This the 6th installment of the healthy habits for writers series.

The following are general life areas that very important. And they can bring to bear, a great deal of negative stress. Negative stress is the chronic, debilitating stress that threatens to block your productivity.

Stresses have threatened and succeeded in impeding my work on occasion. Still there are ways to manage them that can shorten their stay.

1. Health: Most of us get sick from time to time. But if you start to notice the same minor illnesses popping in often, it may be an indicator that you need to change some things.

Often times poor health is a result of missing your sleep, worry, and of poor diet. It may have been okay to lose sleep for days on end when you were young, in school, playing, but for work being sleepy can make you punchy and destroy your focus.

So, to help put off chronic, minor health issues, to think clearly and work most effectively, it’s important to get your proper rest and sleep. Worry can be alleviated by sleep, which points up how circular this situation can be. Worry can also be alleviated by keeping a journal, #7 below.

2. Diet: A healthy diet can affect your work day. There are many options to choose from and dietary suggestions are all over the internet, if you’re healthy enough to eat what you want. If not, consult your health care provider. Here are some suggestions that I followed that help me.

1. Eat fruit for breakfast.
2. Let your first drink of the day be water.
3. Eat light lunch to fuel your body without over filling.
4. Between meal snacks should be brain foods.
5. Dinner should be nutrition packed and not too heavy. If you eat before an evening workout, allow for that drain by having a healthy snack or juice after.

3. Tools: I have simple equipment to do my work. My tools need to work. Computer, external drives, scanner, phone. And I get a little bent out of shape when they don’t work.

When my external hard drive is really behaving oddly. It turns on and off as it pleases. Once for 2 days I fiddled with the thing, the outlets and the connections. I was about to pull it apart when I moved it to a different outlet on my surge protector, (again). A few seconds later, I heard the familiar whir letting me know it was booting up. Finally I called in because it made no sense. From my detailed description of my experiences and experiments, I was diagnosed with needing a new power cord. Since I replaced that I’ve had no more trouble.

Needless to say the experience of possibly losing my external drive gave me a lot of stress.

1. It’s not just backup, it’s also primary storage for many files
2. It’s larger than my internal drive, so it’s not like I could move it back to my computer at all
3. It was giving my problems at a time when I really wanted to focus on the project I was in the middle of

Make sure your tools are current and in good working order. Learn all you can about the tools you use, so that you can use them efficiently, without having to learn every time you use them.

Make sure you have the proper backup system for your needs. If you don’t have a backup system and you don’t worry about it, it may be because you never lost critical data. In that case, preempting such an experience will save you more than you know.

4. Family: My family will make demands from time to time, with no regard to my work or my plans. They make noise, ask questions, make plans, and assume I’m available.

Most times it’s light-weight stuff that I can easily counter. However, there are those times when the pressure to accommodate and comply is stepped up. You know when you can be available. When you can’t protect your space like your income depends on it—because it does.

Over time teach your family that your work and activities matter, even if it is work at home. Some people take it less seriously when you’re at home.

1. Keep a schedule that allows time for family and activities—unless that’s not part of your reason for working at home.
2. Have your boundaries of space and time set clearly for family members to see.
3. Leave home sometimes when there are unavoidable schedule conflicts. You don’t want to miss deadlines if you can help it.

5. Friends: My friends pressures are far different from my family. It’s passive rather than active, like with my family. They invite me to things, and the enticement takes on a life of it’s own. Once the invitation is received and the phone is hung up, I spend my time trying to make happen, whatever was asked.

I get caught up in the vacillation. Yes, I can go. No. I better not. But if I move this and hurry that, then I might just make it. But, wait! I can’t rush that; I’ll miss something.

If none of this sounds familiar, never mind. But, if you’re like me and have great friends that don’t push you into anything, only try to include you, then you know the pressure inherent in being included in fun stuff. This is just another area where self-discipline can see you through. You don’t have to be perfect, just good.

1. Schedule in fun activities when you’re not working.
2. Put your work first. If you can finish it, so much the better. If not, be aware of how much time you’ll need to get the job done and take that time.
3. Reschedule with your friends, if you have to. Friends will understand.

6. Community: We are social creatures. That means we require some measure of social interaction. If you work alone all day, and all night when you’re pressed, you need to find social interactions. It takes more than staying abreast of things by reading the news listening to the radio. Social interaction is how you keep your finger on the pulse of humanity. And isn’t that what you draw on to write whatever you write?

While this is less obvious for people who live with families, it can be a problem for them too. If you’re a writer, (1) you need to be able to communicate with an audience of at least one; (2) you need to be aware of topics and trends that proliferate the airwaves if you write time specific pieces; and (3) you need to network to get your ideas shared.

