The Office Jungle

Managers should be grateful when staff take small breaks like this as working quickly without pause tends to make work less accurate.

4 Get your eyes tested. Caroline suggests every two years, or as often as the optician guides you. Too many people get caught peering at their screen or paperwork.

5 Rearrange your work-station. When people allow their workplace to get cluttered, desk chaos ensues, together with associated stresses and strains such as painful backache which is aggravated as you reach for the phone, in the same awkward way, for the fiftieth time that morning. Caroline advises that you have the phone on your left side if you are right-handed, which leaves the right free to write messages.

According to Caroline, ‘Most office desks aren’t designed for a VDU and its cables. You could buy a bracket to store your keyboard out of the way when you’re writing, which will give you more space.’

The back legs of your keyboard should also be flipped out to provide a comfortable angle of working.

6 Plants. Plants in the office will moisten the air, which can otherwise get very dry. Humidifiers will also help with this problem, at the same time as soaking up some of the dust.

7 Lights. It’s possible to have too much light in an office, especially if you have bright, natural light competing with harsh ceiling lights. Caroline suggests removing one tube from fluorescent lights to soften them. Daylight can cause glare, which is why a filter in front of the VDU screen can be useful.

Caroline suggests up-lighting as the kindest to lights must always be fixed.

8 Decoration. Ideally, wall paint should be matt, as glare from a shiny desk or gloss walls can cause fatigue and stress. Caroline recommends light, rather than dark colours for walls, as dark walls will tend to appear closer to you and therefore more confining.

Best Behaviour

Stress symptoms lose some of their menace once you are able to identify them. Like most of the problems we are discussing in this book, the first step is to understand exactly what you are dealing with before you begin to combat it.

Perhaps the worst scenario is to suffer from stress in a state of bewilderment. If you have any of the following symptoms the first thing to understand is that you are horribly normal.

Stress affects the body in a way that is necessary for survival under extreme conditions. When the human animal feels threatened its body reacts in a way to turn it into a lean, mean fighting-machine. The heart beats faster, the senses are on alert, while unnecessary functions for fight or flight – like digestion – close down. We sweat more to cool ourselves down and our breathing becomes shallow and swifter. If all these symptoms are triggered by a lion attack – fine. If your trigger happens to be some toe-rag leaving the photocopier set on multiple while you only wanted one sheet, you may find the profuse sweating, pulsating headaches, imminent diarrhoea and shaking hands a little over-the-top for your immediate needs.

Happy Stress

It’s important to understand that there is such a thing as good stress. We like to be busy and we enjoy being challenged. When the stress you’re working under is manageable you’ll find you feel on top of the world. Your brain is working quickly and clearly. Your judgement is sound, you have more energy because your interest is stimulated, and you often feel healthier than normal. Fine.

The Pig-Out

So far you’re climbing up the sunny face of the stress curve. Then you reach the summit. Things are a bit too busy and you have a feeling you’re not completely in control any more. This is where the stress levels start to become a nuisance. You feel more tired for no real physical effort, you are touchier and snappy when things go wrong. You may go off your food or begin comfort-eating. Your brain seems sluggish and you find decisions a problem. You may also become forgetful and start mislaying things.

Going for the Burn

If this sort of stress is allowed to fester unchallenged it may skid off-piste from summit to downhill slalom, where it can swiftly run out of control.

It is at this stage that the symptoms start to get serious. Nausea, palpitations, indigestion, dizziness and exhaustion may be the physical manifestations. Then there are the tears that appear for no apparent reason, the smoking or drinking that can become heavier, the inability to cope, the headaches, and the general exaggeration of moods – so that vague irritability becomes screaming temper tantrums and nervousness escalates into dread and panic attacks.

Stress Busting

For a big production like a business presentation you may be able to surf your stress, enjoying and employing the adrenalin buzz to make your speech sparkier and wittier.

For everyday use, though, you need to cut free. To do this takes time and application. It also needs trust in the cures, which isn’t easy because many of the options appear barmy.

Stressed-out executives walk a high-wire of jittery mirth. Yoga, mood-music and chanting can induce paroxysms of cynical, ill-concealed laughter. Lying, stretched out, on the floor rediscovering your aura can lead to convulsive attacks of the giggles that can make the stress symptoms seem almost preferable.

If you are addicted to the adrenalin of stress you will find relaxation techniques difficult. In a busy job you will suffer from the ‘four-second’ syndrome, the instant-gratification, instant-results disease that makes you impatient when you aren’t making constructive use of your time, even for four seconds.

Lying on floors listening to whale noises or womb sounds is not for the cynical. Some of the following may be, as they are easy, fast-working and practical.

Loony Tunes

• Sit still. You are achieving nothing by your impression of a whirlwind.

• Find any slow, mediocre ditty you think relaxing and listen to it. Nothing stimulating can pass muster for this, though it’s important it’s stuff you quite like, too. If rain-forest sounds make you jittery, try Mahler or Burt Bacharach. Avoid the Blues or you may slide from stressed to depressed. Play this stuff when you feel stressed-out. Take a Walkman to work, if you feel it would help.

Facial Scrubs

• Sit still.

• Place your elbows on the desk and start massaging your face. Nothing with a psycho-spin to startle your colleagues, just a little eyebrow- or earlobe-rubbing here and there. Maybe a gentle pinch to the bridge of the nose. Or a cool caress along the temples. Slacken the jaw muscles an inch or two along the way.

Pulse Out

• Sit still.

• Place your fingers lightly on your pulse and close your eyes. Listen to your heartbeat. Then do everything you can to slow it down – relax your body. Empty your mind. Breathe deep and slow. The buzz of satisfaction you’ll receive when you realize you have regained control over your own bodily functions will be enormous.

Age in Context

• Sit still.

• Relax your body and close your eyes.

• Visualize. You are a very old person, now retired. There is no office any more, no work – just the annual nursing-home outing to Blackpool to look forward to. Look back on your life. Then think – does this problem I’m stressed about really matter that much? Will it matter to me when I’m reading the Peoples’ Friend and smelling of TCP? Will it? Will it really?

Comfort Zones

• Sit still.

• Do something silly that you enjoyed as a child. Children are expert at formulating their own stress-busting. Cartoons are good. So are lollipops. Find a book you used to enjoy as a kid and drag it out of your bag and read it when the going gets tough. Do this in private if you have a low embarrassment threshold.

Or, do it with enough élan at work and you may even find colleagues will treat you with renewed respect, believing they’re working for a true eccentric genius. Or, at the very least they’ll give you a wide berth in future, which could solve all your stress problems in one fell swoop.

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