minutes each day to exercise and engage yourself in fast-paced activities like jogging, cycling, and running.

Another great way to keep yourself active during office hours is by using break time to take a small walk with colleagues.

Stay Calm

It’s quite common to get frustrated at the office when you feel pressured to meet the deadlines.

Sometimes, even explaining the same thing more than once to a colleague triggers anger, and chances of conflicts in the workplace escalate.

And as we all know, anger always does the most harm to the person who’s wielding it.

To avoid complicating things and spoiling your relationships with colleagues, you should know how to stay calm even in the worst and provoking situations. By doing so, you will restrict yourself from taking impulsive actions and get stressed about them later on.

One of the best ways to keep yourself calm when you are frustrated or angry is to use a simple breathing technique. To practice the technique, all you need to do is take long and slow breaths in such a way that you inhale from your nose and exhale from your mouth.

Be More Realistic

Becoming a perfectionist at work is much difficult than it seems. And you may end stressing yourself out by trying to do so.

It’s good to go that extra mile to prove your mettle and feel good about your achievements. But sometimes, unforeseen factors come into the picture and restrict you from finishing tasks in the way you have planned earlier.

In such circumstances, it’s better to accept reality and don’t feel low over things that you can’t control.

Set your personal goals in a realistic way by considering all the factors that govern the outcome.

To find mental peace, always take some time to admire your own efforts and recognize what you have already achieved.

Conclusion

Today many fast-paced jobs bring with them a lot of stress that you need to manage effectively. Well, the ways mentioned in this article are pure stressbusters and you can rely on them to prevent stress from affecting you at the workplace. By making these techniques a part of your everyday life, you can fight back stress and work more productively.

About the Author :

Vartika Kashyap is the Chief Marketing Officer at ProofHub — a project planning software for teams of all sizes. She is one of the LinkedIn Top Voices in 2018. Her articles are inspired by office situations and work-related events. She likes to write about productivity, team building, work culture, leadership, entrepreneurship among others and contributing to a better workplace is what makes her click.