5 Ways to Beat Stress

Jul 08

Health & Fitness, How-to's, Productivity By Carl Hickson

Exercise

Exercise has been shown to reduce stress. From past experience, I’ve found that regular exercise doesn’t just beat stress, but has helped me to reduce stress. Things such as going to the gym, running or playing your favorite sport can get you moving and help relieve the stress.

Cut Back
This means, do less of things such as extra-curricular activities, even just short term. This allows you to focus on your school work and not be overwhelmed by other activities. If you don’t want to cut back completely, try just cutting down to one extra-curricular activity.

Meditation
Although not a method I’ve tried, meditation is often praised for its ability to reduce stress.

Renegotiate Deadlines
Where possible, speak to your tutors/teachers/lecturers and attempt to have deadlines moved. This helps reduce the stresses of one of our major problems as students – all the deadlines for things falling within about one week!

Take a Break
Even during the day, we can get stressed, do not just work through your breaks because you’ve got loads to do, truth is, you will become less effective the longer you work, it’s important to take short and regular breaks to keep your mind working best.

Of course, these suggestions are helpful when you are stressed, but the best method, would be to prevent stress altogether and take a long term approach to stress prevention.

I’d love to hear about how you all cope with stress, please leave a comment below.

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This is Carl Hickson’s regular “Tuesday Tips” column, writing on all aspects of student productivity to help you become a more effective and stress free student.

7 Comments so far »

Web Marketing Man said

am July 1 2008 @ 4:48 pm

My approach is simple, there is no such word in my dictionary as “stress”. Word substitution will help, like I play instead of work etc. As far as influencers in my life I say that during the course of the day, take a few moment to connect with yourself.
Warenwirtschaft said

am July 1 2008 @ 5:09 pm

There is one important principle from Stephen R. Covey: The difference between “urgent” and “important”. Many tasks that are urgent are not important and should be discarded. Doing important things that are not urgent (like maintenance) can reduce the urgent tasks because they do not arise that often. That reduces stress very much.
Carl Hickson said

am July 2 2008 @ 2:12 am

@ Web Marketing Man
Although I like your methodology, for many students, stress is a harsh, unavoidable reality. The idea of taking a moment to reconnect with yourself is excellent, and many students just don’t do this, they are working, socializing, studying and just do not think to do it, when it can be done so easily within a fairly short space of time.

@ Warenwirtschaft
Thanks for pointing that one out. I have read the book and this is a very important tip. This is the sort of thing I am talking about when I referenced “Stress Prevention” at the bottom of my post.

Also reminds me of the quote

“Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along” (Og Mandino)

Thanks for contributing!

Carl Hickson
Poems Girl said

am July 2 2008 @ 7:53 am

Meditation and cutting back are the very things that help me to relax and struggle against stress.
Alfresia Garden Furniture said

am July 2 2008 @ 11:15 am

They say that the best thing for stress is laughter, so just pop on your favourite comedy and relax regular.
Flora Morris Brown, Ph.D. said

am July 7 2008 @ 2:44 pm

Planning ahead helped me as a student to reduce stress. Cram studying and last minute papers caused me undue stress. So, as soon as the assignment was given I’d begin outlining it. Even if you just do a little here and there, it makes life a lot easier when you pull it all together rather than having to start from scratch.
christmas said

am August 8 2008 @ 1:11 pm

Thank you for the pointers. In my opinion the main ways to beat stress are taking a break, meditation and good rest during weekends.