Copyright (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.SCOTT HARLOW, a Hartford, Conn., information technology consultant, is doing his part for the miracle of rising U.S. productivity. Clients are hiring him for more projects, but demanding that he complete them in less time. His workweek has expanded to as much as 60 hours from 40 to 45 hours.
But all the pressure is throwing his personal life off balance. He's lost time with his wife and two kids, and he can't hit the target any more in his favorite hobby -- competitive pistol shooting on a team.
"When I'm in real, real stressful times, my averages go way down," he says. "I try to blank out work," but "I feel myself wandering. I'd be thinking, 'Geez, I've got to get this program written.'"
Economists are impressed by the powerful gains in the output of American workers. Productivity has risen at an annual average of 5% during the initial stages of this recovery, faster than any rebound in 40 years.
But the output comes at a personal cost. Nurses at a Joliet, Ill., hospital care for as many as nine patients apiece, more than twice what they regard as reasonable, causing tension. An investment manager at a New York bank says he's been asked to work nights and weekends as part of his normal routine. "It has become a very ugly way to live," says the manager, who is taking three blood-pressure medications.
The standard stress relievers, such as yoga or a vacation, can help, of course. But how do you relax when you can't leave your desk? Based on interviews with a dozen stressed-out workers, many are breaking ground on a new frontier of stress relief -- the mind -- by building mental skills that give them internal respite. A sampling:
Turn off your brain: Some workers are training themselves to withdraw for what you might call an inner vacation.
Terry Moreland, head of neonatal intensive-care units at two El Paso, Texas, hospitals, oversees 90 staffers and the lives of 40 fragile infants every day -- a workload that has doubled in recent years. With the help of biofeedback gear, he has learned to control how he responds to work problems.
In a meeting with a mother reciting a litany of ill-focused complaints, Mr. Moreland grew frustrated. But he consciously stilled his impulse to react, shut himself off briefly from the immediate events around him, focused on calming his breathing and respiration, and invoked a positive feeling from the past; often, he remembers a moment fishing in the mountains with his young son.
As his body quieted, he began to hear the woman in a different way. Her problem, he realized, wasn't with the quality of care -- it was her own apprehension at the approaching release of her baby from the preemie unit. "I started noticing that she was really frightened," he says. Once he understood that, he was not only able to stay calm himself, but to calm the woman.
The biofeedback training and gear Mr. Moreland uses, Freeze-Framer by HeartMath in Boulder Creek, Calif., is provided by his employer, Sierra Providence Health Network. He learned to "kick back" by plugging into a finger sensor, reading his heart rhythms on his computer, practicing relaxation techniques and watching the results.
Shift to a broader perspective. Other workers are developing the ability to pull away from their anxieties and to regard work problems from a mental distance.
Allen Elkin, New York, author of "Stress Management for Dummies," counseled a manager at a pension fund who was angry at losing her assistant to layoffs. He first helped her practice acceptance -- to stop fighting the fact that "life isn't fair, especially in corporate America," Dr. Elkin says. Instead of constant fretting, he helped her focus on a plan: To decide on a temporary period during which she would stay in her job, and to vent her frustrations regularly to a friend, to get some psychological distance.
Dr. Elkin also recommends a "time-jump" technique. When something awful happens that pushes you to the edge, "ask yourself, will I be upset about this in three months, or three weeks, or three days? The answer is, probably not."
Corral and tame your work. One of the many maddening qualities of today's jobs is that their demands seem boundless. When you haven't defined your most important job outcomes, or the next actions you must take, the result is free-floating anxiety, says David Allen, an Ojai, Calif., productivity consultant.
His suggestion: Collect all the items demanding your attention; identify the desired outcome; define the next actions, and focus on those. That will free you from worrying about less-important tasks. Also, when new work comes in over the transom, you'll be equipped to go to your manager and say, "I love these 14 tasks you've already given me. Can we talk about the six new ones you want me to do now?"
Jeff Adams, a Kingman, Ariz., salesman and writer who has had two heart attacks, has honed these abilities. When people ask, "Can you help me?" he has trained himself to say "no." And when he's under water at work, he asks himself, "Is this worth dying for?" So far, Mr. Adams says, the answer has always been no.
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Have a question about balancing work and family? E-mail me at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com. WSJ.com subscribers can read my responses in the Work & Family Mailbox online.
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