Faith Evans with A Tribe Called Quest on the title lyric, but it was Kristen Harris, my manager at Sun, who forwarded me "Top 5 myths about workplace stress". It's a nice piece. It has a few flake-off bits, but it certainly does identify unfortunate attitudes towards workplace stress I've seen. One bit I decided I need to pay special attention to is:
So the solution to stress is not to work harder to catch up because in most workplaces this is impossible. The solution is to feel good about the work you finish and not to get stressed about the work you don’t finish. It’s not that you should stop caring, it’s just that you should remember that being stressed makes you less productive, which means you get less work done and become more stressed. That’s a vicious circle right there and we need to break it.
Seems obvious in print, but I do so often get caught up in my mountains of unfinished work, and sometimes it weighs on me so heavily that it slows everything down. I think I'll try to keep a scratch list of accomplishments, however minor, for each day, and try starting each day reviewing the list from the previous day. Perhaps this might put me at risk of further malaise if, for example, I fall behind on keeping my accomplishments scratch list, or if I start each day nit-picking my previous day's work. But it's worth a try.