Stress: Is more “Sink Time” needed?
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC
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Defining the workplace now sees many of us having had our lives so infiltrated completely without even noticing it. And it has also moved into those natural gaps in the day that allow us to maintain our sense of reality and balance. Like blinking gives the eyes a rest, those gaps give us natural respite.
Hence as our workplace has become more intrusive it is now so very different to “once upon a time”. Conventional wisdom once suggested we should manage stress in the workplace by determining; the boundaries between lower limits of too little to do and few rewards and the punishing regime of too much to do and too little time to enjoy the rewards. Both extremes provoke de-motivating stress.
Once upon a time… yes it does sound like a fairy tale… there was a man who caught the bus to his office every day. He would get up at a respectable hour and start the day with a run in his locale, nodding to the other regulars who also made time for exercise routines. It was a time when he would actually sift through things in his mind that he was expecting to tackled that day. “Sink time “, a colleague used to refer to it as. That is a time when bad ideas would sink so good ideas can surface and when creative responses to difficult situations might emerge.
The walk from the bus stop to the office was the most valuable as the days focus started to become concentrated” This period of sink time” was when could finalize his strategy for the work day.
These days with far less structure and routine available in our workplace to us, we still need to find the time sink time for some natural ways to allow the junk to fall and the good stuff to rise, so we can manage our lives to have one.
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Nada Mills is a retired clinical psychologist enjoying living in Perth Western Australia
Workplace stress
Stress can be good and stress can be bad. Good stress can help you work harder and make your job more challenging and interesting. Bad stress can be like a ‘work-caused disease’
What causes stress?
High demands at work + low control over them = stress.
Here are some examples:
You’re given too much work to do or there aren’t enough people to share the work
You haven’t received enough training to do your job
You’re working long hours
Things that can help to reduce work stresses include:
Creating a safe and healthy work environment
Consulting about changes to job roles or workplace practices
Minimising unpaid overtime
Taking a reasonable amount time between shifts and taking regular rest breaks
Eating well and regularly, make sure you take your meal breaks and rest breaks
Exercising (this will help you sleep better and give you more energy)
Check out this helpful fact sheet on stress in the workplace
OHS Reps @ Work
Find out more about work-related stress and its effects
ACTU Worksite
Fact sheet on fatigue, stress and injury in the workplace
WorkSafe Victoria
Information and advice about health and safety at work
Actually, those sink times are best for each individual to plan their daily work.
Your sink time is similar to some of the interpretations of the micro sabbatical in this recent HBR article http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/trapani/2009/11/how-to-take-a-creative-micro-s.html
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