How Unrelieved Stress Hurts Your Productivity: Decreased Productivity

In previous blogs, we’ve briefly mentioned how unrelieved stress hurts your body and your emotions. My purpose in writing these is not to go into great detail but just to make you aware of the many ways that stress does negatively affect us. Some topics we will revisit in much greater detail.

For the next couple of blogs, I want to show how unrelieved stress can hurt your productivity. Productivity basically means how much you are able to get done in a day.

Not all stress is bad and in many cases, some stress can get us to do more. For example, I always find that I get more done if I have a deadline or time that the project needs to be done. If there is no deadline, there is no stress and no real incentive to do the work. That is why I will often give myself deadlines to complete a book or project.

However, when you get overstressed or have a lot of stress for a long time, your body’s energy is being used up just trying to combat all of the toxic stress hormones in your system. Stress can be physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting. Your ability to concentrate and focus decreases.

In that situation, it is very common to find that the amount of work that gets done is less. To make matters worse, the work that is done is usually of poorer quality too.

There was a time in my life when I was so stressed that my mind shut down. I had five small children, all born within six years. One was seriously handicapped. My husband didn’t have a job so we had no money to live on. I thought I was functioning well but obviously I was not.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table one day and suddenly I blanked out. I have no idea how long it was for. I think only a few minutes. When I became aware again, I didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, what month it was or even what year it was. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. I had to phone a friend and ask them.

That is an extreme example and thankfully, it was very short. I never experienced that again. But how many of us will go through the day and looking back, realized that we have accomplished nothing? When we try to account for our time we really can’t. This could very well be a symptom of having unrelieved stress.