Creative Ways To Reduce Stress At Work

Stress management in the workplace

People stress at work largely due to their personalities conflicting with the nature of their work environment. If you are a calm, rational person, you will not enjoying being in a chaotic, irrational envrionment. In most cases, you cannot control your surroundings, but you can certainly control the way your surroundings impact you.

These creative and fun methods have helped me protect my mental health and stave off depression in the corporate world for well over 10 years now.

Buy a mechanical keyboard

Having cool devices to work with can help to make your day a little easier. A mechanical keyboard is a keyboard that gives you audible and tactile feedback with each keystroke. The sound it makes is cool and the typing experience is much better than a standard keyboard.

For me, it makes emails a lot easier to get through. Even if I want to punch the person I am writing in the mouth, typing an email to them is enjoyable on my mechanical keyboard. I use the Keychron K2 with blue switches. It has a compact form factor so it does not have a number pad but does have dedicated arrow/function keys.

Buy a gaming or ergonomic mouse

Standard cheap mice are dull and boring. Gaming mice and high-end ergonomic ones are a lot of fun to use. In addition, given their ergonomic build, they help reduce stress on your wrist and joints. Here is my list of the most comfortable mice.

I've collected dozens of mice throughout the years and love to use them whenever I can. Using them at work while going through code or a spreadsheet feels more like play, which helps preserve my mental well-being.

Try to reduce the number of meetings you have

Many meetings are scheduled for 30 minutes to an hour and often times run over at many companies. If you are on 4 of these hour-long meetings you will have lost half of the work day. This results in increased pressure on you to respond to emails and finish other tasks before the end of the business day.

To make matters worse, whatever you don't finish may result in you being reprimanded or scolded by a sociopathic supervisor. To prevent this from happening, try to provide your contributions via e-mail and inform the supervisor that you have too many meetings scheduled daily.

If they are sensible, they should understand. However, if they respond by telling you that you should just complete your remaining tasks after hours, make sure your resume is updated because its probably time to start looking for a different job.

Realize that statistically speaking, this is probably not your last job

The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that people will have around 12 jobs in their lifetime. If the job you are stressing over is your 4th or 5th, chances are you probably aren't going to be there until you retire. Knowing that something is temporary can make dealing with stressors a lot more manageable. Although when you are going through stressful situations, it feels like an eternity.

View the employer as your client

As an employee of a company, you are being paid to provide services. This essentially means that the employer is a client of yours. As such, they should be treated as clients. You should do a good job and be respectful, but above all else realize that they are not the only client in the world.

As a seasoned, talented, and creative individual, you can provide services to any client you choose provided they paid your rates. As the service provider, you have the ability to control the relationship and end it as you fit. The employer, aka your client, also has the ability to terminate services with you.

This perspective puts you as the employee in the driver's seat. Think of yourself as a business owner with a valuable product, not as a subordinate who has to quake in fear of their "superior".

Stay away from gossip

As tantalizing as office gossip is, it's better for you to get your daily dose of drama from reality television. Getting sucked into work drama never works out for anyone involved. Also, realize that the same person sharing the gossip with you is probably talking about you to other people as well.

Try to avoid negativity entirely and your stress levels will be lowered as a result.

This is why, as adults, employees do not speak up when they are being corralled into offices, or other venues and forced to partake in corporate events that intrude into their personal lives.

Take every break afforded to you

There is nothing admirable about missing PTO, lunches, or breaks. It's just stupid. I made this mistake before and have regretted doing so ever since. What's worse is that others may emulate what you're doing and end up destroying their mental health as a result.

Prioritize your mental health over your career

Your mental well-being is more valuable than any position at any company. Too many people become depressed and tragically take their own lives as a result of stress, abuse, and bullying. These things happen daily at workplaces across the globe. Your life is too precious to be put in jeopardy by the stress of work, if you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed, it's okay to walk away.

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