The Work Stress Cycle
5/5
()
About this ebook
You've been for a while having time just to work. Projects take longer, you have to put in extra hours, often without pay. That leaves you in a sorry state of exhaustion. Not even coffees have an effect.
Then you make mistakes. These errors must be corrected, so you have to work overtime again.
And if you are self-employed or a small businessman, what can I tell you? There are no weekends, the pressure exhausts you, you barely have time for your family.
If this is happening to you, I have bad news: you have entered the work stress cycle, a vicious cycle that affects millions of professionals around the world, and in all sectors. It is also known as burnout.
Our body notices it: it begins to release cortisol, adrenaline and other hormones. We can have tachycardia and hyperventilation, and higher blood pressure. Anxiety also appears.
If stress lasts over time, you can enter a really worrying phase: your body is no longer able to resist stress. You run a real risk of suffering serious physical and emotional disorders, to the point that you could develop mental or physical illnesses.
I don't need to tell you that your family life is also going to deteriorate. Work stress can destroy personal relationships.
But it's not all bad news. Just as we know very well what stress is and how it harms us, effective ways have also been developed to get out of this vicious circle.
"The Work Stress Cycle" shows you the way out in a simple and enjoyable way.
It is not a treatise or a study. It is the story of someone who manages to get out of the vicious cycle of work stress.
Although it is a fictional story, it is based on my own experience: I was where you are now, the work stress cycle, and I managed to get out of there. Is this possible to do.
How did I get it? First I focused on what was most urgent: the harmful habits that were hurting me. With the help of professionals I changed some that were deeply rooted, but that were detrimental to my health and my family life.
But this was not enough. There was no point in changing habits and attitudes if I continued doing things as usual at work.
That's why I radically changed my way of working. I adopted agile methods, which are revolutionizing the work life of professionals around the world.
Methods such as Scrum, Kanban or Lean Startup serve that purpose: working less and improving our lives, both work and personal.
I do not intend to make money from this book. I have my job for that. What I seek is to help professionals subjected to the tyranny of work stress.
If you are one of them, you have here an exit path within your reach. You are one step away from starting it.
Antonio Montes Orozco
When introducing myself, I think it's best to start at the beginning. I trained as telecommunications engineer and have worked as a systems administrator and C++ programmer. In 2006 I learned about the Scrum methodology, and I have specialized in this field, working as an employee and as an independent consultant. In 2014 I was cerHfied as a Scrum Manager, and in 2015 as an Agile practitioner by the prestigious Project Management Institute. Over time I have been training as a coach, both in my area of specialization and at a more general level. In 2020, I obtained the Master "Coaching & Mentoring Fundamentals for Agile", from the European Coaching School in Spain; In addition, I have been certified as a coach by the prestigious International Coaching Foundation. At the same time, I am a writer. A peculiar writer, who does not stick to a specific genre, but publishes what he considers can help other people. That is why I have published two books aimed at people interested in the Scrum methodology, both at a basic level ("Scrum for Non-Techies") and advanced ("Agile Coaching for Scrum Masters"). I have also published a fiction book about work stress, based on my own professional experience ("The Work Stress Cycle"). But I have not settled for writing books aimed at professionals. I have also published one aimed at anyone interested in the deep meaning of their life. It is titled "Maturing Your Catholic Faith." In 2016 I returned to the Catholic Faith, and I have felt the concern and the need to share my spiritual path with other people. The result has been this book. I wrote it thinking about people who, like me, have been educated in the Catholic Faith but then abandoned it. As adults, we need a map to reconnect with it. But the book will also help anyone who feels the need to find the deep meaning of their life.
Read more from Antonio Montes Orozco
Scrum for Non-Techies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Agile Coaching for Scrum Masters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maturing Your Catholic Faith Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to The Work Stress Cycle
Related ebooks
Great Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Building Self Discipline Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeak Productivity Blueprint Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSucceed as a New Manager: How to inspire your team and be a great boss Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsResponsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don't Act) Responsibly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWinner Instinct: 2Nd Revised Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Five Pillars of Talent Management Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMore Great Less Grind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCorporations Compassion Culture: Leading Your Business toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Coach: 13 Skills to Enhance Your Career Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew Ways of Wellbeing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Effective Leader: How to Maximize Engagement and Cultivate a High-Performance Team Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProfessionalizing Strategic Systems Management for Business and Organizational Success: Introducing the Ccim Three-Leg Stool Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelf-Development: How to Change Your Life?: What to Do if You Don't Have a Goal in Life? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Control Your Finances: Save Money, Increase Income, Invest, & Grow your Networth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeeking Adversity: How to Use Stress and Embrace Life's Difficulties to Reveal Your Best Self Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmart Work: Why Organizations Full of Intelligent People Do So Many Dumb Things and What You Can Do About It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSteer Through the Storm Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hammerhouse Effect: Obtaining Win-Win Through Model-Match Recruiting Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaving the Company: A New Strategy For The Age Of Radical Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLessons from Abdul: The Hidden Power of Receiving from Anyone, Anytime Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelf Improvement & Personal Development Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe 50+ Plan: His & Hers HRT Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFailure is an Option: How setbacks breed success Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lazy Manager: Exceed Company Goals the Easy Way and Win Back Your Personal Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCultural Insanity: And the roadmap to Great Organisational Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeople Centricity: the incredible power of putting other people first Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Power to Lead with Empathy: Transforming Workplace Culture and Performance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMonster Under The Bed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Leadership For You
How to Lead When You're Not in Charge: Leveraging Influence When You Lack Authority Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Win Friends and Influence People: Updated For the Next Generation of Leaders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stop Doing That Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Emotional Intelligence Habits Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Intelligent Investor, Rev. Ed: The Definitive Book on Value Investing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New One Minute Manager Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Minds for the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 15th Anniversary Infographics Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lead It Like Lasso Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, 20th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Work Stress Cycle
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Apr 29, 2020
The book is amazing. I like Antonio's ironic humor, and what I like the most is his principle: “remove fear from the equation”. I’ve also suffered the work stress cycle and I wish I’d read this book before suffering it, because it wouldn’t have been so painful. It has helped me a lot to understand everything that happened to me.
