Studies show that Australians work longer hours than all other OECD nations and do not use their full annual leave entitlement. Signs of obvious workplace stress include headaches, increased anxiety, high blood pressure, depression, increased drinking and reduced work performance and productivity. Here are some career tips for reducing stress in the workplace and alleviating that sense of dread when you wake up in the morning.

Develop friendships at work

Cultivate friends and allies at work that you can turn to and exchange jokes and funny stories about your weekend. Try and avoid negative or toxic people in the workplace. This will deflect the focus off your workplace problems and give you a safe haven where you feel more relaxed and in control. If you are going to vent about your workplace problems, make sure that your colleagues are trustworthy. Generally, it’s better to discuss any problems with your partner, friends and family outside of your workplace.

Manage your workload

Learning to manage your time at work is a major factor in decreasing your stress levels. Try employing time management tips such as prioritising your workload and managing your employee’s expectations, learning to say no to work tasks and ask for additional help or resources. Give yourself some breathing room and delegate repetitive tasks that don’t take much supervision and focus on tasks that require your individual expertise to manage your stress levels to try and achieve a work-life balance.

Take short breaks

Taking regular short breaks during the day to stretch out your legs or walk around the office to speak to colleagues can help reduce anxiety levels. Even after a short break, you will return back to your desk rejuvenated, refreshed and ready to tackle the problem, project or day that lies ahead of you. Step away from your desk, computer and telephone at lunch time and eat your lunch at the park, go shopping or have a coffee with a work colleague.

Mentor programs

Finding a mentor can be a great way to reduce workplace stress for junior staff or middle management. Mentors can be assigned within the company or can be found externally through industry associations and networking groups. A mentor can help work through work problems and how to negotiate work conflict, help employees build self confidence and develop interpersonal skills.

De-clutter your office

Even doing something as simple as cleaning your office can clear your mind and increase your focus. It can be very draining and overwhelming to face a messy office every single day. This is only a temporary measure so to keep disorganisation at bay; you need to incorporate a proper filing system and system of managing your documents. Adding plants to your office and changing the layout of your desk so your back doesn’t face the door can be good feng shui as well.

Exercise

Exercising at lunch times or before or after work has a host of psychological as well as physical benefits. Aerobic exercise can help you manage stress in the workplace by producing endorphins that uplift your mood and mental well being. It increases your social networks and decreases your social isolation. Exercise also improves your sleep patterns and gives you time to think and focus on other things.

Go on a holiday

Holidays can be a great way to unwind, de-stress and shake off workplace blues. Make sure you that you have organised someone to take over your work, arrange an adequate handover or hiring a temp or casual to do your work while you are gone. You want to be free of worries and stress when you do go away and relax knowing your work is in good hands and you won’t have any face any problems when you arrive back at work.

As a very last resort, you may have to consider changing jobs if you cannot cope with the workload, demanding boss, toxic colleagues or unrealistic deadlines and you have undue stress in the workplace. You spend an average of 40 hours a week with your colleagues so you need to be happy. Your mental health and relationships with your friends and family are far more important.

It’s very true, what the Beatles said …. money can’t buy you love or happiness. Self improvement and happiness don’t just ‘happen’ when you’ve saved up enough money to upgrade your car, house or children’s school. Also, much as the feeling seems convincing at the time, happiness is also not a new pair of shoes or a bout of retail therapy. Here are some ten self improvement tips that can help you find lasting happiness.

Mitigate morning madness

Set your alarm so that you have plenty of time to have breakfast, a shower, and tidy up after yourself before you leave the house. Then, tell yourself before you go to sleep that “I am going to wake up when my alarm rings. I will press the snooze button once, and then get out of bed”.

Pencil it in

Create a realistic priority list of tasks that you want to achieve for the day, and make a concerted effort to tick every one of them off. The key to using this self improvement tip is not to overload yourself and to also schedule some relaxation time.

Weekend maximiser

Do you ever find that you’ve spent an entire weekend stressing about work? No wonder we all feel that weekends aren’t long enough! Check tip #2 above, and pencil some ‘fun’ into your weekend schedule so turn off your computer and stop checking your Blackberry.

Generosity killed the ‘sads’

Humans are social creatures, and helping the people in your society is a wonderful personal development strategy to make yourself feel good. You don’t have to become a homeless shelter volunteer … but do take your co-worker’s teacup to the sink on your way, hold out the bag of sweets to your neighbour at the bus stop, and make dinner for an overworked friend.

The serenity to accept the things that you can’t change, the courage to change the things that you can

It’s a little trite nowadays – but if you think about this concept for a while and try to apply it to situations in your own life, you can find plenty of inspiration to either let go, or move forward.

Parlez vous …?

Learn a new language! It takes a while, but when you have the reward of a holiday in a country that has the language you’ve chosen as its native tongue it becomes much easier to motivate yourself.

Mix it up

Deliberately try to do things in a way that you usually don’t. The simple act of walking a different way to the bus stop or going to a new bar for after work drinks can really broaden your experience. Aim to achieve this on a larger level as well – to visit places you’ve never been, to speak to people that you usually wouldn’t or perhaps changing careers.

