How to manage stress in a modern world

Keep calm and look at these kittens

Working in a cosy office with Internet access, foosball and maybe an X-Box in the corner of a gaming room may not sound like stressful conditions to work in, but as a matter of fact, office workers are more exposed to stress than you might think.

If you are a software developer, like me, you probably work until 11 p. m., spend an hour or two on weekends to fix a hard-to-catch bug or maybe just struggle with another super complex system and eventually fall into analysis paralysis. So these things do not sound weird to you, but sometimes they become really frustrating, and then you remember the word «stress» and all the buzz around it.

Yes, stress is inevitable in modern society, but it’s not a huge thing actually. From a biological perspective, stress is a reaction of the organism to some stimulus or environmental conditions. However, often we relate to stress the feeling of strain and pressure. Here you will find a piece of advice and some considerations on a set of methods for stress management for those working in a software development and IT.

Music and silence

Working while wearing a headset just because there is noise in the room or someone talks too loud? Listening to your favorite jazz band or enjoying one of the playlists in Spotify’s focus collection? Well, maybe you shouldn’t.

Music itself is a very complex theme. Some studies show that people solve cognitive tasks better when there is no music at all. And it’s actually obvious — music triggers emotions and loads a significant part of the “circuits” in the brain. Thus, it’s connected to your emotions and may influence the stress level as well.

For me, music works as a key to open some mood state or inspiration level and as background to sustain it. But when I’m working on some complex task, I (and most of my friends) usually turn it off and find some quiet place to think.

On the other hand, when you are not used to listening to music in a workplace, and are feeling stressed out — try to listen to some calm and melodic beats. There are a lot of Spotify playlists and even Youtube channels dedicated to relaxation music only. Also, there are some background noise generators, like noisli. It may impact on your productivity and stress level and make you more relaxed or focused by filling your hearing with customizable surrounding sounds like nature, coffee shop conversations, or artificial white noise.

Limiting your information feed

When you ask some random person in the office “in what conditions in the office do you have the best productivity?” — most likely, they will say: in the early morning, when no one is yet at work, or late at night, when everybody is gone. Or even more extreme: on the weekend, when the office is completely empty.

Does this sound right — people work better outside of work hours? Well, actually, they just work better when there’s no one around them. And that’s simply because they are too distracted. When a fellow employee or your boss jumps into your workplace with (another) super-urgent, missed-yesterday’s-deadline, super-important task, it’s really hard to not overreact. Additionally, you have your emails, chats and social networks, which help you to procrastinate a lot.

So what to do? For those of you who are extreme, work remotely. But if you don’t have such a luxury, or it just does not fit for you, here are some other tricks:

• Read your email as late in the day as possible.
• Maintain a simple workspace. All those sticky notes and papers distract your subconscious.
• Just don’t read news and social network updates, or have a specific time — later in the day — to read them. Or you may use this tool.
• Use “do not disturb” mode when doing large chunks of work.
• Turn off email notifications.

Time tracking

Time tracking is how most service companies work nowadays — track the (actual) number of spent hours and bill them to the client. Whether you like it or not, it may be very useful. For instance, pomodoro technique gives you a better understanding of your task’s time consumption. It consists of twenty-five-minute work intervals changed by five-minute rest periods. When you practice it for some time you’ll get better estimates of how much each of your tasks is going to cost you in defined half-an-hour pieces.

For me it does not work as a general solution, I often have continuous flow intervals that last more than 2 hours. But I find it very useful when I study something (like a foreign language) or do some kind of paperwork-like stuff.

On the other hand, if your company has strict time tracking policies that make you feel overloaded, maybe it’s time to revise them?

There are a lot of time management methods, solutions and practices. And there’s also a lot of material already written about them. However, in general the principle is simple:

You track how much time it takes to do some work and then you can more accurately predict how long it will take to finish upcoming tasks, so you can balance your workload and plan accordingly.

It’s also worth saying that planning requires you to take into account not only the amount of tasks but the level of your energy, the stress level and additional external circumstances.

Task management & productivity

Productivity is another fancy trend and lots of people are chasing it. Some people are even obsessed with it. There is actually a point to it: everyone wants to do more and be successful with what they do. But as I see it, most people (and sometimes me, too) forget one thing:

productivity is not how much you (have to) do, but rather how much you achieve.

