4 Ways To Manage Workplace Stress
Starting your first job can be stressful, particularly for degree apprentices who have to juggle full time work with a uni degree.
Here are 4 ways to cope with stress in the professional environment to help you stay happy and productive at work.
Have a Life Outside Work
It amazes me how many people’s lives revolve around their full time job. They don’t have passion projects or any real hobbies - they are NPCs who despawn after 5pm.
If I have a stressful day at work, it literally doesn’t matter. My life still goes on and I can mitigate my temporary defeat by excelling in other aspects of my life (e.g. MMA training, writing for this blog, hitting a PR at the gym etc.)
If your job is your life, then managing stress becomes almost impossible because you’re unable to detach your identity from your employment responsibilities.
In other words: stress at work becomes stress in yourself. If you don’t separate your identities then the stress from your job tasks easily leaks into your life outside the office.
Now I know for a fact someone reading this is thinking: “its okay for you, you don’t have a stressful job”. If you’re a degree apprentice - neither do you. The company aren’t that stupid to put an entry level apprentice in a business critical role that absolutely cannot be done wrong.
The whole point of being an apprentice is that you make mistakes but you learn from them. So when it’s time log off, switch off completely.
If you’re struggling to get all your work done in an 8 hour window as an apprentice then you need to have a serious chat with your people leader or apprenticeship provider.
General Mental Health
I do so much for my mental health outside of work that when i’m having a stressful day I think: “how do regular people deal with this lmao…”
The truth is that they probably don’t. Men are particularly bad at this because they think their an alpha male for having loads of stress and not doing anything about it. It’s not wonder that 74% of suicides in the UK involve men… [1]
Sorry to kill the vibe, but I’d argue that the deliberate and strategic expression of emotion is better than the uncontrolled and unpredictable outburst.
I’d rather journal about my feelings in private and get called a beta male by men who think being a chad is taking out your emotions on your wife and kids.
I don’t mean physical abuse when I say ‘taking it out on them’, this can be in the form of crying, not being present, moaning about your problems etc. Your future kids don’t care about your problems.
If you not concerned about your mental health for yourself than at least be concerned about it for others. Isn’t that the whole point of being a man in the first place?
Journaling, meditating, exercising, fasting, reading, and talking are all better than what you learned about being a chad from Andrew Tate because it will benefit your future family and improve your ability to provide.
I’m not an expert in any of the above but they all worked for me. Do your own research and you might find the same results.
Prioritise
It feels like the word ‘priority’ has lost its meaning in recent times. People talk about ‘priorities’ which is intrinsically contradictory.
If something is a priority, it means that everything else is less important.
This goes back to what we talked about last week in that people are lazy and often take the path of least resistance. They’ll happily work on all their low effort tasks first, while procrastinating the thing that is actually important.
There are only two contributing factors to stress on a task:
The importance of the task
Not enough time to do it
You obviously can’t control the significance of it or make it any less important, and it’s not always feasible to just ‘ask for more time’ - deadlines are deadlines whether we like it or not.
A few weeks ago I interviewed the company’s CTO and was responsible for writing up the Q&A for a newsletter that gets sent to all employees.
It was the most important thing for me to work on that week, and I only had a few days to write it up before it needed to be published.
Instead of feeling stressed by the situation, I understood how big of an opportunity it was to increase my communication skillset and boost my personal brand.
Of course I still had other day-to-day responsibilities to worry about, but by effectively prioritising I was able to mitigate the stress I felt towards a task by focusing all my energy on it until it was complete.
Say No
It feels like we all know someone who has the complete inability to say the word ‘no’. It’s just not in their vocabulary.
I once asked a mate if he wanted to come to the pub with us. He said: ‘my phone is charging’. In his language that’s as close to ‘no’ as you can get.
In the professional environment, you’ll need to develop the ability to know your boundaries and say no to certain tasks/projects if your plate is already full.
The irony is I’m completely guilty of this myself. When I rotated into my new role I thought I could take on as much as possible.
I joined the refurbishment project, wrote for the company newsletter, attended networking events, became a ‘buddy’ to a new apprentice, conducted mobile phone audits…. all while balancing the responsibilities in my actual job description.
Degree apprentices need to listen even closer, as you’ll have a full on uni degree to add to the pile of things on your mind.
If this sounds scary to you, here are some actionable ways to say no:
Start by thanking them: “Thanks for the opportunity but…”
Offer an alternative: “I can’t commit to this right now but I can help you find someone who can…”
Stand on business: don’t feel pressured to change your mind after making the decision
Be decisive: don’t waste the requestors time if you know you’re going to say no. Decline the offer quickly and move on.
If there’s something you shouldn’t say no to… it’s signing up to my newsletter!
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Sources:
[1] https://www.priorygroup.com/blog/why-are-suicides-so-high-amongst-men