Top 5 myths about workplace stress
Here’s some typical thinking on workplace stress:
- Mike is getting stressed at work, but that’s just natural these days.
- In fact, if Mike isn’t stressed, it probably means that he’s not really crucial to the organization.
- The solution is to let Mike work less and with fewer responsibilities for a while until he recovers.
- Or to let Mike work more for a while until he’s no longer falling behind and getting stressed over that.
- And of course to send him on a stress management course to teach him all about stress.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Yes, workplace stress is a serious problem. Yes, the cost to people, businesses and society is enormous. Yes we must do something about it.
But some myths exist around stress that mean, that most of what we do about it isn’t working. Often, it even makes things worse.
Here are the top 5 myths about workplace stress.
Myth #1: Stress is normal, it means you’re important and it’s even good because it pushes you to perform
Some people seem to think that if you’re not too busy, you’re not really crucial to the organization. These people revel in having full schedules, long working hours and too much work.
But stress does not mean you matter. It either means that somethings wrong at work or that you’re not doing a good enough job of matching your tasks to your time. Worse, it also means that you get less work done, because stressed people are less efficient, worse communicators and worse at making good decisions.
To accept stress as a normal condition of work is bad for people and bad for business!
Myth #2: Stress is caused by working too much
But then why do some people work 80 hours a week and feel great, while some people work 30 and get serious stress?
Here’s why: Stress has nothing to do with the number of hours you work, and everything to do with how you feel during those hours.
If you work 100 hours a week feeling great, having fun and taking pride in what you do, you won’t be stressed. If you work 30 hours a week feeling inadequate, bullied or unappreciated you will be stressed.
Myth #3: Stress is cured by working less
Most workplaces react to stress by reducing employees’ workloads, responsibilities or working hours and in serious cases by giving people long sick leaves. According to Danish medical researcher Bo Netterstrøm who has studied workplace stress for 30 years, this is a mistake.
People hit by stress need to increase their capacity and confidence at work, and while time off from work can be necessary to treat the immediate symtoms of stress, a long absence from the workplace does exactly the opposite. When people return to the workplace, they’re even more vulnerable than before. Worse, some never return to work at all.
Also, reducing work or leaving work remporarily doesn’t fix any underlying problems. When employees return to work or to “normal” work conditions, nothing has changed and the stress returns quickly.
Myth #4: Stress is cured by working more
“Yes, I’m a little stressed at work right now because we’re falling behind. If I work really hard for a while I’ll catch up and it will go away.”
No it won’t. For two reasons:
- Workplace stress does not come from falling behind at work. It comes from how you feel about falling behind.
- In most businesses, people will always be behind. There is simply too much work and finishing all your tasks simply means getting assigned more work.
A temporary push to reduce a pile of work or meet a deadline is fine. But all too often that temporary push becomes the new standard.
So the solution to stress is not to work harder to catch up because in most workplaces this is impossible. The solution is to feel good about the work you finish and not to get stressed about the work you don’t finish. It’s not that you should stop caring, it’s just that you should remember that being stressed makes you less productive, which means you get less work done and become more stressed. That’s a vicious circle right there and we need to break it.
Myth #5: Stress is cured by focusing on stress
I’ve seen a lot of the literature and training about workplace stress, and the typical content is:
- What is stress
- Symptoms of stress
- Health implications of stress
- How to fight stress
This is often presented by a stress consultant. Here in Denmark that consultant may even come from the rather unfortunately named Center for Stress (shouldn’t that be against stress?)
A recent study showed that people who return from anti-stress training felt more stressed than people who didn’t attend. No wonder, because focusing on stress is not the way to remove it – it’s a great way to create more stress. Instead, you must focus on what gives you peace and energy. Here’s a great way to do that every day at work.
The truth on stress
Repeat after me: Work does not give you stress. Feeling bad about work gives you stress.
This means thant changing your workhours, your responsibilities, your priorities or your work environment is meaningless, unless it also changes the way you feel at work.
