All of us who works for a company experience different levels of stress on a daily basis. This work stress can either break us down and have a huge impact on our health, or it can make us better.
A lot of videos of talks we see on social media and articles we read talks about how detrimental to mental health work stress is. However, I think it is not always the case. A good level of stress can help bring out the best from us and make us create something we never imagined before.
Work Stress Effects On Mental Health
There was this client that I had that is very difficult, close to impossible, to appease. Every time we had a discussion, there will always be something this client would spot as wrong. Instead of discussing what to do next, meetings always become a reprimand and all. Even if our COO and VP are in the meeting, they too get it wrong. Now, some of the things the client said are true and correct but most of the time, it becomes tiring that I even question myself of what am I doing. What does this work even mean? Is it even critical to do what this client was pointing out? I just want to work. I don’t want to die.
When we experience these kind of moments that we feel like what we is unpurposeful, we tend to just stop. This is not about our whys. This is not about our reason of working such as giving our families a good life. This is not the purpose. The purpose I am talking about is the end goal of doing the work.
There are work that we do on a daily basis that will start feeling unimportant. The little things or the big things that stresses us out and realize that it is not crucial to the life of the business may it be the client’s or the company we work for. It becomes a waste of time. It affects us mentally.
We worry about something we do not need to worry. We spend so much time and mental energy in doing something that is not so important and start to get sick. We lose sleep. We end up not eating, drink a lot of coffee, smoke or, if we eat, we eat the wrong food. We lose time with our loved ones. We lose time that we could have spend in doing what we love.
When work stress is too much, it affects us negatively. Why are we even doing it? Why do leaders in high position and clients, with all of their experience, expertise, training and seminars they attended, they still put unnecessary stress on people? Maybe it is because they are also put into tremendous stress by the people they work for? Well, wasn’t it said that leaders should not pass that stress and pressure to those who follow them? Didn’t they know this or they know and choose not to live it?
By the time I figured out that nothing makes sense, I decided to quit. It is just work. I don’t want to kill myself.
When Work Stress Is Good
But, there are times when work stress is good. That even if we find that work difficult, our desire to figure it out and do it is stronger than just plain quitting. We aim to solve a problem, see through it till the end, and until the work is not done, we keep pushing through no matter how hard it is.
And this is good. This creates stress that makes us learn and be better.
In my work right now, I get stressed out but different from what I used to get. Before, the stress that I get made me drink every Friday or weekend. It made me sleep longer during the weekends and thinking that what troubles me will just go away. I was anxious and started to dread a weekly meeting with a client that put so much pressure on something that it was not important. (Well, maybe it was the tone that sounded demeaning, but I want to forget that.)
The work I do now still creates stress but it makes me move forward. The pressure is about figuring things out and doing something about it that makes sense to me and understood its underlying importance. The stress pushes me to find ways to solve a problem that I know if we just let it be will be detrimental to our business.
And this is the type of good stress that I am talking about. A stress at work that is backed up by clear understanding of the purpose and clear goals that I can see if the solution that was implemented was effective or not. Unlike the stress of presenting on meetings, creating charts and analysis for presentations and calculating various scenarios just because those who are on top didn’t really know what they needed (Additionally, they would ask you to deliver the following day only to find out that they just looked at it the following week. And then, the cycle repeats).
A Call To Leaders
I ask all leaders (or managers) to figure things out first on their own and work on things that are really important and impactful. Everyone has a lot on their plates and in their minds and the human brain, however complex it is, can only process enough before it just stops. Asking our teams to work on multiple things without any sense of purpose, or understanding the importance of the work, it will just lead to unnecessary stress.
Additionally, it is not about weekly meetings, good presentations, and beautiful charts. All of us must consider that while presentations make it easy to understand the message, it takes time to create it which uses brain powers just to make it beautiful. A template works but if we are expecting different things on a weekly basis, are we expecting our teams to do PowerPoint presentations only?
So, leaders, ask yourself and if you are not sure that is fine. You are also just human. Ask yourself if the work we are asking from our teams is important and crucial. Is it detrimental to the business of not done? I understand that there are a lot of things happening at the same time and everyone must juggle. Come to think of it, isn’t that poor staffing management too? All about the profit margin, right?
Still, if the meeting is not necessary, if the presentation is not needed and you can do with a simple graph, just skip it. It eats a lot of time that could have been used to do real work.
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