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.
