April is Stress Awareness Month with a recent report from Champion Health showing that 74% of people feel so stressed that they have felt overwhelmed and unable to cope and the most common form of stress is work-related with 79% of people saying they have experienced work-related stress it is clearly an issue that needs to be tackled. In light of that all of this blog is about the things you can do to reduce your work-related stress.
· Outsourcing
If you’re self-employed like me then you might be in a position where you find yourself wearing all the hats, sales, accounting, PR, marketing, HR and so on. This in itself can be massively stressful but it doesn’t need to be. The key is outsourcing. It will cost you money, but it will free up your time. For example, if numbers aren’t your thing and you spend hours going over your figures then by hiring an accountant as they will be able to do the work much faster and you’ll gain some time that can be used to do the work you actually love.
· Comparison
The saying goes that comparison is the thief of joy. I agree it is and I also believe that it is a source of stress. Scrolling through social media looking at bodies you believe are better than yours, holidays that appear more exotic, kids who seem better behaved, parents doing more with their kids than you do or businesses that are more successful than yours.
It’s really important to remember why you started and I can bet it wasn’t to spend time scrolling through x, y and z’s page and feeling bad about yourself.
· Prioritise
The other week I joined a live in the Doing it For the Kids group and one of the hosts said something that really resonated with me “If everything is a priority nothing is a priority.” I know how it is sometimes there are so many tasks to complete that it can all feel a bit overwhelming, and you can feel like you have to get everything done. This is where prioritising comes in. One way of doing this is at the start of the day list things that must be done, things to delegate (maybe to somebody you’ve outsourced some work to) and things that can wait. Everything can’t be a priority.
· Managing your time
A bit similar to prioritising is managing your time. I find that without some sort of order to my day I tend to jump from project to project, starting everything and finishing nothing. But that’s changed since I discovered Reclaim.ai With Reclaim, you enter your hours of work, put in all the projects you need to do that week and how much time each task should take and then it sorts them all out for you and schedules when you should do what. It’s a serious game changer as prior to this I just relied on a to do list but that didn’t help me focus in the same way.
I’m not saying that following these tips will totally eliminate your stress but hopefully they will help reduce it.
Rebecca Slater is a PR Consultant with more than 20 years public relations experience. She is based in Staffordshire and provides support to businesses all over the country.
Find out more at www.beckandcallpr.co.uk or email sayhello@beckandcallpr.co.uk
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