1. Talk to people online via social networking.
2. Get out and connect with friends and family.
3. Read blogs on topics that interest you and leave useful comments.

Find the fun side of participating. As people who write out of passion and drive, we do have a tendency to want to isolate. Often we feel that this is our more natural state and participation is purely an effort. (Maybe I’m just telling on myself.) In either case, it’s important to make that effort. Finding common ground with others can be a major source of positive reinforcement and knowledge. You’d be surprised at the many things you can learn from people.

7. Writing: It’s not just for work. Writing helps you to work things out, the list out your concerns before they become worries. Keep a personal journal for writing out your random thoughts. It can help you to organize your thoughts. Eliminating the chaos in your thoughts can make you much less stressful throughout your day.

1. Write in a notebook. The physical action of writing can help you connect more deeply to your quiet, nagging thoughts.
2. Write in private where you are free to be fully uncensored, and don’t censor yourself.
3. Think about the fact that you’re not writing solutions, but problems concerns and observations. Often the solutions will come.
4. Keeping a journal can also help you to be prepared for other eventualities that upset your balance.

So that’s it for these seven stress areas. I hope you got something out of some of them. There are other areas that can stress you, putting you out of balance, and making productivity very slow. Be vigilant and be pro-active to counter the effects of stress.

If you have stress areas, how do you deal with them?

Writing is an important skill that can make you quite valuable. You can increase your value by learning complementary skills. However, it doesn’t mean that you should lose focus of the job that you were hired to do.

It’s important to continue to learn, in whatever work you do. As a writer, you learn how to complete articles quickly and cleanly. Anticipating the needs of articles will help you to get done beforehand any research you need. You know too that language is fluid, dynamic and therefore guidelines change. You need to keep up with changes and that’s a lot.

So Why Learn Other Things?

If you knew one thing, only one thing, better than any in your field, I wouldn’t necessarily bid top dollar to hire you. Wherever I work, I find that employers are of the same mindset. Why is that?

It helps to know how other departments work to improve the flow of projects. Knowing a little about design will help when you have to write the ad copy for 1 inch positions. Or, how to write the article so that the preview section to come from the first paragraph. Or, how to edit so that you can write your articles to need minimal revisions by the editors. These related skills will usually come into play somewhat throughout your work experience.

How Much is Too Much?

Most people run their businesses to maximize profits. Makes sense, right? It can get out of hand when the boss wants you to put on the multiple hats you wear at the same time. Unless you’re in a one-man operation, you need to focus on your one job. Sometimes employers forget or don’t understand that it’s a good practice to have people focus on their primary responsibilities.

Signs that things have gotten out of hand include:

• Deadlines constantly needing revisions – when deadlines are repeatedly being extended and you’re being singled out, there may be too much on your plate
• Work requiring more revisions than usual because of mistakes – many things requiring your attention concurrently makes you want to rush; things can easily get missed
• Bad stress from juggling multiple jobs – when you have several full jobs, it can be stressful to have to switch gears throughout your work day; bad stress can be physically debilitating
• Dread on Sunday for what’s coming on Monday – when your weekend ends early because your job takes your attention away from relaxation, something needs to change at home, at work or in your routine

Basically only you know when you are pushed to extremes. Even if you’re financially compensated for doing all different jobs (and this is highly unlikely if you’re being asked to do them all) at some point work starts to flag. After a point, it is counterproductive and if you care about your performance, it can be quite frustrating.

What’s an Employee to Do?

There are things you might to to pre-empt and solve problems at a job. Make an honest assessment of your skills before and while you’re working at a job. Always, do what you do to the best of your ability. Understand that in most companies there is some overlap and cross training. With that, there are things that you can do to minimize your being over-stretched.

1. Never say you can do what you can’t. And be specific about how well you know your skills. In other words, when you’re a writer don’t say you’re also a professional web designer if you’re two weeks into learning HTML.

2. Bring your healthiest self to the job. Get rest and exercise and proper nourishment. Being alert on the job will help you to think clearly, and be able to trust your work choices.

3. Something more difficult to do, don’t always say yes to get along. When you can’t, say you can’t. Early on in one of my jobs, I said yes to everything and all deadlines. I eventually learned how the company worked and what to say no to, and when to adjust deadlines.

Some companies don’t understand that one person doing three jobs is not the best circumstance, and should only be short term. Sometimes in those companies, there are bosses who are receptive and able to separate jobs, hire and pay people to do them.

4. Ultimately your best work will be done when you are in a good work environment. When your work environment is not good, when you can’t work with others to make the situation better and you know you’re doing everything you can individually, it may be time to leave. When you know it’s time to go, I suggest that you begin your exit strategy by searching for the work and the environment you need.

Make sure your choices are made based on earnest assessments of all factors.