Managing pressure

Rutendo Gwatidzo-Changing Perspectives

“The truth is stress does not come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about your circumstances,” says Andrew Bernstein.

This past week I found myself under a great deal of pressure and stress.

I was failing to complete important tasks, I was also failing to balance my accounts and I was anxious about a lot of things. As I was looking for ways to manage the pressures that I was going through, I visited one of my business mentors for advice. She told me that pressure is real and will always be part of life. It comes in many forms which can be good or bad. In other words, pressure can be a result of good things or bad things, positive things or negative things.

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The interesting part about pressure though is that the after effects are not good even though the pressure may be a result of good things.

She told me that it is important to focus on how to manage pressure more than avoiding it.

This is because, in as much as we try to avoid certain things, we may still find ourselves dealing with certain battles that cause us stress, anxiety and pressure without realising how we got involved.

For instance, it is hard to avoid the economic situation in every country because it affects everyone.  What is better is to learn to manage life according to the prevailing economic conditions.

For example, an employee in America may suffer stress and pressure due to high productivity expected from him or her while an employee in another country may suffer stress and pressure due to low productivity and low income that is not enough to cater for his or her needs.

The after effects of these different kinds of pressures are almost the same.  After leaving my mentor’s office I went and further researched on the subject of the effects of pressure.

I realised that there are three words which probably mean different things and which are probably a result of different things but, the after effects of those words are usually the same.

The three words are stress, pressure and anxiety.

While stress sounds like the worst thing, the interesting part is that all the three words are not good if not managed and can cause detrimental effects on our health.

One of the challenges that organisations are going through is that of having mentally disturbed teams.

Often times when we talk of mental issues people tend to generally focus on biological mental disorder yet, mental issues can be a result of pressure, anxiety and stress.

Mental issues are real and they do affect performance to a greater extent.

There is need to offer counselling facilities within organisations. Health and wellness programmes are also good to have.

I also discovered that a greater deal of stress and pressure come from failure to complete tasks. Generally, a significant number of employees are playful but, without realising it.

Many of them tend to make the mistake of thinking that they have so much time to do what is required until they fail to tell what happened when they suddenly realise that time is gone. I did an observation this past week to employees within one of the organisations that I am consulting for.

I discovered that the first two hours of the day are critical to productivity.

Unfortunately, many team members take time to settle down in the office and before they realise it, it will be tea break.

Some of the things I noticed include fidgeting, being confused about where to start, failure to start with what is important, addressing home issues during work and arriving late at work. Cleaning work station when its already time to work, too much talk among colleagues during work and unnecessary movements, the list is endless.

I would like to challenge someone to do something deliberate this week.

Take record of what you do every hour for at least one week. After a week, you are most likely to see what happens to your work routine and then you can tell if it makes you more or less productive.

Be challenged to adjust for the better accordingly after your findings.

The moment you start to be deliberate about your actions, in most cases you also become deliberate about your pressures.

Be deliberate about your daily activities.

Come up with daily priorities and that will help you to be productive and to spend time on important things.

Managing pressure requires order. Organised people tend to do well even though you probably find them under the same conditions with those that probably fail to manage pressure.

Rutendo Gwatidzo is the managing consultant at The HUB HR Consultancy – as a culture and change management specialist. She is a multi-award winning leader, consultant, speaker and coach. She is also an Author of “Born to Fight” and “Breaking feedback: 0714575805/ [email protected] / Rutendo Gwatidzo_Official fb public page.