Stress is normal in the workplace, but when it is too much, it can adversely affect your performance on the job, lead to serious health issues, ruin your relationship and put your home life in jeopardy. In fact, stress can determine whether you succeed or fail at your job.

10 Warning Signs You Are Stressed at Work 

When you are stressed at work, your body will often give you warning signs. Below are some of the signs you need to heed:

• Feeling overwhelmed and unable to think well
• You can’t concentrate for long
• Loss of confidence 
• You become angry easily 
• You have headaches
• Any little thing irritates you
• You have trouble sleeping
• Low sex drive

7 Common Workplace Stressors and How to Deal With Them Effectively

1. Lack of Clarity 

Clarity issues are communication issues. Therefore, to overcome clarity issues, learn to convey what needs to be done clearly without leaving room for ambiguity.  If the problem is coming from others, then ask questions until you fully understand the job to be done.

2. Lack of time 

To overcome lack of time, you need to set deadlines on tasks and projects and communicate the deadlines clearly. But you need to be careful not to set deadlines not based in reality. If you set deadlines that are not realistic, work that needs to be done won’t be completed on time, or worse; you get poor quality work. 

3. Lack of Knowledge

It’s frustrating when the people you count on to get things don’t have a clue on how to get them done. To prevent this, make it easy and safe for people to speak up about their knowledge gap and seek for help on time.

4. Worrying about bad events that might happen

Bad things happen all the time, yes. But worrying won’t prevent them from happening. One way to put your mind at ease is to see your doctor. It can be hard to find the time to have a check-up, but with your insurance provider, you can make private GP appointments online. By seeing your doctor, you put your mind at ease to focus on work.

5. Too many open folders

Too many open folders often lead to folder fatigue. To overcome stress triggered by too many open folders, start by choosing one project to work on at a time. This will limit the number of folders you have to open. Also, invest in tools that enable you to visualise important folders on a single dashboard.

6. Lack of Control

You need first to identify what you can control and what you can’t. For the things you can control but have yet to come up with a solution, don’t fret about it.  Instead, give yourself time to think and reflect. Stressing yourself about problems you don’t have solutions for yet will only prevent you from finding solutions.

7. Change

People are naturally resistant to change, and this can be a major source of stress. One way to overcome this is to look at the positive benefits to be derived from the change. If the benefits of the change far outweigh the discomfort, but other team members are against the change, you need to persuade them to embrace it and give them time to adapt.