Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Deal w/ User Induced Stress?
Anonymous asks: "I've worked as a Network/System Administrator at a small company for two years now. It's my nature to remain calm and collected while trying to accommodate everyone, even when having a particularly stressful day. After two years though, I've recently found myself being stressed all the time and my calm, cool exterior is starting to show some cracks. How do Slashdot readers cope with the stress induced by a highly demanding job and being stalked by users asking for the same thing over and over (i.e. password resets, login problems, how do you...)?"
In today's economy everyone is working to the point where they don't even know what stress is anymore. There is no "normal days" to remind us what work was supposed to be like.
The worst thing to do with stress/emotion is to hide it and keep it away. Sure, there are definitely occasions when you need to keep your cool, but if you fid yourself having to do it constantly every day, get out fast. You will find yourself doing something rash and stupid which you will most definitely regret later on if you let it all build up.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
"being stalked by users asking for the same thing over and over (i.e. password resets, login problems, how do you...)"
:D
If you have a large number of people asking the same things over and over again, you ought to have (as the name suggests) a FAQ. Keep it up to date and relevant to the problems people have, and it will save you (and them) time.
If a bunch of people are confused about the same issue, maybe the process they have to follow should be made more user friendly? Usually when a lot of people have the same problem, it is a genuine problem, and not them being idiots. If they *are* idiots there's not much you can do to fix that, so try increasing user-friendliness first.
Keep in mind there is a good kind of lazy. Any tools you can create to save work for yourself and others in the future, is the good kind of lazy. So spend a couple hours writing a shell script, so that you can save 20 minutes each time a problem comes up again and again. Eliminate mindless repetitive tasks as much as possible, and you'll save yourself time, and the time you do work will be more enjoyable.
No, they've learned to write down their passwords on post-it notes stuck to their monitors or elsewhere. Or, their password is "password" or their name or something similarly stupid.
They may stop calling on this because they think you're berating them (though I don't), or they may finally feel some guilt. But I can almost guarantee they are not learning anything useful from this.
Here is my outlook, let me know your thoughts...
If you're at work for X hours, does it really matter how you're spending your time? Just kill your ego a bit and don't worry about it. You are being paid for your time, so if people want to waste it, then complain to management the same as you would if they sit there reading a magazine all day instead of working.
If the problem is keeping track of your TODO list, then you just need to get organized. What would you do if you were a software developer and someone kept giving you new bug reports? You'd log them in a list sorted by priority. Can you do the same here?
If this "stress" is caused be being forced to work more than the original alloted hours, then that should be a different Ask Slashdot question: "What should I do when I get asked to work overtime when i'm not getting paid?"
I'm also a big fan of exercise. To minimize my stress levels, I like long, moderate cardiovascular exercise, like bike rides and fast walking. I also find yoga really helpful.
The trick for me was noticing that when I get stressed, I tend to stop exercising because I'm too busy. Now I tell myself that's bullshit; if I'm busy, the most important thing to do is to maintain my capacity for getting things done. And being relaxed and happy does wonders for my productivity.