November 4 is National Stress Awareness Day, and your immediate reaction might be, Well, of course I’m aware that I’m stressed out!
On the other hand, like me at one time, you might not be aware of how stressed you are. I had a job that I enjoyed, working with decent people, that laid me off in November 2008. Yes, right during the Great Recession. I’d seen the layoff coming and as I was last hired in my department, I knew I’d be the one to go. Which is exactly what happened.
What I didn’t know was that even though I enjoyed the job and the people I worked with, I was still really stressed out. Had I not been laid off, I probably wouldn’t have realized that was the case. I’m not being sarcastic either; I really didn’t know. I realized it only when I lost a ton of weight without even trying, because I wasn’t stress eating anymore.
Currently, I think most people are aware whether they’re stressed out or not. However, you might not have recognized a couple of stressors that can have a huge impact. These sources of stress also severely compromise your ability to be effective. Dealing with these issues will help you get the important $hit done to elevate your business.
The right environment for productivity is critical
I have not had an alcoholic drink for over nineteen years (I hit my 19th “sober birthday” in August 2026). When I was in early sobriety, it was really, really hard to be around people who were drinking. I stayed away from bars and pubs, because it was just too hard.
A lot of people want to “test” their sobriety by going to a bar, and usually that means they don’t just fall off the wagon, they hurl themselves off it. Trust me, I’ve been to a lot of meetings and that’s how it goes. The closer you are to alcohol and people who drink alcohol (even if they themselves don’t have an alcohol problem), the more likely you are to drink.
So if you want to be sober, you clean out any bottles of alcohol you might happen to have lying around. You try to hang with people who are either sober themselves or who don’t drink much. You don’t go to the bar and you don’t go with your drinking buddy to the corner liquor store.
With more time in sobriety, you might be able to go back to bars because you don’t drink anymore. I don’t care if other people are drinking around me now, and they don’t care that I don’t drink.
The point here is that at least for a while, when you’re trying to be sober, you create an environment around you that supports your sobriety. You don’t leave temptations out where you can easily fall prey to them.
It’s the same with productivity. If you don’t have an environment around you that allows you to focus and accomplish tasks, you’re not going to be productive. You have to create this environment yourself, and you’ll probably be around lots of other people who aren’t interested or don’t want to do the things that will make them productive.
I’ve discussed a lot of issues with workspaces that interfere with productivity, and stress is absolutely something that interferes with it. Of course, spending time with loved ones and getting enough sleep and exercise are stress fighters that are good for your brain. Yet there are other ways to combat it that you may not have thought about.
Fighting the stress that results from being an informed citizen
First of all, VOTE! I’m publishing this the day before Election Day, and if you see this in time and you haven’t voted yet, please vote! (And then come back and read this.)
Previously we’ve had presidents who hired competent staff, so we weren’t dealing with a firehose of demented bullshit every single day. But well, thanks to everyone who didn’t vote for the woman, here we are in this firestorm of absolute stupidity.
The problem is, aside from voting and bringing back 1789 (IYKYK), there’s not much you can do about all these issues directly. Building community and holding officials accountable at public meetings are some things you can do locally to help, but these are indirect, though no less important.
Which means that there’s very little on a daily basis that you can do anything about. When you keep scrolling through the news feed, you stress yourself out and the stress has nowhere to go. Stop the scroll — you don’t need to be up on the latest atrocity. There’ll be another one soon enough, so you don’t need instant alerts for them.
Also, if you have notifications on your Interruptor (what I’m calling smartphones) and they’re constantly going off because the 34-time convicted felon in the White House or one of his incompetent lickspittles has done something, your Interruptor is constantly interrupting you to bring you news you can’t do anything about.
If you have items of interest that you keep up with, you can maintain those alerts. For example, maybe you have alerts for clients and prospects in the news. Just change the notification settings so you get them in a daily digest or some other form where your Interruptor isn’t constantly alerting you to them.
And speaking of Interruptors, put yours away completely out of sight when you’re trying to focus. Research has shown that even if it’s face down, if it’s in your eyesight it’s distracting to you. Put in a drawer or on the credenza behind you if you absolutely must have it in your workspace. Mine lives in a bowl near the front door, away from my office.
Fighting stress that results from constant task switching
The human brain does not like open loops. It wants to close them. That’s why you wake up at 3 am remembering that thing you forgot to do. One thing that helps prevent this is to write things down by hand before you go to bed.
This does NOT work if you type or speak the words, you need to write them with a writing implement and piece of paper. Even if it’s a crayon and the back of a receipt, this works. Write down everything that’s in your mind that still needs to be done before bedtime. Go back over your day and think about every single thing that didn’t get finished and write it down. That’ll help you sleep.
Even better, get $hit done so you avoid having pages of unfinished items. When you accomplish a task at work (or even at home), you get a little dose of happy brain chemicals. Doing $hit actually helps you destress, and that’s one less thing you have to journal about at night.
But again, you have to create the environment. If you feel you can’t get anything done, notice how many times you allow the Interruptor to pull you away from tasks. Notifications, texts, emails, calls, all prevent you from accomplishing your tasks.
If you’re a business owner, can your people get in touch with you at any time? Are they also preventing you from getting $hit done because you allow them to contact you at any time? How about clients? Are they allowed to contact you 24/7?
Do you value accomplishing your work over always being available to anyone at any time? I’m not judging, because clearly a lot of people prefer to be available than to get work done. However, if you do want to achieve your goals, then you need some parameters around when you are not available at all and when you are available.
And when your office door is closed and you have time set aside for focused work, you still need to mute your Interruptor. If you’re still bombarded with notifications, you won’t be able to accomplish much, if anything.
So set office hours when you’re available to take calls and questions, and a separate time for focused work, and make these clear to everyone. In focused work sessions, you are not available to anyone outside of a true emergency and makes these clear to everyone. Then you’ll have the environment you need to destress and be productive.
Recap (tl;dr):
If you want to destress and at the same time have a thriving business, it’s critical for you to create an environment that allows you to do so. Willpower doesn’t work.
Still feeling like you work all the hours and get nothing accomplished? I will help you go from stressed to getting $hit done with less stress, fewer hours, and better mental health. Click here to schedule your free consultation.
Photo by Vasilis Caravitis on Unsplash.