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Showing posts with the label WORK STRESS

The Best Ways to Use Breaks to Be More Productive (Infographic)

To be your most productive self, take a step back from your work. Between working,  exercising  and spending time with family, you may think you’re giving yourself enough  breaks , but what about during work? Taking breaks throughout your work day is vital to maximizing  productivity . Think you don’t have time? Even a 30-second break can account for an increase in productivity. There are different strategies for a work-break balance too, and it’s important to find the one that is best for you. For example, try out a 25/5-minute split -- that means work in 25-minute blocks and take five-minute breaks between. If that doesn’t work for you, there’s also 50/10 minute split. What you do during your breaks is just as important. If you only have five minutes, eat a healthy snack, read an article or even try to solve a Rubik’s Cube. When you have 10 minutes, make a coffee run, tidy up your desk or watch a TED talk. If you’ve got more than 10 minutes -- take a walk outside, call a

How to React to Biased Comments at Work

Bias at work can be overt and insidious. It can be shocking and enraging. But the subtle “Wait, what just happened?” moments are far more frequent. Take these examples: A client assumes you are in a subordinate role because of your age. A prospective customer only makes eye contact with your white colleague. A coworker calls you “angry” while your equally assertive male counterpart gets labeled “strong” (a far too often occurrence for women as   one of our previous studies   showed). Moments like these leave you questioning others’ intentions and your own perceptions. The inner dialogue can sound a bit like, “I’m upset. But should I be? Do I have a right to be?” At best, this shadowy bias is exhausting. At worst, it is soul destroying. Bias’s sometimes slippery nature also makes it difficult to eradicate in the workplace. Leaders implement policies that prohibit discrimination against protected classes, but rules can’t prevent unconscious, unintentional bias. How do you legis

How To Avoid Self-Induced Stress And Decision Fatigue In Business

Not too long ago I finally went to the doctor for my annual physical. When I got the results back, it looked like I was healthy for a person my age. The results were right where they should be, except for one: my stress hormones. Apparently, my cortisol levels were incredibly high. Naturally, the doctor was concerned and wanted to dig deeper. Once she found out that I was an entrepreneur, she stopped her line of questioning. “That explains everything,” she replied with supreme confidence. “Almost all of my entrepreneur patients experience the same thing.” And with that, she sent me on my way with instructions to “try and relax.” It’s no secret that running a business is stressful. In fact, for the average entrepreneur, there are so many stressors and decision points throughout the day that at some point the quality of the decisions being made begins to deteriorate rapidly. This impaired ability to make good decisions is called decision fatigue, and it plagues leaders an

3 Small Things Every Person Can Do to Reduce Stress in Their Office

In a world of tight deadlines, it’s no wonder that some of your stress might seep out and affect your colleagues. But — because they’re under pressures of their own — you risk perpetuating a vicious circle, where you mirror and magnify each other’s frenzy. You can’t control their behavior, but you can take charge of your own. There are obvious ways to tamp down the stress you inflict on others, such as refraining from yelling or making sarcastic comments. But those are only the most visible ways one risks alienating one’s coworkers; to truly stop the office pathology, you have to look deeper. Here are three subtle but powerful strategies to ratchet down the pressure and ensure you’re not subjecting your colleagues to undue stress and frustration. First,   stop being vague . If someone doesn’t know the full context of a situation, vague messages — which might be quite harmless — are often read like a Rorschach test, with fears and interpretations piled on. If you send a late-nig

5 Ways To Spare Your Body If You Have A Desk Job

Want to stay active and spare your body while at work? Here are some tips to follow to minimize the harm due to prolonged sitting. 5 Tips To Follow 1. Reduce Your Sitting Time How much do you think you sit on a given day? No, seriously: think about it. Sit at breakfast, sit in the car, sit at work, sit at the computer, sit during lunch, sit in meetings, sit in the car again, sit at dinner, sit while staring at your phone, sit in front of the tv – you got the point a while ago! You may have heard, “sitting is the new smoking.” It may sound ridiculous; however, according to the World Health Organization physical inactivity due to sitting too much is causing an estimated 3.2 million deaths annually! 1 Apart from sleeping, our bodies are meant to move. 2. Get Up And Move Inactivity is not only bad for our bodies but bad for our brains as well. Recent studies and historical texts have shown physical activity is linked to optimized cognitive function. 2 Movement is how

3 Tips For Finding Your Ideal Workflow

When most of us think of flow at work, we may think of charts, project plans and deadlines. But there is another kind of work flow that is incredibly important, especially for entrepreneurs. Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi popularized the concept of “flow” in the early 1990’s. According to his theory, flow manifests itself when a person’s natural skills align with the challenges they face. When people operate outside of their flow, problems arise.  For example, if an individual works in a highly challenging environment in which their natural skills are outclassed, they tend to experience terrible anxiety and stress. Conversely, if an individual’s advanced skills are wasted in an industry that is neither interesting nor challenging, boredom and apathy quickly set in. In the world of business, this situation occurs when an individual’s natural skills and proclivities are simply not a fit for the career they chose. That’s why I believe that finding the right

How to Handle Stress in the Moment

You hear a lot of advice about how to reduce stress at work. But most of it is about what to do over the long term — take up yoga, eat a healthy diet, keep a journal, or  get more sleep . But what do you do when you’re overcome with stress in the moment — at your desk, say, or in a meeting? Perhaps you’ve heard bad news from a client or were assigned yet another project. How can you regain control? What the Experts   Say Eighty percent of Americans are stressed at work, according to a  recent study  by Nielsen for Everest College. Low pay, unreasonable workloads, and hectic commutes were the top sources of tension, followed closely by obnoxious coworkers. What exacerbates the problem is that “people walk into work already laden with stress,” says Maria Gonzalez, the founder and president of Argonauta Strategic Alliances Consulting and the author of  Mindful Leadership . “If there is a hardship at home, you bring that to the office and it gets layered with your professional st