Book preview
The Work Stress Cycle - Antonio Montes Orozco
Table of Contents
Introduction...... .............................................................
Chapter 1: An Unsustainable Situation.........................
Chapter 2: Robert Visits The Coach...............................
Chapter 3: The Revolution.............................................
Epilogue.........................................................................
Conclusion......................................................................
Special Thanks...............................................................
About the Author............................................................
Credits............................................................................
Introduction
In the world of software , endless days are the routine. This causes workers to leave very late and return home without time for anything other than dinner and bedtime.
Imagine a life in a loop, in which one day dangerously resembles the next one, and the next one, and the next one... a life with hardly any time for anything other than work: no family, no friends, no recreational activity, which is so necessary to recharge batteries in this stressful world. That is the life that many workers have, and that many others have experienced at some point in their professional career.
Through this fable I pose the story of Robert, our protagonist, who is burned out for living in a continuously high-stress environment. Robert will discover what has led him to this situation and draw his own conclusions. You will discover the world of coaching, the world of Agilism
, and you will learn about the five steps that lead to entering the Work Stress Cycle
.
Burning out workers is counterproductive for the worker and for the company itself, so it is good to be aware of the price involved in overtime. Loading the members of a team with impossible tasks is the result of fear, so we will discover that we must eliminate fear from the equation.
Dedicated to:
Rosa, my indefatigable companion and the fruit of our love:
Elena and Laura
Chapter 1: An Unsustainable Situation
Robert
Our story begins with Robert, a young man of thirty-four years old, of medium height, curly and brown hair, and overweight. He is a programmer analyst who has been working in the software world for ten years. He studied Software Engineering, and when he graduated at twenty-four years old he quickly found a job. Since then, he knew the preoccupations of the software world: projects that were twisted, and extra hours that were worked, without receiving remuneration in return, and leaving him in a pitiful state of exhaustion. In addition, the fatigue was so extreme that the coffees were no longer effective, and he made many mistakes during the workday. These mistakes had to be remedied, so that meant more work and more overtime. Until the project was delivered to the client, Robert was in a panic to go through the same situation over and over again.
In addition, the way of working seemed absurd: in each project, a project manager was appointed who directed all the work. Before knowing anything about the product to be designed, they tried to document everything thoroughly, even though it was impossible to have so much detail, and the client did not even know what they wanted. After the initial titanic effort to document the entire product, everything was subdivided into tasks. Some were absurd tasks that would never be done, as they were based on an incorrect vision of the product. Reality always imposes changes, and it is very difficult to adapt these changes to the original plan.
This obsession to adapt to the initial plan leads to the loss of market opportunities, and to design products that were not what the client really wanted. It was very frustrating that, after so much effort invested, the client was dissatisfied with the product shown.
Robert still remembered that client who sold second-hand cars: He asked for an application to show the cars he had in store. A competitor invested in developing a similar application, which clients could easily access, showing their driver’s license to the camera. Robert’s client was left without his own simple access, because his was preset and the contract was signed; thus, after a year, he was given an application inferior to that one that the competitor had, to everyone's disappointment.
Robert, over the years, had met bosses who took into account the opinion of the programmers and trusted their criteria, but he had also met others who distrusted the programmers and treated them as lazy, regardless of their criteria and managing all tasks dictatorially. Any deviation from the plan set was attributed to the poor performance of the programmers, so they were punished with working overtime. These work peaks led to extreme fatigue of the entire team, and they made more mistakes, so the ball was getting bigger and bigger, to everyone's frustration.
During those years, not everything was bad, because he met Victoria, his wife, and married her. Victoria was cheerful, and a faithful and committed companion. Robert went out of his way for her, but, after longer work days, he came home so late that he was frustrated, feeling completely empty and exhausted.
There were also bad economic cycles that impoverished the country; the companies began to have losses and sometimes Robert was laid off, so he had to look for a job, to the despair of the young couple.
With the last crisis Robert was laid off again and ended up in the company where he was currently working. The work methodology was the same as always, and the project manager, Gerard, was the worst of all he’d had so far. He was just as dictatorial as the rest, but he listened less to his team and imposed impossible deadlines, so that each of his projects ended with anger and overtime, to the frustration of the team of programmers. The company where Victoria worked also went into crisis, and she lost her job, so she was now unemployed and looking for job offers every day.
Robert went back into a dynamic of overtime and extreme exhaustion. His health suffered and eventually ended up with a cold that did not get better, and instead worsened day by day. He was so exhausted that he could no longer have any down time with Victoria, as he fell asleep, literally speaking. Victoria felt that Robert was no longer listening to her. They couldn't even watch any of their favorite television series, which they enjoyed sharing when things were going well. After a while, her day was reduced to looking for a job in the morning and seeing her husband's shadow in the afternoon, with whom she could not speak. The love she felt for Robert faded away and she became disenchanted with their relationship,