How often do you find yourself working into the small hours to complete a customer’s deadline? Do you promise over-tight delivery times in order to secure orders? Is your mobile phone always switched on so that people can reach you at any time of day – and night? Are you reaching for a caffeine fix (coffee, tea and cola drinks) or sugary snacks by mid-afternoon to give you a boost?
Any of these can leave your body stressed and running on adrenaline. You may feel you work best under pressure – but wouldn’t you do even better work if you had enough time to make the end result great instead of just about good enough?
Being constantly under pressure leads to stress and that leads to loss of energy and focus, both of which you need to make your business successful.
Over the years I’ve worked with an increasing number of business owners who are feeling stressed but have not been able to get off their personal treadmill to sort things out. Stress is a real problem and it can have serious health problems unless you deal with it.
Here are a few practical suggestions to try out which will get you back in control of your working day. Pick one to start with and try it for a week, see what difference it makes to your stress levels, and then continue with it until you have a new, healthy habit that doesn’t rely on adrenaline!
- Build in some contingency time to projects
- Leave at least 10 minutes early for meetings to allow for traffic or parking problems
- Switch off your phones at the end of the working day (or arrange for someone else to deal with urgent messages out of hours if that’s what your business is about)
- Take a 5 minute break from your desk or computer every hour (at a minimum)
- Try arranging meetings only in the morning – that will give you time to catch up when you get back to the office.
What else could you do differently to reduce your stress levels? Please share in the comments.
|
Share This Content
|
Subscribe to Updates
|
