Today's work conditions create more feelings of anxiety, tension or pressure, and as a result there is low productivity, reduced income, professional stagnation or even dismissal. According to surveys, 80% of stress is due to conditions prevailing in the workplace. To deal with stress and be able to achieve what you want in your career you should consider the advice of specialists regarding ways to manage stress. First you must determine whether you are stressed and then find the cause of stress. As regards the sources of stress in the workplace, these are varied. Some relate to the role of the employee, others are specific to certain professions and others are related to working conditions.

The poor working conditions, such as non-protective measures for workers or overtime not paid, are the most common causes of stress. The pressure on the deadlines is another factor that can cause stress to the employees. A list of potential sources of stress that may be experienced by employees is as follows:

High degree of accountability
Lack of promotions
Receiving promotions
Non-participation in decision-making
Uncertainty regarding their position
Problems with colleagues, superiors, or subordinates
Feeling that their work is not recognized or appreciated
Constant changes
No clear idea of their responsibilities
Working environment, with strict and rigid rules.

After the stress diagnostic factors i.e. if you notice that you feel stress because of your work, you should follow techniques to solve the problem. Some tips to cope with stress, according to psychologists, are:

Find what is causing you stress in your environment and observe your emotional and physical reactions. Do not ignore the problem in the hope that it will pass. Most times it gets worse.

Identify what you can change. If you cannot change your environment or to reduce stress, take care of yourself, make breaks more often, exercise, watch your diet.

Reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions. Do not try to please everyone around you. Put priorities, all the things with which you deal are not urgent. Try to see the positive side of things and not always the negative.

Use relaxation techniques and meditation to reduce tension in the muscles and breathing to help restore the normal pace. Even 10 minutes a day helps considerably in reducing physical symptoms of anxiety.

Avoid alcohol, smoking and large amounts of caffeine, because they tend to increase any physical symptoms of stress. It is important to sleep well and not disrupt the program of your sleep.

Develop friendships and relationships that support you mentally.

Also a very effective way to self manage stress is the proper use of time and your career. You must properly manage your time not only to avoid stress because you do no have enough time to finish your work, but also because, as the famous saying says, time is money. A useful guide on how to properly use your time is the following:

1. Your time schedule should be a decision making tool.

2. Your time schedule should be flexible.

3. Your time schedule should make efficient use of resources.

4. Your time schedule should have clear targets.

5. Your time schedule should clearly define priorities.

6. Your time schedule should not be over scheduled

7. You should continuously review your time schedule

When you set targets it is good to write them in a piece of paper and clearly define what is urgent, what is important and what is not, in order to determine what ahs priority. The registration of your goals may be in the following format:

As regards the time management you should consider the situations in your work in which you loose unnecessary time, precious minutes and how you can save this time. Visitors are one reason that several times forcing you to stop your work. You can deal with them by closing the door of your office, avoiding discussions that do not lead anywhere. In this case you must acquire modern equipment, to keep notes while you speak, and be prepared to tell the most important when asked. You can also loose valuable time from the lack of organization of your office. So discard the unnecessary paperwork, write to the organizer about your business or even better on a schedule that exists on computers. Leave on your office only the current work and arrange the office space by placing relevant documents and tools in the same position each time.

Generally you should know that all these solutions would perform better if you have the opinion of a professional career advisor or psychologist, because for each person the conditions of work are unique. Of course, if none of the above measures does not help reduce workplace stress, you may need to follow more drastic solutions, such as the search for job that is more satisfying. Remember that to grumble about your job and your boss constantly is equally futile to silently tolerate a situation that erodes your health and your career.

manage your work stress by work-stress

The nature of work life has changed significantly in recent decades. The requirements are more than ever. Nearly one in three European workers, or more than 40 million people, are suffering from work-related stress. Stress can affect everyone. Concerns employees, employers, managers, professionals, apprentices and trainees.

Work stress is the reaction that many people have when they are under high pressure at work for a given period. Many people are motivated by the challenges and difficulties arising from the requirements of their work. Fulfilling these requirements leads satisfaction. However, when the pressure at work reaches high levels and lasts for a long time, people find the existence of a threat to the welfare or interests and then experienced feelings like fear, anger or anxiety.

