![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Recognition
Sep. 17th, 2008 09:47 amI've just been sitting at my desk, feeling vaguely unsettled. Well, more unsettled than usual. I'm figeting, I'm doing a number of repetitive, compulsive actions, I'm switching very rapidly between a handful of trivial tasks while not completing any, I'm feeling a little light-headed and distracted and my insides are a-flutter.
Then I recognized what was going on: it's a classic case of stress and anxiety. Lord knows what my blood pressure must be like right now.
Outstanding tasks cause me stress. I have a deep-seated need to see projects completed. When there I have more than a dozen projects outstanding, I start worrying about missing details, deadlines or critical snippets of communication. At the moment, I count nearly three dozen active projects at work, at home, involving square dancing and involving my career path. Estimated completion times for most of these are months or years away.
Worse, I'm on-call this week. Yesterday was the day from hell and while it hasn't been too bad yet, one never knows when the pager will start screaming bloody murder, possibly continuously. I hate that kind of uncertainty as it impedes my ability to rally my resources as efficiently as I'd like. On the good side, at least I'm off the pager Thursday night. On the bad side, I have to work this weekend anyway.
Financials weigh heavily on me. I'm acutely aware of my retirement savings nose-diving with the markets. And my employer's share price evaporating, taking my prior years' bonuses with it. And the possibility of a long, slow-burning recession. Realistically, I have nothing to complain about when so many others are vastly worse off than me but doesn't reduce the emotional drag.
My sure-fire cure for stress is an action plan, so here it is:
- get more sleep. Sadly, I'm booked most evenings this week but I can reset my hours again beginning Sunday night.
- consume less caffeine. It's not the friend it used to be.
- stay focused. For the moment, I'm largely ignore everything happing after the end of the month to free up resources to deal with current problems.
- delegate more. I'm going to pass around some of my office tasks to the rest of the team so they can feel the love. They can pass tasks back again when I'm no longer on-call.
- decline additional projects. "No," isn't something I say a lot, but it's time to make more use of it.
- go watch some clouds. I think I'll spend a chunk of my lunch break staring at the sky and practising breathing for a while.
Then I recognized what was going on: it's a classic case of stress and anxiety. Lord knows what my blood pressure must be like right now.
Outstanding tasks cause me stress. I have a deep-seated need to see projects completed. When there I have more than a dozen projects outstanding, I start worrying about missing details, deadlines or critical snippets of communication. At the moment, I count nearly three dozen active projects at work, at home, involving square dancing and involving my career path. Estimated completion times for most of these are months or years away.
Worse, I'm on-call this week. Yesterday was the day from hell and while it hasn't been too bad yet, one never knows when the pager will start screaming bloody murder, possibly continuously. I hate that kind of uncertainty as it impedes my ability to rally my resources as efficiently as I'd like. On the good side, at least I'm off the pager Thursday night. On the bad side, I have to work this weekend anyway.
Financials weigh heavily on me. I'm acutely aware of my retirement savings nose-diving with the markets. And my employer's share price evaporating, taking my prior years' bonuses with it. And the possibility of a long, slow-burning recession. Realistically, I have nothing to complain about when so many others are vastly worse off than me but doesn't reduce the emotional drag.
My sure-fire cure for stress is an action plan, so here it is:
- get more sleep. Sadly, I'm booked most evenings this week but I can reset my hours again beginning Sunday night.
- consume less caffeine. It's not the friend it used to be.
- stay focused. For the moment, I'm largely ignore everything happing after the end of the month to free up resources to deal with current problems.
- delegate more. I'm going to pass around some of my office tasks to the rest of the team so they can feel the love. They can pass tasks back again when I'm no longer on-call.
- decline additional projects. "No," isn't something I say a lot, but it's time to make more use of it.
- go watch some clouds. I think I'll spend a chunk of my lunch break staring at the sky and practising breathing for a while.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
