How to manage stress.

kduke · Post by **kduke** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:48 pm

Stress Relievers for Consultants.

1. Try to eat and sleep at the same time everyday.
2. Try to not think about work before sleeping or during eating. The stress was so bad at one project we had a rule that if you talked about work during lunch then you bought everyone's lunch.
3. Breathe. Take a breath instead of reacting immediately to some crisis.
4. Take care of your self. Try to exercise.
5. Try to stay calm. Be angry and sin not. Anger is okay but try not to punish everyone who has made you angry.
6. Mood swings are not good for the team or yourself. Even tempered is better for yourself than any company or project.
7. Take time to slow down after a major deliverable.
8. Celebrate a good deliverable.
9. If management is crashing down on you then try not to pass it on to the rest of the team. Share some things but not the bad things.
10. Watch what you say and unto whom. You can share wisdom or mentor but you can make a bad situation worse by sharing too much.
11. Try not to do it all yourself. Mentoring is a better long-term solution.
12. Delegate and trust someone. Try to hold them accountable so stress is spread across the whole team. If you try to break ten sticks then it is a lot easier to break them one at a time. To break them all in one break takes a lot more pressure. Pressure is another word for stress.
13. Try not to change the whole team in one day. Expect it to take a while. You need allies to change bad momentum to good. If your team is moving in the wrong direction then it takes a while to turn the bus around.
14. Try not to throw people in front of the bus or allow others to be thrown in front of the bus. Do not participate in the blame game.
15. Protect yourself by documenting what was said in private in an email. State what was said and say you are just trying to confirm what was expected. Copy your boss or someone else to prove what was said. Clear definitions are a safe way to avoid the blame game.
16. If someone is unreasonable then weigh the situation. Your health worth risking for a situation you may not be able to change.
17. All jobs have stress.
18. The bigger the risk the more the stress.
19. Manage expectations. If expectations are not reasonable then you might not be able to change them until the next deliverable. Knowledge and experience in estimating helps. If estimates continue to be low then double or triple the next deliverable estimate. This will protect you until you can make the team more efficient.
20. Understand the talent on your team. Estimate their skill level against what the deliverable requires. Expand estimates based on skill to requirement. Use the best or most experienced for the requirement.
21. Challenge your team to learn new skills during slow times.
22. Cross train. Skills transfer means stress is being spread across the whole team.
23. Keep all team members busy. A few team members doing most of the work because the work was not spread out is not good.
24. Hope for the best. Plan for the unexpected and trust your team.
25. Decide to be happy and life is more than your job but if you can be happy for 8 hours a day then outside work can be really enjoyable.
26. Understand who to trust. Who has the most to loose. You need allies make sure you trust the right people.

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:19 pm

'Constants' = 'Consultants', I assume?

kduke · Post by **kduke** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:42 pm

Thanks. Fixed.

Stress is pretty constant some times. That and death and taxes.

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:58 pm

Have a life. This must be the most important point on any list.

I have a number of activities completely unrelated to ETL, some of which (such as umpiring a sport or modelling railways at a scale of 1:160) require sufficient concentration that I can completely ignore anything even vaguely related to my paid work. As a result, I'm still sane (at least by my own standards) after all these years.

If you have a young family, devote some uninterrupted - and uninterruptable - time to them. You can pick up extra work when they've left the nest. You only get one chance. When you're regretting the missed chance it's too late. You have to be a parent and a friend, not just a provider.

Rip some of your favourite music onto your laptop or MP3 player. Take some time out to relax when you need to. Get outside, or at least get away from the computer screens and stare at the scenery outside the building (this adaptation of focus is good for your eyes, too).

Everything in moderation. Even a moderate amount of stress can be a positive factor.

(I can't manage Kim's #1 point - I have enough difficulty eating and sleeping in the same time zone, much less at the same time!)

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 9:33 pm

Learn to let go, just so that, you can come back to it with a fresher mind. In the begining I used to spend hours trying to solve a problem. It would get solved on my way to work the next day. Having a relaxed mind is the key to unlock all doors. Well almost all.

All points layed out by Kim are to be pondered upon and can be adhered to as commandments. Very wise insight Kim. [thumbs up]

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:06 am

That reminds me of the old gag where Moses is coming down from the mountain and announces "on these tablets there are fifteen - oops! (crash!) - ten commandments."

kumar_s · Post by **kumar_s** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:10 am

Good to see these sort of post among the routine ones.
:D

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:50 am

Kim cares about us

kduke · Post by **kduke** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 9:07 pm

I don't want you to make the same mistakes as I did. If you run your health down too far then you may never recover. In my 30's I could work way beyond what my body told me to and bouce back quickly. What I did not know was you pay for it in your 40's and 50's. Developed some pretty poor habits. Let someone else be superman.

Ray is right. Music will sooth your soul. Whatever calms you down. I like smooth jazz most of the time. It calms me down. I like rock and hot tea to pick me up.

DSGuru79 · Post by **DSGuru79** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:14 am

Great...Good one Kim. Going thru this itself gives a kind of relief.

kumar_s · Post by **kumar_s** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:55 am

Kim, what you said is 100% true. We can do anything but not with the cost of our health. I ll find room for myself to play Cricket, just an outdoor game. I do pencil sketches to find some relaxation. I ll try to follow the commandments that you mentioned.

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:46 am

My dad used to warn me about this. He used to warn me about how youth can push a person to extremes and how a person pays for it once the age wagon starts going down hill. Moderation is the key. Anything a person does, extremes are never to be crossed. As Kim put it, let someone else be superman.