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How to Stay Stress Free In Stressful Situations At Workby Ben on November 15, 2011 edit

Stress is a part of lif e. Working in inf ormation technology can come with highlevels of stress. Deadlines f or projects, working with dif f icult users, and latenights f rom being overworked can cause abnormal levels of stress. Here are af ew tips on how you can stay calm in stressf ul situations at work.

Take a Few Deep Breaths

Being stressed can cause higher levels of anxiety. A great way to reduce this is totake a f ew deep breaths. It can be done at your desk, or away f rom your desk.Stop what you’re doing f or a moment, take a deep breath f or a f ew seconds, andexhale. Do this a f ew times. It should allow you to calm down a litt le and theref ore make you f eel a litt le lessstressed and more f ocused.

Get Away From Your Desk

you just need a break f rom your work. Your employer doesn’t expect you to be at your desk f or the entireday. If they do, it ’s unrealistic and unproductive on a larger scale. Taking a break f rom your work – even ifyou just wash your f ace in the bathroom, or get a drink of water, they can help reduce the f eeling of stressin a situation.

Keep People Informed

Stressf ul situations are of ten imposed by other people rather than yourself . If your boss has given you adeadline or a customer is waiting f or some inf ormation, it ’s a great idea to keep them inf ormed of yourprogress. This way, they won’t be as anxious f or you to get your work done as they know where it ’s at. Itwill also most likely reduce the number of t imes the call/email/come to speak to you and ask about yourwork – which will then reduce interruptions and stress!

Focus On Your Job

It ’s easy to get distracted in a stressf ul situation. You may have a deadline due the next morning and youthink you have nowhere near enough time to do it. You start working harder and f aster and think you’regetting it done well, but all of a sudden with all the stress you realise you made a mistake somewhere andit’s made things even worse.

If you f ocus on the work you’re doing it can help prevent these kinds of mistakes. It will benef it you andyour team, as you’ll get the work done at the same standard and won’t cause problems f or others.

Stay Organised

It ’s important, both in general and while you’re working to a deadline, to keep yourself organised. Keep toyour normal f ile structure when saving f iles. Take notes as you usually would. Organise your documentationor source code as you normally do. If you try to do a rush job when doing this work, it will most likely slowyou down later, when you try to remember where you saved that f ile or what that piece of code does.

Be Aware Of Your Emotions

This is such a big area that it deserves a post all on its own (which I’ll do in the f uture). Essentially, if you’reaware of how you’re f eeling at any given time, you can learn to control how you communicate with others.It ’s all too easy to become short or snappy or rude when everyone is under stress. If you’re aware thatyou’re stressed, realise that you may come across as being rude. Try to change the way you’recommunicating or presenting yourself to counter that. This means speaking to others in your regular tone(perhaps slightly adjusted if you’re stressed), rather than shouting or being rude. In the long run it will payof f .

Do you have any other t ips on how to reduce stress? Post your thoughts in the comments area below!

For more IT career t ips and inf ormation on how YOU can improve YOUR IT career, visit Complete ITProf essional!

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