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Working 16-hour days and weekends, deadlines, staff problems, production targets and other things may be keeping you awake at night. This lifestyle may be unhealthy, but often we have to continue coping with the work stress that we have, because we rely on the income we earn.
How can you reduce the health hazards of work stress and still keep your job?
Things to remember
- Make sure that your job description is clear so that you know exactly what your responsibilities are.
- Don’t bring outside stressors into the workplace.
- Don’t cause unnecessary stress by coming late, not making deadlines or being unprepared for presentations.
- Limit your coffee and junk food intake at work. On the long term, these things actually add to your stress levels.
- Don’t get involved in office politics. They very seldom have any positive spinoffs for you and take up valuable time and energy.
- If you feel you are being treated unfairly, do something about it by going through the right channels, rather than moaning behind peoples’ backs.
- Get exercise. This is a very good stress reliever.
- You have a right to be involved in decisions that affect you at work and you can ask for this. Be polite, otherwise you could achieve the opposite effect to what you were hoping to achieve.
- Set goals for yourself – learn new things.
- If your job has become a test of endurance, you hate every day, you are depressed on Sunday nights and you think your boss has a personality disorder, accept that you may not be able to change things from within. Get your CV together and start looking out for something else. If this is the fifth job in a row in which you feel this way, the problem might lie with you.
