Ways you can manage SBS?
No, not the Special Broadcasting Service you can find on the TV in Australia. SBS in this case is small business stress.
Managing a business, by yourself or in a small team - is difficult. Even if everything is going swimmingly, you might feel there’s an endless list of things to do and think about. And, when it’s not going well, this stress can multiply and have some negative effects on your health and ability to manage your business.
Stress is inevitable, but we can keep it manageable - how?
According to Mike Kappel of Entrepneur.com, you need to:
Remember What’s Going Right.
Simple enough. It’s easy to focus on the negatives when things are, well, negative. But the key to keeping stress from building is to remember and focus on what is going well, or what has gone well in the past for your business. For example, if you made a loss this month but your business has had more leads, focus on those leads and figure out why they didn’t turn into increased revenue. Or maybe they indicate you had higher outgoings - why? Focus on the positives, and focus on how to fix the negatives. Not the negatives themselves.
Rank your tasks.
Lists are great. They help us remember and complete tasks. Until they don’t. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed by your never-ending to do list. Break it down and rank the tasks you need to do. Make much smaller list with the most important tasks and focus on that. Maybe even just put one task on a list - which may not make it much of a list, but at least you don’t have the weight of everything else putting pressure on you. Day by day, and you may not notice, but the total list will shrink and business will very likely, improve (or function better).
3. Purge your brain.
This refers to slowing down your brain by removing work from it for a bit. This can be by leaving your work brain at the office, and not thinking about it. But if you do, which is very likely, try to remove those thoughts by focusing your attention of other things, or by writing them down and storing them away so you don’t have to keep them on your mind. If you work at home, where it’s most difficult to separate business and life, try to keep your thoughts and activities to one room, and when you shut the door, shut off your work brain until the next business day.
4. Take breaks.
Easy enough to say, but the breaks don’t have to be 6 week holidays through Europe. Breaks are necessary to keep us working effectively and efficiently. If you work non-stop you’ll probably lose quality of work, speed, or just burnout which will render you unable to do much work at all. So instead, maybe step away for 10 minutes and drink a tea, or go for a walk when its lunchtime. Do something unrelated to business for a moment and reset.
5. Think about your health.
Looking after our health is one of the most important jobs we have in life. Without our health, there’s not much we can do. The less healthy, most likely the less we can get done. So, if you want to be successful and make the most of your working hours, make sure you get enough sleep, eat healthily, take your supplements and exercise.
There’s plenty of other ways you can manage stress, some not fit for a blog post, but maybe its worth thinking about what makes you feel relaxed and happy - and whether you can fit that into your schedule. Maybe if you’re an alcoholic you can bring a flask to work and pour spirits into your morning coffee (don’t do that, I’m just joking). On a serious note, maybe at work you give yourself a scheduled break and read a book for 15 minutes if you find that relaxing - or you can segment your journey to work so that you can ride your bike some of the way. Whatever works for you.
Always remember that a large part of stress is our perception of things, and that if its overwhelming, we need to take action to lower it - even if taking action is by doing less!