There are may ways to manage work stress and over the year a lot of institutions carried out research about the causes of work stress and ways to eliminate it. In this article we outline 9 quick ways to help you manage your work stress starting from tomorrow.

power nap now by pierluigisurace

The power nap for many people is a pleasure and also a need. But often there is no time for such a luxury.

Many people feel bad and stressed when they take a power nap in the afternoon while others work. It has spread the impression that a power nap is a sign of laziness and also that it prevents good sleep and creates insomnia during the night.

A series of data obtained in recent years show that people have a biological need to power nap in the middle of the day. As the human body needs sleep at night it also needs sleep during the day.

A power nap has no adverse effects on the duration and quality of sleep. In short the human brain, is somehow biologically programmed for both sleep periods without any negative interaction.

The biological need for a power nap, when met, has beneficial effects among both the young and elderly.

Chronic sleep loss leads to attention problems, concentration problems, data processing speed problems, short-term memory and decision-making problems. Indeed, the chronic sleep deprivation is a risk factor for developing obesity and diabetes.

manage your time by glasbergen

To successfully manage your time you have to get organized both in your professional and personal life. Getting organized in an efficient way is a skill that not all people posses. To manage your life and work you first have to be able to manage your time. In our days people spend most of their time working. There are times that they feel that they will never manage to escape from the four walls of the office and are lost in the various projects and tasks they have to finish.

Their personal life has become an old memory, which has been «locked in the drawer». The solution to this vicious circle is one: get organized and start managing your time. This article outlines 14 ways that can help you manage your time successfully and efficiently.

1. Make a list of what should be done

Make a list of what to do and try to constantly renew the list and keep it up to date. Include in this list both urgent and non-urgent things so as never forget or ignore something again. Keep the list all the time with you in your briefcase or in your daily agenda.

2. Allocate your time correctly

Include an estimated time frame for each action and the date by which each task must be completed. If the order that each task must be completed does not matter it may be possible to complete something during an unexpected free time. For example, you can look for information on the Internet while you wait in your office to start a meeting.

3. Set your own deadlines and meet them

improve your memory by visualization by michaelmarlatt

Do you sometimes forget things? Birthdays, names, dates? Surely you are not alone and the good news is that there are easy ways to improve your memory. 

The memory capacity varies greatly from person to person, regardless of age. However, there are some factors that affect these skills: hypertension, insomnia, excessive alcohol consumption, thyroid problems, depression, or merely the absence of stimuli, all this reduce the performance of our memory. The same happens if you get too much information. The flow of information today is frightening and the loaded mind has low absorption.

Another factor affecting memory is stress. The stress hormones neutralize the transporting glucose molecules in hippocampus and leave the brain with low energy. If the stress is chronic, the same hormones act as acid, which passes through the neurons, leading to the reduction of hippocampus. If this trend is continuous, can destroy the neurons of hippocampus. Good sleep, stress control, physical exercise and the proper maintenance of the arteries and circulatory system will certainly help to improve memory.

a power nap can help you relax by binscorner

Taking a power nap is a proven way to increase creativity and productivity, while improving the state of our health.

For many years in western societies, a power nap was considered laziness, weakness or illness. But during the last years a power nap is seen increasingly positive. The scientific data show that a power nap in the middle of the day helps both our mental and physical condition, making us more creative, more productive and more responsive. A power nap reduces stress and reduces the risk for heart attacks and heart diseases, diabetes and weight gain. It can also make you cleverer, healthier and more still.

A power nap of 60 minutes can make us function better in the next 10 hours. Research showed that pilots who take a power nap of 26 minutes during a flight (while the aircraft is on auto pilot) improve their performance by 34% and general alert by 54%.

6 reasons why you need to take a power nap

1. A power nap can help you relax

manage your time better

The ability to manage our time efficiently is of great importance for happiness in our lives. Success in this critical area will allow us to enjoy the pleasures that life offers, will help us to manage stress and is a big step for our mental relaxation and calm.

