Business Without the Bullsh*t: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know (32 page)

Stress can result in headaches, muscle tension, muscle pain, chest pain, fatigue, upset stomach, insomnia, anxiety, restlessness, lack of motivation, lack of focus, irritability, depression, eating problems, addiction, and social withdrawal—here’s how to avoid it:

Many companies and industries have cultures that encourage salaried employees to regularly work unpaid overtime (i.e., more than forty hours a week). Unfortunately, if you let that culture determine your behavior, you’ll end up wasting time and adding stress.

It’s a myth that you can consistently get more done by working longer hours. In the early 1900s, Ford Motor ran dozens of tests on workers and discovered that working sixty hours a week (rather than forty) provides only a short-term increase in productivity. After three to four weeks of working the long hours, people working sixty hours a week end up getting
less
done than when they were working forty hours a week, because they become stressed out and start making avoidable errors.

Workaholics may think they’re accomplishing more than the less fanatical, but in fact, long hours result in stressed-out people who get
too sick to work, and who produce sloppy work that must be either scrapped or redone.

Your brain is programmed to reflect the behaviors of those you see and hear. This is a neurological phenomenon resulting from the
mirror neurons
in your brain. In other words, you can “catch” stress from other people.

So although it may not be possible to avoid stressed people all the time, you should try, as far as possible, to limit your contact with such people—at least until you’ve conquered your own stress.

At that point the opposite effect kicks in, because the calmness you will have achieved is also contagious—provided you’ve made it into a strong enough habit. In other words, reducing your own stress can help everyone around you do the same.

In the past, people worked nine to five; in today’s business environments, there’s pressure to work (or at least be available) 24-7. Needless to say, that pressure generates oodles of stress.

An absurdly easy way to reduce that stress is to shut down your computer and your cell—not just while you sleep, but also an hour before and after you sleep. This takes discipline, because you’re probably in the habit of checking e-mail, texts, and so forth all the time.

Doing this also takes self-confidence, because you must believe that you don’t need to be at the constant beck and call of your boss, colleagues, and customers.

If you’re like most people, a huge amount of your stress comes from worrying about events that you simply can’t control: the economy,
the weather, traffic, politics, other people’s thoughts and emotions, customer decisions, and so forth.

While it can be useful to observe and predict such events (in order to know how to react to them), once you’ve decided how you’ll deal with them, it’s stressful (and, frankly, a little nuts) to obsess about them.

Worrying about stuff you can’t control isn’t going to make any difference either in the short or the long run. It’s wasted energy and extra stress you don’t need. Change what you can change and shrug off what you can’t.

Unreasonable expectations about what you’re capable of accomplishing are a huge source of stress—regardless of whether those expectations come from yourself, your boss, or your customers.

The cure for this kind of stress is a dose of reality. Look at how much time you’ve got to spend, assess the amount of work that needs to be done, and, based on that, be realistic about what’s actually going to get done.

If you’re expected to accomplish A, B, C, and D, and there’s only time to achieve three of the four, decide—or force your boss to decide—which three will actually get done and which one will not.

The news, like every other form of entertainment, makes money by producing strong emotions in its audience. Outside of business news, those emotions are almost exclusively negative: anger, fear, anxiety, dread, and frustration.

While those manufactured emotions do provide momentary distraction from work stress, they do it by adding more stress. Watching or listening to the news in order “to relax” is like having a beer to dull the pain of a hangover.

So whenever you come upon a news story that starts to make you angry or upset, change the channel—unless it’s 100 percent relevant to your life—or click to another page.

Many people feel stressed because they “have way too much work to do.” That sounds perfectly reasonable, but in fact it’s not the work that’s creating the stress. It’s worrying about what might happen if all that work doesn’t get done.

I once heard that when you commit to 10 percent more than you can actually accomplish, it feels as if you’ve got 50 percent more, thereby creating
even more stress
. I don’t know whether that’s true, but I have observed that taking on too much work makes me feel as if things might fall apart if I (gasp!) take a day off.

It’s not enough to be able to say no to your boss and your coworkers. Sometimes the real challenge is learning to say no to yourself when you’re tempted to over-commit. Like any good habit, this becomes easier over time.

Probably the biggest source of stress is worrying about the future. While it’s a good idea to have a plan, you’ll be better able to execute that plan if you don’t think all that much about that future.

Being focused on the present eliminates stress even when disaster strikes. Suppose, in the middle of your workday, you get news that your biggest customer is jumping ship. You could react to the news by freaking out, of course.

Or you could remain in the moment, note that the event happened, continue with whatever you’re doing—and then, when you’re relaxed and feeling creative, devise a step-by-step plan to win the customer back or find some new customers.

When you’re driving, you’re going to see people driving in ways that are stupid, dangerous, and annoying. Even so, you’re wasting your energy getting upset about what they do, to say nothing of reacting to it by honking or flipping the bird.

Similarly, getting into arguments with people online (such as in the comments sections of blogs or underneath controversial articles) is a colossally foolish way to spend your time. Do you really care what some stranger thinks?

I’d venture to say that in the entire history of the Internet there has not been a single time when anybody online has changed the opinion of anybody else. Online squabbling is always a waste of time.

Trying to do multiple things at once gives you the illusion that you’re getting a lot of things done, when in fact those things are getting done badly. The result is stress, not just because you’re trying to do too much at once, but because you know (in your heart) that the work you’re doing isn’t (and can’t be) your best.

By contrast, focusing on one thing, getting it done, and doing it well gives you a sense of accomplishment and mental serenity. It puts
you
, rather than the demands of everything else around you, in control of your life.