Managing Project Stress - Five tips to manage it

Managing Project Stress - Five tips to manage it

1.     Accept the stress; It is a must attitude to manage the stress, be in at project, work or anywhere else is to ACCEPT it. By accepting it, not denying it, the stress becoming sort of reality instead of un-reality. Then start applying following points in mind.

2.     List the stress; to make the stress becomes sort of real; you must be able to list down of the stress. If you are not be able to list the stress, you could also make it a list of things that make you worry, as the source of the stress, obviously, is worry. E.g. in the project to many task and because of it, project manager, in this case you, is having stress. The benefit of list the stress, it, some how, will relief the burden out of the chess. To make your list is not growing, you should start practicing to say ‘No’ smartly.

3.     Work out the stress; upon finishing of stress list then you can start workout the stress by planning on how you are going to over-come it. E.g. after you have the task list, you can start putting the timetable and action item to finish it.

4.     Observe the stress; this activity is important as it will act as a review checker whether the stress list if correct or not. Correct means you stress level is gone or at least lower and not correct means you are not having a genuine stress list then you need to repeat step 1-3 again.

5.     Divert the stress; we need to balance between project (work) and life, during office hours if you feel stress, it is beneficial to divert the stress by doing something else, some companies that have installed games box such as Wii, Xbox or playing table tennis, massage chairs, chill out zone etc. which are pretty effective for project manager to breakaway from work temporary during office hours. After office hours, catching up with friends over a cup of coffee or dinner or devotes his weekends into fun stuff such gardening, cycling, jogging, reading, etc; which is also a good way to shift yourself away from work. In summary anything that requires your immediate focus and full commitment will turn out to be a good activities for you to breakaway from your working routine and unwind.

These tips are actually generic and it can be applied to manage the stress for other areas.

Cheers.