Getting there
Cycling or walking to work is also known as active commuting. It can be a practical way to incorporate physical activity into your day. How easy it can be to do will depend on your circumstances. If you drive or need your car for work it may not be practical. It may also not be feasible if you live a very long distance from your work, or work anti-social shifts. However, often all it needs to get going is a little bit of planning and preparation.
If you can easily walk or cycle all the way to your work that’s great. However if that’s not possible you could think about walking to the train station, or driving part of journey, but parking a distance away and walking some of it.
If dropping off and picking up kids means that you are struggling from a time perspective you could take turns with your partner to actively commute while the other person does the childcare run.
If you don’t like getting to work all sweaty and disheveled you could take your work gear in by car one day so it’s already there for the rest of the week.
Previous clinical trials have shown that active commuting by bike or walking reduced risk of heart disease and of death by all causes. A further recent study has shown a reduction of risk of heart disease in people who are overweight and obese if they actively commute relative to those who don’t.
If you don’t own a bike and you’re thinking about buying one it might be worth investigating whether your employer takes part in the Cycle to Work scheme. This is a salary sacrifice scheme where you buy the bike in installments over a year from your pretax salary and effectively save money on the bike.
If you can’t actively commute, what about the option of doing something physically active at lunch-time? I was at a meeting last week in Glasgow city centre and was amazed (and envious) to see the amount of people running along the Clydeside at lunch-time. Not something that would be feasible for me usually, although I do try and go for a quick 5 minute walk around the hospital building to clear my head, but maybe something you could think about?
Healthy Eating at Work
Again this should be fairly easy to do with a bit of forethought. Preparing and taking your lunch and snacks to work with you can help prevent you eating less healthy choices. It can also save you money, as you’re not nipping to the shop everyday.
Stress at Work
You’d be an unusual person if your working life was never stressful. There is a difference between “pressure” and “stress”. The pressure of a deadline can be useful in terms of focusing your mind. However constant day to day stress can have a negative impact on your physical and mental health.
It can be useful to think through what the particular stressors are and if you can set up a mechanism of dealing with them. There will always be surprises that pop up that you can’t plan for but if you get the recurrent stressors dealt with you’ll have more energy and resilience to take on the surprises.
I have thought about this quite a lot over the last couple of years. One thing that I found really stressful was the paperwork element to my job so I re-jigged the way I manage it. I hate having blood test results, letters etc. waiting to be checked and signed for any length of time. I need to know I’m up to date before I can get on with other projects. But there’s always more… As soon as I’ve finished checking and signing my letters there are more waiting to be reviewed. Every-time I leave my office, someone sneaks in and plants more letters in my in-tray. And then there’s the emails – don’t talk to me about them, for years and years I really couldn’t keep on top of them. I’m sure you have the equivalent at your work.
So I’ve created a system for my paperwork. I don’t multi-task – some people may manage it but as soon as soon as I start flitting from subject to subject, my head begins to spin and I get myself into a tizzy. I sign my letters first then I shut down that particular application and don’t open it again till the following day. I move onto my paper correspondence and paper results. Once they’re done that’s them for the day. And so on. As far as the emails are concerned I never have the notifications on, and likewise once they are done for the day that’s them.
I made a flow chart of the order in which my paperwork gets done and stuck it to the wall. It only goes in one direction and after I’ve been through everything on it once that day – that’s it – I can get on with my other projects.
I’ve also developed various other systems for other areas. Eg. I have somehow been entrusted with the departmental clinic and on-call duty rota which may sound simple but in reality is a total nightmare. I’ve written out a system of doing it which means that I (usually) don’t miss out anything.
Task-lists are also really useful in terms of knowing what needs done. Plus there’s the added satisfaction of scoring something out once it’s completed.
Having a logical approach to these recurrent tasks can be really helpful in terms of taking away unnecessary thinking energy, saving time and reducing work stress.
Communication with colleagues is another area that can cause stress. Generally being calm, listening and being understanding can help defuse most difficult conversations. Also bear in mind a person may be difficult to relate to because of things going on in their life which you don’t know anything about.
Asking and listening to other people’s opinions is really useful. They will feel valued and may be looking at the situation from a perspective that you haven’t considered.
Being clear in your own communication helps. I have learned fairly recently after only about twenty years of being a doctor that people can’t read my mind. If a new junior doctor is doing the ward round with me then it works much better all round if I spend 2 minutes explaining to them how I like it to be organised, instead of expecting them to guess.
If you can’t escape from tricky people or certain elements of your job that you find stressful then make sure you are as resilient as possible. Balancing out work stresses with whatever technique you find works best for you – go for a walk, listen to a funny podcast on the way home, meditate. Being physically active, eating well, sleeping well, having adequate down time and having a supportive community outside of work will put you in a better place to manage the stress.
Izzy
