In 1998, Richard Carlson, Ph.D. published Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff at Work, a spin-off of his bestselling book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.
Most of us will agree that work is stressful. People spend most of their lives working. In fact, Nigerians who live in places like Lagos and Port-Harcourt can testify to the sheer amount of time spent in traffic to and from the workplace. It can feel like your whole life is spent getting to work, working, and getting home from work. On top of these, each job comes with its own specific kind of stress and its peculiar burdens.
This is the reality, so it’s important to ask ourselves, how are we going to deal with it? Here are 5 facts I had to face about work and stress as I read this book:
1. Our responses matter. We expend a whole lot of energy being stressed out, frustrated and angry over relatively minor things. By allowing ourselves to be offended, bothered or upset over being criticized, we suffer the loss of productivity. We must examine the impact that emotions like worry and fear have on our output and on our enjoyment of our work. Dr. Carlson does not claim that the advice he shares in his book will make our work and business challenges disappear. Rather, he suggests that our immediate response to challenges should not be negativity. When we learn to stop reacting this way, our experience of these “problems” will change and our stress levels will drop.
2. We can put our energy to better use. If we change our attitude and divert energy spent on worry and fear into being more productive, creative and solution-oriented, we can better the quality of our work. By resisting the inclination to make a mountain out of every molehill, we make our lives easier.
3. Our deadlines alone are not the sole source of our stress. I live from deadline to deadline, and I often find myself stressed by them. By being honest about the fact it’s not just the deadlines that stress me but my complaining as well, I have successfully halved my stress. My complaints are justified; we all know the factors that make even simple things in Nigeria complicated, from unreliable internet to epileptic power supply. However, I had to admit that the complaining wasn’t helping me and that I was better off saving my time and mental energy for finding solutions and doing the actual work.
4. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness. This will always be a big one for me because I used to do it and then forgot all about it, to my own detriment. The time and mental energy you save by not whining can be used to find a candle. There’s always an alternative, always a solution, if we can calm down enough to think things through.
5. Being dead is bad for business. This is my favorite take-home nugget from this book. I tend to view breaks as a luxury, and this usually results in me working through my projects like a slave, because who has half an hour to take a walk or a short nap? It took me a long time to accept the fact that I wasn’t helping myself by refusing to take breaks during the day. I find I am more creative and efficient when I take breaks, as opposed to when I’m burning the candle at both ends. Breaks are a necessity, not a luxury. If you drop dead from stress tomorrow, at best the work will go on, and at worst, your business will grind to a halt. Either way, it’s not worth it. Stay alive, stay well.