How to avoid stressful situations at work

There are days when everyone and everything seems to work against you while you are trying to find a solution for problems. A deadline set for the next week is reset to tomorrow, a task that you had to finish until tomorrow your boss needs it now. You get into a very stressful situation because you want to solve those problems as fast as possible and satisfy your aggressively reset deadline and your funny boss who wants everything now or never. Well, these can be very challenging situations, but there are ways to avoid such problems. In this article, I am going to share my experience on this topic.

Keep clear communication

In many cases, problems like mentioned above can happen because of poor communication between you and the party who expects your solution. Even if communications seem an undeniable part of a project, many times, large and expensive projects fail because of poor communication. There are many approaches and even remarkable frameworks with stringent communication regulations in a project where a relatively large team is working together. So make sure your communication is clear and documented to avoid unnecessarily stressful situations.

Don’t wait until the last minute

For example, if a task is set to be done in two weeks, but actually it looks like you needs only a few hours to finish it, make sure you finish it as soon as you get the time for it; or better said, make the time to finish it as early as possible. Now, is the best time to start working on it. From my experience, I often underestimate the time needed to complete my tasks, so I always focus on finishing as early as possible, at least those tasks with a deadline. This way, I win some room to play with if, eventually, anything unexpected pops up.

Solve all dependencies on time

Let’s say you need to finish task B on a specific deadline. But to start working on task B, there is another task A that has to be completed, so you can start working on task B. However, it happens that task A is assigned to a college of you. So you have to wait until your college is done with task A, so you can start working on task B. In this case, you really need to set a deadline for your college before the actual deadline, so you can have enough time to finish your part, which is task B. Sometimes this part can be tricky because you are not the one who decides about deadlines, but you still have to get what you need. Here is how I manage such situations: first, I try to arrange with my colleges, so we both can finish our tasks on time, no matter if I am in the position of task A or B. If that doesn’t work, I talk to the project manager or whoever is above us to find a solution. Usually, the first step works almost always, but if not, the second step gets the job done, and there is always a solution in the arrangement.

Summary

This article’s main takeaway is to make sure that you have documented your communication about arrangements. Make sure you keep clear communication while accepting those arrangements. Teamwork is also a significant part of any project, so make sure you are an excellent team player.