How To Work Under Pressure And Stress: 7 Tips To Get Bette
This new article will show you everything you need to know about working under pressure.
Everyone, eventually, learns how to work under time pressure. It is in our workplace that we are particularly exposed to constant busyness.
We have lots of tasks and projects to complete, all for now, all without delay, all at the same time, all soon.
And while we regularly boast about our uncanny ability to work under stressful conditions when writing cover letters, the truth is not so colourful anymore.
How to prove to employers that we are capable of carrying out our duties properly, particularly when this pressure manifests itself in the form of deadlines or strict requirements from superiors.
Besides all this, we also need to make sure the quality of our work, efficiency and productivity.
Living under pressure is everyday life
There’s no way to avoid stress. We all succumb to a greater or lesser degree. That’s why it is so important to find out how to manage it, while staying healthy and maintaining productivity.
If you find your work overwhelming, you panic, experience tension, communication problems, otherwise you are missing deadlines more and more often, this could mean that stressful work is not your strong suit.
Not all is lost!
The following tips can help you take advantage of such a difficult phenomenon as time pressure.
How To Work Better Under Pressure:
1. Anticipating the unpredictable and working under time pressure will become less painful
Working for a certain company for some time, you have knowledge of how it works, the nature of your work and the goals of your organization. You also know yourself, your abilities and limitations.
So rather than repeating over and over: “I can’t work under time pressure,” take a couple of minutes to assess the potential for failure.
Think about what you can do ahead of time to better prepare for a crisis situation and deal with it ahead of time.
Then you will solve the problem more efficiently or you will not even let it show up. This method certainly relieves stress and lets you act in case of difficulties, because none of us like nasty surprises.
When you prepare better and on time, you will get back to the right task more quickly.
2. Combat procrastination and reduce the need to work under time pressure
Don’t procrastinate with your work!
If you know what you must do, do it as soon as possible. Oftentimes, people feel stressed about dealing with things that are important to a department or company, and they haven’t got as much time as they need.
Procrastination is not the same as laziness.
If you procrastinate, you focus on other tasks at the expense of the right tasks. On the contrary, laziness is complete indolence, apathy, caused by unwillingness to act.
To avoid procrastination, make a list of the most vital tasks you need to do on any given day and complete them first.
Investigate carefully how much time you can waste putting things off for later. All you need is a standard notebook, a pen and you can track all of your work activities for the next few days.
I know I know! This requires extra time, which you already don’t have enough time for. The point is to build an accurate picture of what’s taking up your time and eliminate these factors.
3. Decide which tasks are a precedence and do not work under time pressure
Once you have a to-do list for the day, consider whether each is equally important. Will this assignment relieve pressure on your company? Will this e-mail drive the whole project forward?
If you identify tasks that are less significant, see if you can delegate them to someone else, post them back in time, or even remove them from the list.
This will contribute to better organization of activities and maintaining order in the workplace.
What’s more, have the courage to from time to time turn down new assignments, particularly those that do not meet the precedence criteria. Strictness towards superiors (1) or team member is not a simple skill, but highly desirable in the workplace.
Say yes to better assignments that will improve the performance of you, your team, and the whole project.
4. Don’t put extra time pressure on yourself by treating your task as a whole
Appropriate! Anything can seem overwhelming when you look at it in its entirety. It’s good to divide tasks into milestones or steps that can be achieved easily.
With the division into specific stages in front of your eyes, you’ll have more peace of mind to attain smaller goals and feel less overwhelmed.
Dividing tasks into chunks helps judge large tasks as accessible and possible, reduces our tendency to procrastinate and better knows where to start.
This is because the human brain is rather limited. No offense meant!
Dr. Melissa Gratias points out that: “Relying on our memory, we stop at each stage of a task and think about what we should do next. These breaks are an opportunity to get distracted, get out of rhythm, or miss important steps.
To avoid being intimidated by big and scary projects from the start, the idea of dividing this colossus into smaller parts is a good idea.
5. Do it slowly and accurately and working under time pressure will become more enjoyable
When you feel like you have to work, it feels much more difficult, strenuous, and tedious. This perception of duty is effectively discouraged from the start. It’s a disaster.
Instead of throwing yourself into the maelstrom of work and putting yourself under extra stress, take the opposite action.
Create a habit of getting away from work by spending 15 minutes or more on “planned breaks.” Walk around the office for a bit, get outside, breathe deeply, meditate and rest.
It’s not about deliberately delaying tasks, specifically the aforementioned delays.
By allowing yourself to rest, you gain physical and emotional freedom from the stress you are experiencing. Your body – particularly your mind – will benefit from this, and after a well-organized break, you will be back to work with new energy and concepts.
Artificially increasing speed only increases stress, negatively affects tasks, which will definitely contribute to the quality of activity.
6. Look at your experience working under time pressure
Because you work so hard at this company, you have had many stressful and demanding projects (2). This also applies to people who are just starting their professional career. Time pressure also affects students, all the time present in personal life.
Based on these practices, known from the post-mortem.
Note that you have successfully overcome previous difficult life or professional projects. What are the methods to solve the problem, what to fix, what did you learn?
Think about what was achieved in the past, under as much pressure now.
Use these examples in your head to undergo what’s in front of you more smoothly. Then the vision of the future task will be less terrifying.
7. Changing the perception of working under time pressure
I want to say that there’s nothing to be afraid of, but obviously changing your attitude to time pressure is the most difficult task here.
Developing a positive attitude towards stress can help you regain your enthusiasm for work and cope well with a really demanding day.
Define your own emotions. If you perceive this task as a threat to your own position in the company or your health or well-being, then you are subconsciously trying to avoid it.
Consider this project as a challenge that you can manage. Let it be a chance to develop and learn new skills.
Squeeze as much out of this task for yourself as you can! This will generate a positive belief in what sleep deprivation is.
You will see positive aspects of your workload and it is going to be easier for you to complete projects or get promoted. Isn’t that a tempting prospect?
You cannot avoid stress. This is the brutal truth of life. Time flies fast, and in cases crowds seem to reach the speed of light.
You haven’t any influence over him. All you can change is your own attitude and technique, so working under time pressure becomes something positive.
I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article on how to work under pressure.
I hope that the suggestions above will contribute to a better understanding of your task, allowing you to see it as a chance, benefiting personally from it, in addition to facilitating the attainment of goals, without compromising efficiency at work.
