A few years ago, after 25 years working in corporate America, I began to feel as though I could not shake the effects of stress off anymore. I can’t be sure if it’s the amount of stress I was dealing with, the type of stress, my age or all of the above. I just knew that I was handling stress differently than early in my career. The bottom line is that I didn’t feel myself handling stress well. Instead of a good night’s sleep or a three-day weekend, or even a week’s vacation, putting me back on level ground nothing seemed to shake the feeling inside of me that was at best unsettling and at worst nauseating when it came to performing my work duties. Since my tendency is to seek rational approaches to problems in my life I took some time to study the possible remedies to the situation rather than throwing up my hands in defeat and retreating to live in a trailer up in the mountains or something.
What I found both in my research and my personal experience in seeking remedies for my stress were common recommendations that ultimately don’t solve the issue of stress in the modern workplace, but rather act as window dressing so that corporations can assure themselves that they’re not working their employees into the ground. It seemed to me (and still does) that the priority in terms of corporate remedies for stress management lies in keeping employees productive to the level that modern employers expect from their employees. And modern employers expect a heck of a lot from their employees! Why shouldn’t they? Employees have more tools than ever, such as smartphones, laptops and nearly limitless access to internet connectivity, allowing them to do the bidding of their corporate employers at the office, at home, in transit and just about everywhere in between. Work life balance was a corporate buzz phrase in the early 2000s because that was the time when such technologies were ramping up and people felt the change in the pace of their work and their employer’s expectations. I’ve noticed that in recent years you don’t hear so much about work life balance anymore. I think that’s because employers, who for years touted work life balance as a reason why their companies were different (i.e. better) than other companies, have finally normalized a productivity all the time culture in which work is life.
I’m trying not to get too sidetracked here, but past is prologue after all. What I found in my research was that there are three main remedies that companies recommend to employees who are stressed out and express the fact that they’re stressed out. They are: talking to your supervisor, taking advantage of company sponsored counseling and taking a vacation. None of these approaches are effective (for reasons I’ll list in the following paragraphs) but they do allow employers to assert that they care about their employees and are doing something to support employees health and welfare. My reasoning on these three ineffective remedies is summarized below.
Talking to your supervisor. In your quest to reduce the stress of your job this suggestion only leads to more stress…for your supervisor. In the notional corporate world where the supervisor is a kind and thoughtful person they would immediately spring into action to help reduce your stress by shifting some of your workload to other team members and taking other proactive measures to set you right. In the real corporate world you’ve just created a problem for the supervisor who now knows that they have an unsatisfied team member. Supervisors have their own pressures they are dealing with, including pressures coming from above to have their team be productive. Hence, your supervisor will likely push for no structural changes to the work environment and recommend that you take advantage of the other two ineffective remedies that follow.
Taking advantage of company sponsored counseling. Most companies today, even some smaller ones, offer a benefit of free counseling services for their employees. These services offer sessions with mental health professionals (often via the phone or online) to help you cope with the stress of work. Such services give you someone to talk to confidentially and they may provide you with methods of coping with the stresses of work, but they won’t change anything related to the nature of your work. And they’ll be another appointment on your calendar to boot. Whatever solace you may get from the conversations with a therapist you’ll still have to face the same issues that lead to your feeling overstressed at work in the first place. While corporate leaders tout such counseling as a panacea for overworked employees it’s really just a get out of jail free card for corporate leaders who serially overwork their employees.
Taking a vacation. Usually when a person in a corporate environment signals that they’re experiencing burnout from too much stress the supervisor will also recommend that the person take a vacation. This is another simple way out for the company but it’s also a loaded suggestion for two main reasons. First, you have to find the right time to take a vacation and that process can add it’s own stress to an already stressed out employee. You comb the calendar for times when there are no important meetings, deadlines or reports due. You then often also have to find a co-worker who will cover for the critical issues that will invariably come up while you’re off work. It will take you some time to find the right time frame, and then that time frame might be weeks in the future. Till then, you just endure. Second, if you’re like most corporate employees you have company email and chat programs on your smartphone. So even when you’re away…you’re not really away. Sure, you set an email autoresponder but the emails (or text messages) still come through and fate usually intervenes to create a “fire” in the middle of attempting to enjoy a single week “off” from work. The bottom line is that for most corporate employees work follows you on vacation. And what doesn’t follow you on vacation is waiting in your email inbox when you return to work. So you start back at work after the vacation feeling behind the curve and any destressing benefits the vacation offered evaporate quickly.
You may or may not be in a place where the above situations resonate with you, and if you’re not I say this. Give it time. So what to do about this broken system? I’m not naive enough to think that the system can be changed. Corporate America is a long way down a road that has made office work a grueling existence that people are made to endure for decades. Although the work is light in a physical sense it ultimately breaks people down mentally and physically in a way that was never expected as the dominant work style in the country shifted from physical labor to intellectual labor. Especially over a long period of time. What to do about this is to recognize that the time will come and plan to make your career obsolete. It’s a suggestion that has significant implications but as far as I can see it’s the only one that makes sense in terms of freeing yourself from the stress that dominates the working lives of long-term corporate employees in the United States. Some people who offer advice on this topic suggest shifting to part-time work or hourly consulting type arrangements. Those may be acceptable if you manage to come across such opportunities, but they are best approached when you have already exited the corporate work place and have little need for employment in the first place.
It’s important to understand that regardless of your situation your tenure in the corporate world will eventually end one way or the other. You may experience stress related burnout and depart your corporate job in your 50s or you may push through into your 60s where general health issues usually make it undesirable to work. Some people decide in their 40s that corporate America is wearing them down so they shift gears to part-time work or consulting. So I say prepare consciously for the time to come one way or the other. The details of that are best saved for another post, but a major factor in your ability to declare your career obsolete is a financial one. Start saving for that proverbial rainy day when you realize that you’re too fed up to continue working much longer. Start setting aside funds at the start of your career that are absolutely walled off from your budget so that you’ll have a generous nest egg waiting for you on the other side, whether that’s 25, 35 or 45 years in the future. Such a nest egg is your best defense against the negative effects of stress in the work place. Heck, sometimes the knowledge that your job needs you more than you need them is a stress reducer in itself.
The bottom line is that the time will come when working for someone else, on their terms, will be too much for you to handle. The associated stress of such a situation can reduce the quality of your life and also shorten your life. The only true remedy for a situation where corporate job stress has become overwhelming is having the ability to walk away from the job knowing that your financial situation will support your lifestyle without a regular paycheck. We plan for so many things in life and I believe that planning to make your career obsolete is one of those things worth planning for. Even if you’re in the middle of your career now is as good a time as any to start on that work. Your future self will most definitely thank you for that!
In The Midst Of A Journey 