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How to get on top of your work so it doesn’t get on top of you
April 28, 2022
As another Stress Awareness Month comes and goes, at Pumpkin we’ve all found this April particularly pressurised. Whether that’s because work has returned to pre-pandemic busyness or because in many industries companies are short staffed, it’s key we all learn how to manage stress at work.
As 74% of UK adults felt so stressed at some point over the past year that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope, it’s clear we all need to explore coping mechanisms at work and in our personal lives. I’ve pulled together my top tips for helping manage stress levels during the working week.
- Prioritise your to-do list. I find that writing out my to-do list at the beginning of every week, allocating tasks to specific days and prioritising the most urgent work helps to alleviate stress. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed after a Monday morning catch up when work for the week is discussed. But dividing your workload day by day creates more achievable chunks. While writing in a notebook works for me, if you’re more tech savvy then there are many apps now at your fingertips such as TickTick, Google Tasks, Microsoft To Do and Trello.
- Accept you may not get everything done. PR is a world where there is often pressure and urgency to get everything done at once. Accepting that this may not be possible and identifying and shifting non urgent tasks to the following week is crucial to meet deadlines and not panic. For example, my diary is filled with meetings, both client and internal, so sometimes a critical eye is needed. Internal meetings are the first to scrutinise – are they there out of habit rather than necessity? Can they be ditched, pushed back, kept to 10 minutes maximum or replaced with a quick email update? Everyone will be glad of the time saved.
- Go with the flow. Comms is not a world where rigidity works; last minute requests are part and parcel of the job. So, finding a way of managing that fluidity is vital. If you’re asked to drop one task and pick up another, just relax. It may not be best rushing to finish something before starting another task. That’s a recipe for high stress, delivering sub-standard work and potentially having to redo the task entirely. If you can be flexible, park and revisit work to better manage your to-do list. If you’re in the middle of writing a long piece of content and need to urgently jump on a client call or journalist briefing, it’s better not to rush your writing, as it will end up needing more work. Sometimes postponing a long and time-consuming task to another day when you are fresh is the best course of action.
- Communicate and share workload. If you’re struggling don’t just keep it to yourself. There’s a difference between needing to get your head down and crack on and drowning in work and feeling overwhelmed – when it’s the latter, don’t suffer in silence. By letting your team know the situation, other team members can lend a hand where possible and appropriate. It also means managers know you’re at full capacity when they are delegating new tasks. Open communication is important when it comes to de-stressing at work – even if it’s just to vent occasionally. Since Covid-19 began, workplaces across all industries have had to manage increasing sick leave. In April last year, the total days lost increased to one million from 25,000 (a monthly average over the previous five years). The pandemic has meant that everyone has had to become more adaptable and willing to pick up work from colleagues. We use WhatsApp to communicate quickly with each other, help each other out and handover key actions when someone is ill. This helps people who are taking sick days not worry that urgent tasks will be missed.
And finally remember, it’s PR not ER!
Ella Wallace-Browne