How To Deal With Stress At Work: 12 Powerful Activities To Try

If you’re exhausted from work, you’re not alone. 3 in 5 employees in the UK and US report feeling unable to deal with stress at work.

Now imagine if you felt happy at work, regardless of the deadlines, numerous deliverables, angry boss or demanding stakeholders. They can no longer stress you out and make you anxious.

Because you have a proven system to manage work stress, without having to compromise on your ability to achieve your goals and be successful!

Here are 12 research-backed activities to deal with stress at work easier. They’re split into 3 sections. Do at least 1 from each section as they complement each other:

1. Activities to help you recover from the immediate stress.
2. Positive habits to adopt to improve your resilience and ability to cope.
3. Bad habits that are easy to ditch to reduce the amount of stress you experience in the first place.

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How to Deal with Stress At Work Step 1: Recover from the stress

After physically exhausting your body it needs time to recover and replenish its strength. Otherwise, you risk injuries.

Similarly, you need time to recover from the work stress because it exhausted your mental energy. Without adequate recovery, any initial stress reactions such as fatigue, low mood, and anxiety may develop into chronic conditions such as burnout.

Importantly, you must recover regardless if you like your job or not. Research suggests the following to be the most effective recovery experiences and in what circumstances they work best.

Relaxation

Meditation, bath, and massage are excellent recovery activities to give both your mind and body the rest it deserves. They work particularly well for recovery from busy, high work demands jobs such as teachers, nurses and doctors.

Take Control of Something

Some jobs have no control. You’re told what to do and when to do it. And that’s fine.

But lack of control, especially in busy and demanding times, is proven to result in stress if it’s not counterbalanced by taking control outside of work. This could be how to spend your leisure time, a personal project which you’re entirely in control of, such as redecorating the house, learning a new skill such as knitting, coding, cooking, etc.

This will give you back a sense of control, mastery and accomplishment.

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Get Social

Meaningful social interaction with your partner, friends, and family is also an effective strategy to detach from work. But here’s an interesting catch – if your occupation requires a lot of social interaction (e.g. sales, flight attendant, shopping assistant) then actually too much social interaction after work can have a reverse effect on your wellbeing as it continues to exhaust your emotional resources.  

Improve Your Sleep Quality

Psychological research suggests we function best when we sleep for 7 to 8 hours. But if increasing your sleep quality is not an option, then focus on quality. The more relaxed you go to bed, the more deep sleep you will have. So you will wake up more refreshed in the morning. Here are 3 products which can improve your sleep quality.

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How to Deal with Stress At Work Step 2: Adopt Positive Habits

Adopting these 3 habits is proven to improve your resilience and help you deal with stress at work better.

Practice Gratitude

Practising gratitude as a daily ritual reduces stress hormones such as cortisol by as much as 23%. It also improves sleep quality, decreases blood pressure and lowers HRV (heart rate variability, i.e. sudden changes in your heart rate). This makes you feel less stressed and more relaxed. Recalling positive feelings of appreciation also switches your positive mindset on.

Practice Mindfulness

A daily dose of mindfulness enhances creativity, productivity, peace of mind and helps you manage work stress.

Adopt a positive mindset

This is a key activity if you want to not let work stress you at home too.

If you think and worry about work in your leisure time, your brain and body don’t realise you’re not actually at work. This results in poor mental health.

But if you adjust your mindset and think and reflect positively about work, this is good for your mental health and wellbeing. Even if you’re going through particularly tough times at work, it’s important to stay positive in order to sustain your efforts.

Here are what thoughts to watch out for and what to replace them with:

Worry and a negative mindset	Constructive thinking and growth mindset
I worry about how I will deal with this last-minute project. If I fail this will have a huge impact on my career.	I know I have the skills to deal with this project. It may be challenging but it will give me an excellent opportunity to develop new skills and prove myself.
I have so many things on my to-do list. It makes me anxious and agitated. I’m not sure how I can cope. I’m at the point where I’m ready to ignore some of the tasks and dig my head in the sand.	I have so many things on my to-do list. But I have also completed many tasks. Besides, all projects will benefit my development and I just need to prioritise well. I will put a priority list tomorrow and discuss it with my manager.
I am useless. I just can’t think of ways to solve this problem.	I will be able to deal with this. Let me think of similar situations I’ve been in before. What did I do? Or can I check what others have done? Even Google may know the answer. This will help me put a plan together.

How to Deal With Stress At Work Step 3: Change Bad Habits

These 4 bad work habits are linked to experiencing more stress and feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and unmotivated. The good thing is they can be changed easily!

Learn to Say No

There’s a strange feeling to saying No. Others may perceive you as not committed, pretending that you don’t have time, even incompetent.

But this is a mistake you make in your career in the long-term. By committing to many things you fail to prioritise your own wellbeing and risk burning out. So ask yourself:

• Is it my job to do it?
• Do I really have the time?
• Is it in line with my goals, professional and personal?
• Can I learn something from it, develop a new skill, or make a valuable connection?
• Will it have a positive impact on my performance appraisal or career growth?
• What would be the negative impact if I said ‘No’ (but remain objective! Don’t overthink it.)

If you can’t say ‘No’ then at least be realistic about a time frame. Is it a top priority? How long do you need to complete it? Overcommitting will cause you even more stress.

Take breaks

Hands up if the only breaks you take are to go to the toilet, walk to the meeting room (if you’re working in an office) or to prep your lunch. In the UK, only 1 in 5 people take their lunch break let alone other breaks. And 52% admit to eating on their desks.

Taking a short 5-min break every 1-2 hours improves productivity and the ability to reduce stress at work by recovering your mental and emotional resources. Without such recovery, stress reactions such as fatigue or low mood develop into chronic conditions such as burnout.

So if you notice you are 1) having difficulty concentrating, 2) making mistakes, 3) demotivated to keep going, 4) doing something for the 5th time without success – don’t push yourself. Here’s what to do instead:

• Go for a walk. The fresh air will clear your mind. You will also distance yourself from the problem, and look at things with fresh eyes.
• Do something for yourself – exercise, read a career book, update your personal development plan, or network with someone who can teach you something. These activities will recover your energy.
• Take your full lunch break. It is an important opportunity to detach from work halfway through the day.

Stop Multitasking

How often do you try to multitask? Fill in a spreadsheet whilst talking to your colleague and keeping an eye out for new emails. But do you really save time doing these things at the same time?

Our brain cannot focus on more than one complex task at the same time. We can do automated things at the same time, such as walking and talking on the phone or driving and thinking about a work project. Because they rely on different brain areas which makes it possible. Work tasks require active thinking, planning, reasoning. These rely on the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in complex cognitive functions. And it can only process one complex task at a time.

So when you try to multitask you’re actually switching between tasks. Which in itself drains your resources even further as you continually change your focus.

So organise your day in chunks and do one thing at a time – dedicated time for emails (e.g. morning and after lunch), separate time blocked for different projects, small talks in your lunch breaks etc.

Reduce your Caffeine Intake

So swap some of your caffeine drinks with an alternative such as a glass of lemon water, matcha tea, a refreshing walk outside, or natural energy and strength-boosting supplements such as Guarana extract or vitamin B.

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Conclusion

Dealing with work stress is most effective when you combine an effective stress recovery activity, adopt positive habits, which increase your resilience, and ditch negative habits, which only make you more stressed. This, in turn, improves productivity, happiness and satisfaction with one’s work life.

But sometimes, regardless of how well you manage your work stress, things happening in your personal life take their toll. So coping with changes in your life impacts your work as well. Find out how to successfully cope with life changes, step-by-step, here.