Those stress management courses will not do the trick either, unless they can achieve just that.
If you’re stressed, you must take charge and make whatever changes are necessary to go from feeling anxious, inadequate or drained at work to feeling appreciated, proud and energetic.
Which will not only remove workplace stress, but will also make you more efficient, creative, successful and happy at work.
Additional reading
Want to know more about reducing workplace stress? It’s in my brand new book Happy Hour is 9 to 5: How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt at work.
“It’s very, very good. It’s incredibly well-written.”
- David Maister
Read it free online or buy it on paper or pdf.
If you enjoyed this post, I’m pretty sure you’ll also like these:
- The cult of overwork
- Top 5 business maxims that need to go Part I – Part II
- How to lose your fear of being fired
Alfredo Abambres Said,
November 15, 2006 @ 5:27 pm
To my favorite CHO… from the essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s12.html
«Human beings generally take pleasure in a task when it falls in a sort of optimal-challenge zone; not so easy as to be boring, not too hard to achieve. A happy programmer is one who is neither underutilized nor weighed down with ill-formulated goals and stressful process friction. Enjoyment predicts efficiency.
Relating to your own work process with fear and loathing (even in the displaced, ironic way suggested by hanging up Dilbert cartoons) should therefore be regarded in itself as a sign that the process has failed. Joy, humor, and playfulness are indeed assets; it was not mainly for the alliteration that I wrote of “happy hordes” above, and it is no mere joke that the Linux mascot is a cuddly, neotenous penguin.
It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source’s success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.»
I know that this is OLD… but I just found it today :(
Trine-Maria Said,
November 15, 2006 @ 10:37 pm
Ahh thanks – that explains why I am never feeling stressed – I am just busy doing what I love to do… Thanks!
Dave Schoof Said,
November 16, 2006 @ 6:39 am
Thanks Alexander – super article! You really hit the bullseye – it’s how we relate to what is causing us our suffering. Too often I try to change the thing I think is causing me the pain. But its how I am relating to the pain that is causing much of my suffering.
And the key in making any changes is to work at changing that relationship.
I see that with headaches and other aches & pains I get – when I get worked up that something is wrong and I shouldnt be uncomfortable, the suffering really ramps up. When I can relax around it, even accept it, the pain often diminishes.
m a d s k . n e t » Blog arkiv » Stress = mangel på lykke Said,
November 19, 2006 @ 4:57 pm
[...] Stress på arbejdspladsen handler ifølge The Chief Happiness Officer dybest set om mangel på lykke. Jeg er fuldstændig enig. Hvis jeg ser tilbage og prøver at finde en rød tråd i de perioder, hvor jeg har følt stress, har de alle været karakteriseret ved fundamental usikkerhed og trælse opgaver. Det har aldrig været, fordi jeg har haft alt for meget på min tallerken. « Odense i baronens seng Tæt på Kim Larsen » [...]
Alexander Said,
November 20, 2006 @ 12:59 pm
Alfredo: Thanks for the quote and the link – that’s spot-on!
Trine-Maria: Exactly. Now you don’t have to worry any more what’s wrong with you since you don’t get stressed :o)
Dave: That’s interesting – I ‘ve noticed the exact same thing in myself. I heard someone say once that “What you resist, persists”.
Nunuvyer Bizniz Said,
December 5, 2006 @ 9:33 am
Your article ignores the plight of much of the world. Do you really think everyone can be paid to do what they love? Many will be under paid & undervalued until they die. What about artists? What about 60 year old construction workers? You come from a hyped up tidy little world of clean offices and hands that never get dirty.
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krystal Said,
October 20, 2008 @ 6:37 am
Thank you for me find your article on the net, it help me with a paper i had to write for schoool.
John Flynn Said,
November 20, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
I when I work on projects I love I feel less stress. When I work on projects I am “concerned” with I feel high stress. Thanks for helping me work that out.