Tag Archives: stress

Focus on Having the Best of It

By Dr. Laura Hills, President, Blue Pencil Institute, www.bluepencilinstitute.com

 

Are you in a job shutterstock_65135377or other situation that’s hugely stressful? Many people will give you advice about managing your stress. They’ll tell you take daily walks, practice deep breathing exercises, eat the right foods, avoid caffeine, meditate, soak in a hot tub, and so on. In fact, those practices may actually help. But sometimes, no matter what you do, you won’t be able to get rid of the headaches, backaches, insomnia, digestive problems, and other symptoms of your stress. This will be the case when your job or other situation goes against your values, serves no greater purpose, or compromises your well-being and self-esteem. If you’re stuck in a stressful situation that doesn’t make sense, refocus not on making the best of it, but on having the best of it. Look for or create a new opportunity that will be a better fit to your needs, one that will also be more meaningful and personally rewarding. If you’re asking yourself how you can best muddle along, think: Is that the right question to be asking?

Don’t focus on making the best of it.

Focus on HAVING the best of it — and how you’re going to make that happen.

 

Debunking Time Management Myths: 12 Popular Misconceptions

shutterstock_86113621By Dr. Laura Hills, President, Blue Pencil Institute, www.bluepencilinstitute.com

Below are 12 popular misconceptions about time management. Do you believe any of them to be true?

  1. There’s plenty of time. I can do that later.
  2. There’s too much to do. It can’t be done.
  3. He/she has more time than I have.
  4. I’m busy right now so I can let that slide.
  5. I’m the only one who can do it.
  6. I can get more done in more time when I wisely use caffeine, sugar, alcohol, or nicotine.
  7. I should have no limits
  8. It’ll be quicker if I just do it myself.
  9. The longer I work, the more I will get done.
  10. Multi-tasking will save time.
  11. Breaks? That’s a waste of time. I don’t need them.
  12. I have no control over the way I spend my time.

Hanging onto misconceptions about our time such as these will ultimately create stress and interfere with our productivity. Talk with your colleagues, partner, or coach to see how these misconceptions are untrue and to figure out better, healthier, and more effective ways to think about managing your time.

Computer Ergonomics: How to Use Your Keyboard Properly

shutterstock_23458258By Dr. Laura Hills, President, Blue Pencil Institute (www.bluepencilinstitute.com)

I spend a tremendous amount of time writing at my computer workstation and have learned that if I don’t use my keyboard properly that I will have quite a few aches and pains later. Here are some tips that have made a big difference for me and that I hope will help you, too.

Your computer keyboard should not be on your lap or on top of a traditional desk. Good computer ergonomics dictate that the keyboard be positioned below the desk on a keyboard pullout try. This helps ensure that your wrists and forearms stay in the neutral position roughly parallel to the floor and that your elbows stay close to the body and bent between 90 and 120 degrees. However, be sure that your keyboard tray provides leg clearance and has an adjustable height and tilt mechanism so you can position it properly. The keyboard tray also should not push you too far away from other work materials and equipment such as your phone.

Be sure that your keyboard tray allows adequate room both for the keyboard and the mouse and that the mouse can be kept close to the keyboard. Ideally, your keyboard tray should have space on either side to allow you to switch over and mouse with your other hand periodically.

Tilt the keyboard tray down and away from you so that you do not have to bend your wrists up to type. Sit with your elbows close to your body and place your hands on your keyboard with your forearms extended naturally. Make sure that your wrists are in a straight line with your forearms. Keep your shoulders relaxed and down. The space that you can move your hands over without moving your elbows away from your body is your keyboarding neutral reach zone. For good computer ergonomics, you shouldn’t have to reach out of that zone to use the mouse.

Pull your chair close to your keyboard and position it directly in front of your body. Determine which section of the keyboard you use most often (letters or numbers) and readjust the keyboard so that section is centered with your body. Wrist rests can help you maintain a neutral position and pad hard surfaces. However, the wrist rest should be used only to rest the palms of the hands between keystrokes. Resting on the wrist rest while typing is not recommended and has been linked to injuries. Avoid using excessively wide wrist rests or wrist rests that are higher than the space bar of your keyboard.

Finally, if you don’t have a fully adjustable keyboard tray, adjust your workstation height, the height of your chair, or use a seat cushion to get in a comfortable keyboarding position.

Why I Love Deadlines

deadlineBy Jessica Johnson*, Guest Blogger

I love deadlines. Really, I do. Is it because I love to work? I’d much rather play. Is it because I like crossing things off my to-do list? Well, yes, though if doing so involves work,  then not so much. The reason I love deadlines is because I would be lost without them. And I hate being lost.

I have a long list of successes on my resume, though I am a procrastinator, a fact that often leaves me heavily burdened with an anxiety caused by the combination of listlessness and stress. But if it were not for deadlines, I’m sure I would never do anything that actually requires deep thought and concentration, wasting my talents and abilities in the daily minutia of keeping up.

Despite my affliction, I love learning and reading and any kind of word puzzles, art, and writing. I’ve always loved school and that continued into college. In addition to my coursework, and perhaps more so, what turned me on was reaching milestones as I went: crossing off the classes I attended, passing a midterm, finishing a course.

Checking the student handbook to track my progress became a tangible way to see how many credits I needed to graduate, which classes I had to take when, and when each semester began and ended. I loved receiving a syllabus the first day of class and deciphering how long I had until the first test, the final, and the next break! That way I could schedule my time, mark my calendar, and have concrete things that I could cross off my list toward a goal.