Conversely, if we do not learn the basic principles of time management, the setting of objectives and priorities, we risk being caught up by the waves and storms of life that affect us too often.

Good time management is not easy. Not all people have the gift of proper organization. Many people have a wealth of activities and obligations. They feel they are oppressed by the many jobs that have to do with respect to the family, home or their profession. Easily, without the skills and education, one can be caught in a vicious cycle of time disruption and priorities with extremely negative consequences.

Despite the importance to manage time efficiently, educational systems at all levels give very little education to young people. This is a paradox if someone considers that the management of time is an essential component of success in all business sectors.

manage your time better by lutvision

Manage your time means to be in position to dominate the time and your work rather than being dominated by them. Your time is your life. Every thought and every action you make takes time. Therefore the way you use your time automatically determines where and how to use your life. The great paradox is that nobody has enough time, and yet everyone has as long as there is. Many of the time consuming factors affecting people cause stress and anxiety, so these factors must be identified and limited.

It is very important to manage your time successfully because:

• If you have more time for work you have more chances for success.
• If you have more time to think you can utilize your mind better.
• If you have more time to play, you can enjoy your life better.
• If you have more time to read, you can gain more knowledge.
• If you have more time for being friendly, the happier you will be.
• If you have more time to love, you will feel more joy.
• If you have more time to enjoy, the better is for your health and soul.

Do not forget Murphy’s law:" Nothing is as easy as it seems. Anything to be done needs more time than you think and if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. "

manage stress at work by career

Stress is a term that causes anxiety and it is usually connected with nervous tension and fatigue. The workplace is one of the major contributors of stress for all people. Despite the reasons that can cause stress at work there are quick and easy ways to manage stress at work and become more relaxed and more productive. This article outlines 12 methods you can follow to manage and relief your self from stress those difficult days at work.

12 Ways to manage stress at work

1. Give up your coffee

Coffee flows in your blood this is the problem. The caffeine is like wet stress that flows in your veins. It increases the production of adrenaline and simultaneously it prevents the production of adenosine, a natural sedative for your brain. «Blocking the caffeine from your daily habits is the most effective strategy to reduce stress as far as I know,” says David B. Posen, stress expert and author of Always Change a Losing Game. Posen supports the fact that 75% of decaffeinated coffee patients feel more relaxed and more active at work, mainly due to better sleep. For more information about coffee, you can read The real truth about the myth of coffee.

puzzle games can help you improve memory by brainpower

There are ways to improve memory. Our memory like the rest of our body needs regular exercise to be in good condition, as the athlete must train to allow the body to respond to difficult times, so does the memory needs its own special training in order to stay in "shape" and improve. There are simple ways, which you can follow to keep your memory in shape, and also techniques that can actually help you to improve your memory's condition and performance.

Memory loss causes

The quality of the memory of a person depends not only on the education, the learning environment and the physical environment in which we live in, but also on other factors that can influence our life (e.g. loss of a beloved person). There is also the hereditary genetic factor that plays a very important role. Besides that, other memory loss causes are:

Teamwork in the workplace by lumaxart

Teamwork is a very important aspect of every life. The person's ability to work harmoniously in a team as well as the communication and interpersonal skills are key factors for succeeding in the workplace. Persons who posses these characteristics are more likely to be successful in today's competitive business environment. There are some simple tips and techniques that one can easily follow to improve these skills and become a teamwork guru.

Why good teamwork relationships are important?

The relationship we have with our colleagues in the workplace, is affecting our psychological condition, productivity and quality of life in general. No doubt the quality of relations that exists between the members of a group working for a common purpose in a workplace is a key factor for the success of the group.

A harmonious relationship and good communication between the members of a team is necessary for the effective cooperation in achieving the goals of the team, and is an irreplaceable weapon in the struggle for your own personal success.

Inevitably in a human environment, you should expect to have different approaches to solving problems.

Stress in the workplace is devastating. Regardless of the factors causing stress at work is very important to develop ways to manage stress to be creative and productive for us. It is unrealistic to believe that we can live without stress. The aim of stress management is not to stop worrying and care about everything (so that we can avoid stress) but to learn to keep our self relaxed and under control.

