Stressbusting

Torsten and I had a long conversation last night about stress and priorities and work and how to leave your work at the office when it's never really done. He and I have such different jobs--mine is not always low-stress, especially not while I'm at work, but for the most part, when I leave the office, I'm done with work. I might check my work email once during the evening, but usually that's out of curiosity more than anything else, and any important emails I get during off hours just get marked as unread so that I'll remember to deal with them the next day.

Torsten, though, is always working. He works with people in different time zones, so the traditional office hours don't really apply. As a result, he feels compelled to be on Skype, checking his BlackBerry, and generally being on call at all times. He literally leaves his Skype on 24/7 in case anyone ever has a question. He never gets to the end of his to-do list, and so he always feels guilty when he's not working, because in the back of his mind he's still thinking about the next work task that he should be dealing with.

It's an admirable trait, having such a strong work ethic and being so dedicated to your job, and it's part of why everyone at his company loves him so much, and why he's advanced so far in the relatively short time that he's been at the company. He's brilliant, too, which is part of why people always seek him out for help and advice, even after hours.

But the down side to the work ethic is that it comes out of a deep, genuine dedication to his job, and a strong feeling of personal responsibility and culpability. It means that even when he isn't working, he's thinking about work. It means that he feels guilty when he's away from Skype, even though his coworkers could reach him via his BlackBerry if there were a true work crisis. It means that he was planning on bringing the BlackBerry on our honeymoon even though his boss told him not to.

And that means that his emotional energy is drained. It means that he spends so much time thinking about work, even when he's not doing work, that he hardly has time to do anything else other than collapse on the couch and yawn a lot. It means that he doesn't have a proper work-life balance, and he doesn't know how to achieve one.

This problem hasn't really taken a toll on our relationship, but I can certainly see how it would down the road. Right now I have a low-stress job, and we have no real responsibilities other than our jobs. We don't have kids, we don't have a mortgage, we aren't in school, we don't have aging parents that require caretaking. And because my job is particularly low-stress, I can dedicate extra energy to make up for the gaps in Torsten's energy. I can set up social activities, and prod him to get out of the house, and manage the household more than he does (cooking, paying bills) so that things even out.

And I'm totally fine with that. But at some point, we'll have kids and that means lots of responsibility and very little free time. It means a lot less energy and a lot more chafing. We're aware of that, and for us, the sacrifice is worth it. But that means, to me, that we need to make sure that we've learned how to manage work stress and not let it affect our personal lives--before we have kids and the stakes are higher.

So Torsten and I talked it over last night, and we came up with a plan, one with tangible, concrete steps that can be taken to help him better separate work and home. Skype will not be on at home. Work will be approached by time instead of by task. When seven o'clock rolls around, that means it's time to let everyone know that he's going home, write down whatever needs to be taken care of the next day, make sure people in other time zones are set for the evening, and then leave. And when he leaves the office, he needs to leave work as well. Neither of us wants work to inflitrate our home life anymore. And so we're taking steps to make it stop.

Just thinking about these steps makes me feel less stressed--and I'm not even the one who was stressed in the first place. I can only hope that the idea of blocking work into finite chunks of time, and putting it behind him when that chunk of time comes to its necessary end, can help lift some of the self-imposed burden from Torsten as well. Because he deserves it. And so do I.