Stress reduction for a lot of people is taking their mind off work, taking their mind off whatever is causing the stress.

But this is where you bang into humans being human, you must find your own WAY of taking your mind off what is causing the stress, and this varies hugely from person to person, even this statement is not a helpful one for someone in the grip of stress as they are not wanting to think any more. so lets go through some options, to make your solution easier to find.

Not thinking at all: This solution is often seen in the form of a very strenuous physical activity, perhaps very heavy gym work, or the complete opposite i.e. just sleeping the whole weekend. people that find this working for them just turn their mind to pure heal mode. I find this solution works best if you don’t have uncertainty in your stress at work but are just being overloaded.

Full distraction: For the people that can’t turn off, for the people whose voices are screaming in their heads constantly. This is often a way of dealing with high levels of stress. They take on huge additional mental workloads. But in completely none related areas. It’s often more involved even than work, but its not stressful as the work is clear or failure does not have a large impact. You see it in people with very complex and involved hobbies or in helping others such as county council work or charity work. such work FORCES you to not think about your stress points, and thus you can go back to them the next week feeling “Rested”.

Alternative thinking: This is my personal bag, which involves doing something that takes your mind off your issues and makes your brain work in a slightly different way, but something that still requires me to concentrate and apply myself so that my mind does not drift back to the stress point. most hobbies provide this which is why they are so useful.

Complimentary mental activity: This one is the cleverest solution I’ve seen, if you can manage it, it is nearly like preparation for work, or for the stress that you’re facing in work. You go and do something that will aid you in your job and that requires concentration, but is not ACTUALLY your work, examples include training for professional qualifications, or presenting at conferences in your field. It improves your abilities in you’re stress point areas. and also you feel as if you are not just waiting around for the next challenge, you are more in control of your life which in its self reduces stress, 

Explanation:

This is a management strategy used mainly against people that provide deliverables such as developers.

It’s a two phase strategy.

The first stage is to ask about a largish deliverable, one that might take a full sprint (2 weeks) or more and to get a firm completion date on it. When the developer/resource gives that date as an honest answer based on 100% of their time being dedicated to it, write that down, write it in stone.

Then later on, even in the same planning meeting, ask for a much smaller deliverable, suggest a much shorter delivery date “as it will only take a sec”, But crucially don’t mention it in context to the larger delivery already promised.

Keep doing this until the developer massively over commits, but in a way that you are not to blame as you asked them in the hearing of others on a meeting.

This is a classic old school dirty trick for those who care far more about project plans than deliverables, and originally came from the Mr. Creosote seen in Monty Python’s the meaning of life.  

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.