It is hard to underestimate the importance of a proper schedule and workload. There are tons of good books written on time management, effective load, work-life balance, and other similar items. However, I would like to look at this topic from a different view and see how an average person can deal with the pressure and stress of work on a typical project.

Less Pressure, Less Stress

The main thing you need to do if you want to decrease pressure and stress is to define priorities properly. You have to put mental and physical health and the first place, and everything else has to go after it. This way, you can program yourself to avoid stressful activities or at least decrease their influence.

The next best practice is to predict the most stressful task in advance and decrease the stress level. For example, if you know that the following meeting will bring bad news, you can prepare yourself and think about improving the situation to prevent such a case in the future.

Finally, you can organize your work to spread the load or stress across the week (or month) to avoid spikes of stressful activities. In most cases, this balance can also decrease overall pressure, so you feel better at the end of every day.

New Perspective

One of the best recommendations to stop worrying about the work is to change your mind and develop a new perspective. You should try to find something exciting or pleasurable in every activity, even if you do not like it at all. It can be a call to another person you admire, a discussion of some specific details, etc. You may use these small good things to motivate yourself to do this task.

If you can choose between the tasks, you may balance or mix easy and stressful tasks to decrease stress spikes. Such balancing can be an attractive activity by itself. You can make a game of trying to fit as many as possible small pleasant activities to compensate for one big stressful one in one day.

In the worst-case scenario, when you have no other choice except for doing an unpleasant task, you can follow the “divide and conquer“ principle. Split that task into smaller ones, set priorities for all of them, and do them one by one without combining them till the very end. Each small separate task should be more bearable comparing the stress level of the big task.

Finally, you may try to introduce changes both in workflow and yourself. You may try to change the way you work to make it better or easier. You can also try to change your own opinion on the tasks you are doing to understand why they are important and give yourself more motivation to do them. This small piece of advice can help you both in a short and long-term perspective and make your life less stressful and make yourself a bit happier!