In recent decades the word stress has entered our vocabulary for good, describing the fatigue, discomfort and pressure we are experiencing in our daily lives. The difficult working conditions, the financial difficulties, and the small or big personal problems of each of us became our personal load that we are forced to carry every day.

stress in workplace by nonsuonamale

Stress in workplace arises when we realize that the tasks we have to undertake in our work are greater than what we can handle. When the stress is intense and lasts for a long time, we begin to develop various symptoms that warn us that something is amiss. The most typical symptoms (signs) are the following: intense irritability, anxiety, uncertainty, difficulty in sleeping (insomnia), memory disturbances, tremor in the hands, headaches, abnormally tense muscles (particularly in the neck), nausea, tachycardia, intense sweating, dizziness, trends faint, and others.

Efficient time management is one of the ways to manage stress in our life. In the world of technology and computers all designed to make our lives easier and add to our free time, day by day we are ultimately more busy than ever! Single or with family responsibilities, we must all find ways to organize and manage our time so that we get little time for our own personal pleasure and relaxation. Our time is our life. The more we are able to plan and manage our time in an effective manner, the more we will be able to enjoy our lives.

But not everyone is having the gift of efficient organization and proper time management. Often many people feel that they are oppressed by the many things they have to do for their family, home or work.

The pressures felt by the unrestrained flow of things we have to do during working hours are increasing and eventually they become intolerable by the additional requirements that currently exist in our personal and family life.

All this creates too much stress and removes the psychological calm that we all need so much today.

Does this mean that we are condemned to the mass of committed work to be done, suffering psychologically and having repercussions on our physical health?

The answer is NO. If we do not have the inherent gift of good organisation and management of time and innumerable obligations of each kind are invading us continuously, it is possible with a methodical effort to learn to apply a few basic principles that will be able to protect us. To manage stress effectively you must first be able to manage your time efficiently.

The benefits of such a successful effort will not only reduce our levels of stress, but will also improve our psychology, mood and satisfaction, and it is a major step towards better physical health. Let us see then how best to approach the issue of proper management and efficient use of our time.

image by aussiegall

1. Create a to-do list

Initially we can make a list of our daily obligations, or even with the obligations we have to perform in the near future, specifying when and how our obligations will be met. Repetitive obligations can be planned for specific days and times where we have the appropriate time and availability to finish them.

We must never forget that the planning and design of our activities for each day gives us a large degree of control of our time. We must recognize what is important for us and be placed first on our list.

2. Create a ‘smart’ plan

A good idea is the starting point, the impetus for everything we do. It is the most important success factor for a new project and at the same time the most difficult one.
 
Creativity is not a special skill, ability or privilege of a few people, but instead is the result of careful and structural thinking.

Digging your mind for new ideas is not an easy thing to do. This article gives you 15 tips and techniques on how to prepare your self and mind for your next big idea.

1. Exercise your mind by reading

Like the body, the mind needs exercise. One way to exercise your mind is to study the ideas and projects of smart people. For example, biographies of successful people are an excellent source of inspiration. Also reading magazines that are considered serious, such as Forbes, Business Week and The Economist, web sites like "Pick the Brain", “Digg” and "Self Growth" is "food for the brain." Reading other ideas, makes it easier to digg your ideas and bring them on the surface.

2. Write your ideas down

It would be a shame to suddenly come up with an excellent idea and after a while to forget it. Do not rely solely on your memory. Keep a notebook, a PDA or a recorder with you in order to capture the idea any time of the day - even besides your bed, in case your inspiration throws you a visit at 2 in the morning.

After you capture your idea, try to use it as soon as possible. Expand your thinking of how this idea can be implemented. What are the good things about this idea, how it can help you improve in an area. These ideas are like fruit: the fresher they are consumed, the better.

3. Discuss your new ideas with others

People have different views, different influences and different cultures, which make their minds work so uniquely. Discussing your ideas with others can help you discover new opportunities to integrate into the idea and ways to expand and enrich it. The discussion may bring something that had not previously gone through your mind, which will broaden your original idea.

