[bluevolt]

As I started climbing the corporate ladder, I felt the need for a tool which can help me relieve from the stress of missing out on an important task for the day. Being in IT, we work across time zones and the day is divided often into three slots - morning, evening, late night!

It's been close to one year since I am using this tool 'WunderList' which is now known as 'Microsoft To Do' as Microsoft has taken over it.

I divide my tasks accordingly - Some tasks need to be done during offshore timings, some needs to be completed during onshore timings, hence categorized under 'Day' and 'Evening' category. Along with that, I have tasks lined up for the entire week, hence I enter those items in 'Pending' list and keep on dragging the items accordingly so I don't miss out on anything.



And it's just not only useful for office but for the personal end as well.
I have created categories where I keep a track of any personal tasks that need attention, household chores, keep a check on my hobbies/vlogging, reading and any other relevant tasks.



The best thing about this approach is that I have a tool through which I prioritise and execute things accordingly. Since it can be sync across devices, I can keep a check whether from my laptop, phone, iPad etc.

Highly recommend this tool to relieve yourself from stress!

[NPV]

Awesome thread, need of the hour for many of us during these stressful times and as many of us would have realised, working from home will need a lot of effort and adjustments to our schedules and approach to work in general.
I will just list the routine I follow and things I do to keep myself stress free - mind you, from a work perspective, I love the satisfaction of stress that comes from a challenging assignment, solving problems, meeting deadlines etc. Some of the things I do:
1. Start early - wake up early, get some exercise/activity which will keep me refreshed and energetic throughout the day. I enjoy listening to music during my workout (something new I added very recently).

2. Avoid spending time in the company of negative people to the maximum extent possible.

3. Leave my ego behind, it is of absolutely no use and is a major cause of stress.

4. Avoid anxiety over things outside my sphere of control.

5. Avoid being or trying to be a perfectionist (this helped me a lot).

6. Stop being a control freak - trained and built trust with my team members, now I can confidently delegate certain tasks, obviously I can't do everything.

7. Get good breaks away from work and some helpful distractions like coffee, spending time with family, watch a movie or sporting event and getting good sleep.

8. Eat healthy and nutritious food (low carbs have definitely helped me).

9. Cooking is a great way to de-stress for me.

10. Use my leaves/holidays properly, no point accumulating them.

[nax04]

From my point of view.,

- Keeping away from the negative news on every channel. Nowadays, to sensationalize any news, everyone are adding extra hot masala to the actual news.
I read news on mobile apps which feels important to me.

- Managing / Planning a healthy bank balance. Me and my wife try to plan our savings / major big expenses (of course forseen expenses) well in advance. This should atleast make you stay away from the panic mode.

- Another major factor that creates stress according to me is the pressure created by peer pressure / comparing yourself to others / comparing your kids progress etc...
I feel this rule will apply in any aspect of life.

[Tilak_7k_1979]

My routine:

- Stop reading every message forwarded on Covid, turn off news channels except for highlights on India/world

- Don't participate in debates on Covid. Nothing will come out of it. (No reason to debate if lighting candle/diya is good or not)

- No delimiters now between office work and home front. Coming in from software field I am used to spend additional work hours at home always but I can vouch for the fact that this work is home is most difficult. I have started turning off my laptop specific hours and use mobile for reading mails during off hours.

- Explicit time needs to be set aside for home. As we are stressful so is everyone at home including spouse, parents, kids. Participate in household chores regularly.

[AMG Power]

Originally Posted by GTO

With time & maturity, I realised that the top 30% of my tasks give me 80 - 90% of money / progress / returns.

That's referred to as the Pareto principle which states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

[Durango Dude]

For me it's the other way round, it's the pressure and uncertainty of not working that's getting to me. I'm a Health care provider working in the region where the Corona resides and am having a tough time deciding as to when to get back to working; where as our "association" is advising politely to not look into the regions where I need to look in order to do a good job. I literally need to sanitize every client that I see provide them with masks, fill COVID questionaire and check the body temperature first before I can decide whether to "see" them professionally or not!! After they make the cut, I have to get into PPE, N 95 and face shield to examine them, in a Non A/C room with good ventilation, it's getting oppressively hot and humid here in Chennai. And after going to all these pains we're advised against looking into the throat, not to do endoscopies even of the indirect kind. With so many restrictions in what I can do after all these complex procedural formalities we make an educated guess regards diagnosis and prescribe medication. More over if the client has fever and cold, I'm advised not to see him/her and refer them to the nearest Govt. approved fever clinic. That leaves me scratching my scalp: There will be a gross restriction of the number of clients that I can see, steep increase in operating costs and almost no increase in my consult fees given the economic scenario, whether it's really worth it.