A skyscraper-high pile of tasks you have to do right here and right now is overwhelming. And if you see it every day — it becomes your main stressor. So here is a simple recipe that works for me:

• keep your daily to-do list short, as short as possible;
• write tasks down so not to lose track of them;
• stop maintaining complex systems of sorted tasks — keep everything in one place.

Sorting all problems and incoming tasks requires some degree of discipline, and if you are lazy like I am, it doesn’t work — so eventually you end up with a mess. Paper sticky notes don’t work, so I use Any.do + google keep. Also, for email-related communication and stuff, Google’s Inbox works great for me.

The point of both task management and time tracking in stress resolving is simple: don’t let the stack of tasks overwhelm you. Productivity is a huge topic and deserves a separate discussion.

Disconnected rest & round of focus change

Haven’t you ever caught yourself thinking that you are caught in some kind of vicious cycle, a “Groundhog Day”, you might say? Constantly thinking about some problem or task, at first during working hours and then at night and finally on weekends. Well, it also may be a private issue. But anyway, this kind of stressor is very dangerous — it drains your energy, steals your attention and just doesn’t let you have any chance to enjoy your life, whatever you are doing.

You may argue that if you are in some kind of field that requires at least a bit of creativity, like a software developer, and you are working on some challenging stuff — you may have that “Eureka!” moment at any time and place. Yes, that’s 200% true. But it’s important to understand that the “black hole” which drains your brain’s resources in the background all the time does actually prevent you from being attentive and productive.

I’m guided by the simple rule here: fix it right away or leave it. So if you can’t just solve it here and now — it does not deserve your further time. However, your subconscious may not agree, and therefore you’ll have your brain loaded in the background. But the chances of having a moment of enlightenment in the shower are way greater if you perceive the problem in a positive way.

So just fix it now. Or, if you just can’t do it at the moment, plan a time when you can. Just by doing something, even something not related to the problem itself, you decrease the amount of strain and stress you actually have.

Another, and I think more preferable, approach — if you can afford to care less or even to not care at all (to some extent, anyway) — is to disconnect. Just do anything completely unrelated to the problem that commands your attention. The most effective things you can do are to exercise, meet with friends, or spend some quality time with your family and the people you are closest to. It may sound boring and you may find this advice in almost every article you find if you google using the keywords stress, productivity, work, etc. but they are as powerful as they are simple.

Working for thanks

You may have heard, “if money can’t buy you happiness — then you’re not spending it right,” which turns out to be true, at least to some extent. Just by doing some charity or volunteer work we satisfy our need to feel accepted and needed and also raise our self-esteem. And this in turn contributes to the positive side of the balance against stress and depression.

Studies have shown, that the result of stress depends on your perception as well, thus not all stress may be so bad. So if you feel depressed or overwhelmed, reach out for help to those closest to you, family or friends. They might be unable to solve the problem for you, but just not feeling alone helps a lot. On the other hand, you could do the opposite: go and help other people with whatever they are doing. People are social creatures, and teamwork in any form is a very powerful tool.

Conclusion

When I started writing this article I hadn’t done a lot of research, but the subject itself was very interesting and very, very topical. To be honest, with things happening here and there, it was a stressful job to write it. So I tried some different methods and became a guinea-pig in my own experiment.

Here are some results I would like to share:

1. There is no silver bullet. There is no universal solution. You have to try every solution and apply each one to yourself and your situation. Not only mentally but in reality. All methods depend not only on the type of person but also on the situation and circumstances as well. So after many tries and certainly some failures, you may end up with templates and a system you may use effectively in the future, but it requires work.
2. You have to resolve the issue. Let’s say you have a bad day, which ends with a situation that almost makes you lose your temper, and you don’t actually do anything about it or defer it without a definite resolution, it will definitely cost you something. Either physically or mentally, but it will happen. And if the matter is important enough to you, you have to resolve it, preferably today, and on both a physical and mental level. Otherwise the price will be high, and you’ll have to pay with your own health.
3. Perception is 9/10 of the law. Maybe not always, but in a significant number of situations, our attitude defines the outcome. And when other people are involved, there is always someone else’s point of view. Just don’t forget to pause a moment, put your ego aside and see the situation from another angle. It may seem to be hard to do in the beginning, but if you realize that things tend to be less important than they appear, it becomes much simpler.

That’s it. Thank you for reading, and cheer up!

If you liked the article, hit that heart button below. Would mean a lot to me. :)