There will likely be one person on your list of stressors that you cannot avoid: YOU. Everyone has some area of time and work management in which they can improve, and those inefficiencies in your work habits are causing you stress. Learning to manage your time more effectively will go a long way toward reducing your daily stress. Online and offline courses are plentiful in this area, and there are also a huge number of books and resources written on the subject. Any improvement in the way you manage your day will immediately translate into an improvement in your quality of life. A similar step to office stress relief is learning the skill of delegating. Through a class or your own research, learn to delegate the tasks that bring you stress. Be eliminating these drains on your energy, you will actually accomplish much more throughout the day. Delegating truly is the art of accomplishing more while doing less.
Once you have streamlined your day to remove unnecessary stresses and inefficient time management, you can begin to pursue office stress relief with more direct approaches. A good first step is to try brief periods of meditation while at your desk. Try to remove yourself for a moment from the tasks of the day, and focus only on your breathing. After a few minutes of this, your stress will begin to subside and, as a bonus, you will also increase your mental focus. Another popular stress relief option is to purchase a stress-ball or tennis ball and squeeze that object when you feel stress creeping in to your mind. The repetitive action will help focus your mind in much the same way as meditation.
Physical activity is also a good way to achieve immediate office stress relief. This can be as simple as taking a five minute break every few hours to perform a stretch routine at your desk or in your office. This will stimulate the blood flow in your body and provide your mind with something on which to focus other than your work. If you can escape to a gym during lunch, or if your company provides one for your use, then a full workout in the middle of the day is a great way to reduce stress. The endorphins created by the workout will elevate your mood, while the meditative effect of physical exertion will allow your mind an extended break in the middle of the hectic work day.
Above all, and throughout your journey through office stress relief techniques, remember that your job is just your job. It is difficult to recall during hard economic times, but there should be more to life than work. Controlling stress at your place of work will increase the quality of every area of your life.
