Make An Action Plan For Fighting Your Work Stress

Like it or not, stress is an integral part of our lives and especially our professional lives. Meeting deadlines, organizing meetings and conferences, handling daily correspondence and meetings, booking accommodation and make necessary travel arrangements, finding alternative solutions when things don't go as planned can cause us loads of stress every day!  

It's good to follow some techniques that help us cope with stress such as meditation, yoga and exercise in general, but these techniques only help us after we have already experienced stress and anxiety because we just couldn't handle a situation as good as expected and that lead to feeling not so proud about our time management skills and lose our self-confidence. 

What if we could take action before and find out what are the sources that could generate anxiety? If we really now what these sources are, then we can adjust the way we're doing things in such a way that we could manage our time more efficiently and reduce our stress level. After all, doctors say: Prevention is better than cure.

• Start by making a journal for a couple of days, just to write down the tasks you conduct and how much time you spend on each task. This will give you a clearer idea about where you spend more time than needed and what you could do, to do it faster. In some cases, you will probably be shocked about how much precious time you waste by doing unnecessary things.
• Ask your supervisor to give you more instructions and details about tasks that you're assigned with and you have some gaps on how to do them. It's not a disadvantage to say that you haven't understood exactly something and that you need more information on this. On the contrary, it shows that you respect your job and you want to present a high-quality piece of work. Also, most of the times, bosses get angry, when they have to return your work for correction again and again just because you haven't understood their instructions.  
• Learn to say 'No' with a good and tactful way! Many times, we need to feel that we're liked and approved by everyone, so we say "Yes" to everybody and we take the responsibility of doing tasks for other colleagues. In this way, we change our priorities and we leave behind things that have to be done, just to work on favors. Trust me! The colleague you're doing a favor for, may love you at the beginning but sooner or later they'll hate you when they find out that you really can't finish their task because you're overloaded. So, it's better to make things clear from the beginning and say No when you believe that you really don't have the time for an extra task that popped up. 
• When you do come face-to-face with a stressful situation, due to a change on the schedule, stay calm! Try to adjust yourself to the new situation, design a new action plan and move on! Flexibility is everything in the business world!!
• Changing the way you're working and implementing new methods, we'll help you get things faster and more efficiently done and will help you stay confident about your work and you as professional.