Overworked and Overwhelmed summary

Have you ever had the urge to jump out of your office chair, run right out the door and never come back? That’s a pretty good sign you might be suffering from work-related stress. The desire to flee is one of the body’s natural responses to stress. That’s part of the “fight-or-flight” response, a cerebral and hormonal reaction to life-endangering events. Here’s how it works.

Imagine someone jumps out from behind a corner with a weapon. Your brain – or, more precisely, the command center of your brain known as the thalamus – is the first to react. This, in turn, triggers the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions. This then activates the hypothalamus, the area in charge of regulating the autonomic nervous system, which transmits a message to your adrenal glands. These start pumping out adrenaline – a hormone that prepares your body to react quickly and, if need be, violently. Once it runs out of adrenaline, your body switches to cortisol, another hormone with a similar effect.

You’ve probably heard the old Chinese proverb that says giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, but teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. That’s also a good motto when it comes to stress reduction. Quick fixes like nipping out for a coffee have their uses, especially when you’re in a pinch, but the best way to minimize stress is to develop a long-term anti-stress plan.

Here’s an idea: start by trying to work out a supportive daily work rhythm. That’s precisely what Hilton Hotels CEO Chris Nassetta did. In his case, that involved getting up earlier to free up time to mull over his day’s responsibilities. Nassetta gets up at five every morning and aims to be in the office by six at the latest. Since his work officially only starts somewhere between eight and nine, that gives him at least two hours to prepare for the day ahead. The upshot? He can think through his tasks without losing focus or worrying about what’s coming up later. Rather than drifting off in the middle of a conversation because he’s worried about what he’ll say in an upcoming meeting, he can be fully present and engage with the people he’s talking to.

Imagine you had to summon all your willpower to do even the most mundane tasks, like brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces. Life would be unbearably exhausting, right? Luckily the human mind has an autopilot function that helps you do these things without wasting too much brainpower. And here’s the thing – you can get the most out of that nifty cerebral technology by cultivating routines. That’s good news for your personal life.

So, how can you start putting that into practice? Well, there are three words you need to remember: cue, routine and reward.

Lots of people accept stress as a fact of life and try to put a brave face on it. It’s only when they finally burn out or get seriously ill that they start considering changes. But that’s not the right approach. In fact, you can spare yourself no end of suffering by taking action today. And here’s the good news: you don’t even need to make particularly radical changes to boost your well-being.

Sometimes all it takes to beat work-related stress is exercise. That doesn’t necessarily mean taking out a gym membership, though. Simple rhythmic and repetitive movements like walking, jogging, cycling, dancing or even going through some yoga poses can significantly reduce stress.

As we’ve seen, physical movement is an excellent way of relieving stress. Unfortunately, that’s not something we can do whenever we need a bit of relief. After all, you can’t just leave your office to go for a jog whenever you feel like it! That means it’s also a good idea to develop some cognitive strategies to quiet your mind. In this blink, we’ll look at two top techniques that’ll help you do just that.

Let’s start with being in the moment. Stress is all about worrying about the past or the future. Learning to appreciate the present pushes those anxiety-inducing thoughts to the back of your mind. Best of all? You can start practicing this kind of mindfulness without making any changes to your routine. The reason for that is simple. Remember those autopilot activities like brushing your teeth we talked about earlier? Well, those are the kinds of things you can focus on to become more present!

What’s worse than those endless shifts that bite into your evening? Getting off work and not having anything to do or anyone to do it with. The simple truth is that isolation just isn’t good for your mental health. Friends matter – a lot!

That means it’s in your best interest to make an effort to stay in touch with old friends. How you do that depends on your personality type. As Susan Cain points out in her book Quiet, introverts will generally prefer seeing more of fewer people. Cain, a self-professed introvert, says she spends 80 percent of her free time with just 10 percent of the people she knows. That means it’s important for her to regularly reach out and give a select number of old friends a call or invite them out for a drink.  

In the previous blinks, we’ve talked a lot about stress and how to overcome it. As we’ve seen, stress is inherently harmful. That’s why one of the simplest and most effective ways of getting it out of your system is to stay positive.

That means learning to be genuinely grateful for the things that are going well. Take Kaye Foster-Cheek, a senior executive at the Boston Consulting Group. She’s found that making time to experience gratitude has boosted her well-being significantly. So it’s the first thing she does when she wakes up. Rather than jumping out of bed, she takes a moment to reflect on how grateful she feels to simply be lying there with a new day ahead of her.