6 Steps to Reduce Stress at Work

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The year is coming to an end, Christmas is just around the corner and suddenly you have the feeling that everyone wants something from you, you have to get so many things done and everything is too much.

This is a good opportunity to look at your processes and see if there are parts where you waste energy unnecessarily and if you can make your life a little easier.
Especially in the startup world where you often jump back and forth between different topics, a better self-organisation can help immensely to reduce stress.

Here are six things you can do:

1. Talk about it:
   In order to become aware of what exactly the status quo is and to find possible starting points for change, it helps to talk to someone about it. As soon as you want to explain your situation, you have to sort out your thoughts.
   Besides, you are certainly not alone with this problem, others have probably already made their experiences in some kind of way with it and these could also help you.
2. Take the time to work on your self-organization:
   Block time in your calendar only for that, no rejections, no mails, no chat messages. There is always the possibility to take one to two hours of your time. And the probability is that you will save this time by better organization elsewhere.
   There is a nice analogy to this:
   A man tries to cut down a tree with a blunt handsaw. A walker comes by and offers him a chainsaw, which he would only have to pick up 100 meters further at the walker’s home. The man looks at him in awe and says “sorry but you see what I’m doing here, I really don’t have time for that”.
3. Visualize your tasks:
   We are often stressed by the fact that we know in the back of our minds that there are still a lot of tasks that we have to do. We don’t know exactly how many they are, what they are, how much time they take and how important they are.
   One method is to write all tasks on Post-its and then sort them by topic. Afterwards prioritize them and write down how much time they likely take.
   Once you have done that, you already have a good overview of your tasks and can estimate more realistically how much you really have to do.
   Now take your calendar and set the tasks to days and hours. It is important to bundle tasks of the same kind or tasks of the same topic so that you don’t have to constantly shift your focus. For example put the answering of all emails on one time slot or all tasks to one project.
4. Separate Management Schedule from Makers Schedule:
   A management schedule looks like a patchwork rug. There are many fragmented slots with different subjects, most of them involving interaction with other people.
   A Makers Schedule contains large slots on a topic in which you work concentrated, without distractions from outside.
   Plan enough maker slots in which you have enough time for focused work.
5. Consciously take some time to work off what you have left behind:
   No matter how well you plan your day, something can always come in between, tasks can take more time than planned and work remains that is not immediately important but should be done in the long run. This accumulates over time until you have a pile of unfinished work that threatens to overwhelm you and cannot be dealt with during the day-to-day business.
   Take a day off from your day-to-day business to focus on these things only and work through everything that is left behind. It is ok to do that, if you are sick or on vacation the world doesn’t end. So you can also take a day for this kind of work and ask colleagues to jump in for you.
6. Do a checkout at the end of the day and plan your next day:
   Especially when you’re stressed, it’s hard to let go at the end of the day, but that’s when you need to relax.
   At the end of the day, it helps to take 10 to 15 minutes to think about what you have done that day and what you have to do tomorrow. Then you plan the next day and don’t have to worry about what you have to do the rest of the evening. In the long run it also helps you to better estimate how long it will take you to complete certain tasks.