STRESS & HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE CONTROL VIA GOAL-SETTING AND PERSONAL PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Extensive medical studies have indicated a strong relationship between the number of hours worked and the hypertensive inclinations of test subjects. While not terribly surprising, what is shocking is the high correlation between those two parameters. If you suffer from high blood pressure, then you must pay attention to this truth: Those who allow work-related stress to constantly get to them tend to live less happy, more unhealthy, shorter lives! Nonetheless - realistically, speaking - what can we do about this situation? After all, we know relentless hard work is needed by most of us if we want to have any kind of career. And, frankly, isn't it our career that needs to be nurtured if we ever hope to get ahead in this increasingly wearying, competitive world? I don't have all the answers, but I do have a few suggestions that you can benefit from. To start with, I believe the smartest thing each of us can do is make a personal commitment toward learning how to work smarter, without necessarily cutting back on our long work hours... at least initially! Over time (pun intended!) things should get better. You see, just as seeds sown need long spells to grow into a bountiful harvest, so too do the 'smart' aspects of your new work habits need time to generate personal productivity gains. But once they do, you can then begin to slowly reduce your number of hours on the job each week. Isn't that worth shooting for? If you answered 'yes', then the best way to begin working smart is to put in place an effective goal-setting regimen; one that allows you to cut through the clutter of each day's appointments and focus solely on the relatively few tasks that bring you closer to your core goals. Another route toward working smart, with a view to reducing work stress and personal high blood pressure is described in this excerpt from another article within this archive: ...consider using core goal-setting techniques to put in place a personal version of what is called business process management in the industrial and corporate arenas. According to the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia: "The term Business Process Management (or BPM) is a set of activities which organizations can perform to either optimize their business processes or adapt them to new organizational needs. As these activities are usually aided by software tools, the term BPM is synonymously used to refer to the software tools themselves." While that definition is replete with jargon, if you take the time to look at it closely again, and substitute your own words for your life, your work or your family for the terms in that definition that refer to the 'organisation', you'll realise there is no reason why you can't set up a series of personal activities that optimise your own life's processes. Obviously, tools - both software and intellectual - can and probably should be used to help you in this quest. In my life, the key eventual migration away from a stressful, hypertension-inducing, life in journalism and later in institutional investing as an equities analyst was achieved through a careful process of dream identification and goal-setting. Over the years, I've been able to reshape my life into something that closely resembles my mental ideal. I'm not there yet, so I still work hard, but more and more I do so now on my own terms... So, make a decision today to put in place new processes that will inject a fresh level of calm control in your life. You don't need to use my books to do so. Just carry out the research required to help you identify ways to inject human-friendly variants of conventional business process management methods into your life. Doing so wisely should grant you access to internal and eternal resources that will empower you to do far more than you've probably ever dared to dream.