In college, except for in the case of an emergency, when a semester ends, it ends, it’s over. If you don’t show up for the final and you’re not on life support in a hospital somewhere, you’re out of luck. Having these strict deadlines allowed me to work toward small manageable goals and each time I accomplished one I felt stronger, smarter, more capable, and more confident to achieve the next. At first I finished one class, then one semester, then a year. Before I knew it I not only had my bachelors, but a masters, both of which I passed with flying colors! Then something awful happened… I got a job.

I didn’t get just any old job, I got a job with a private company as a contractor to the United States intelligence community. As a contractor, or consultant, you work for a private company, and your client may be a government agency. You may be on site with that agency and the client boss tasks you, but you also have a company boss. For a young person it can be very confusing to navigate who’s in charge, who you take orders from, what are your priorities, and how you manage your time. For your client you may be just another employee, but for your company you are also in business development, urged to create jobs to do for your client.

As a new young contractor I worked for a company and had two different clients that I would go see every day spending the morning with one client and the afternoon with another. So, essentially, I had three bosses and three related, but different missions. And no one helped me in a way that actually, well, helped!

It was my job to figure out what kind of projects my customers needed, design those projects, and create a schedule for work and delivery. My company bosses kept asking me for a project deadline. I would think and think and try to figure out exactly what it was I was supposed to be doing and then how on earth I was supposed to draft a schedule for this project and when would be a reasonable expectation for it to be delivered, but I didn’t even know what my clients really needed or wanted — and how could I? I had no experience and  no one modeled to me how to figure it out.

Defeated, I could no longer put off the inevitable, and I admitted to my company boss that I was lost, lost in time, without a deadline and without the necessary understanding to create one. Then she told me something that changed my world: She told me that in government and sometimes in private industry that deadlines are not absolute. Coming from academia, this was a completely foreign concept to me. In school, classes begin in September and you have so many weeks to complete the coursework and take the final. End of discussion. But apparently in matters of national security, delivery schedules are a little bit more flexible. And if the government is the party setting the deadline, good luck with that! I came to learn that when dealing with the government, expect the delivery date of never and anything before never, consider early!

When providing a product to government, and anyone for that matter, I now set a deadline that I believe is reasonable. I’ve learned that if after every attempt to meet that deadline I find that the deadline is unrealistic, I can work with the client to adjust the delivery schedule reasonably. In most cases, that is acceptable. This blew my mind and to be honest, there’s still a part of it that blows my mind today. I do just about everything to meet a deadline, and rarely do I come up short, which sadly, seems to be the exception in business, not the rule. But now I understand that many business people are accustomed to changing deadlines, which has allowed me to create deadlines, even when I’m not 100% sure what I’m doing; I can figure it out along the way–and I do!

*Jessica Johnson is a social media consultant, writer, teacher, fashionista, and anti-human trafficking activist. She is currently focused on promoting ethical fashion, and works as as a fashion and brand management consultant for her companies EtreFaire and Trafficklight Consulting. She’d love you to share with her on Twitter at @etrefairshop, @Trafficklight, or @Jessica_in_NOVA; on Pinterest at EtreFaire (http://pinterest.com/etrefaire/?d) and at Jessica Johnson (http://pinterest.com/trafficklight/?d); or email her at etrefaireshop@gmail.com.

What’s Causing Your Stress? The Answer May Surprise You

shutterstock_86394244(2)Certain working conditions are stressful to most people. For example, excessive workload demands and conflicting expectations are workplace situations that most everyone will find stressful. However, such situations are not the norm. Apart from universally stressful workplace situations such as these, differences in individual characteristics such as personality and coping style are the most important factors in predicting whether certain job conditions will results in stress. In other words, except for universally stressful workplace situations, what is stressful for one person may not be stressful for another.

There is no “one size fits all” solution to managing stress. Workplace stress management begins with identifying the sources of stress and your own particular hot buttons. This is not as easy as it sounds. Your true sources of stress may not be obvious to you. It’s very easy to discount your own stress-inducing thoughts and behaviors. For example, you may know that you’re constantly stressed about staying on a tight schedule or meeting ambitious deadlines. Clearly, a jam-packed appointment schedule or a project that has to be done triple-time is stressful. However, it may be possible that your own procrastination, fears, expectations, insecurities, or guilt (and not only the actual job demands) are contributing to your stress. That’s why it is so important to look closely and objectively at your habits, attitudes, and excuses.

Many people find it helpful to keep a stress journal to help them identify their true stressors and the ways they deal with them. Each time you feel stressed, keep track of your feelings in a journal. As you keep a daily log, look for patterns and common themes. Record what caused your stress (guess if you don’t know), how you felt (physically and emotionally — be specific), how you acted or didn’t act, and what you did, if anything, to make yourself feel better. Pay particular attention to journal entries that suggest that you explain away your stressors and don’t deal with them directly. Also, look for entries that suggest that you define stress as an integral and inevitable part of your job. (“Things are always crazy around here.”) Also note journal entries in which you blame others or outside events or when you view the stress as normal and unexceptional. Finally, use your journal to help you identify the techniques you use to cope with stress and evaluate whether they are healthy or unhealthy, productive or unproductive.

Are you looking for more ways to avoid and reduce work-induced stress? Or, would you like to use an interesting tool to help your employees to minimize and manage their workplace stress? If so, check out my Pinterest board, “Stress Management: 25 Tips” at http://pinterest.com/drlaurahills/stress-management-25-tips/. And the next time you feel yourself gritting your teeth, coping with a stress-induced headache, or otherwise feeling that your work stress is getting the better of you, try to step back from it and identify what’s really going on. Look for solutions externally that will help you avoid and minimize the stressors. Then, look for solutions inward that will help you cope better. – Dr. Laura Hills, Blue Pencil Institute, www.bluepencilinstitute.com