Give Me A Break!: Work Stress, Burnout, And The Time To Relax

Recharging batteries and taking a break is good for both, our physical and mental health.

There are many health risks involved in not taking a break from work, especially if your work is stressful. The main reason is that our body is designed to respond to short period of stress but, when stress is prolonged, the situation becomes chronic and then the health problems start to appear. It is well known that stress is related to many different medical conditions -from insomnia and obesity, to heart diseases. In addition, burnouts are becoming more and more common.

It is not only about your physical and mental deterioration but, there is more damage involve in working without taking breaks. When you focus too much on working, you work longer days and you are worried about work issues outside the office, you miss out on your friends and family; you are more susceptible to eat badly and exercise less. Many people working at office are also spending a long period of time sitting in front of the computer. All these issues are part of a bad "cycle" and therefore, it each of those actions produces more stress in the long term. 

The damage produced by the stress affects the company and the company results as well. A clear fact is that the people who are stressed are getting sick more often, and perhaps they are not able to deliver their best result because they are not in their most productive condition. No doubt that stress management at work should be an important issue to take care of.

The pressure of working too much

Why people are working too much without taking care of themselves? Well, perhaps we just have been forced to do so. There are many factors related to stress at work and perhaps the cultural and societal pressure is one of the most relevant. When people work hard, the society appreciates it. To be busy has became normal, and even a respectable status. The society also values "achieving" therefore, people are afraid of failing, giving up and showing tiredness or weaknesses. As a result, we are all continuously pushing ourselves to the limit to be seen as “successful”.

We should add to the pressure from the society, the work pressure or the role pressure. We try to do tasks at irrational rhythm and we try to do much more than what is reasonable possible. We do this constantly and we are continuously pushing for (even) more. Sometimes this is part of our lifestyle or personality however, we are not the only responsible for this pressure. Asking more and more from employees has also become a standard in many company cultures. Do you feel sometimes that nothing is enough? Or if you achieve something this year, you need to achieve the double next year? 

The recession has a lot to do with this situation, too. In times of recession is very common to find companies letting go people but, the work itself does not leave the company. Because the future is unclear, many companies are not taking the risk to hire new employees although there will be more than enough work to do now. The result is that there are a lot of employees doing the work of many.

We cannot forget to talk about the other external factors affecting our daily work and making our days more stressful e.g. noisy working environment, demanding customers, unclear company strategy, money pressure, unstable economy and fair to lose our job just to mention some examples). 

Taking a break

The good news is that despite of the factors and issues I mentioned above, it is pretty much our own responsibility to take care of ourselves. Yes, there are some circumstances which we cannot control, but there are small actions that we can take every day to release stress and become more productive and happy. Yes, I know that taking a ten minutes break once will not solve the entire problem, but taking 10 minutes break every day will make you feel better than without any breaks. If you combine this with the holidays, interesting hobbies outside work, healthy eating and good sleeping habits a good relaxation can be achieved.

Each step counts. When you feel overwhelmed with all the work remember that you get more done quicker when you step back and recharge the brain and the body. The 10 minutes break can be that first step ... if you make this and habit it will help you. I know that this is easier to say than to do. Next time when you are tempted to forget your break to finish an assignment or call a customer, remember that after your break you will perform at a more optimum level, so perhaps taking those minutes to breath will save you few hours of extra work.