Noise can cause intense stress.
In a working environment a high level of background noise can severely impair your ability to concentrate. In an open plan office, the sound of people talking casually, of office machinery, or of meetings going on can seriously undermine the quality of work done. Ringing telephones disturb not only the person to whom the call is directed but also other people in the same area.
Large amounts of background noise during the day can cause irritability, tension and headaches in addition to loss of concentration.
Solutions to noise at work can involve:
In a home environment, unwanted noise can be even more stressful and irritating as it intrudes on private space.
Where noise comes from neighbours or someone sharing the house, it may be effective to try a pleasantly assertive approach. Ask that music is turned down or that a different room be used.
Where noise comes from outside the home, double-glazing the windows may be effective in reducing outside noise.
Another source of stress is muscular tension and pain caused by bad furniture or by bad use of good furniture.
This normally shows itself in backache caused by badly designed chairs or by bad seating positions in properly designed chairs, although it can show itself in other ways. It is important to take the time to arrange your working environment so that it is comfortable. For example, when you consider that you may spend a large proportion of each day sitting in a particular seat, it is worth ensuring that it is not causing you pain or damaging your body.
If you work at a computer, then it is worth ensuring that the monitor and keyboard are comfortably positioned and you are well-positioned relative to them. If you find that tendons in your hands get sore when you type for sustained periods then it may be worth experimenting with an ergonomic keyboard. If you find that your eyes get sore when looking at a monitor or that you start to get headaches then try taking breaks periodically.
If you feel that you are experiencing pain from your environment, it may be worth looking into ergonomics in more detail.
It is important for people to feel that they have sufficient personal space at work and at home. You may have experienced the dissatisfaction, stress and irritation of working at a different desk each day or of sleeping in a different hotel room each night. This unpleasant situation is largely caused by the lack of power to organize and control the space in which you operate.
Other people can also cause you stress when they impose themselves on your personal space, perhaps entering it uninvited.
The ideal way of establishing personal space is to have a room or office of your own into which you control access. If this is not possible, you can block off areas with furniture, screens or blinds.
In the highly undesirable situation where no personal space is available, then you can establish some feeling of ownership by bringing personal objects such as small plants or photographs of loved-ones into the workspace.
Some recent experiments in management practice have involved eliminating personal space in the working environment, allocating different working cubicles to members of staff each time they come in. The idea behind this is to keep sales people out of the office. If your employer shows this level of contempt for you, then the best thing may be to find another job with a better company.
Taking frequent effective exercise, like Fencing, is probably one of the best physical stress-reduction techniques available. Exercise, like Fencing, not only improves your health and reduces stress caused by unfitness; it also relaxes tense muscles and helps you to sleep.
Exercise has a number of other positive benefits:
There are a lot of wrong approaches to exercise. Many traditionally recommended forms of exercise actually damage your body over the medium or long term. It is worth finding reputable and up-to-date sources of advice on exercise, possibly from your doctor and then having a customized exercise plan drawn up for you.
An important thing to remember is that exercise should be fun - if you do not enjoy it, then you will probably not keep doing it.
If you have a subject that you would like covered or comments, please e-mail me at gord@scarboroughfencing.on.ca
"All For One And One For All"
Gordon Fong, Head Coach
Scarborough Fencing Club