• "Stress" is primarily an endocrine reaction to fear or anger.

    In this case, it's primarily going to be low-intensity fear, engendered by a threat to project success, as a reaction to unknown vectors entered into a survival calculation. Of course, getting to fear requires passing through antagonism and anger, on a standard emotional curve.

    So, the genesis of it hints directly at a cure for it. First, it's a reaction to unknown factors being entered into a survival calculation, so a positive response is gather more data, disseminate more data, and validate new calculations/plans based on that. In other words, communicate, then communicate some more, then communicate some more, with the areas affected.

    The single most common cause of both work overload and project failure is doing work twice. The most common cause of that is picking up some piece of work (opening an e-mail, looking at a piece of code, whatever), and not handling it right then and there, but instead deciding to handle it later. Right there, you just made yourself do at least twice the work of analyzing whatever it is you just had to analyze a first time. The second most common cause of double-work is not doing something right the first time, usually in a false sense of "just get it done".

    In summary, three very easy ways to reduce work-related stress in most circumstances: Communicate more, and more effectively; Do it right the first time; Don't pick something up, analyze it, then decide to handle it later.

    The biggest stress factor after that is fear engendered by people who just plain enjoy spreading bad news. Simple solution, just avoid those people if you can.

    - Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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    "Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon