Three Tips to Reduce Work Stress

1. Learn to use time-management techniques at work and be sure to include time for rest and relaxation every day. Taking many little breaks throughout the day to gather you thoughts, breathe, and relieve stress actually improves your productivity.

If you cannot get up from your desk at work every 30-60 minutes, then simply put your head back, stretch, close your eyes, and just breathe for a minute or two before you get back to work.

2. Recognize that to do a good job and meet the challenges of work, you must put equal time and care into your body and spiritual needs. Without energy and "peace of mind," you cannot enjoy what you are working for every day.

Feed your body and mind. Read motivational material, exercise, and eat nutritionally dense foods. These life-enhancing activities will help you work harder, relieve stress, and attract more good things into your life.

3. Learn to prioritize your tasks and start delegating or outsourcing the ones that can be done by other people. The problem with many of us is that we tend to want to do everything ourselves.

We get so swamped with all of the little jobs that make up the big projects. Wanting to do it all can only spell failure. Learn to "let go" by outsourcing what you can. Your stress levels will decline and your well-being will improve.

Stress Management: Understanding Stress

Stress is when you "feel out of control." If you have the time, experience, and resources to manage a situation, you feel much less stress. That is, stress is not an inevitable consequence of an event: It depends on your perceptions of a situation and your ability to cope with it.

To help you develop the resources to reduce stress, the team at Mind Tools called on Dr. Susan Mitchie, Stress Specialist at the Center for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness, Department of Psychology, University College London, to assist in compiling a single reliable resource that can be used to understand stress, recognize the symptoms, pinpoint the sources, manage it, reduce it, and perhaps most importantly, recover from it.

The result: Mind Tools' Stress Management Masterclass, a clear, concise, comprehensive resource on stress. In its nearly 200 pages, the Stress Management Masterclass shows you how to:

• Understand Stress
• Pinpoint the Sources of Stress in Your Life
• Cope with Work Overload
• Survive Problem Jobs
• Work Successfully With Powerful People
• Reduce Co-Worker and Team Stress
• Manage Performance Stress
• Reduce Stress With Rational Thinking
• Build Defenses Against Stress, and
• Avoid or Recover From Burnout