Stress

Stress kills.

Worse yet, it kills slowly — eating away at productivity until even mundane goals seem like monumental tasks. Don’t get me wrong, A little stress is useful. It keeps you focused, it drives you forward and it pushes you when you need that little kick in the right direction.

Lose balance, however, and stress can turn an effective entrepreneur into a rambling mess. With that in mind, here are a few tips to keep your stress under control as your business turns up the heat.



Eat

Restaurant

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There comes a point in every product cycle when you’ll start looking back at 18 hour work days with fondness. Even if you find yourself burning the candle at both ends, you need to eat. It’s amazing the difference a meal can make to your mood, and when you live in stress, every change in mood is important.


Do Something Else

Fishing

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Find something that you love doing that is completely unrelated to your product. Whether it’s Rock Climbing, Synchronized Swimming or Unreal Tournament, you need to have an outlet. Stress builds up when you forget that there is a world outside of the office. Take some time out of everyday to remind yourself of that fact.


Learn To Laugh

Clown

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No matter how bad a situation seems at work, chances are that it could be worse. The only way to pull yourself through the oft ridiculous world of startups is to learn to laugh at yourself. There are enough people in the world who will take you too seriously, you don’t have to be one of them.


Domestic Mediation

Maid

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When things seem wildly out of control, I clean. There is something about cleaning around the apartment that adds a certain clarity to the world. You might not have the same affinity to Windex that I do, but there is almost certainly a “chore” that helps clear your mind.


Friends and Family

Friends

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Spend some time with people outside of the office. While you’re doing that, don’t forget that this isn’t time you should spend complaining about all the things going wrong at your job. By getting your mind away from work, it becomes a lot easier to see that many of the crippling dilemmas that had been plaguing you aren’t such big deals after all.


Make Something

Carving

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Paint, write a story, carve a block of wood, code a side-project, or knit a sweater, one great way to get rid of stress is to stitch it into a creative work. The focus you need to create something will help to get your mind off of the problems that are holding you down. In fact, sometimes, just working on something else might be enough to find the answers.


Web 2.0 Roundup

There are as many ways to get rid of stress as there are things to be stressed about. The important thing is that you find some way to keep things in perspective. If there is one thing that can sink a startup as quickly as any marketing slip up or technical flaw it’s when stress destroys the teams ability to function.

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