Hello! As you all know, us consultants have stressful jobs. Long hours, lots of travel, demanding colleagues. Thus, we oftentimes find ourselves stressed out. So, let's make this a thread where we all share our tips for: 1. Avoiding Stress and 2. Coping With Stress. Please state with your answer whether you are a soft-skills type of person (HR, cultural issues type, change management type, leftie) or a hard-skills type of person (engineer, IT, finance, right-winger) as this might help us to understand the applicability of the proposed solutions to different character types.Thanx Dudez!!!!

1. You cannot avoid stress. Even the attempt to avoid stress creates stress. 2. Accept that business is not life and death. Everything else is the stress you take on yourself, so on that basis decide what is in your direct responsibility, what is someone else's and what you can delegate away. Everything that is not directly yours should not now be in your direct consciousness (other than any supervisory capacity), so no stress there if you let go and mean it. What is directly with you will only cause stress if you create that stress yourself.

Take the stress on weekdays....don't care a damn about work on weekends

Totally agree with what Mars said - it is all about being mindful of the fundamentals of your role and effectively separating what truly affects you and what doesn't. Number one thing for me - cut the booze (if you do - and most of my British colleagues do) and start exercising. Anything that gets you outdoors for 30-40 min. It not only helps drown stress in serotonin, it makes you fitter, more balanced and productive. It's really that simple.

Have to agree on the booze. I've just tried drastically cutting down consumption this month and the difference is huge, I'm not going back! Not only do I get a lot more done, I can focus more easily, I get less tired and a lot less stressed. To BEP's point too, it's not life and death. Is anyone going to give a flying f**k about that report you wrote on digitally transforming retailers in D&E markets in five years time? No, thought not.

All good advice re booze and exercise. I cut down caffeine to strictly one cup of caffeinated coffee per day, and it had made a big difference as well.

I agree with Marsday. It's all about your own perception.I'll add1 - Reasonable use of this can help (turn the asterisk into a U)http://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-f*ck2 - Let go of your emotions, even when sober. Some cultures might be better at this than others. 3 - Try to find ways to discipline yourself easily. I find that a lot of stress is self-generated, not so much in psychological terms but in practical ones. That general slack of postponing, dealing with issues only when they become catastrophic, and thus everything becomes catastrophic is a major issue for most people at all levels. 4 - Take up some extreme sport as a past-time. I've been doing on and off rock climbing for some 2-3 years now. Once you get used to the risks of moving on a rock face, at the limit of your technical and physical ability and in situations when cocking it up might result in a fall of some 7-8 metres and maybe some pain, anything that your worklife can throw at you seems a non-issue all of a sudden. Maybe...5 - Find the right balance between quantity and intensity of the work you do. Some people prefer to be revved up throughout their work so long as it's over with quickly and doesn't overspill in the weekend. Some others don't mind longer hours and taking some work at home to be done in peace, if the pace can of the day can be slower6 - Come to terms with the fact that you can't do everything (and) perfectly all the time. Learn to prioritise and to delegate. Find the stuff that yields the most results and do it, forget about the rest.Oh, I'm the latter type of person BEP described, I guess it was pretty clear...

Great tips i have found here to get rid of stress :)

Exercise is key. Also, just remember that you're basically working to enrich somebody else. You're as stressed as you let them make you.

True, but slightly less so if you are a contractor ; )

[quote]True, but slightly less so if you are a contractor ; )[/quote]

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I leave all the stress out of work, if work is a source of stress, then you need to quit.

Everyone becomes stressed because of work, studies, etc. but there are ways to reduce it. Like for me I use CBD oil and it's very helpful! Here's the link that talks about the benefits of it. https://uk.formulaswiss.com/blogs/cbd-and-stress/cbd-can-reduce-stress?_pos=1&_sid=d36ecaa05&_ss=r

I spend my time with a good Single Malt and a woman - works a treatDC

Echo DC's sentiment. Though, am more of a 'blended' person myself :-)