[Ashish0485]

The following thought process helps me:
1) Stay away from unnecessary comparisons at the workplace. Do your job well without getting into office politics, gossip.
2) Financial/job success is one of the many many factors that should define my life journey. Again, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aspire to earn more.
3) Long working hours is not equivalent to workplace dedication. I always tell my juniors to do a damn good job during the work hours, rather than making the working day your entire life. Time won’t roll back.
4) Have something to look forward to - a vacation, a new purchase, a new experience, celebration et al. Let the monotony of life not get to you.
5) Daily workouts (and twice a week Yoga sessions) have brought a calming effect.
6) Don’t fear the future, it’s one hard nut to crack. No way it plays the way one wants.
7) Last, there’s no right way to live life. Even the set of ideal practices is a product of years, generations, and centuries of conditioning. Just strive for things that make you feel worthwhile.

[akshay_ritz]

Thanks a ton, GTO for putting this thread together. It is crucial and all the points you mention are really valid. Here are a couple of points from my end.

1. Having a spiritual anchor - There is a massive difference between being actively religious and spiritual. It took me a long time but I finally found my guru. On all my good days I start by listening to something he has said or written and then begin the day. The quality of that day vs. an average day is always very different. I have been an avid organized religion follower, an atheist, and spiritual so can speak from experience.
2. No big loans: I know a home loan is a fiscally good option. However, with some help from parents I closed off my home loan and it lifts so much weight from my shoulders. I know I don't have an outstanding amount of 40% of my salary going out every month. That money helps create a cushion and allows me to sleep well. My uncle used to smile and say I never understand your generation. We retired and used or PF to buy houses outright. You buy them now and worry for the rest of your life. I bought a smaller house than I could have purchased and a smaller car than I could have bought. The Mahindra guy kept smiling and telling me "sir you have a pre-approved loan of twice this amount". I would keep smiling and saying I need to pay the EMI not you so no thanks. XUV 300 W6 AT vs. XUV 500 AT. I had a pang of regret and now ten years of smiles.
3. Avoid watching news of TV - Its just horrible to most people screaming on each other for no good reason. Most of them don't know anything. It just saves me from a whole load of negativity. I love reading the New York Times.
4. Read a lot - I read a lot. I read spiritual books, fantasy fiction, business literature, general non-fiction. It helps to have enough knowledge to know you can never know enough. It helps me appreciate specialists a lot more and find explanations about why certain things happen the way they do.
5. Do something creative with time: It is amazing how the act of creating anything (writing, food, pottery, drawing, painting) is such a natural destresser.

God bless you all with peace and happiness.

Warm Regards
Akshay

[COMMUTER]

It is a highly pertinent issue at this juncture the world has put itself in.

We must categorise whatever we face into two sections. In the first section must be the things we stress over as being more important than life itself. Things to be done (not just worry over) for the eternal soul, our family and other vital commitments must come here. These tasks must be completed at any cost. These might involve either reducing stress or enduring it.

The second category must have all other things that are not worth dying over. Here, alway strive to be the second-best at best. There is no need to scurry along with the rare achievers in this rat race.

With death being certain, though stress kills, the best we can do is to make it worth it.

[SJQIL87]

Stress is part and parcel of current world. Considering professional life, I may be on winning side one day and may be on losing side another day and might be stressed a lot with unrealistic deadlines. I personally believe that nothing is more important than our health. So in situations where circumstances goes out of control, I let it go by believing that it will be fine. I pray, I play, I ride, I drive, I spend time with my family and make sure that I hit gym at least four days a week to reduce my stress and for boosting my positive thinking.

[manchandap]

Thanks for starting this thread. This thread could not have come at more appropriate time. With multiple factors like Covid, bleak economy, work from home stress cannot be far away.

Nice to read the experiences of how people deal with stress.

