2018 Aug 24
Remember the days when we were kids and all we ever wanted to do was grow up? We all wanted to be great people, doing amazing things: Doctors, Engineers, Teachers or heroes saving the world.
Fifteen years later, and all we’ve ever accomplished is build a routine for ourselves, spent in a meaningless rush, making other people’s dreams come true. Little by little, the energy and dreams you had as a child have been replaced with dreams of mid-week Poya days and more sleep.
While work stress has many deep rooted issues that have a lot to do with finding our passion and dreams and finding ways to achieve them, let’s look at some ways to make the workplace a little bit more bearable.
1. Personalize your workspace
Make your workspace a ‘home away from home’ to help increase your productivity while boosting happiness and morale and letting your personality go wild, within the limits of your company culture of course. Add a dash of green – cacti and succulents need very minimum effort and look absolutely beautiful, making them the ideal green desk buddy. Inspire yourself with a few printouts of your role model, picture of your family or quotes that brighten up your day and give you inspiration and power. Use colour therapy! Whether a funky mouse pad, brightly colored sticky notes, or a milkshake shaped water bottle (Yes, you can find this at Miniso), wearing and surrounding yourself in brighter colors reflect positive energy. Try stress-busting objects – a stress ball, slow hourglass, or bundle of bubble wrap works wonders. Additionally, food such as a packet of Ginger biscuits or Snickers can really do the trick for a ‘mood fix’.
2. Build bonds in your team and beyond
Make that extra effort to smile in the morning and say those ‘Good mornings’ and compliments, even if you really don’t feel like it. You could be making the day of a person who just came to work after a terrible morning. Take some time off your day to complete those small favors you promised to people, actively listen to them, sit with different people during lunch hour (even though this is a very un-Sri Lankan thing to do) and walk up to people rather than picking up the phone.
Relationships are made up of both give and take. Whenever you ever do need a small favor back, whether it is a piece of information or an extra member for a project, you will have that reliable friend from Marketing who would never say no.
3. Add zest to drab meetings
It is such a Lankan thing to find it difficult to say ‘No.’ Are you one of those people who spends all day in useless meetings, so much so that there isn’t any time to do what was actually discussed at these meetings?
Decline meetings which you feel are not useful and are just taking up your time. When you must attend, make sure you prepare beforehand (Lankans love to be last minute) and try to steer the meeting towards the agenda and discussion whenever it goes astray. Casual meetings or standing chats are a good alternative to blocking precious time off the calendar (and having to waste 20 minutes for that late colleague or discussing the situation with SAITM).
4. Make an effort to pre-plan the little details
Preplanning little details like your outfit, your bag, your lunch and your to-do list for the following day can take you a long way. It allows you to be prepared and helps you look put together, and not forget anything in the rush to leave home. Taking this little effort allows you to be prepared, look put together, and add that spring to your step that has everyone turning back for a second glance at you, wondering how you always look so happy.
All these little tips of preparation, especially knowing you have a delicious meal of rice and curry waiting for you at lunchtime, adds up to make your day just that little bit better.
5. The importance of balance
Sri Lankans tend to be hard workers rather than smart workers. You may think you are doing the company a favor by spending every waking minute sacrificing your life to achieve company target, but what you are creating is an extremely dissatisfied, imbalanced individual who isn’t healthy and who cannot do sustainable good. You are only able to give your best when you feel your best and in order to feel good you have to provide your body with the other aspects of well-being that it craves: nutrition, social acceptance, exercise and other forms of mental stimulation.
So rather than holding your breath for your hell-bent boss to leave work and go home, it is okay to set a strict work ethic to finish all your work by 5.30 and then take time of your day to eat your meals, exercise, do things you love and most importantly, have a life besides work.
6. Find a way to channel your creative energy
Working for a company or corporate may not allow us to do exactly what we want to do, but in our free time we should find a way to channel all our pent up creative energy, whether it is through art, cooking, or even teaching or whatever passion we might have. This helps add some spark and newness to our life.
7. Music!
Keep a killer playlist handy or find your favorite traveling radio show. Having a killer playlist handy or a good radio show to listen to helps ease away the hours spent stuck in traffic, the sun, humidity and stagnant, standstill traffic.
While these tips may not catapult the direct causes for your work stress, it will definitely help bring a smile to your face and make your day just a little more bearable.
