You’ve surely experienced it yourself, the sudden production rush that occurs during the fall season, making the months of September, October and November a living hell in most offices. In some sectors, this labor-intensive period is due to the approach of Christmas and all its commercial opportunities. In others, it’s got more to do with the fiscal year coming to an end. Regardless of the cause, it’s best to prepare for the difficult times ahead. Here are six tips on how to survive the 3-month crunch without damaging your career or your personal life.

Pace yourself

Don’t procrastinate, but don’t try to do everything at once either. You wouldn’t want to burn out on the first week. To survive the 3-month crunch, schedule your workload with care, making sure to accomplish a reasonable number of tasks every day, and be mindful of your peak hours. Most workers get a bit groggy in the late afternoon, so use this period to handle repetitive assignments that demand little attention. You should also leave yourself time, especially in the last month, to deal with unforeseen complications. You can bet there’ll be more than a few.

Unmanaged stress can have a serious impact on employee performance and overall wellbeing, which in turn, has crippling consequences on company output.

The results of poor stress management and workplace pressures can include decreased proficiency, higher absenteeism rates, low company morale, counterproductive team work and employee health related problems. Effectively assessing stressors, stress types and implementing the necessary measures to create healthy stress management programs can be the differentiating factor of a mediocre business to a productively efficient one.

What are stressors?

It must be noted that stress factors are subjective and what one person may find stressful, others may not necessarily experience as negatively. The way in which we experience and react to stress is described as an emotional condition which triggers physical, psychological and emotional responses from the individual.
Formally, a stressor is defined as an event or context that elevates adrenaline and triggers the stress response which results in the body being thrown out of balance as it is forced to respond.

Examples of Stress Triggers

• Environmental stressors (elevated sound levels, over-illumination, overcrowding)
• Daily stress events (e.g. traffic, lost keys)
• Life changes (e.g. divorce, bereavement)
• Workplace stressors (e.g. role strain, lack of control)