Work stress and Relaxation Tecniques

Work stress and Relaxation Tecniques

Many things enter into the art of living, and relaxation is certainly one of them. It is valuable not only in and of itself for the enjoyment of life but also as a means of preventing undue physical fatigue, boredom, and tension, and for actually making work easier and 'more enjoyable. Ours is an age of rapid change, of increasing complexity in social and industrial organization. We are busier with mental and less with physical work. We live at a faster pace. 

There are more and more challenges and opportunities-and perhaps, more and more stresses, pressures and, deadlines. How people react to stress depends, of course, upon very many things, and certainly included among them are general health, physical fitness, fatigue, and emotional well-being. And relaxation is an important influence on all of these.

Almost everyone knows from experience that pronounced tiredness from day to day can, if extended, produce chronic fatigue. When this occurs, the weariness sensations are intensified, appearing not only at the end of a day but during the day and even early in the morning. Along with the weariness, there may be increased irritability, a tendency to lapse into depression or blue moods, a general lack of drive and loss of initiative. Many people have the idea that they can't afford to take time for rest and relaxation, that in the modern world it's essential to work long and hard or you won't keep up. 

But this is to overlook, for one thing, the relationship between performance and working hours. While more studies are needed of the relationship between mental work performance and working hours, there are guidelines to be found in the many investigations carried out in factories.

They have shown repeatedly that when working time is shortened, hourly performance improves, whereas lengthening the work period has the opposite effect. In many cases it has been observed that after more than ten hours of work, overall performance falls off decidedly, because the slowing down of working speed due to fatigue is not compensated for by the longer period worked. Longer working schedules are frequent in wartime and boom conditions. 

But the overtime worked often proves of little value because productivity fails to increase to the extent that was expected. Various studies have shown that overtime work not only cuts down on performance per hour but also leads to a characteristic increase in absence due to illness and accidents.