Recognize Your Stress Agents at Work
>> Sunday, April 18, 2010 –
Health Tips,
Stress
I have a colleague who is a very nice person and very focused on his work. Let’s call him Ravi. I was recently talking to a Ravi he mentioned how stressed he was after the office everyday.
“Nilendu, when I reach home in the evening, I am very tired and have no energy left. My head feels heavy and the neck is also tired.” Ravi said.
“Ravi, is your current project too much stressful?” I inquired.
“It is. But the stress I feel is more on physical level and not on mental level” He replied.
He continued “This problem disappears when I take vacations or on the weekends. That means this has something to do with the work environment.”
“I agree with you totally. There can be various factors which can be the reason of your problem.” I told him.
When we later analyzed his working style he rarely moved for couple of hours while involved in some tasks. That tired his neck and shoulder muscles a lot and resulted in tiredness. Ravi started taking short breaks more often and did some light shoulder movements. Doing this kept his neck and shoulder muscles relaxed and he was able to control the problem to a large extent. Ideally people should also include exercise in their daily activity to avoid such problems.
Since we work in a software development and consultancy firm I know that our job involves sitting for long hours in front of the computers.
This is a common problem with many people who work on computers for long hours. When we work on the desk for a long time and do not move the muscles start tiring and soon that drains our energy. By the end of the day you would not be left with much energy to spend on your family and kids.
When we work on thinking of a solution for a particular tough problem our focus shifts to that issue totally and during the thought process the physical movements become very less. That is almost similar to meditative process though due to the task in hand and the work environment it is not as relaxing as meditation and in fact causes bodily stress.
Here are few indicators of stress you can check and you can go through the list every hour to see if you are putting some body part under undue stress.
Neck Region : Is your neck thrust forward while working. Do you continuously look up or down during work. When there is less movement of the neck muscles these can cause serious long term problems and make you stressed out by the evening. Move you neck sideways and rotate them frequently.
Shoulder Region : Observe your shoulders. Are they raised up? This can especially happen if the desk is not at the correct height. Constantly keeping the shoulder raised up tires out the shoulder muscles.
Lower Back : Wrong sitting posture, wrong type of chair or constantly sitting for a long time can cause lower back pain. If you feel that lower back is getting tired, get up and take a walk around the office for few minutes.
Forehead and eyebrows : Sometimes when we concentrate too much we squeeze our eyes and forehead. This can also be sign that there may be eye problem. Another issue while working on computers is we blink very less and these can cause red eye or dry eye problem. Eye problems are frequent cause of tiredness
Observing there few tiredness originators and indicators can help you to have a more energetic life after the office.
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