Working Well: Twelve Simple Strategies to Manage Stress and Increase Productivity

by Stephanie Berryman

Do you need stress management tools to give you some stress relief so you can have more time and energy for your life? If you want to stress less, relax more, have better time management and higher productivity, this is the book for you. You'll find practical strategies to help you instantly reduce your stress, manage workplace conflict, deal with workplace stressors including work overload, finding work-life balance, and having difficult conversations.A comprehensive guide to reducing workplace stress. . . . A thought-provoking and optimistic set of tactics for stress elimination. –Kirkus Reviews

Working Well is the stress-management book for people who are too stressed out and busy to read books. It’s fast, funny and practical. You’ll

Sure-fire strategies to help you stay calm in any situation

Approaches to change your hard-wired stress response and handle your stressors like a Buddhist monk

Brain-based methods that will skyrocket your productivity

A model for having difficult conversations with ease

Tools to build a foundation for a relaxed, happy life

Filled with engaging stories, thought-provoking questions, and research, Working Well is a must-read for anyone wanting to thrive at work no matter how difficult their manager and coworkers might be. If you’d like more time and energy for what matters most to you—your job, your relationships, your health, and your life—start reading.

Genres: Nonfiction

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 28, 2020

Reviews

[Sharon Summerfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. So many great tips to change our relationships to stress and improve our productivity.

I really enjoyed how Stephanie shared her many lesson learned in harmonizing her life personally and professionally while raising a young family. Each chapter closes with a summary, questions and actions. The tools shared offer great strategies to experience life with greater ease highlighted in digestible actionable bits. I highly recommend this book capturing so many gems finding exciting ways to choose how we respond to stress.

If you feel you are too busy to add one more book to your reading list, consider, carving out 30 minutes several times a week to read one chapter of “Working Well”. The ideas shared will have you looking at how you can manage your stress with new eyes.
“When we recognize that taking time to recharge and replenish our energy will make us more effective, we can make different choices on how we spend our time and energy” Stephanie Berryman
A few of the ideas shared to change our relationship with stress.
• Make self-care a priority.
• Practice Gratitude, Meditation and Mindfulness
• Consider the five balls. Work is like a rubber ball, if you drop it, this ball will bounce back. Keep work in perspective. We are so much more than the work we do.
• Manage your mental and emotional state. Remember to let go and question your thinking.
• Build Positive Working Relationships by replacing judgement with curiosity and compassion.
• Find new ways to manage your distractions and change your relationship with your phone and e-mail.
• Be present and stop multi tasking.
• Consider your strengths. In the book “Nine Lies about Work” written by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall speak to strengths: “A strength is far more appetite than ability, and indeed is the appetite ingredient that feeds the desire to keep working on it and that, in the end, produces the skill improvement necessary excellent performance.”
• Embrace ways to slow down. Make rest and downtime a priority.
• Invest in relationships and resolve conflicts by first, listening to understand.
• Move away from the badge of busyness. Create space to build in thinking time.
• Move from the urgent to the important and embrace your imperfections.
• Create positive habits and rituals. “Positive habits of thinking and responding to stress are going to lead to good results”. Stephanie Berryman

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I like about this book is that even though it is about helping people to be happier and more productive at work, the focus is really on taking care of yourself. It's about how to be a more centered and balanced person, which will help you in the workplace, and in life in general.The author gives excellent advice about managing difficult relationships, taking responsibility for your own feelings, using meditation and other practices to relieve stress - basically, as she puts it, showing up for yourself. These things are especially important to remember in the difficult times that we are all living through right now.

Thanks to Goodreads for a review copy.

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mostly common sense or things we’ve all probably realized on our own but stated in clear, relatable, and doable terms. I plan to reference back to this book often in future

[Csimplot Simplot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book!!!

[oohlalabooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s 12 strategies that’s easy to read and it offers stories with a set of questions afterwards. The strategies are quite helpful. Thanks to the author for this Goodreads giveaway. This is my honest review.

[Pao Vilchis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of the opinions are my own and this did not affect my review in any way.

As a medical student, stress and feeling unproductive are major components of my day to day life. So when the opportunity to read and review this book came along, I knew I had to give it a go in the hopes of finding tips and techniques to reduce my stress. Even though I was already familiar with some of the techniques this book presents, I was still blown away by how much this book helped me.

Working Well: Twelve Simple Strategies to Manage Stress and Increase Productivity is a comprehensive guide to reducing stress in every aspect of our lives primarily the workplace.

Like I said I was blown away by this book, although some of the techniques in this book are not new or mind blowing the research presented by the author does not only give this book more credibility but it allows you to understand our need to manage our stress. This book provides with strategies to help you remain calm in every situation, scientific methods to improve your productivity and tools to help us build a foundation for a calm and happy life. The 12 steps are easy, they are things we all know, however, the author puts these concepts in a clear and relatable way that makes it so much more manageable for us to digest.

What I love most about this book was that it all comes down to self-care. All these strategies, methods and tools are based on the idea of taking care of ourselves, of being the best version of ourselves in order to prosper and for me that was really important. Moreover, I appreciated that even though this book is fast to read and goes straight to the point, the author provide us with extra resources in case we want to know more about a specific tool.

Overall I am very happy I gave this book a chance, it turned out to be an excellent resource and just what I needed at the time. This book is perfect for everyone who is looking to reduce their stress and find tools and techniques to have a more balanced and happy life.

“We aren’t responsible for everything that happens in our lives, but we are responsible for how we respond to it.”