One truly absurd, yet extremely effective tactic is to place yourself in stressful situations early on in your career. In other words, there is no substitute for experiencing stress to mitigate the impact of stress later on. Examples of professions that have institutionalized this practice include the medical, legal, and investment banking professions. That doctor who is now cool as a cucumber when faced with a life or death situation likely didn't feel the same way during their residency program. But the amount of stress that person endured early on in their career prepared them to handle stress later on. It's important to note that this path isn't for everyone, but if you're up for it, it works really well.

Roger Silvermane

Founder and CEO, Silvermane Consulting

Posted on Dec. 15, 2011

Hi Catherine,

I can completely agree with Scott that having a hobby outside of work is important. I would add that make sure that hobby takes all of your concentration so you can release all thoughts around work.

Having said that, I personally had problems with stress due to the fact that my work kept me mentally occupied even after leaving the office. So I had to be able to "mentally leave the office" before I could engage in a hobby outside of work.

Several years ago, I found that the reason for my stress was that I had 1000 things to do and was afraid of "dropping the ball" or forgetting one of the tasks or critical problems to be resolved.

Then I learned a technique for writing/listing up everything that needed to be done, problems to be solved etc. And the most important part, I made sure that the tasks and issues were PRIORITIZED.

This did several things, first and most beneficial was that I could leave the office free from stress because the list I made would be waiting to remind me what needed to be done when I came in again the next morning.

Second benefit was that taking the effort to prioritize tasks and issues showed me how the problems were interlinked and that solving 5 major issues would resolve 100 smaller issues. This increased my productivity and dramatically reduced my workload.

Today, I go a bit further and write down ideas and thoughts so I can remember them later at a more "appropriate" time.

Try it, hopefully it can benefit you as much as it has helped me.

Lisa Boesen

Owner, DBA Lisa Boesen

Posted on Dec. 16, 2011

I may not be interpreting the question correctly but I don’t think there is truly a “stress-free” management. One needs just the right amount of stress to promote change, “stretch”, motivate and create resiliency. You have to manage the frequency and intensity of the added stress to insure you are not creating anxiety, overload or fatigue on yourself or others and thus becoming ineffective. I think of stress like a rubberband except that when we relax, ideally we do not relax back to our original state. We are more resilient and our new “shape” has learned how to accommodate the challenges and stressors of life. It is absolutely important to rest, regroup, and rejuvenate but I think it is a fallacy to say life, management or whatever is truly “stress-free.” With that said, I agree with the other contributors. Allow time to develop your non-work side through family, friends, spiritual development, hobbies remembering that what is remembered is who you are, not the 40, 50, 60+ hours per week you put in over the years. Take care of your physical self and although that can be a stressful it may result in a greater sense of calm and control. Allow yourself time to regroup and rejuvenate to create a stronger baseline of resiliency.