Face your fears – take a plunge

Deliberately doing things that put you outside your comfort zone are essential to personal development because they force you to look at the world in a new way … from a position of strength, courage and personal power.

Beauty is as beauty does

For many of us, thinking about our appearances takes up a significant portion of the day. Remember when your mother told you that true beauty is on the inside? She was right. Self improvement is about what’s on the inside, and you’ll have more energy for that without the distractions of excessive grooming. Spend your weekends without makeup, and wear clothes that make you feel comfortable.

Bend it, stretch it, just a little bit

Exercise is what our bodies were designed for – work that requires you to spend an entire day sitting down is a very recent social development. You’ll feel better able to deal with problems, more energetic, be less prone to depression and have a higher level of cognitive function if you make the effort to exercise every day.

Happiness has little do with the things you have, and so much to do with how you feel inside and what you do with your life! Try incorporating these self improvement tips and strategies into your life every week, and see how much difference it makes to your personal satisfaction level. Because in the end, who makes the most difference in your life? You do!

There is no doubt that stress starts to play a role when our busy schedules get on top of us. Effective time management can help you keep on top of your workload and keep the stress at bay. Here are seven of our top tips for time management…

To Do Lists – Don’t avoid the ugly tasks

Do the work tasks you are trying to avoid when you’re at your peak and keep procrastination at bay. Work around your internal body clock.

If you find that you’re more of a morning person and your concentrate is lost later in the day, do those mind numbing tasks earlier in the day and the tasks you enjoy later in the afternoon when you’re struggling to get motivated.

Get into a habit of writing Your To Do list just before you leave work so you can return the next day and hit the ground running.

Learn to prioritise – Do the most important things first

Effective time management is all about prioritising your tasks and doing the most important things first. The easiest way of managing your workload effectively is prioritising each task. The Motivation Expert suggests prioritising tasks as follows:

A = Top priority jobs – those which must be completed today

B = Jobs that should be completed today

C = Jobs that you’d prefer to complete today but can put off until tomorrow

D = Jobs where the deadline is some way off and you can complete later

If you are having problems prioritising your tasks or there are two tasks that seem as urgent as each other, speak to your manager who will be able to clarify which task is more important or better still, set priority of tasks in your regular meetings.

Be Proactive Not Reactive – Don’t fight fires

Encourage your employees and colleagues to be proactive and not reactive and pre-empt any possible problems with project management, client management or general day to day work tasks.

There is little point having an ‘ostridge in the sand mentality’ because when the problem does reach the surface and become known to your manager, it will more likely take longer to fix and use more resources. Ways to avoid this are:

• set up regular work in progress meetings and catch up sessions
• put reporting mechanisms in place and
• establish benchmarks or key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure workload.

These are a good way to foresee any problems before the proverbial hits the fan in an office.

Learn to Delegate – You are not an island

Delegation plays a defining role in being able to manage your workload. You need to be able to let go and trust your staff and/or colleagues to take on part of your workload. There are many advantages to delegating work:

• The motivation of employees is increased as you trust them with more responsibilities.
• It increases employee’s self confidence and leads to development of decision making skills.
• It encourages an environment where creative ideas and alternative ways of working are expressed.
• It saves time – we can achieve at least twice as more through delegation than we can by doing all the work by ourselves.

It can be quite difficult granting someone else the authority and responsibility and they may make mistakes along the way and not do everything as you may have liked. However, with patience and guidance, it can alleviate the less crucial parts of your workload leaving you to work on more important tasks.

Managing expectations – Learn to say no

Effective time management can sometimes be more about managing expectations from your manager and/or colleagues. While there may be occasions where you work overtime, this should be an exception rather than the rule. If you find that you are continually working more than a standard 8 hour day through no fault of your own, speak to your manager about:

• assigning extra resources;
• delegating your workload to other employees or;
• hiring a temp or casual staff member

This should all help you bring your workload down to a more manageable level and allow you to skip out the door at a reasonable hour.

Manage your employees and colleagues – Don’t Let Them Manage You

Attending to emails or tasks and answering adhoc questions or the telephone can take up valuable time in your day. It may only be a task that only takes five or ten minutes but that can easily add up during the day but this can be avoided by:

• encourage your employees and colleagues to save non urgent questions for meetings where you can discuss the project;
• asking colleagues to email you when rather than come to your desk or call you directly so you can attend to the email when you have time;
• making your priorities known to your colleagues and ask them if you can do their task later after you have finished your more important tasks.

Take control back of your workload and don’t let your colleagues dictate your work patterns. Attend to urgent or more important tasks first and attend to the tasks further down your list later on.

Manage yourself – Time management is a myth

It is also important to manage yourself and make sure that you are hitting your deadlines, not working excessive amounts of overtime and also taking regular breaks throughout the day. It is important to set aside regular breaks in the day for the following reasons:

• decreases levels of procrastination and work avoidance;
• maintains the level of quality and productivity across the day;
• increases your concentrate and motivation levels;
• reduces stress and maintains your health.

Remember you can’t manage time – there are only 24 hours in a day. The only thing you can manage is yourself, your colleagues to a certain extent and your workload so incorporate these time management tips into your workday to create more of a work-life balance that will have you leaving the office at a reasonable hour.