How to deal with Stress
How to deal with Stress
(OP)
Hi fellas,
Well, it is impossible not to have stress in this bussines and almost in whatever work you have. Question for everybody,
How do you deal with stress? (i.e. project due date, conflicts, professional or personal, etc..)
Do you bike? Go to a bar? Movies? Read a book or go to the park, family? anyways, you are welcome to share your tips, opinions and experiences.
Regards
Well, it is impossible not to have stress in this bussines and almost in whatever work you have. Question for everybody,
How do you deal with stress? (i.e. project due date, conflicts, professional or personal, etc..)
Do you bike? Go to a bar? Movies? Read a book or go to the park, family? anyways, you are welcome to share your tips, opinions and experiences.
Regards





RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
Personal stress ... sit down & relax with a nice hot cuppa ... then visit Eng-Tips.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Never a bad idea. Coffee doesn't have the same effect.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Just kidding.
A quick walk around the block (city block, with parkette and water fall) usually helps. Running is kind of hard - we don't have showers or anything like that to change afterwards.
"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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RE: How to deal with Stress
I usually either wakeboard, eat, or drink. Sometimes all three, though rarely all at once. Come winter I'll probably have a skateboard ramp to play on. Once in a while I just go to bed as soon as I get home.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Exercise is good, I haven't been good at it since I moved to the US but in the UK I had a little Gym set up in my garage. My punchbag was especially fun till I punched it off the wall! (Ok well technically part of the wall was still attatched)
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
Stay in charge of your work, don't let your work be in charge of you.
Manage your agenda, plan the work, work the plan.
Learn to live with the idea (and teach your boss the same thing) that you can't necessarily do all the work that people drop on your desk.
Write only a reasonable amount of "to do" items in your agenda each day. Don't carry them over to the next day all the time. If there's too much work, put priorities in order (have your boss validate that order) and start at the top without looking at the rest.
Put certain limits to your working hours and respect them.
At the end of each day, look at the few things you actually achieved and be happy with those
RE: How to deal with Stress
for heaven's sake, become efficient!
RE: How to deal with Stress
Short term - walk around the building once or twice.
Regularly - exercise followed by sauna.
Extreme cases - go to the range and shoot 75 to 150 clays.
RE: How to deal with Stress
On an incredibly painfully stressed day at work, when I hit the gym, I usually don't have my head in the game enough to get a really good workout. I've learned to take it easy on those days.
Wes C.
------------------------------
Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Frankly, what I do is surf Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com to reassure myself that I do have career value and marketable skills - and options to find a better workplace.
RE: How to deal with Stress
BTW as you can see I have had a stress management training because I wouldn't be able to invent all this myself
According to the training, stress in general follows from the discrepancy between experiencing a mental + physical reaction due to a threatening phenomenon (say an amount of work that you can't finish with all kinds of consequences for your performance evaluation and the rest of your career) and not being able... I mean the FEELING of not being able to do anything about it. And that's why starting to do something about it is the key to getting rid of stress.
RE: How to deal with Stress
When I don't, I find I tend to drink too much coffee and and eat toxic substances from the snack machine to stay awake.
The caffeine sugar combination really lowers my performance and ability to triage without getting involved.
We are all just brokering finite resources.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Deep breathing and walk through the shop helps too.
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
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RE: How to deal with Stress
Makes it much easier to ignore pushy colleagues who think everything they do is the most important thing in the company and that you deserve to be as stressed as they choose to be.
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
Now I just get up and take a walk through the shop, which has several virtues:
- It establishes and maintains a relationship with the people who actually do the work that I plan.
- It helps me keep track of what is happening, and of what is not happening.
- It makes the office's erratic air conditioning seem not so bad after all.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
LewTam Inc.
Petrophysicist, Leading Hand, Natural Horseman, Prickle Farmer, Crack Shot, Venerable Yogi.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Stress reducers would vary by individual and stress level. Mine range from general complaining sessions with fellow engineers (this site can be good for that), music, spending time outdoors (particularly during deer season), to climbing into a racecar (you don't dare think about anything other than driving).
Taking even a half day off can help tremendously. I also try to end my work day with something less stressful so that when I leave for home, my family is not subjected to the brunt of a bad day/week.
Regards,
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
Let's see...
I work at a place not at all known for high-pressure environment.
At least one person at the management level in my small office is on anxiety medication.
One of the admin people in the next office over has a chronic stress-related skin condition.
Me, I've been doing a lot less stomping around and growling lately, but I think that's because my depression has increased...
I don't even want to think what it's like in private sector jobs where people have to worry about the bottom line or real-time financial losses that add up as time ticks by while problems are worked on.
On the flip side, I drove past a yoga studio yesterday on my way home from a work-related errand, and I walked in and signed up for classes. We'll see.
Hg
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RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
From the outside looking in it looks as though they don't have enough stimulating work to keep them busy (all pressure without authority), so they internalise everything and screw their own minds up. Or is it the obligatory pretty bureaucratic politics that seems to go with these jobs.
Please understand I am not trying to be flippant and I'm aware the above is a blatant generalisation.
