DO you have one minute to talk about your work stress? 

Richel Sacare, 24, who works at an outsourcing company in Quezon City, said her workload is so demanding that she can only pee during lunch breaks or worse, only after her shift.

According to her, there were times, too, when she was not able to take a break as she was working five to eight hours straight to finish all the tasks she was assigned to do.

But since she is the breadwinner of the family, she is not complaining about it. However, when she finds that tasks are very hard to manage, her world feels “heavy and tiring.”

Work load

“I am grateful that I have work because I have been waiting for this job for so long. But sometimes I whine because I feel like my world is no longer manageable because of the tasks I have at work and, at the same time, pressure, of course,” said Sacare.

Her lack of opportunity to take a pause also makes her struggle emotionally at times.

But taking a break (even if it’s not your break time) won’t make you an inefficient worker. You won’t even need to spend an hour to reap the benefits of taking a pause at work. 

Adam Morris, the Managing Director of the UK-based Believe and Perform platform that provides mental health-friendly information for the workplace, said workers’ continued use of time constraints as an excuse for their inability to take care of their mental health is unacceptable and should be dealt with accordingly.

“We can’t keep using time as an excuse for not being able to take care of our mental health,” said Morris.

As a response to the need for breaks at work, here are some simple, one-minute activities to keep the workers sane:

Deep breathing

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, breathing practice was demonstrated to be an efficient non-pharmacological treatment for enhancing emotions, as well as mitigating anxiety, depression, and stress. It has also been discovered that practicing breathing exercises can alleviate the emotional fatigue and depersonalization caused by job burnout.

Close your eyes 

According to Morris, closing your eyes for at least one minute and imagining yourself in a calm and relaxing place can also reduce work-related stress. 

Not only that, a separate study from the University of Surrey revealed that closing your eyes also boosts memory recall.

Identify the tension

It was also shown in a  study by the UK government’s Health and Safety Executive that one reason workers experience stress is that they tend to neglect the tension affecting them. 

What are the signs of tension? Here are some:

• Arguments at work
• Increased number of staff turnovers 
• Increased numbers of reports of stress 
• Additional days missed due to illness 
• Deteriorating work performance
• Frequent complaints and grievances

According to the study, as a result of these tensions, workers lose their motivation and confidence to work and have increased emotional reactions. 

What can workers do? According to Morris, workers can do muscle relaxation techniques. Even for a minute, workers can lie down in their chairs, meditate, and breathe deeply.

Use Mindfulness 

Working mindfully means giving your full attention and awareness to everything you do from the moment you walk through your workplace door. Maintain your concentration on the activity at hand, and as soon as you become aware of an internal or external distraction, let it go. Mindfulness leads to an increase in efficacy, a reduction in mistakes, and even an enhancement of creative capacity in this way, according to a study from University of Berkeley Research.

Morris likewise noted that when doing the one-minute mindfulness activities, workers can do the 5-1 countdown in order to increase focus and awareness. This means identifying five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

Stand up and stretch 

Despite the busy work schedule, Morris advised all workers to spend a moment stretching. According to the Harvard University Green, workers can do various stretching activities from the comfort of their chairs, including open chest stretches, chair twists, neck stretches, and shoulder rolls.

Engage with a workmate

It is evident that having a workplace best friend is beneficial to lessen the weight of your workload. Not only that, engaging with a workmate, even for a short moment, would help counter psychological problems from an unhealthy workplace. A 2022 survey by the Business Disability Forum noted that individuals who have at least one friend at work report experiencing reduced levels of stress and anxiety while on the job, and they also report higher levels of productivity.

When employees have a friend at work, their overall level of happiness in their jobs increases by 50 percent, it said.

The role of the company

But Sacare hopes that workplace stress should be addressed so that workers would not be terrified of going to work.

“Workplace stress is something that should be faced by company administrators because regardless of how we cope in the environment, we are only human, and our strength is only limited; we can’t endure a toxic environment forever,” she said.

She likewise said that workers should not be made to adjust all the time just to keep going since, aside from work, they also “face battles outside the work setting.” The workplace should be the “least” of their worries in terms of discussing stress, she added. 

While some consider their work as an extension of their homes, workers should be reminded that a pause, regardless of the duration, is as important as completing their tasks on time – and it should not be illegal to take a moment away from work.

When you can no longer take it, pause for a minute.