At Work or Home – Stress is Stress…and it’s Stressful
You left the house early this morning hoping to get ahead of the morning traffic rush but you know that was a dream of yesteryear, and barring some type of holiday, you will be in it just about every time you commute to work. Once there you do your thing, go through the grind, which includes the ups and downs like anything. And after eight, ten hours or so you wrap it up and call it a day, and head back into the rush home. With not much ‘rush’ happening it gives you time to think and perhaps provides the only separation between the two major parts of your existence, work and home. And what do you do with that time most often? You probably are thinking about what you just did today in work, what you need to do tomorrow in work, or what may be waiting for you to do once you get home. Attach that formula to the next twenty years of rinsing and repeating day after day and it weighs on you.
Stress is a very broad term, often serving as an umbrella, covering feelings of pressure, anxiety, worry among others, and can lead to serious physical and mental health issues. It is critical to recognize your stressors, your level of stress day to day, and what you should do about it. If asked to list out all of the different stressors you have in your life, you could no doubt find yourself hitting double digits without much effort.
- Too busy at work
- Not enough time with family
- Sick/Loss of Family
- Finances
- No personal life/no fun
- Discrimination
- Business Changes
- Meeting Deadlines
- Managing Budgets
- Job Security
- Relationship Issues
- No voice or autonomy
- Too many responsibilities
- Et
- Cetera
The Better Health Channel on ‘Work-Related Stress’
https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/work-related-stress
You can keep going and adding to this list, which for many probably feels like a ‘good start’ more than a complete list. And while, barring some significant life changes, you can’t see how any of this will change any time soon as you run your household, raise children, and care for all of your personal and family responsibilities, you can do a bit of consolidation to make it all more manageable.
When we think about what brings us stress it is far easier to think small, the individual event or person or condition that we find stressful. If you thought about just the people who bring you stress you would likely blow right past double-digits into triple-digits fairly quickly. The boss, the customer, the sales agent, the spouse, the in-laws, the child who wants the car, the new smartphone, the tuition, more money, etc. That list is endless. And there are commonalities throughout most of these and most of the other areas that we often thing of as separate, individual stressors. But the biggest ones generally fall into two main categories: Time and Capacity
Time Stress:
- Whether you need more time with your family, do not have enough time to get everything done at home or at work, the commute takes up too much time, little time to meet deadlines and more. We think of them individually but boiling them down to what may be bringing you stress is the perceived lack of time. With unlimited time, we could do it all – play with the kids for as long as we would like, blare some music and put the top down in the car for that enjoyable ninety-minute commute home, and pay no mind to an upcoming deadline, there’s always plenty of time! But because life does not give us an unlimited bank of time, we have to get things done within the parameters of days, weeks, and years.
Capacity Stress:
- While certainly related to time, each of us has a different amount on our respective shoulders than anyone else and will typically associate those responsibilities with the time it takes to care for them. But when the scales between Time and To-Do Lists no longer balance it is not really a time issue as much as a Quantity or Capacity Issue. Too big a load of work or too many tasks at home can be so overwhelming that we find ourselves either skimming through as much of it as quickly as possible just to call it (somewhat) complete, or we attempt to do it all well and fail to hit a deadline…or worse, we collapse in the process.
From Mind.Org on the causes of stress: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/stress/causes-of-stress/
As you think about areas you can impact to help you better recognize and deal with the stressors in your life, Think Big, not small. Make a plan to address by being strategic about everything you are responsible to do and take it public.
Be Honest at Home:
- Talk to your family about all of the household tasks and responsibilities it takes to keep everything running
- Delegate tasks to share some of your burden with those who benefit for the completion of these tasks. (Didn’t you grow up having to do chores? It’s okay to assign them!)
- Schedule time for play, date nights, visits to grandparents, aunts, cousins, friends
Tasks compound, and stress will compound with it if you let it. Without good delegation, sharing of responsibility, and a strong plan, your homelife is likely chaos which will see pressure of both time and quantity roll right over you.
Be Honest at Work:
- Talk to your boss about what you are required to do during the course of the day, and discuss options to better manage, whether working from home some days to give you that commute time back and make you more productive and effective. Gain agreement on what a reasonable amount of workload looks like to allow him/her to see that work needs to be more evenly distributed, or perhaps work with you on a plan to care for everything that falls under your scope.
- Delegate more and better. If in position to do so, be sure you are not taking things on that you really should not because you may not trust that others will complete their work but not as well as you might, so you do it yourself too often. Developing your people will not only be great for them it will create opportunity for you to put workload in the hands of capable people.
- Map out your days and each workweek and share it with your team, your boss. Make your calendar publicly viewable so people can see where you might be at any given time, and you are likely to see how respectful people will be for your time and your workload.
Much like the changes you can make at home, the changes at work can be done with simple honesty, transparency, and solid planning. Don’t be a martyr. Yes, people love you for your hard work and your willingness to take on so much while still hitting deadlines and doing quality work. But to what end? You know best what the cost of that effort is, and it is up to you keep paying it or change it. If you keep this status quo, consider who you are like this and whether you are less friendly, patient, available, or more irritable, distant, and angry. As much as you think you are holding it together like a champ, you most likely see what it does to you on the inside and makes you seem on the outside. Living chaotically and working chaotically will bring stress to your life, and by extension to everyone around you. Good planning that you commit to, and are able to change when it needs to change will no doubt help you manage everything and feel great about what you are able to more comfortably accomplish.
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