You become frazzled, snap at your co-workers, miss your daughter's dance recital, and make your family miserable until the projects are completed. You have a sick child at home and other personal issues that need to be resolved. Workplace stress such as this is becoming commonplace. But often employees tell us that their most significant source of stress is not their workplace, but their home life. They have the feeling of being out of control or that they are a victim of life.
People feel pressured by work, personal problems, or a combination of both.
Some suffer because of personal expectations set too high. You find yourself thinking about that last bad interaction with your manager, rather than concentrating on your task. And tasks that normally would take a few minutes of time sit unfinished for days because you lose the capacity to prioritize and you put off larger, important projects that take more energy and concentration. Sometimes stress is mild and temporary. When the consultant politely suggested to a company human-resources executive that this might be a good time to assess whether other executives were under the same pressures, he was firmly told no.