How to deal with stress at work: what actually helps

To deal with stress at work in the moment, reach for something quick and physical: a few slow breaths with a long out-breath, a five or ten minute walk, or simply naming what you feel. Over weeks, the things that make the biggest difference are duller: enough sleep, real breaks, a clear end to the workday, and someone to talk to.

Most stress advice mixes those two kinds together, which is why so much of it disappoints. A breathing exercise can't fix a job with too much in it, and a talk with your manager won't calm you down five minutes before a presentation.

What helps with stress at work right now?

These are for the moment your chest tightens, an email lands badly or a meeting goes sideways. Each takes under ten minutes, and most take under two.

Make the out-breath longer

Breathe in through your nose to a slow count of four, then let it out over a count of six. Five or six rounds is plenty. Slow breathing tends to bring the heart rate down a little, and small studies suggest it leaves people feeling calmer for a while afterwards. Nobody can see you do it, so it works in a meeting with your camera on. Breathing exercises for anxiety at work has four patterns with full steps.

Name it

Put the feeling into words, in your head or on paper: "I'm anxious about this deadline", "I'm angry the plan changed again". Psychologists call this affect labeling, and lab studies suggest that putting a feeling into words takes a little of its sting away. At the least, it turns a vague, whole-body alarm into one specific problem. Writing down the worry and the next small step you could take is a stronger version of the same thing.

Walk

Get up and walk for five or ten minutes, outside if you can. Walking burns off some of the restless, braced energy of stress, gets you away from the screen that is causing it, and gives your eyes something far away to rest on. Many people come back with the problem looking smaller, even though nothing about it has changed.

Unclench

Stress settles in the body before you notice it. Let your teeth come apart, drop your shoulders, and take your hands off the keyboard and let them rest in your lap for a few breaths. Signs your workday is too tense has a 30-second check for this.

Wait before you reply

If a message made you angry, draft the reply in a note instead of the reply box, and send it after your walk. Most replies written in the first minute read differently ten minutes later.

What reduces stress at work over time?

The quick tools take the top off a spike. Your baseline, how stressed you feel on an ordinary Tuesday, mostly comes down to slower things.

• Sleep. Stress makes sleep worse, and short sleep makes the next day's stress feel bigger. A regular bedtime, and work that stops well before it, protect both.
• Breaks during the day. Short breaks away from the screen and a real lunch let you recover as you go, instead of saving it all for the weekend.
• A clear end to the workday. A stop time and a few minutes to write down where you left things make it easier to stop thinking about work in the evening. If you can, turn off work notifications on your phone after hours.
• Movement. Regular exercise is one of the most often recommended ways to manage stress. It doesn't have to be hard; a daily walk counts.
• Regular meals. Running on coffee and nothing else makes everything more irritating than it needs to be.
• Someone to talk to. A friend, a partner or a colleague you trust. Saying it out loud to another person often helps more than solving it alone in your head.
• Sorting what you can change. Make two lists: the parts of the stress you have some control over, and the parts you don't. Act on the first list. For the second, the aim is to notice when you are spending energy on something you can't move.
• The workload conversation. If the stress comes mostly from too much work, the lasting fix is usually less of it, and that means talking to whoever sets your priorities. Bring a list of what is on your plate and ask which items can wait.

Here is the whole toolkit in one place.

What tends not to help

Some of the most common responses to stress make it worse, or just move it along.

• More caffeine. It can sharpen the jittery, on-edge feeling, and late in the day it eats into sleep.
• Working later to catch up. Sometimes necessary. As a habit it takes away the recovery time stress needs.
• Scrolling as a break. It feels like rest but keeps your eyes and attention busy, and the news can add worries of its own.
• Skipping lunch to save time. The afternoon gets harder, not shorter.
• A drink to wind down every night. It can feel like it helps, but alcohol tends to disturb sleep, which feeds the next day's stress.

None of these are failings. They are what people reach for when they are stretched. It just helps to know they don't pay back what they take.

When is stress at work too much?

Some stress comes with any job that matters to you. It becomes a problem when it stops letting go. See your doctor, or a counselor or therapist, if:

• you feel stressed most days for weeks, including weekends;
• your sleep, appetite or energy has changed and stayed changed;
• headaches, stomach trouble or other aches keep returning;
• you feel exhausted, detached from your work and less able to do it, which are the marks often used to describe burnout;
• a drink, or something else, has become how you get through the week.

Chest pain, fainting or real trouble breathing need urgent medical care, even if you are sure it is only stress. It is also worth asking HR whether your employer has an employee assistance program, since many include short-term counseling in confidence. If you are ever in crisis or feel unsafe, call emergency services or a crisis line in your country.

Letting the crew do the remembering

The in-the-moment tools share one weakness: you have to remember them while stressed, which is exactly when you won't. Stress builds while you are busy, and by the time you notice, you have been hunched over the same problem for two hours.

Notchpals hands some of that remembering to its characters. The Self-care area has a Breathe moment, which waits until you have gone an hour and a half at the Mac with no real break, and only comes between 10 AM and 8 PM. With Kapi in your crew:

KapiNothing is urgent for three breaths. Not even that. Breathe slow.

Once each early afternoon, a Movement character brings the Short walk moment. Nick, a fluffy white spitz, argues for it the way only a dog can:

NickTen minutes outside. Sniff something. Tell me about it after.

Come evening, a Self-care character asks for one good thing from the day, a small way to end on something other than the worst email. None of this touches the workload, and none of it knows how stressed you are. The visits come on their own gentle schedule, and Done is simply your word that you took the breath or the walk.