I don’t know when it started, but I remember being young and observing business owners and managers. I would watch them in local businesses. I would try to watch their interviews if they were on TV or on documentaries. I would read about them and would always be most interested in the small details of the operations.
One huge aspect of running a business is that stress is inevitable. So it makes sense that long time owners and managers have ways to reduce stress so they don’t burn out or worse.
Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed over the years that seem to help reduce stress the most…
1. Assess Priorities
One of the struggles with a business is that the number of tasks adds up and it can really take a toll. Every once in awhile it seems that those who are successful with running a business will step back and assess their priorities for the business.
It’s easy for tasks to creep into the operation of the business. Someone reads something, they send an email, some work is done and soon a new task is born. Over time, this happens again and again and soon there is too much going on in the business.
If you’re feeling stressed, schedule time to step away from the day-to-day and assess the priorities.
2. Eliminate & Delegate Tasks
Once you understand the priorities it’s easy to eliminate tasks that aren’t essential. But perhaps “easy” isn’t the right word. Some people have a really difficult time with letting go fo things. They might be physical things. But they can also be tasks. Business owners and managers sometimes struggle with this. It can be difficult to eliminate a task that has become part of the normal routine.
Steve Jobs coming back to Apple in the late ’90s is an example of eliminating tasks. Jobs thought that Apple had become bloated. He cut a lot of tasks from the business and narrowed the focus. For many leaders this would be difficult. But it’s almost always necessary.
As for other tasks that stay on the priority list, look to delegate more of them. You can’t do too much as the owner or manager. You only have so much time and energy. Trust that others can do as good or a better job than you at certain things.
3. Eliminate Repeat Stressors
Stressors come in many forms. Look at what you do every day and identify triggers or stressors. Perhaps you have a regular phone call that raises your stress level. Would you be able to do it via email? Maybe you could delegate the discussion?
Maybe you take time each morning to read the news. Is it necessary to the success of the business? Try going without the news for a week and see how it affects your stress level. The same could be said for social media.
Or it could be that a certain person is causing stress in the business. They make the same mistake over and over. You could try to provide better guidance and training. You could move them to another position. Or you could let them go.
4. Narrow the Focus
This builds on the idea of what Steve Jobs did at Apple. He looked at the company and realized it was bloated. He narrowed the focus and it gave everyone on board a clearer picture of what they should be doing. It kind of narrows the focus and narrows the stress.
So while it’s still stressful to narrow the focus it removes other aspects of stress that can cause harm. We often experience burn out and stress as we change focus from one thing to the next. In bloated businesses, even small businesses, we are often jumping from one thing to the next. That isn’t sustainable and can be a big reason for burn out.
5. Exercise
We know that exercise is good for us. But we rarely make time for it. It’s weird, but when we’re excessively stressed out we feel even more like we don’t have time for something like exercise. So as you’re going through a few of these suggestions you should look to free up time for exercise. It might even be a simple stretching routine for ten minutes each morning and again in the afternoon. It might be taking a walk each day at lunch time.
We can all find 20 minutes or so each day for some exercise and you don’t need a gym membership to do it. It can even be as simple as doing push ups each day.
Conclusion
Most of these suggestions require that you step back from the day-to-day of the business that you’re running. That’s a big step for a stressed out business owner. But that is probably the biggest issue. You’re in the grind so much that you’re hurting everything, but you’re also afraid that if you step back that the entire thing will come crashing down.
Based on my experience of watching successful business leaders, that won’t happen and the results almost always lead to growth and good things in the future.