Franziska Lauter is a psychologist who gives anti-stress semi
In the workplace, there are also external-stress triggers such as time pressure or interruptions, Lauter said, adding that this is due to the fight-or-flight response that stressors trigger in our brains.
There are a few classic workplace-stress triggers, she said, such as having too much to do, not having enough time for your tasks, or the pressure of high expectations.
Work interruptions are another major cause of stress, Lauter said. These include, for example, the telephone ringing, receiving e-mails and notifications, or suddenly being asked for information.
“This produces a similar effect to having someone standing next to you and constantly poking you,” Lauter said.
nars and works as a consultant for individuals and companies.
According to Lauter, stress becomes a problem when you don’t meet your basic needs. Some of these needs affect everyone, such as the need to be pain-free or to eat, she said, but other needs are specific to each individual. “Many people also have a need for recognition or self-actualization,” she said.
She said feeling underappreciated or unchallenged at work can lead to stress, burnout, boredom, and even depression, adding that these are “internal-stress triggers.”
How to identify your stressors
To target stress, it’s important to pinpoint exactly where the problem lies, Lauter said.
“First, I have to ask myself, ‘What’s stressing me out? Is it all the conferences? Am I taking on too much responsibility? Has my work become too much for one person? Or do I not feel challenged enough?’ In a situation like that, you have to listen to yourself very carefully,” she said.
It can help employees to recall specific situations in which they felt stressed and then ask themselves what or who caused it, she went on.
How to fight stress at work
Lauter said that if an employee realizes that something outside of their control caused their stress, they need to discuss it with their supervisors and team.
“For example, many people perceive meetings as stressful,” she continued.
If an employee is already busy, meetings eat away at valuable time, and this means less time to do other tasks, Lauter said.
One solution is to restructure meetings and make them more targeted, Lauter added. She recommended that employees be direct and suggest how they think their managers could run meetings more efficiently or that the team could cancel a specific meeting altogether.
“It may be uncomfortable for a moment, but it can make everyone feel better,” she said.
Another approach is for an employee to look at how organized they are at work.
“Scrupulous people tend to go beyond their limits,” Lauter said. Those who use their careers to define themselves often overwork themselves, she said, adding that this can lead to long-term exhaustion and a drop in performance.
It helps for an employee to define what a good working day looks like for them, she added, encouraging employees to consider questions like: “What do you do and when? When are you most creative — do you prefer mornings or afternoons? When do you take breaks?”
An employee optimizing their schedule will help them maintain the boundary between work and rest, she added
There are a few methods that can help employees do this, according to Lauter.
Eat the frog first: Do unpleasant tasks first as this frees up an employee’s mind for the rest of the day.
Getting things done: If an employee has tasks that are urgent that they can complete reasonably quickly, then they should do them immediately. This keeps an employee’s to-do list short and clear and lowers their stress level.
She pointed to the Eisenhower Matrix: a modified to-do list which divides tasks into four fields: “Important and urgent,” “important, but not urgent,” “urgent, but not important,” and “not urgent and not important.”
t stipulates that an employee should do tasks that are important and urgent immediately, while the employee can schedule ones that are important but not urgent for a precise date and time.
The employee can delegate anything that is urgent but not important, and the matrix shows that the employee can simply ignore anything that’s not urgent or important.
An employee can also simplify this further and divide everything into “urgent” and “not urgent,” Lauter said.
The most important thing is for an employee to take five minutes at the start of each day to write or update a to-do list because this gives them the structure they need and helps them remember everything they need to do, she added.
Another classic stressor is poor time management, Lauter continued. If an employee feels like they’ve worked a lot during the day but still haven’t accomplished much, then they should look into this area, she said.
Poor time management often comes from a misconception of multitasking, Lauter said.
“There are things we can do in parallel. For example, I can be on the phone and stir my pasta sauce at the same time,” Lauter said. “But I can’t be on the phone and read and understand a complicated email or Whatsapp message at the same time.”
If an employee tries to do this, they often have to repeat both tasks — which eats up time, she said.
If an employee keeps getting interrupted and feels like they have to multitask to make up the time, it helps to add in fixed quiet periods to their work day where they’re not reachable online and their phone is set to silent, Lauter continued.
But it’s important for an employee to communicate these times within their team, she added.
An employee can also save a lot of time by becoming more efficient online, Lauter said. They should bookmark frequently used pages and make sure these pages are visible in the bookmarks bar, she said, adding that saving them as shortcuts is also helpful.
Lauter said it was important to tackle stressors in the workplace and not just rely on vacations or weekends to relieve stress: Many people try to compensate for stress at work with extra relaxation in their free time instead of thinking about changing jobs or tackling stressors, Lauter said.
But there’s always something an employee can do about the causes of their stress, she added.
Lauter also warned against things advertised as a “dopamine detox” or “digital detox,” saying they can’t compensate for the stress work exposes to employees.
After all, she said, it all starts again once their vacation or weekend is over.