Never discard any ideas. Some things that sound silly in the beginning may be simply rough diamonds at the end. Moreover, while discussing try to keep the conversation "open" and non-critical, encourage your friends to use their imagination to the fullest.

	image by Peia

Do you know what the Great Napoleon, John Kennedy, Leonardo da Vinci and Churchill had in common? All four-loved power napping, the short sleep shortly after noon.

It is proven that the power nap reduces stress and helps to have a more productive afternoon, whether we are in the middle of the week or during the weekend. At a time when even the list of our obligations grows and the time for a good night sleep is reduced, power nap is a very good way to fill up your batteries.

Power nap does not last long but it invigorates and stimulates our body and spirit, cutting pleasantly the day to two.

The power nap effect is like when a computer makes a SAVE and stores the information, in the same way our brain stores the information obtained until the power nap. So when we wake up from power napping, our memory is clean and our mind is refreshed.

Power Nap image by marj_k

The need for a power nap has to do with not only sufficient sleep at night, but also with the load of information we receive. Our brain has the need to rest and stop for a moment the flow of information and this is why we need to 'turn off the switch' during the day.

The signs that notify us that we need sleep are different for each person. Some feel that energy is reduced, others experience memory gaps and others simply cannot keep their eyes open. Whatever your warning alarm the key 'is to sleep a little' - take a power nap, of approximately 20 - 30 minutes so that you do not get in deep sleep (REM). If you sleep more, you run the risk of having difficulties to wake up and when you manage to wake up you will end up with a headache and bad mood.

Following our previous post "16 Tips for Better Time Management" we also post this article, which concentrates on how we can manage our time in our daily work activities.

Nowadays many people are always under "time pressure", they are constantly overwhelmed by work without the results to justify the effort.

The result?

• Anger, stress and Frustration;
• Inability to complete even the seemingly small or insignificant obligations;
• Limited or no time for social / personal life;
• Endless list of obligations and outstanding issues.

Thus intense anxiety and stress is generated, while threatening our self-esteem, after starting to doubt our value and capabilities.

Every day has just 24 hours - and this applies to all people. Some people are constantly pursuit and pushed by time. This article is about how we can learn to manage our valuable time more effectively.

In reality we cannot manage time, we can only manage ourselves and our relationship with time. After all, how we use (or utilize) our time is largely a matter of habit. And habits are not that easy to change.

To organize and manage our time - and generally our life- we need to clarify what are our objectives, this means we need to identify what to organize and make sure we know where we want to be and be ready to accept the possible 'cost'. In order for us to be able to change how we operate, we first need to 'consider' and understand how we use our time now.

How do you usually spend your time:

• Interruptions from others (telephone calls - visits)
• Doing work that should be assigned to others
• Indecision
• Lack of adequate information about what you have undertaken to do
• Unclear priorities
• Lack of planning
• Stress and tiredness
• Inability to say «no»
• Lack of organization in your surroundings, and that also disrupt you
• Lack of flexibility - very tight, rigid and unrealistic planning, etc. are some factors that have the ability to swallow your time!

In this article we outilne the most important reasons for memory loss and suggest ways of how to improve your memory. There are a number of reasons that may cause a memory loss. Most of them though can be addressed provided that are identified at an ealry stage.

Age

It is normal to sometimes forget things. With increasing age, we observe that we forget more often.

Besides age, there are other factors or diseases that contribute to declines in our memory. Fortunately there are many such situations but if detected early and treated effectively, then the memory loss can be reversed.

The sooner we realise that our memory is suffering from a specific cause the better. If we allow a situation without corrective measures, the problems with our memory will get worse and most probably create a permanent damage.

Chronic Stress

The prolonged chronic stress is so common today in our lives and this affects our memory in a negative way

It is important to find ways to correctly control stress so that we can keep our memory for many years to the maximum extent of its capabilities.

We must also know that a very large and intense stress situation can occur when we face a catastrophic event or the loss of a very loved person. This situation can cause a major blow to the possibilities of our memory.