Managing Stress

I’m not an expert at managing stress, but I have picked up a few key habits over the years that have helped me maintain a decent equilibrium. In the current era of post-COVID work I’ve noted that many colleagues are constantly feeling extremely high amounts of stress. Some peers have told me that they are now pre-diabetic, and others have claimed that they feel constantly on edge, and that the feeling can be incapacitating. Sleep and exercise seem to have gone out the wayside. The trend is certainly troubling. This shift toward the “stressed and exhausted American” dominating the urban landscape has made me realize how vital it is to have stress-negating habits.

I believe managing stress effectively requires one to stray from the norm of Westernized work culture. What are the norms, and can some of them be prevented at all?

• Wake up early and check your phone immediately

• Rush to work via car, sit in traffic and a drive-through, and eat breakfast along the way

• Chug coffee to mitigate sleepiness

• Sit at the desk and stare at a blue screen

• Eat an unhealthy, oily and heavily processed lunch at the desk, and eat it quickly

• Drink an afternoon coffee to mitigate the post-lunch drowsiness

• Drive home and quickly eat a large dinner

• Plug eyes to phone screen, tablet, or tv screen while drinking alcohol in order to “wind down”

• Sleep with the phone next to your bed

When listed it seems obvious why people at work seem incredibly stressed. These habits are not only debilitating, they’re cancer-inducing, and the mental state of most employees is a key indicator of this. I don’t always do the opposite of all of these negative habits, but I do find myself straying from them as much as possible. Obviously the key is to do damn near the opposite of each bullet point listed above. Here’s my own “aim” for a norm:

• Wake up early (a necessity if working) but don’t check the phone. Exercise outside and let dawn be the first light that the eyes register. In a perfect world, we all sleep in at our leisure.

• Ride the bicycle to work if possible. If not, exercise before driving.

• Have one cup of pour-over coffee or tea before work (at most)

• Spend five minutes before logging into the PC either practicing deep breathing or meditating.

• Work with a standing desk, not a sitting desk (if you have a computer job)

• Take a five minute walk every hour, regardless of your Inbox (responsiveness be damned)

• Eat a healthy lunch (oatmeal or a salad), preferably outside and with people, not alone in a rat cage

• Drink water and electrolytes throughout the afternoon

• Ride the bicycle home from work

• Listen to calm music while making dinner

• Watch the sunset

• Read myself to sleep

There has been pressure, even in my own work culture, to trend towards the less healthy habits. For example, there is an option to work longer hours Monday through Thursday, and then to have Friday off. I opted out of this option due to the extensive time it tethers you to a computer screen on Monday through Thursday. I decided it’s better to have an extra hour for movement and “slow eating.”

The work environment is also typically rife with toxic foods. Potato chips, birthday cakes, candy bars, and hamburgers dominate the food scene. The post-COVID average weight gain shows it. To make matters worse, many employees now work virtually, and as a result move even less, while still eating a similarly terrible diet. One has to shield the eyes from the packaged stuff and opt for a salad or oatmeal.

After work, the phone screen provides a universe of dopamine. Avoiding this is difficult, and I still struggle with this one. But the phone interferes with sleep, so I try to unplug by 7 pm. Alcohol, likewise, destroys sleep. And a good night’s sleep, whether you believe it or not, is probably the best possible thing you can do for yourself.

I don’t always hit all of these habits; sometimes, adulting is tough and time is constrained. But I strive to make most of them routine. Addressing some of them has required some shifts in my own routine. For example, I enjoy metal music. However, it gives me too much adrenaline, and too much adrenaline places one in a constant state of “fight or flight”. I’ve had to switch my music a little. I still listen to some metal, but not as often as I used to.

If you find yourself in a constant state of work stress, you are not alone. By most metrics, the vast majority of employees are constantly stressed in America. I don’t recommend switching all of your habits at once—that might be overwhelming—but instead gradually addressing one habit at a time.

Let’s start with a good night’s sleep and add to that.

The Still Point of the Turning World

T.S. Eliot referred to the act of reading as “The still point of the turning world.”

Finding such moments of stillness seems crucial to sanity, now more than ever.

With the advent of clockwork came the creation of anticipation, and with anticipation inevitably came anxiety. Yet time as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon in relation to the span of human history.

The first mechanical clock was likely invited some time in the 14th century. Portable clocks, or pocket watches, arrived much later, in the 1700s. So while clocks entrenched a spot in societal life only over the last several hundred years, humans have existed for over 200,000 years.

Before clocks, we evolved to sense time as something that ebbs and flows, like the rise and fall of the sun.

With clocks came a march toward “progress”, something that could only be tangible if we had “markers” and “goals” to anticipate.

Now there are such time markers everywhere. Beeps on phones serving as reminders of looming appointments and peers to call. Blings on computers reminding of upcoming work meetings and due dates. Deadlines on projects. Metrics on spreadsheets marking durations of tasks to push employees in the assembly line faster, for the sake of “efficiency.”

Where can modern people find stillness?

Alarms pull the languished out of bed so that they can rush and “hit a calorie count” on a gym machine, which has a set duration that counts down to an end time, after which that person must rush to work. Hurry, or your exercise time gets reduced! Even time outside of work is spent hurrying to get to work.

Phones remind us at lunch that our eating time must be brief. We have appointments, and tasks, and deficiencies to address!

The constant tick of the modern mind has never been louder, and I have never more ardently sought stillness to counter it.

I do not exercise with a phone on me. I bike and run without one to get lost in the moment and appreciate the elements, and how they interact with me and the world around me. “End time” be damned.

I try to hide screens when I read. Reading is a rare opportunity for absolute focus and meditation, and time does not need to exist while in this state of mind. I don’t want schedules and reminders distracting me from my chance to push time aside.

I hand write these blogs first, then type them later. I don’t want a sense of urgency in a rare opportunity to reflect.

The march forward creates a longing for more and uses a tool called time to hammer feelings of incompleteness into the minds of the masses. It is this sense of urgency that turns a state of peace into a state of longing. Clocks are now tattooed into our upbringing and we justify the need for them by fooling ourselves into thinking we need more. We become obsessed with addition. More screens, more material stuff, more upgrades, more responsibilities, more promotions, more emails, more phone reminders, more bills, more Xanax, and more work hours.

It feels so damn good to just hit the pause button on it all.