Few Stress Busters:

• Behavior Aspects
  • Respond not React
  • Avoid Confrontation or as they say pick your own battles and every battle is not worth dying for
  • Stop Comparing to others: Each individual is different. There will always be people who will be more blessed than us and there will always be people less blessed than us.
• Finance/Money Matters
  • Have enough liquidity to maintain current lifestyle if out of job for at least 1 year. Nothing gives more relief than a good bank balance
  • Control the expenditure: Would a mobile phone worth INR 30,000/ make a difference as compared to a INR 15,000/-. Would a song from a touch screen infotainment system more satisfying than from a single din audio system
  • Debt/Loans, try to eliminate or minimize them. They are the biggest source of worry during recession
• Try Meditation or prayer

and above all Keep Traveling or at least planning . Nothing beats the stress like a road trip to a remote Himalayan destination

[NiInJa]

Last year, I joined a new start-up and the project that I got into was a complete mess and the guy on contract whom I replaced just left one fine day putting me and my manager in a fix. No proper hand-over of project work, nothing. I basically had to learn everything myself with a little help from my boss. The contract dude even started rejecting my calls in case I needed some help. I've been dealing with stressful projects since the day I joined my first organization so I wasn't much concerned with the work load, but this time, it was different. I slowly started to realize why the earlier guy was so non-committal and ignorant about his work when I came on board. The reason was very simple: My Boss. To put it simply, he enjoyed controlling every small aspects of work. He used to get sarcastic like a high school girl-friend if things didn't go as per his expectations. He never asked us to send a direct mail to the client, everything was (is) scrutinized by him, then certain nuances that are typical to ones writing style are corrected, certain grammatical changes are done. This used to stress me a lot, I mean, I have been praised for my mail writing skills so many times for the last ten years and suddenly, there is a guy who is bluntly saying that I need to work on it. Then, the stress of waking up knowing something has failed in the application (I start at afternoon and finish at 00.00 AM) and mentally preparing to face the boss with his sarcasm would make me sit in front of the laptop from 8.30 in the morning till late night.
At one point, I started having these thoughts if my decision of jumping the ship was a mistake, or should I just quit, take a break etc. I would have lots of arguments with my wife too. At this point, I decided to fight it out and do something about it. One thing I started doing is not attaching myself to someone else's opinions. If he wants to read and correct every mail that I am writing, no problem, makes my job easier to do just half of the thinking. If he wants to go sarcastic and all, go right ahead, I'll just focus on the work that I need to finish and not let his words stick me or define who I am. Slowly, the project started taking shape and things started getting normal. We finally started seeing a proper go-live in sight. Then, we both started to communicate more apart from the project and all the pieces started falling in place: How the project was missing so many timelines, how the client changed their requirements so many times, how difficult it was to bring people on-board as it was a relatively new technology. How the client would go berserk or focus on the specifics of mails/documents. Then I realized that the last 5-6 months were like a war. There are going to be flared tempers, heated arguments, walkouts and all. My boss was happy that I sticked around, he even confessed on being aggressive and now that we are out of the woods, we dont have any of those awkward moments I have been working from home and he flew from US just to meet our team here. Meeting him made me realize that he is not a guy that I was thinking he is. Its just the circumstances that made him do certain things which might be a slight deviation from his nature. This is the case with all humans.

So what I learnt from this is : There is no set formula for keeping oneself cool. At one point, everybody is going to snap, including me. People will shout at you, point your mistakes even if know you are not at fault, you will do the same. We are humans so there is no escaping that fact. Its how much we want to stick it to ourselves that will decide how stressed we are. Reading the Mahabharata and its related document the Gita helped me a lot. The idea of doing a job keeping one's ego, feelings, emotions aside and only focusing on the basic fact of how my work is going to change the client's life made me ignore other factors that were surrounding it: my performance rating, my peers or bosses reactions etc. Every stressful job will end at some point and you will have enough time to celebrate. And a last learning: trying to keep cool is a constant process which has no end

[anand_hc]

Am trying to learn - what not to do than what to do.

Once I stopped things am not supposed to do - it automatically enabled me to do what I need to do.

I used to watch lots of movies / series - on Prime, Hotstar & Netflix. Stopped Netflix, Hotstar expires 2 months from now, no plan to renew either of them.

Just stopping Netflix allowed me easily 4-6 hours per week and better sleep.
I started getting up early with better energy, led to working out at home & get fit.

It's similar to learning to say NO.. little tough but can be done.

[Sparky]

Excellent, Inspiring, Superb write-up GTO. Thank you very much for sharing. At first, I almost missed the post from the title, thinking it will be same mundane info. But was jow dropped as I started reading. The title of this post be like 'Life Lessons..' I am saving all your points in a separate file, to read and remind me later on when needed.
Thanks again, GTO, you are awesome, wish to meet you one day.

[SnS_12]

My father strongly believes that being financially sound is what will avoid you from getting into most unwanted stressful situations in life. One can make sense of this in the current times, where companies are delaying/reducing salaries or laying off employees.

We need to stop giving into peer pressure or the temptation to buy/own something which we can't afford unless one has a sizable disposable income.

Live a life you can afford to live not what you want to live!