How You Can Reduce Your Stress In 5 Steps
Stress is part of Newhouse
Spending more time in the library than in your own bed? Knowing the menu of food.com better than the cooks do? Calling your mom crying because you can’t do this, it’s just too hard and you want to come home? Stress seems to be an integrate part of Graduate school, but why is that so?
Biological mechanisms
Stress is as old as the way to Rome, older even according to the Dutch Psychiatrist Witte Hoogendijk, one of Europe’s most knowledgeable people on stress. Hoogendijk promoted on the locus coeruleus, the so-called blue spot in our brain where a mere 10,000 cells produce noradrenaline, the stuff that heightens our senses and bumps up our stress levels. It turns out that the same biological mechanism existed in fish already for hundreds of thousands of years: in a split-second, fish had to decide if it was going to be flight or fight. A competitor had to be bested or a predator fish was approaching. The same archaic stress-response system is active in humans. Hoogendijk compares it with the alarm system of second-hand cars, spotty and way too sensitive. Although we are no longer being threatened by predators or hunger, our body reacts to deadlines or projects as if they were life threatening situations.
Just take it easy?
So we just need to tell ourselves that the world doesn’t end if we don’t get at least an A for our midterms? Easier said than done, right. Sometimes deadlines do gnaw upon us like the bite of the saber-toothed tiger of yore. Our lives aren’t that stressful but our thinking makes it so, according to Tony Crabbe, the author of Busy: How to thrive in a world of too much. Crabbe works as a corporate psychologist for multinational companies like Disney and Microsoft. Rumor has it that he has had one Mr. Gates on his sofa on several occasions. We don’t feel pressured because we have a million and one things do to, it’s the helplessness of getting ourselves organized to do all of them that stresses us. Whether Crabbe spoke with Graduate students at the London School of Economics or employees from Disney or Microsoft, all were struggling to get a grip upon their busy lives.
Five golden standards from Crabbe
- Thou shalt concentrate
Focus on intention, not on time. In his book, Crabbe describes how a majority of the people he talked to seemed to be running from meeting to meeting, not having one moment during the week where they could sit down and reflect upon it. The worst thing, according to Crabbe, is that they seem to be proud of it. Crabbe is very clear on this: there is no way you can perform in our current knowledge economy if you don’t have time to reflect.
Manage your attention. Focus: turn your email notifications off and put your phone away.
- Thou shalt schedule thy time in big chunks
Give yourself at least two hours per project. Don’t work in small blocks of time. Your brain doesn’t have to jump from one thing to another, but can focus on one thing at the time. Cluster similar activities like answering emails and Snapchatting.
- Thou shalt do nothing from time to time
Resist today’s trend of filling up our whole day with activities. We are the first generation that spends so little time with just our brain and our thoughts. The Italians have a fantastic saying: dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. moments of time are the cradle of creativity and fresh insight. Crabbe gets most inspired when he’s strolling through an airport or just driving to nowhere.
- Thou shalt develop a morning routine
Don’t put your phone next to your bed. We all do it, but we shouldn’t. Also, eat breakfast, even if it’s only a bowl of cereal. You can look at your phone now, but don’t go into your inbox just yet. That way you prevent that the organizational uber communication sucks your brains dry from the moment you wake up.
- Thou shalt not do everything.
If you have ten problems and you want to solve them all at the same time, you end up with having eleven problems, because that’s never going to work. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel nor is a B the end of our world.
