What I Learned Today

I tend to run at a medium-to-high stress level for a variety of reasons, so anytime I come across good advice for managing stress, I’m all ears.

Lifehacker pointed me to this excellent resource: a list of “52 Proven Stress Reducers”. This list is so full of great stuff that if I were to excerpt all of the ones I agree with and would like to practice, this post would be one big plagiarism. Instead, I’ll highlight my top five favorites:

1. Be prepared to wait. A paperback can make a wait in a post office line almost pleasant. [Or knitting, or a journal, or the How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci Notebook.]
2. Don’t put up with something that doesn’t work right. If your alarm clock, wallet, shoe laces, windshield wipers–whatever–are a constant aggravation, get them fixed or get new ones.
3. Relax your standards. The world will not end if the grass doesn’t get mowed this weekend.
4. Do something for somebody else.
5. Do one thing at a time. When you are with someone, be with that person and with no one or nothing else. When you are busy with a project, concentrate on doing that project and forget about everything else you have to do.

Many of these are, really, common sense — but they get forgotten enough that the reminder alone has value. I manage to be continually surprised by how effective #4 is, not just at reducing stress but also at making your day a fabulous one. Really, it works!

There are a couple of techniques I’ve found effective that did not appear on this list.

• Get some physical exercise (like ballroom dancing or hiking, for me). Inevitably, after a dance class or a dance evening or a hike in the San Gabriels, I simply *cannot* feel stressed or unhappy. There’s too much good endorphin stuff flowing through the body to permit fretting or fussing.

• Spend more time on processing. Most of my time is spent on input (reading books, watching movies, attending classes, studying papers, browsing the web, etc.) or output (writing papers, writing email, posting to this weblog, talking to people, etc.). I recently realized that there’s an important third category, which for lack of a better word I refer to as “processing.” This is time when you’re neither taking input or producing output, but just chewing over things that you’ve already observed. Some people call this meditation or contemplation or daydreaming. It has powerful anti-stress properties.

• Refresh your perspective every four weeks. Each time I get a significant break from my day-to-day routine (e.g., a week visiting family or a train ride to Santa Barbara), I am suddenly able to step back and re-assess my priorities and highlight what really matters. Focusing on those items immediately de-stresses me. For whatever reason, after a few weeks I start to lose touch with it, and I’m again consumed with daily demands on my time. I can’t pull myself back far enough without a real separation of some sort (time or space). I’m finding that these breaks are so useful as to be something I should consciously plan for.

Any other de-stressing tips you can offer? I’d love to hear ’em!