Anxiety isn’t the same as stress, but they are related. <ul><li>Stress is a response to direct external stimuli that goes away when you tackle the problem. </li><li>But unlike stress, anxiety is impressively self-sufficient. It can happily exist all on its own, like a delicate snowflake of existential fear that won’t melt when the sun comes out.</li></ul>

The Workplace War: Work Anxiety Vs. Stress

Instead of trying to calm your way out of anxiety, reframe the feelings as excitement and convert performance-related anxiety into goal-busting arousal congruency—a fancy term for channeling that sense of adrenaline that comes from high-anxiety situations into a positive effort.The crucial part is to simply accept you are anxious. It’s easy to waste time and energy trying to fight anxiety on all fronts. So don’t do it.

Don’t Calm Down

Use your anxiety to access feelings of accomplishment. Tim Ferriss recommends going further to manage anxiety-induced low productivity. Set aside three hours to complete one small task, even if that means putting off other urgent tasks. Taking your time to get one thing off your plate is surely better than fumbling through three important tasks and completing none

Curb Analysis Paralysis

If you switch between tasks, seek distraction, and avoid addressing your goals, it could signal the beginnings of an anxiety episode. Closely monitor productivity fluctuations and you’ll essentially develop an early warning system for those anxious feelings. If you regularly beat yourself up for not doing enough then it’s very easy to miss your daily achievements. Remember that it’s not always about what you didn’t do.

Treat Your Productivity Like An Anxiety Barometer

How attached are you to your devices? Nomophobia is the fear of being without a connected device.The need to be constantly connected to information can skew priorities.  But your productivity should not depend on your ability to get online. In fact, by disconnecting, you remove a number of barriers to productivity. You can say goodbye to browser tab overload, for a start.

Go Off The Grid

If your anxiety spikes when you’re unclear of your goal, demanding high-quality feedback is important. Repeatedly trying to clarify action points can not only hamper productivity, it can make less assertive people feel burdensome to clients.

Ask For Feedback

56% of anxiety sufferers deal specifically with performance anxiety at work. Here are five proven theories to help you manage work anxiety in a productive way.

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How To Channel Your Work Anxiety In A Productive Way

Knowledge workers with a hybrid work profile have two workplaces to maintain – one in the office and one at home. It involves planning and a stop-start routine: taking the laptop to and from the office every day, and remembering what important things are left where.
The problem is the psychological shift – the change of setting every day – the constant feeling of never being settled, always stressed and the earlier productive 'always at home, working' routine being disrupted.

Hybrid Work Is Exhausting

<ul>
<li>Many workers report that hybrid is emotionally draining. In a recent global study by employee engagement platform Tinypulse, more than <a href="https://www.tinypulse.com/state-of-employee-engagement-q3-2021">80% of people leaders</a> reported that such a set-up was exhausting for employees. Workers, too, reported hybrid was more emotionally taxing than fully remote arrangements – and, concerningly, even full-time office-based work.</li>
<li>Optimism among workers soon gave way to fatigue. In Tinypulse’s survey of 100 global workers, <a href="https://www.tinypulse.com/state-of-employee-engagement-q3-2021">72% reported exhaustion</a> from working hybrid – nearly double the figures for fully remote employees and also greater than those based fully in the office.</li>
</ul>

The Impact of Hybrid Work: The Statistics

Hybrid can also come with a greater risk of digital presenteeism, compared to fully remote jobs which imply employer trust from the get-go. If an employer sets up hybrid without trusting their workforce, it can become little more than a token gesture: workers feel pressure to show their boss they’re not taking advantage of home working.
That could lead to overwork and burnout, the effects of which can be devastating but take a long time to show up.

Digital Presenteeism

For some workers, frustrations with hybrid mean they’re gravitating towards jobs that allow them full control over their schedules. It comes down to what organisations mean by ‘hybrid’. 
It’s a broad definition that can be interpreted in many ways: from going into the office three days a week, to once a month. Hybrid can still be the future of work and represent the best of both worlds – but it still needs refining.

Defining Hybrid

<ul>
<li>Hybrid can be successful when managers liaise with staff, likely on an individualised basis, about how the set-up would work best for them. It’s both employer and employee who need to set boundaries, but there needs to be autonomy for the worker to self-manage their schedule – flexibility needs to be dictated by the individual, not the boss.</li>
<li>If workers are allowed a degree of choice and control over their working patterns, the rewards could pay dividends. Both people and organisations claim they want hybrid, so there is a great opportunity to change how we work. But it has to go further than the hours the bosses set – it has to be a mindset that works for both employer and employee.</li>
</ul>

A Successful Hybrid

A part-remote, part-office schedule has been hailed as the future of work. Yet in this hybrid set-up, some employees have never been so tired.

Why hybrid work is emotionally exhausting

Imposter syndrome is a collection of thoughts and behaviors related to feeling like you are a fake or a fraud, despite your accomplishments.
Doubting your abilities, in spite of your accomplishments can create a considerable amount of anxiety, fear, and depression, and it can lead to burnout in the workplace. But sometimes, what might be perceived as “imposter syndrome” is actually the result of a toxic or biased work environment.

It's Not You, It's Them

Although the solutions for overcoming imposter syndrome often focus on the individual experiencing it, the workplace environment also plays a critical role—especially given that it is most often seen in women and people of color, many of who may not have supportive mentors or colleagues who look like them.
Even if women demonstrate strength, ambition, and resilience, our daily battles with microaggressions, especially expectations and assumptions formed by stereotypes and racism, often push us down. Imposter syndrome as a concept fails to capture this dynamic and puts the onus on women.

