3 tricks to feel less anxious at work

Anxiety about work can feel all-consuming. When you’re really anxious about your job, you may think about it constantly but feel paralyzed when it comes to actually accomplishing tasks or improving how you feel. 

This pattern of anxiety followed by paralysis hurts your productivity, takes a huge toll on your mental health, and also can impact your physical health. For instance, feelings such as anxiety, sadness, and loneliness have been known to negatively impact sleep, increase the risk of stroke, and increase the risk of developing dementia. 

As a time management coach, I help my clients overcome anxiety and get more done. Here are my top three tips to help you feel less anxious at work:

Write everything down 

A major cause for job-related anxiety is being worried that you’re forgetting something. To counteract that fear, I recommend having a written list of any tasks that you need to accomplish. You could write these out on a piece of paper, record them in a task management system, put them in a project management tool, or even keep them in your calendar.

Where you keep them is not as important as the fact that you have a centralized place for capturing all of your to-do items. Simply knowing you have a place to look so you won’t completely forget something can dramatically reduce anxiety.

And to help alleviate anxiety even more, I recommend the following to-do list management tips:

• Avoid putting fake deadlines on your tasks so that you end up with a massive amount of “overdue” items that aren’t actually late.
• Separate out your random ideas of things you might want to do at some point from the must-do tasks. David Allen calls this having a “Someday/Maybe List.” This reduces task clutter and increases clarity.
• Review your centralized list on a weekly basis and decide which are the most important tasks for the next seven days. You can then put those on a weekly task list so that you have fewer items to focus on completing and feel less overwhelmed by the number of items still left to do.

Be deadline guided

I don’t recommend having a “deadline-driven” approach to your work because this can lead to hopping from one fire to another, feeling burned out, and having extremely low productivity when you’re not absolutely forced to get something done. This creates anxiety because you associate meeting a deadline with extreme stress and sleep deprivation, and because you’re always feeling behind.

However, I do recommend being deadline guided. What this means is that you’re conscious of what really needs to get done. For instance, you should know whether a task is an essential item and has a firm due date. Then with this knowledge in mind, plan time in your schedule to get that work done ahead of the actual deadline.

For example, if I have something important due on a Friday, I’ll usually try to at least begin it the prior week in case something else comes up, or the work takes longer than expected. This reduces anxiety because I know when I plan to start the task that I have time set aside for it, and I have a buffer for unexpected events.

To decrease your anxiety even more, I also recommend these planning tips:

• Break down larger projects into smaller tasks so that you have clarity on what to do when you reach your project time. This also makes it easier to restart a project after any interruptions.
• If you can’t find time on your calendar to get a project done, make time by canceling or rescheduling meetings, delegating work off your plate, or asking for a deadline extension.
• Set up intermediate deadlines with your boss or a colleague so that you’re forced to make progress before the final deadline. 

Communicate early and often 

One of the major causes of anxiety at work isn’t necessarily the work itself. It’s the stress created when you feel like you’re letting people down. This anxiety compounds when you avoid communicating to others about what’s going on. When you don’t communicate, you not only feel bad about the incomplete items but also the unanswered emails.

To avoid the anxiety created by people incessantly following up with you, simply reply.

You don’t have to have completed an item to let people know you’re working on it, share a status update, or even just acknowledge receipt. Yes, it’s best if you get work done. But any response is far better than not replying at all.

To lower communication anxiety, I highly recommend:

• Follow up with stakeholders before they reach out to you. This reduces your sense of feeling pressured and ensures them that you haven’t forgotten about the work.
• Don’t make promises of specific deadlines unless you need to do so and actually plan to keep them. For instance, you can say something like “I’ll get this to you soon” instead of “I’ll get this to you Friday.”
• If you’re not going to meet a deadline, let others know as soon as possible. They may not be happy, but at least they have time to prepare. If you don’t share until the last minute that you’re going to miss a deadline, you create more anxiety for yourself and them.

Workplace anxiety can come in many different forms and be due to many different factors. But these three tips can help you dramatically reduce that anxiety. The best part is that reducing your anxiety at work creates a virtuous cycle: You feel less and less anxious, you think less about work, and you have more time to actually get work done.