Lew
LewTam Inc.
Petrophysicist, Leading Hand, Natural Horseman, Prickle Farmer, Crack Shot, Venerable Yogi.
RE: How to deal with Stress
It's all in your head...
RE: How to deal with Stress
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: How to deal with Stress
In relatively small, private engineering consulting firms, where you have even more control over how you approach your work and what types of projects you do, that mode of stress-causing fear becomes even less. I think that the more autonomy you have in your job and the more skilled you become over the years, the better.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
Sarnoff of RCA said that he didn't get ulcers; he gave them.
RE: How to deal with Stress
I think the best thing to do is to "S L E E P" as it stands for;
S: Stress
L: Level
E: Elimination
E: Excercise
P: Program
You better keep this! Remember, when youre stress try to SLEEP!
RE: How to deal with Stress
I agree with epoisses. Stress is in the mind. I have been working in stressful engineering environments since around 1987. I felt stressed as the rest of you have indicated. From time to time, I would really become frazzled upon the approaching project deadlines and milestones. Then in 1990, the company I was working for was bought out by a Brisish firm. The location I worked at went from 10000 employess down to 4000 in a year. Engineer's like to work hard and have satisfaction in their work. After the down-sizing, right-sizing or whatever we have been experiencing over the past year's in corporate America, it's hard NOT become stressed. But I refused to knuckle under and let my health be compromised by becoming stressed out. I still had my job, and was busier than ever because the work force was simply reduced too far. But morale had gone down the tubes. Finally, I made the decision to bail-out and I started a job search. I found an interesting position about 3 mohts after my search, and am having fun again. But stress is something that can really get to you, if you let it overcome you.
I think of those poor victim's of 911, and being in those twin towers. The daily project stress and deadline pressure seems like a "cake-walk" compared to 911.
If you have your health, and a loving family, that's alot to be thankful for.
So don't get stressed. Exercise, breath, and tke a stress-reducing walk around your facility.
Hat's off to epoisses... Good thinking !!
BLW
RE: How to deal with Stress
Somewhat easier said than done usually and in its own way maybe stressfull but I guess there you go.
RE: How to deal with Stress
All Stressed Out
and
No One To Choke
RE: How to deal with Stress
RE: How to deal with Stress
When a person get exhausted and confused on how to deal with it, sometimes they'll get lost. The fact, they're too different from you..
When they get lost, maybe this the time to gather a sort of advice or maybe the worst, why not undegone a STRESS MANAGEMENT Program.
RE: How to deal with Stress
I can't say that I'm really learning anything to address any of the situations around me (mostly confirming my own notions of common sense), but at least the time spent working through the courses is itself stress-free yet work-related. (Kinda like Eng-Tips.)
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: How to deal with Stress
HgTx, That's what HR should care about, sending their
capital resources (manpower) to such seminar or workshop.
I dont think online course is effective to people who is not a proactive. I think they need a workshop, somewhat an interactive and hands-on seminar that would lead to actual situation as it was portrayed. This would really a exciting and a boredom-free activites than sitting all day of the course or sitting alone on the on-line seminar.
We have close similar workshop we had as yours - i think, the few are;
- 7 habits of effective people
- Stress management
- Anger management
- How to handle difficult people,
etc.
RE: How to deal with Stress
BTW I have noticed stress is also heavily dependent on fatigue. When I'm tired I'm sometimes overwhelmed by all the things I *have* to do. Now that I've noticed this I tell myself: OK OK I'm just tired now, no panic, let's see what the world looks like tomorrow morning - this helps a lot.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: How to deal with Stress
"..spend half a day sitting in a classroom. "
In interactive workshops (seminars) - most cases, i never experience sitting half day. There's a lot of activities as interacting with participants, portraying some instances, etc. It's fun and really convincing. Hence, you'll never fell bored and sleepy.
Good for you! What a proactive you are! you really do appreciate such enhancement you did.
But once, again i dont think it's effective for a person who fells not interested of the subject as doing alone on web seminars.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: How to deal with Stress
That is the Kantonese rice dilemma. Sometimes you have to eat a lot of rice for one slice of the sausage.
Strangely, if you reduce the rice over sausage ratio, or try to eat the sausage by itself without the rice, it's not as good anymore.
There's an optimum somewhere.
In any case if there are many attendants, you can always sit in the back and bring other work with you (the equivalent of having a beer while you're eating the rice).
RE: How to deal with Stress
PS My granddaughter and I had our graduation picture taken togather in cap and gown.
RE: How to deal with Stress
I'd like to have your perspective on life, but I'd prefer not to have to gain it in that way!
RE: How to deal with Stress
That goes to show that everything IS relative. After having to go through that type of stress, everything else must seem like a cakewalk! Glad you're here to share with us. Now if we could all try to see from that perspective.
RE: How to deal with Stress
My philosophy is just to get things done and dealt with. If something is bothering you that you can influence, then just deal with it there and then and get it done. The things that stress me out the most are the things that I have just left hoping they will go away.
If you can't influence it than don't worry about it, just try to enjoy the ride.
RE: How to deal with Stress
Didn't want to appear insensitive at all.
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