The Work Environment

When the concept of imposter syndrome was first developed, it didn’t take into account the impact that a biased workplace can have on a person. Lacking this context, as well as the inclusion of a diverse set of participants in the original studies, the focus has been on fixing the individual experiencing imposter syndrome, rather than the environment that might be causing it.
This includes:
<ul>
<li>A very fast-paced workplaces, along with workplaces that place a high value on external achievements. </li>
<li>A workplace where managers only offer criticism, rather than praise or encouragement.</li>
</ul>

Imposter Syndrome And The Biased Workplace

Another factor that makes a person susceptible to impostor syndrome is if they are either a pathbreaker or the first (or only) person of a race or gender to hold a position or ascend to a certain level within the company. 
In this situation, not only are they are possibly navigating a biased system, they are often doing so without guidance from others who understand their unique situation.

The Pioneers

The best solution for preventing imposter syndrome is for workplaces to become more inclusive. Until that happens, though, in addition to recognizing the role the work environment plays, there are a few strategies people can use to mitigate the effects.
If you can’t find the support you need within your immediate work environment, get creative about finding it externally, such as by joining a professional society or seeking out a mentor from a different division. It helps to identify and name your inner critic to help create a bit of separation from it.

Survive An Unsupportive Work Environment

Is It Imposter Syndrome, or Does Your Company Suck?

<ol><li>To lay out global standards for organizations to create and administer an environment where the psychosocial well-being of employees is as clearly defined and care for as their physical safety.</li><li>Offer a helpful baseline for HR professionals across industries to evaluate how effectively their organizations are providing a psychosocially healthy atmosphere, without the need for in-house specialists with deep expertise in mental health</li></ol>

The Goals of the ISO 45003 Psychological Health and Safety at Work

<ol><li>A stigmatized (often nonexistent) support system. Our current situation has highlighted the lack of supportive environments, unsustainable and unfair workloads, and ineffective recognition practices.</li><li>A diverse workforce has different mental wellness needs. Having a blanket solution applied to everyone, without considering their position makes them feel excluded instead.</li><li>Burnout remains pervasive and prevention is the best cure. Employees are facing difficulties in dealing with burnout because it remains to be their responsibility to solve it.</li></ol>

3 Common Mental Health and Wellness Issues Organizations Face

<ol><li>We need to discuss mental health more openly at work and underscore the importance of creating a psychologically safe space for each and every employee. The ISO guidelines are asking to create a culture of protection for employees that speak up.</li><li>The quality and reach of the mental health programs are what's important. We should consider the diversity of the workforce and their particular needs.</li><li>We need to implement and maintain support systems in the workplace for burnout prevention.</li></ol>

Strategies For Change: Handling  the 3 Mental Health and Wellness Issues 

Traditional solutions to mental health and wellness issues won't cut it anymore because it's becoming an increasingly important subject. Organizations seeking transformative solutions may need to have fresh eyes for the following:<ul><li>How we view employee mental health</li><li>Our company's role in leadership and how it's changing the company culture around mental health; and</li><li>The effectiveness of our strategies for today's workforce</li></ul>

A Significant Opportunity for Organizations Ready for Change

For too long we have let companies applaud us for being workaholics without considering our mental health and wellness issues. This article shows those in leadership roles, how they can prioritize our psychosocial health just as much as they focus on our physical safety.

Organizations can improve workplace safety by not only focusing on physical protection but the psychological needs of employees.

A New Era of Workplace Safety: Prioritizing Psychosocial Health

For most of human history and in almost all places it would have seemed absurd for employers to give their employees personal feedback.Things have changed today because the tasks of business are more psychologically complex than in the past. There’s been an entirely practical realization that to get the best performance, people need to be psychologically in a good place: which means well-motivated, in good spirits, even enthusiastic and eager around the tasks they are doing. This is the only way not to waste a lot of money.

How the idea of feedback changed

Even if they don’t especially like it, the senior management needs to take the mental well-being of the employee very seriously. We have moved from the era of physical management to that of psychological managementThe task might be to get a sales force to believe in the merits of a new product, so they can sell it wholeheartedly; to get an IT manager to be more creative in the way they interact with other sectors of the business. For all these kinds of tasks, it becomes crucial to get the employee into the right frame of mind.

From physical management to psychological management

<ul><li>Denial: hiding bad news. </li><li>Dangerous independence: the people that don't share information.</li><li>Disguised ignorance: the person who hides what they don’t know. </li><li>Poor teaching skills: someone who can’t teach effectively, what they know to those who need to share it. </li><li>Poor learning skills: the people that don’t listen properly when something is being explained. </li><li>Despair and pessimism: always anticipating disaster.</li><li>Over-optimism and naivety: the denial of real troubles. </li><li>Impatience: ticking the boxes fast</li><li>Cynicism: the disengaged and resentful people.</li><li>Social awkwardness: a mix of lack of confidence and shame.</li></ul>

Psychological Obstacles to the success of a business

For most of human history and in almost all places it would have seemed absurd for employers to give their employees personal feedback. 

How To Channel Your Work Anxiety In A Productive Way

Why hybrid work is emotionally exhausting

Is It Imposter Syndrome, or Does Your Company Suck?

A New Era of Workplace Safety: Prioritizing Psychosocial Health

Why Feedback Matters | The School of Life

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